#and i kick myself for not properly utilizing it

[meulia]

does anyone else have unproductive mania/hypomania? like ur thoughts are racing and jumping from one thing to the next and u can’t focus and ur so overwhelmed that u end up doing nothing?

[morimakesfanart]

Is your house big enough for 10 people 🫠 I can feel myself melting away thinking about the problems you will face 😮‍💨 but having anime people in your house how cool is that 😎

We can make it work. Due to financial and legal reason, my sibling and I have been unable to move out of our parents' home. Here's a preview from what I have written so far that explains how all of them will fit:

When I was 4 1/2 years old, we had to move because my mom's job changed locations. At that same time she was pregnant with my younger sibling, so we also moved into a bigger home. My parents were sold a house they couldn't afford the upkeep on, but they wouldn't understand that for several years. And because of the crashing housing bubble, job markets, and person taste, my parents out right denied the idea of selling the house to get a smaller place we could actually properly take care of. Our roof has poorly patch, holes, and our siding is rotting -to name some of the growing problems. However, it did have a few more rooms than the average house. Both of my parents were hoarders and 7 years after my mom's death, we were still clearing out her things, and fighting my father from adding to the problem. Luckily, in the past few years we had managed to mostly clear out the 2 rooms that had once been a dining room(now "the back room"), and home office (now "the den"). It would be cramped, but we would be able to fit all 9 of them. Both the living room and the den each have a sofa with a pullout queen mattress, and since my dad was a literal hoarder that wouldn't let us throw things out, we have another old queen mattress in our basement, and a king mattress blocking the coat closet. The two old mattresses could be laid on the floor in the back room next to the den. All 4 of those would be enough to fit 9 people ....even with Hina being a giant. I decided to leave the end decisions for who would sleep where to our guests. If they could run a country, they could figure out who was going to sleep where on their own.

Since I was little, my parents pulled out of their pensions and 401Ks multiple times to keep us afloat, so we wouldn't have to move :( We've only been surviving since my mom died, because of me working, and my mom leaving a bunch in savings that my dad uses to pay utilities and most of the food bill. My dad can't work, so I have been the one paying the mortgage, insurance, and taxes for the house too. There are still a few more years left before it will be payed off. Since the house is falling apart it's an eyesore, so we are being charged higher taxes then our neighbors. (This is a common tactic to kick out "problem" families instead of helping them.) Once the house is paid off, I can start putting money aside to be able to try fixing the house, and hopefully get our taxes lowered.

In the fanfic, I plan to have Sin and the Generals work enough to help us, so it won't focus on our struggles. I am planning on having one chapter as set up, and then any other requests for things to happen in the reverse isekai AU will be chapters after that. :D

Me and my younger sibling, Lyly, have discussed reverse isekai for a ton of series before, so we already have some plans for how it could work, and what we would do. Since I started working on this in June of '22, I have talked to my family about what we would do, and how we might make it work. The excerpt I put above is something I talked to them about earlier today, actually XD We talked for over an hour about the different characters and how they might be able to help us too. My whole household knows Magi because I live here and they can't get me to shut up about it XD They've both seen the full anime for Magi and Adventures; Lyly has read a bit of both manga but didn't finish. Everyone in this house agrees that Ja'far is a lot like Lyly, so my dad said he'd be comfortable with Ja'far helping him with paperwork stuff. He also wants to know more about Hina after learning that he's also a widower and over 50 y/o. So it's going to be fun writing how all of them help us get out of the red :3

For all the people that have dm'd me asking if Lyly will ever isekai into Sindria's Prophet after reading my diary comic, "Mori the Webcomic," the answer is: probably not because I don't want to ever misrepresent them. I will write some one shots where it happens for fun, and they will be in this reverse iskekai AU. Lyly is taking a semi active roll with the writing for any chapter that they appear in.

[furys-mercy]

4. Is it easy for your OC to treat someone with courtesy, even if they personally dislike them or disagree with their views or actions? 1. Is your OC modest? Or are there some things they like to boast about?

Is it easy for your OC to treat someone with courtesy, even if they personally dislike them or disagree with their views or actions?

Mercer kicks his right foot up on the crate serving as a makeshift ottoman. The cigarette between his lips bounces as a deep chuckle rumbles through his chest. "Courtesy? Ya mean like proper manners? Ain't got any'a tha' 'round here." A heavily scarred hand motions around are the smoke filled workshop. "Bash ain't a big fan'a tha fact tha' I don't know how ta properly sip tea or which fork is fer wha', but..." He smirks. "Ya ain't really askin' 'bout tha'. Ya more wanna know if I'm kickin' people's arses fer bein' a shite." There's a small shrug. "Depends. Are we disagreein' 'bout something tha' don't really matter? Don't rightly care if someone thinks tek's useless an' prefers ta utilize only magic or some shite. Good fer them. But if we're talkin' 'bout the matter'a someone livin' or someone gettin' hurt?" With a flick of his wrist he drops a bit of ash on the stone floor next to him. "I ain't gonna start shite cause yer annoyin' me. Waste'a m'fuckin' time. But if yer doin' something way outta line, we'll prolly have words. Or more'n tha'. Know at least one guy tha' ain't got a head anymore." The Machinist doesn't seem the least bothered by this. "But ya jus' don't fuck with me'n mine. Put hands on m'family an' you'll find ya don't have hands." Is your OC modest? Or are there some things they like to boast about?

"There's always someone better'n you." He drops the cigarette to the stone floor and snuffs it out with the toe of his boot. "Ain't gonna go 'round claiming otherwise. There's folks better with tek than me. There's fols better with Arcanima than me. There's folks better at shootin' than me. Talkin' myself up jus' sets me up ta run inta those folks an' then it be real fuckin' obvious. Ain't no reason ta be doin' tha'."

((Thanks for the ask! Sorry it took me a bit to get to it!))

[havethetouch]

update~

Still alive n kicking my guys, disassembling ikea furniture like it owes me a shitton of money and packing boxes with a vengance.

I am also incredibly pissed off currently but that works fine for me because spite is a good fuel and I have to get shit done so it works in my favour. Don't worry my absolute darling sibling from other parental units helped me through the thick of emotional bs I stumbled into a few days ago so I am doing well in spite of shit which is good because I don't have time for any of that crap anyway.

The 14th is gonna be M-day sponsored by Mama and BroBro and their sick ass big cars and if we employ our generational Tetris skills we might get this show on the road with just one big trip.

And given that the big day is around the corner I am vibrating again with possibility and my inherited need to make home and nest I am so ready to flip off the flat and run for them hills baby~

So yeah big excite around the corner lotsa stuff to remember still like quitting the utilities and have my mail forwarded to catch stragglers ans all that jazz. First thing to assemble after will be my workroom obviously everything else is secondary. My darling aunt gifted me her slim glass cabinets that I will mount to the wall and sort my inkbottles into which already has me giddy mainly because sorting these babies after type and colour is the most carthatic thing ever and I earned myself some carthasis me thinks.

Imma post some pics once I'm done with it, still need to rig up the electricity in the workroom up properly bc right now it has a 50s chandelier going and that is not enough light for a proper workroom especially since I am a nocturnal beast and good light makes the difference when mixing colours and getting the hues right (used to have a real shitty desklamp and had sometimes to go off memory with my tools to get the colours right which is a point of pride but also wasn't fun). Anywaythe workroom will get the all white treatment mostly, white furniture (imma sand down my table and repaint that in white too), mostly white walls to hang my favourite artworks without visual discrations and some turquoise accents. Other side of the workroom gets a bigass rattan circular disk chair I dream of a massive thing with pillows and blankets that I can curl up in like a nest while I do embroidery and I even saw some neat fireplaces that come in white too which will be needed bc the workroom is hit with cold on two fronts as it is the last room on the corner of the house and it gets icy, which mind, is good for my materials like the copics bc it will keep em usable longer but I need the fireplace to warm myself up in winter if I stay too long in there which I will bc I can draw for hours and should not become an icicle while I am at it hah.

Either way plans start to take actual shapes now and it's hella nice. But also lotsa work ahead like I need to retile my bathroom at some point too. The good things about all my renovation projects and plans for breathing new life in some of the furniture is that I can do most stuff by myself bc my dad was a handy man and he taught me a broad spectrum of things you usually call handimens and specialists for. Hope my old man looks down at me fondly from whichever afterlife and laughs his ass off when I start cursing over retiling the bathroom though bc tiles are lil bitches but man I can't wait. I am so excited.

[mxstball]

[Scorching Sandgems] Distorted Expectations: Daiyu

Daiyu sighed and slowly started to sink into a shadow, but she never got the chance to sink fully before being found out.

"..where do you think you're going, bitch? Lauren may not be in trouble now that I understand what's going on, but you definitely are."

Daiyu was still slowly sinking.

"You go in the Distortion World and I will personally find you myself and kick your ass so bad that not even Mona will save you. You hear?"

Daiyu immediately got out of her portal and sat on the sofa properly.

"Good. Good. Actually, hang on. Sapphire's going to kill me for this, but--" Heidi pulled out her move gun and shot beside her before reaching in and taking something out of there. It was a plush doll -- Sapphire's Gardevoir plush doll.

"H--hey! Don't just yank her like that! Gardevoir's sensitive to swift motions!" Daiyu  was rapidly waving her hands back and forth to tell Heidi to stop.

"Oh? Is she now?" Heidi politely placed Gardevoir down on the table. "That's strange, because, last I checked, inanimate objects like Pokédolls don't normally have feelings… that is, unless there's a soul inside."

"H--huh? What do you mean?" Daiyu started sweating.

"Don't play dumb with me, Daiyu. I've been meaning to ask you about Sapphire's Pokédolls for a while now, and after our little encounter today, I've learned a lot more than what I was expecting." Heidi turned to Lauren. "Big sis. Please, can you tell me if there's anything… odd about this Gardevoir?"

"Sure." Lauren picked up the plush toy and rotated it in her hands. "Just looks like a regular plushy to m--"

Lauren didn't get to finish her sentence before she felt something coming from the plush toy. It felt… alive-- no-- as if something was harmlessly residing in the small object. It reminded her of a Bannette in a way, but… it wasn't quite that. The spirit still had a strong Psychic energy around it and she could tell that it still had a sense of emotion. Lauren lightly grabbed one of the arms of the Gardevoir and lifted it before letting it go. The arm fell to its side of course, but the falling arm motion was enough for her to know that the spirit was tied directly to the doll.

Now that she thinks about it, this did remind her of something.

Lauren summoned the Soul Dew again. She compared the two… then turned to Daiyu.

"Daiyu. There's a Gardevoir in this plush doll, isn't there?"

"!!!"

Heidi glared at Daiyu. ".... tell the truth, Daiyu. We're waiting."

"Okay! Okay! I'll tell you. Just… give me Gardevoir first. She's very sensitive in certain places and I don't want you to accidentally scare her."

Lauren handed the plush to Daiyu, who hugged and petted it. She then kept it in her hands.

"...When a Pokémon dies, there is a time period between the moment that the body stops moving and when they either pass on or become a spirit where the Pokémon's soul is in a state of limbo. They're not alive, but they still retain the full properties of themselves from when they were still living. Under normal circumstances, this time period doesn't matter, but without intervention, there are a few that utilize this period in certain ways." Daiyu looked at the Soul Dew. "It's normally this limbo where a Laitos and a Latias transforms into a Soul Dew for example, transforming themselves into an orb that keeps their minds and souls protected inside. Their soul stays relatively intact, allowing other Latias and Latios like yourselves to benefit from the orb."

Heidi and Lauren looked at each other, but it was Lauren that spoke. "Well, like me. Little sis has this problem where a Soul Dew hurts her."

Heidi glared at Lauren. "That's besides the point, Lauren. No need to talk about my shortcomings here."

Daiyu nodded. "Right. So… I am able to see when a Pokémon is in that state, and I can preserve them… by placing them in special inanimate objects, not too dissimilar to how a Shuppet and Banette work. If you were to die and I didn't want you to go, I can… well…" Daiyu looked down at the plush toy. "Place you in a Pokédoll that looks like you for example. So, as long as that toy isn't destroyed, you can live on, and you maintain everything about yourself so that, maybe, you can fulfill your final wishes before you finally wish to pass on…."

"...." Heidi was able to understand where this was going. "...and so you did this to Sapphire's fallen friends during the war."

Daiyu nodded. "P--please, please don't tell her. I… I don't normally do this and it was their wish to be with Sapphire for as long as they could, so this was the only way that I could help them after they died. She'd be heartbroken if she learned that her Pokémon never passed on… and they don't want her to know, either."

Lauren blinked. "How do you know what they want? Little sis and I can get a sense of their presence and feeling, but not that much else."

Daiyu placed Gardevoir down on the table lightly. Heidi spawned a small toy chair that was just large enough for the doll. Daiyu smiled and placed Gardevoir there, turning her as if she was a part of the conversation. "I… can still talk to them. I can still understand them directly. I can even project into the doll and check in on them. Sapphire and I cuddled a lot in part so I could have an excuse to check on them, to see how they're doing and how they're feeling. Even on my birthday, Gardevoir told me how she was happy to finally get to see Sapphire move on and make new Pokémon friends, and that she was confident that her trainer would be a good trainer to more Pokémon…."

Daiyu stopped talking momentarily as she looked at Gardevoir for a bit.

"Gardevoir appreciates the fact that she seems included in the conversation, though she's a bit upset at me for being so protective of her." Daiyu looked back at the rest of the group. "Honestly, because of the fact that it disrupts the natural life cycle of a Pokémon, I'm usually extremely selective of who I do this to, but Sapphire meant a lot to me at the time so I thought that it was worth it."

Jeanne smiled. "You did what you thought was right, and that's all that we can ask."

Heidi crossed her arms. "Still doesn't mean that you should have been hiding this from Sapphire for so long. I think that it would have been nice for her to know that her friends were still with her in some form, rather than to use the dolls as mementos."

Lauren turned to Heidi. "Well, it's also in part the Pokémon's decisions, and they didn't want her to know, either. I don't think that it's right for her to disregard their wishes."

"Fair enough, I guess. I still don't like it, though."

Daiyu shook her head. "I get that you don't like it, and Gardevoir understands your feelings. We… will talk with the others to see their stance. If they're comfortable, I think I'll tell her."

Lauren blinked. "Here's what I don't get, though. How did Morrigan get a hold of this ability, and why was she able to project Lati the way that she can?"

"I don't know the first answer, but the second is because I can do that, too." Daiyu grabbed the Gardevoir plush and channeled some of her magic into it…

…revealing what seemed to be a Gardevoir beside them!

"[...]" Gardevoir swayed back and forth, but didn't do much else.

Daiyu started her explanation. "I can project her soul into the world of the living like this, but there are two downsides. First, this isn't a true body of Gardevoir. She seems real and attacking and damaging her does occur, but killing her will simply bring her back into  the plush. Secondly, Gardevoir has no will or self-determination. She still controls how she moves and speaks, but it's me who gives the commands and ultimately controls her. I don't like doing it because it feels like disrespecting the spirit."

Gardevoir spun around. It didn't seem to have anything to say.

"She still will remember everything from this conversation… remember her environment and everything that she was forced to do, too. So, why would I force her to come out to have her appear 'alive' when she can live life through her doll?" Daiyu recalled the spirit and placed the doll back on the chair. "Anyway, this is what Morrigan used on us since Lati is perpetually in that limbo state. Considering how much he dislikes her, it's utterly abhorrent and disrespectful what she did. I'll never forgive her."

Heidi and Lauren both nodded. Heidi reached for the doll and grabbed it. She petted the Gardevoir, making sure that she knows that she cares. Finally, Heidi opened the portal and placed Gardevoir back in Sapphire's bed where she was. To think that Daiyu had such a connection with the dead and to other people warmed her heart. Even though Heidi still didn't agree with the fact that she was keeping such a big secret from Sapphire, she understood that it came from a good place, and that's what mattered the most.

"Thank you for telling us, Daiyu." Heidi nodded. "You're still a little grounded for your actions, but… I understand that you're just trying to do the right thing."

"I understand. Just… don't be mad at them, please. The little spirits are just doing their best with what they can do with their friend."

"I'm not. If anything… I understand them. I'd wish to do the same thing if I died protecting Zinnia. I just hope that they eventually find peace."

"Yeah. Me too."

[sensualcoder-dev]

Project Updates - 5/7/24

Looks like it's time for my bi-yearly "remember this blog exists and post an update"! 😄It's been another few months of off and on work due to my day job and other life things going on, but still trying to chip away at things.

More on the individual projects under the cut~

libtcod tutorials

Since my first crack at writing up the C++ tutorials for libtcod, I've mostly been trying to decide what I want to show for them. Part of the feedback I received on the first tutorial was that it didn't have a clear audience, whether it was for beginners to programming or to more advanced developers. I've gone back and forth on this, and I think I've settled on making it more accessible to newer programmers, though that does mean I have some reworking to do. On the upside, I was able to fairly easily change the code on the early tutorials to account for newer versions of libtcod.

I have also been working through reimplementing later tutorials. Most recently worked on the fourth tutorial, where I decided to introduce an event handling system using double dispatch (specifically using the way outlined in this blog post). This approach is a bit complex to implement and describe since it uses certain template patterns, but overall it should allow for the rest of the tutorials to easily add functionality by simply adding events and new event handlers. Actually implementing it took a couple of days of trial and error due to a lot of factors (mostly trying to understand how it all worked myself), but now it's in a good state and pretty easily extendable! Explaining it in the tutorial, however, will be a different story 😅

OpenHomeworld

This is mostly still in the rough design phase still. Most of the tinkering I've done has been around loading and listing the Bigfile contents, and optimizations around that. I'm tempted to start working on a GUI archive tool to display items as well as insert and extract files from the Bigfile, though I'm not sure if I want to make something in Qt or try my hand at making a plugin for Godot. The Qt tool would probably end up being pretty simple and just show a list of files like how 7zip or WinRAR work, which itself would be just a UI around a command line tool, really. If I tried creating a Godot plugin, I'd also want to handle viewing and editing the files extracted from the Bigfile, too, and that would probably also require implementing the way to handle the Homeworld texture, mesh, script, and other files that have their own format internally. The Godot option is tempting, since I would want to have some sort of editor for the project at some point, but I'll probably keep is simple at this point and just make some small command line utilities. Options, though!

At the same time, I've been playing with the source port of the original game and trying my hand at updating the build system to CMake. This has gone mostly smoothly, except for one snag that I have yet to figure out a good way to handle. You see, the old Homeworld source code is written in C, but the game levels were created in a scripting language that the Relic devs used called KAS (which I think stands for Kick-Ass Scripts lol). Essentially these KAS files would get converted into C code and compiled into the main game executable, and the way the game is built with Makefiles makes it pretty easy to hook in calls to the utility programs to convert these files. In all my messing around, though, I have not been able to successfully replicate that process using CMake. I might need to specify all of the mission files explicitly to have them build and link properly, but I worry I'll end up running into a situation where the build will fail due to things being run out of order in multi-threaded builds (which is already a problem with the source port process though). Analysis continues...

Metal Max Redux - GBC game project

In my last devlog, I mentioned that I was interested in making a game based on a series of obscure JRPGs. The Metal Max/Metal Saga games are ones that I found last year and fell in love with, so much so that I wanted to create a game based off them. The first game in the series was an NES game that was never released in North America, but has a wonderful fan translation patch that I was playing through, but have not actually completed quite yet. It's a fun little RPG where you can drive tanks around a post-apocalyptic world fighting monsters, and has a pretty open structure to it, not unlike the first Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.

Last year I also came across GB Studio, a free and open source all-included editor for creating GameBoy and GameBoy Color games from scratch, and this gave me a great idea: since I was a huge fan of the GBC port of Dragon Quest I+II, I thought I would make a similar port of Metal Max. So Metal Max Redux was born!

I'm still mostly in the beginning stages with this project still, but I've created a basic mock-up of overworld movement and triggering random battles. The random battle system took a while to puzzle out, and at one point I thought I was going to have to extend the engine that GB Studio uses, but I was able to make it work using a step counter attached to an invisible player object that seems to work well enough. Next steps will probably be analyzing how the NES battle code worked, so I'll be looking at lots of assembly. Fun times! 😄

Free City-States - lewd city management game

Finally, a project to earn my screenname 😄 I really enjoy city builder and management games like the Caesar series and Dwarf Fortress, and within the last few years games like Crusader Kings and Stellaris.

A while back, I was starting to help out with a project called Free Cities Reborn, itself a reimagining of an HTML game called Free Cities, a lewd management game with some city building aspects. I couldn't continue with FCR after a while due to some growing reservations about the content and focus of the game which extends somewhat to the original too, since its core gameplay is around the raising, training, and sale of sex slaves. It's a fun indulgence, if somewhat of a guilty pleasure, and it's certainly not the first game that's concerned with the subject matter, but I still felt weird contributing to a project where it was so focused on that. But at the same time I started to think about creating my own spin on the core ideas, and creating my own lewd game in general.

So that's how Free City-States came to be envisioned. The core game concept in my mind is more akin to Crusader Kings and Stellaris than to Caesar and Dwarf Fortress, but focused on the management of a fantasy city-state. I've created a small mock-up in Godot as my first real foray into that game engine so far, and hoping to continue chipping away at it as the concept becomes more fleshed out 😊

Wow, this ended up way longer than I thought it would, and this doesn't even cover all the small ideas and tinkerings I've been working on! Putting it down into words, I guess I really did do a lot between the last post and this one 😅 Hopefully future posts will be a little shorter, but this was a fun way to reflect on the things that I'm working on. I think I'll try to make fortnightly updates if I can, going forward.

[possibly-eli]

time to actually make the post this was supposed to lead to. putting this under a read-more for my own comfort and also its probably going to be looonnggggg

so lately ive been properly pondering on the kind of world i feel like id be most comfortable living in. yaknow, economic-system wise. i havent really thought a whole lot about the social aspect of anything yet because ive been too busy thinking about This

and like. put simply; housing and utilities are free (ideally food as well but i'll elaborate on that in a second). its still ~generally~ capitalist, unfortunately, because i find myself not really able to comprehend what a completely non-capitalist world would look like, and this seems at least feasable, however aggressively unlikely it is to happen ever

the idea is essentials are free, but extra stuff isnt. so housing and utilities (and again; ideally food but ill expand on that) would be free, everything else would still cost. food would encompass ALL food, since. its All Food. fuck the sugar tax. utilities would be everything required in a house (electricity, water, plumbing, internet connection, lights. it might be a toss-up on gas but considering electricity would be free, thatd be an extra thing. appliances also since. those are important and technically Are the utilities) the housing itself would be free, as well which means that people would work for Wants, rather than Needs. its not like everyone ever is spontaneously going to stop Wanting things over night just because the world is slightly better to live in now. me being able to afford a place to live and not constantly worry about paying shit wont make me stop wanting art supplies. it just means that people will be less stressed because theyre not at risk of death if they dont work. it also means that the quality of whatever work they Will do will be better, because they wont be stressed and overworked. am i making sense so far education and healthcare could Also be made free, possibly. thats a bit up in the air, considering it is entirely reliant on assumptions that people go into those kinds of jobs for passion, rather than solely pay. but then again, i could be wrong. who knows. but the fact that people dont have to pay for housing, utilities and food*, itll mean it SHOULD be easier to pay off medical expenses. teachers and doctors construction workers would all still be paid for their work, obviously, but itd come from somewhere other than the clients themselves, i guess. details i cant figure out right now

the asterisk regarding food is that, maybe, if the idea of people working solely for wants is too big a stretch; food could still cost money. to make it a less strenuous, but still present, Need.

said as if this would ever, ever happen. i cannot express how badly i want it to. like obviously itd be a pain in the ass to work out the details of; im not educated in finances or whatever. i have a fucking LC education and passionate google searches under my belt. but i dunno, the idea of living in a world that is just like. less stressful is really nice, to me. at least, i view it as less stressful. youre guaranteed housing, and electricity, and food*. if you cant work, youre not at risk of being kicked out of your home or. fucking dying i got so lost in the daydream sauce about this that i genuinely forgot this Wasnt the world i live in. that in this one, i will have to rely on disability payments so ill be able to live. an allowance that they could just decide to deny me. i have to set up a medical insurance plan so ill be able to see a doctor about my multiple medical issues. i have to set up a medical card so ill be able to buy my medication so i dont have a heart attack. i dunno. maybe i just kind of really really wish the world wasnt so fucking malicious

and its not like thisd be a thing thatd only benefit disabled people. itd benefit fucking everybody except fucking billionaires. because to realistically have this happen, itd probably take a lot of finances From billionaires and that just fucking wont happen because they just cant bear to part with a fraction of their fucking. 38 billion. what the fuck do they need it for. there is nothing they can do with fucking. 40 billion that they cant do with 1. or fucking. 100 million i dont know. im so fucking upset about it. im just really fucking upset

i dont know what exactly the workers-having-the-means-of-production would be. itd all still probably be mostly the same, just a lot of major things would be free. it still wouldnt be ideal, but itd be so much better than this. in theory, a cap could be put on the amount of money a single entity could have (maybe with some variation, but for singular people itd be like. idk. 100 million maximum), and anything beyond that will just be donated back into the rest of the world so it wont just be One Asshole Having Literally All The Money

am i making sense? i really kind of hope im making sense. this idea is really important to me, i guess

would you guys still like me if i talked about my thoughts on the state of the world and the economy and some pretty anti-capitalist ideas

[the-fo0l]

Yan!Agent 47 headcanons

Notes: Im honestly surprised at how little content there is for 47, so tried writing some myself

Warnings: kidnapping, otherwise really fluffy

Oh you poor soul, managed to catch the eye of 47 huh?

Now you're hidden away in a hideout no one but 47 knows the exact location of, made to stay there indefinitely

Even though your new home is luxurious and beautiful in every way it is kinda creepy just how close everything is to your liking, how the hell did he know what interior design you liked..??

moving on

In contrast to the rather cold-hearted kidnapping, he takes such good care of you once you're in his home, you'll stop fighting back relatively fast

After he had kidnapped you it was...awkward between you and him, yes he finally has you but he had no idea how to properly express his feelings for you

How could he even express the love he has for you, when there's simply soo much of it <3

He would slowly build up repore with you, even if you are being more resistent than calm he'll still make sure you eat and don't hurt youself

You physically fighting him isn't a problem either cause of how strong he is

Seriously, he barely feels your kicks and punches

No matter how you behave in this situation he is extremely patient with you, you both know you can't stay mad at him forever

He babies you...in a way, not verbally, no, no, no, he's not exactly talkative if you haven't noticed. I mean that in the sense that he insists on doing everything for you

Breakfast, lunch and dinner? Done. Snack? Of course love. A movie? Your choice sweetheart. A massage? Anything for you baby. Some privacy? Fine. Freedom? No can do, anything else? <3

At some point you two started sleeping in the same bed and after one night where you involuntarily snuggled up to him in your sleep, he insisted on cuddling

Being so close to you made his heart go skjswnsjis

Cuddling with 47 is a lot more intimate than you'd think

Yeah, obviously he was really stiff in the beginning due to not having any kind of closeness or love like this in his life but he soon gets the hang of it

He wraps you up really tightly in his arms, specifically holding your head to his chest with his strong arms around your shoulders

In his mind this is optimal, like cmon it has so many benefits 1. Shielding you from intruders (even though there's no way anyone could get in he's paranoid) 2. Playing with your hair 3. Getting to see you so up close and touch you 4. Making sure you don't try to escape

Occasionally he gets really into physical affection. Normally he uses instinct when on missions but holding you starts to also come more naturally. Like, you'll be in the kitchen, making coffee, and he'll just come up next to you and firmly hold you and kiss your head for the next 10 minutes.

But if you express any discomfort he'll back off of course (he's totally not frowning wdym)

He actually starts developing more emotion through his love for you. Annoyance when he has to leave you, anger when you're threatened, frustration when you try to leave and sadness when you're upset. These are very dulled down for him but still

He makes a lot of money through his work but never really uses any of it. Now he can spend it all on you

He knows money can't buy your love but he still wants to give you the world

Im talking the best clothes, jewelry, food and equipment for your hobbies there is

He puts protecting you above all else, even if it means keeping you locked up. He simply can not bear the thought of his enemies or the ICA trying to utilize you againt him (even if he takes insane security measures and has no problem killing whoever gets in the way)

He has to keeps you safe, hope you understand <3

[borderlinereminders]

Healing isn't linear. Recovery isn't linear. I know this. A lot of you know this. We say it a lot to everyone else, but usually forget to apply it to ourselves.

Tonight, I had a trauma response. I wrote a post that was misunderstood by someone. I was then met with hate asks because of the misunderstanding.

I tried to explain what I meant to convey, and apologized. I kept getting hate. My trauma response kicked in here because I kept trying to explain myself. That's something I picked up from years of emotional abuse. Instead of walking away, I kept trying to "fix" the situation. To be properly understood.

People misunderstanding me can be so triggering. I understand that perfect communication isn't really possible. But being accused of something I didn't really say sets off so many memories.

Which led to me, again, trying to apologize and defend myself. At this point, while someone else's feelings of hurt are valid even if I had good intentions, I didn't deserve to keep beating myself up the way I was and feeling guilty. (I really felt like I was a bad person and a failure. I've worked a lot on splitting and black and white thinking but still slip up when it comes to myself sometimes.)

Once I realized I was having a trauma response, the doubt creeped in. "I'm a fraud. I get so much praise on my blogs for healing and inspiring others and here I am having a trauma response."

I stepped away from Tumblr for a bit. Spent some time with my partner and looking at my coping skills. When I couldn't self soothe myself, I reached out for reassurance in a support server I have. The reassurance I received there allowed me to calm down and utilize my other skills.

And it took me a long time to get to this point, and healing is not linear. Me having a trauma response doesn't undo years of improvement. And in times like that, it's easy to forget that how I handled my trauma response differed greatly from how I would before. I stepped away, looked at my coping skills, and reached out for help instead of completely spiraling and doing things that made the situation worse for myself. And that is progress.

I guess what I also want to try and say is that for me, healing does not mean the trauma never affects me anymore. I think it means that I'm better equipped to deal with it in ways that don't impact my quality of life or make it worse than it needs to be.

I share my personal stories like this with you because I want to show you examples. Recovery and healing aren't linear. And a lot of you talk about how my posts and blogs inspire you. And I think (at least for most of you) that you don't think less of me, or think I'm a failure because I slipped up. I don't even think you'd think I was a failure if I gave into a bad habit I've worked hard to kick. I think you see me as human, and that the work I've done is still valid.

My main lesson here is... You deserve to give yourself that same compassion and understanding.

(For those wondering, because I tend to share this in my posts like this, the skills I utilized were my Urge Surfing skill to ride the wave and I then used my Pros & Cons skill to decide between two different actions).

[transformers-fan-continuities]

Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf​ created by @artsy-hobbitses​!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards  Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place. 

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society. 

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times  to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to  Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation  and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and  expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower​‘s OC Missit!)  is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider​’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

[farawayhostel]

Good job, you two!!! Everything is properly documented, you shared your experiences well and shared just enough details to keep the readers in the loop. Utilizing hyperlinks and screenshots was a great move on your behalves, I applaud you two.

Now, I agree with everything. I’ve read through the documents, I noted who exactly I saw in them, and I will remember who was involved.

I may as well drop my own experience. I wasn’t really active, yeah… But I wanted to be transparent and come out with my own truths about the situation. How I really feel about what happened, and why I left the @omori-food-administration.

Here’s my experience at the OFA:

The OFA is strange. Not in a good way either, I only really felt comfortable talking when a friend was present. So I often stuck around Sunny, since he was the first one I interacted with, and he’s the one that I trust the most in Discord entirely.

They both made some really good points. If you didn’t read their responses before, then read them.

Sunny and Gholdengo did not deserve any of this. Some of it might’ve been provoked, but they didn’t deserve to be treated like as badly as they were. Sunny is one of the kindest people I know, one of the sweetest and most caring people in Discord.

I’m aware that he comes off as aggressive when we speak sometimes, but he’s like a baby bunny sometimes. Nervous, shy and cagey whenever he feels uncomfortable, he should’ve been treated better when he was in the server. The server did not respect him, and all he wanted to do was help them.

And Gholdengo is kind, too. They’re funny, they’re good-natured, smart and a generally positive person to be around. I listened to his interests and I bonded with them over a few different things.

In my head, I view Gholdengo as a younger brother. I have a younger brother myself, and thinking of my little brother witnessing things that he shouldn’t be, in a supposedly safe space…

It makes me feel so incredibly aggressive.

They were around for all of the incidents. Sunny informed me that Gholdengo was there with him witnessing events that shouldn’t have occurred in a public space like the OFA discord, incidents that should’ve been made private. In some of them, they were even on call together, as everything occurred.

In some of the incidents, I can acknowledge that I may have been aggressive and argumentative, but I’ll be honest. Every time I got involved (which was twice), I was beyond pissed. I was upset, I was one word away from snapping. I joined the OFA to have some fun, a break in my already busy schedule.

However, I won’t be apologizing, for any aggression I may have shown before. On that matter, I would like to get out this message before I leave:

Death, delete the server. Vin, go to hell. The other mods (minus the inactive Kel one), go kick rocks.

Your community fosters violence. Somebody was committing crimes in there, somebody admitted to choking a kitten. I’ve read through the drives, I have seen what exactly your community is like, and I have experienced first-hand how you treat your members.

If Sunny would’ve allowed it, I would’ve filed a police report on Stranger. I would’ve gone through every piece of information they put online just to find their location so I could file that report, because they’re doing something illegal in a public space.

And I would’ve done digging on Vin to file a police report as well. Just to put this into perspective, these are two minors committing crimes in a goddamn Discord server. Both 16 years of age, smart enough to know better, old enough to do better.

The enabling was a shit move. The poor management was an even shittier move, the fact that Sunny had to swallow his fear down and document the situation for the sake of transparency makes it all incredibly and horribly worse.

Vin sent Gholdengo literal gore. Vin made Sunny feel invalidated, you guys made Sunny feel invalidated. They are one of the funniest and nicest people I know, and they got mistreated in your community.

Your moderation team is full of shit. The amount of bias is insane, the favouritism and nepotism made me gag. I can see that Vin lovebombed Death repeatedly to the point of Death unsure of what to do. They manipulated everyone, but not a single one of you caught onto it.

But who did?

Sunny did. Sunny caught onto their manipulation, and he guided us away from the cycle of abuse Vin was attempting to start. If you guys didn’t take Sunny for granted, maybe you guys would’ve received proper guidance and a proper understanding of what to do in future scenarios.

And he’s been honest about everything. In that document, he was honest and clear about everything he spoke about. Even if he was wrong about little details and such, he was speaking the truth.

Let me restate one of his points. Did you know that:

Public meltdown > Anger against SOMETHING (allistics, hypersexuals, themself, other people) > Fawning (people move to try and stop them from hurting themself) > Calming down > Calm stage

… is a cycle of abuse?

I’ve been told that a member came to confront Vin. Somebody went to go try and talk to them, Vin refused to dm her, and it resulted in it becoming a public affair because Gaia (the member) tried to get some information and to talk to Vin herself.

Vin tried to take all of the blame, to try and reconcile because they knew that they were wrong. But that’s how abuse works. They’ll try to make you purposely feel guilty by telling everyone (publicly) that it wasn’t the public’s fault, that it was all them.

If your team had actually made a decision to appoint a new moderator, instead of sitting on it and acting indifferent, maybe the document wouldn’t have been released. I wouldn’t be here, typing out my personal thoughts and experiences of the OFA.

And if the moderation team pushed harder and appointed Sunny, the OFA wouldn’t have been a failing organization.

Fuck the moderation. Delete the server, don’t create a space for further abuse to be taken. Take people more seriously, put an effort into learning.

here’s why i left the ofa. and why you should, too!

mind the content warnings. it gets pretty serious, but otherwise it’s a document i’ve been working on for a while now.

i’m gonna convert this blog into a different roleplay blog. i’m going to be part of a different roleplay group/community that i just made. but this time, i’ll be the one handling things

come join my new server!

[commajade]

been thinking abt this, and I'd like to hear ur thoughts (as well as ur korean mutuals/followers thoughts) if you'd like to share them on the average intl kpoppie vs korean pop culture 👀📝

bc i feel like a lot of intl fans don't really understand or know anything abt korean pop culture, despite heavily engaging with a crucial part of it 😔 like u saying how some of chungha's intl fans were trying to act like she was doing charity work or w/e by ft. on rain's song 😭

(btw i'm including myself in this too - i don't mean to sound like i think i'm special or anything!)

sorry it took so long to reply to this it's such a broad question! this isn't gonna be comprehensive at all but here's some things!

-people don't realize that variety shows and radio shows are where the real money is and are a bigger indicator of cultural impact than numbers. no one knows how small the korean entertainment industry is and how broadcasting companies work?

-lack of basic respect and interest in older generations of kpop when the coolest thing about kpop is seeing the genre evolve with the similarities so directly handed down through gens. when i got into kpop again in september 2020 i had been getting really into older korean music (like 60s-90s) first for about 2 years so i appreciate stuff very differently. also ties into the general lack of ability to tell which stars are actually famous and have cultural impact. chungha is successful but in terms of star power she is sooooo much lower than rain he was giving her career a huge boost.

-lack of respect for the artists they like??? these people train HARD for years and they're professionals i've talked to u before about how the whole "just some guy" line of thinking doesn't really work for kpop because people already reduce them to like influencers or streamers because of the 4th gen style of content

-people don't understand that south korea has a LOT of people but it's a tiny country with a historically racially homogenous demographic makeup and a shared unique language there are so many ways in which it is not comparable to the US with pop culture. when people say gp they mean like 70% of the entire population that knows about these musicians and has opinions on them (even if the opinion is "that song was meh" or "he's kinda ugly"). and cultural trends happen rapidly and permeate fast because of this like intl twt fans fighting over who started the second gen nostalgia kick of this year and it's literally what the south korean gp collectively decided to get back into. things just happen like that.

-also that korean people are much more steeped in music as a social activity than people in the US are? there's karaoke culture and radio show culture and variety show culture and talent show culture. if a kpop song is big literally everyone has heard it and seen it performed by other normal people in karaoke rooms or talent shows like including the choreo. koreans r a big fan of getting together and getting drunk and singing and dancing to dance pop. also there's like high school fancam culture where teenage girls gather around in classrooms between periods to watch whatever kpop performance fancam is popular at the time, with classics like junho our house kai tempo and move. also busking culture is like 60% kpop dance covers nowadays.

-korean songs have specific utility and dance pop is like fun music and ballads are "real music" and most koreans listen to more western music and ballads than kpop. but people still hear kpop everywhere in public.

-intl fans just have such an antagonistic relationship to "knetz" or "koreans" or "korean gp" when that's literally. everyone. they really wanna save their idols from koreans who can't appreciate them properly and it's deeply racist. things are shifting a little because of the newly expanded US market for kpop but it's still a fact that koreans know good music and good vocals and good dancing and that if a group can't do well in the domestic market they're never leaving the country.

-when intl fans think they know literally anything about korean politics and history.................. that's a whole other post

[ratcandy]

Dj Grooves and Hat Kid

Hat Kid:

In regards to nothing I like about them being technically canon, that's just due to Hat Kid's characterization being so all over the place the longer you pay attention to canon! I don't even know what Hat Kid's character is meant to be according to GFB, because the more and more I pick it apart, the more confusing it is. So I make up a version of her in my head and I am jus sticking to that

DJ Grooves:

ok grooves fans are about to kick my ass let me explain myself listen listen listen,

When I say "why was this character in the work at all" I'm NOT saying Grooves is a bad character, I'm just saying he was utilized so poorly that it gets to a point you can tell more thought was put into Conductor over him. I've gone on at length about my issues with his character assassination for the boss fight. I think he's a huge amount of wasted potential because I love what his character could've been, and how it COULD'VE been done properly. But it wasn't. N now he serves little purpose when he doesn't even juxtapose Conductor correctly, and he only shows up in one other area (the Finale) wherein he says maybe total 5 lines? I think I'm being generous there, too

And the "horrible person" goes towards if he wins, considering what that then immediately entails for his character shdgkjh

[izkaya]

on deku vs kacchan 3 and the way mha uses fight scenes

I think that a really distinct reason of why every “Deku VS Kacchan” match feels far heavier and different than most other fights in MHA is because it doesn’t matter who wins.

Rewatching both fights so far recently had me thinking. I opened up the clip on youtube and watched it, feet kicked back on my sofa. The video started and hummed and hawed as per usual on the remarkable development and comparison of this to their current relationship in canon. Hey, I thought to myself then. I don’t remember Deku winning in their first fight.

But I rewinded it. I watched it. I opened the wiki and I reread it. And he did.

I was obviously taken aback. I remembered most of the MHA plot, having read and watched both the anime and manga and being up to date. I could remember a vast majority of the fight scenes simply because they were my favorite parts about the anime. So why didn’t I remember the outcome of DvK1?

I eventually understood.

The thing about every fight Katsuki and Izuku have is that who wins or loses never really meant to matter.

You see, with every single fight in MHA, it was almost always a matter of who wins or loses. Villains, obviously, were meant to lose each time--and in any situation where they won, the intention was to strike fear into viewers and make them doubt the hero. The narrative of these fights were always about winning or losing because of the stakes behind them.

Eri. Kouta. Bakugou.

There was always a higher stake. Something to be won or someone to be saved.

Even with students, there was always a reason behind every win or loss. Even narratively. Deku VS. Shinsou, for example, had a stake on either end. Shinsou needed to prove himself to the hero course. He needed the validation that he could be a hero and eventually work his way into the hero course. He lost in the end anyway, because he needed that little kick to encourage him to work harder to make it in with guidance from Aizawa. Deku VS. Shinsou had Deku win because through this, he was able to realize the weight of One for All’s true nature (the vestiges breaking Shinsou’s mind control) as well as prove himself worthy in front of everyone’s eyes.

This same structure is applicable everywhere else. In Todoroki VS Bakugou 1, it was to push Bakugou into creating a rivalry and becoming invested in Todoroki’s improvement because he won ‘unfairly’ and to highlight Todoroki’s remaining inhibitions due to his past in an impactful way that eventually encouraged him to finally speak with his mom. Even in minor fights like Tokoyami vs. Yaomomo, Momo’s quick loss was needed in order to introduce and plant the beginnings of what would become her major self-doubt issues at the beginning of her character arc.

To put it simply, winning and losing was always a huge part of how MHA developed fight scenes.

So why are DvKs different?

The main reason why DvKs always feel different in comparison to every other fight scene is because, in my opinion, they aren’t actually fight scenes. At least, not in the sense that MHA uses them as.

DvKs are always built up, always lead through and hinted at through entire seasons. It was never just an arc between them, never just a Sports Festival or Final Exams or anything. Whenever a DvK battle happened, it was always something that had been festering for episodes.

In example, the first Deku VS. Kacchan. The fight happened in episode 7, and was naturally introduced because it was part of a school exercise. The tension was most obvious in the episode beforehand, viewers bracing themselves as soon as we saw that Midoriya and Bakugou would be going against each other in the first round.

But like, okay.

The tension and traces of this battle were actually lined up since the very first episode. Hear me out. In the infamous “Take a swan dive off a roof and pray you’ll have a quirk in your next life!” scene, we hear Katsuki already placing loads of doubt on Izuku’s capabilities. His respect for Deku was rooted in what he knew. And that was, Deku is quirkless and therefore cannot be his equal. Any idea that contradicted to this would mean two things:

A shift in their relationship

A shift in Bakugou’s world views

From the first episode, we are already laden with hints that Katsuki would not take lightly to knowing at all that Deku had any power. He’s stubborn and also incredibly flawed in his values, believing his assumptions about Deku’s character were correct and that he was superior to Deku in every way that ‘mattered’. When we finally get to the parts where Deku is given OfA, it snowballs more and more until by episode six, literally everyone is aware that a battle between these two is inevitable.

The subtlety of these hints meant that we as the viewers were expecting this fight, whether we consciously realized it or not.

No other fight is set up like this--excluding villain fights like the Overhaul arc, which is excusable because the set-up used in these battles were always about its stakes. In DvKs on the other hand, the stakes were practically nonexistent unless you had a huge bias for either character (obviously, in most of our cases, Deku because Bakugou wasn’t exactly winning anyone’s hearts in the first season).

Each DvK fight is less of an actual fight and more of a conversation. They’re utilized to dispel the growing tension between Midoriya and Bakugou and repair their relationship regardless of who wins or loses. Deku didn’t have to win DvK1. Either way, Katsuki still would have gone on with the knowledge that Deku had a quirk he never told him about. Either way, Katsuki would have walked away with the ultimatum that he now had to acknowledge Deku properly. Regardless of winning or losing, both Deku and Katsuki were able to leave these fights knowing something new about the other and having a conversation to dispel tension caused by misunderstandings.

DvK 2. We’ve all seen plenty of analysis posts on this episode. Did it matter that Katsuki won? Did it matter that Deku lost? Aside from that really tense final scene where they pinned each other that I’m sure all of us remember, the result of DvK 2 had no significant change on the outcome.

The fight was a conversation. It was where Izuku and Katsuki were able to see each other eye-to-eye. The tension that had been boiling--had been continuously hinted at by Kamino Ward and then the Licensing Exam Arc just like how DvK 1 was prepared for since the first episode. There was always a catalyst behind these fights that had nothing to do with the actual need to win or lose--that aspect simply inherent to both Katsuki and Deku’s wins.

Don’t get me wrong; the win or lose aspect is something that still has an effect on either of their characters, but the difference is that they aren’t the main point of each battle. This is something even Bakugou admits in DvK 2 when he tells Deku to stop overthinking their fight. 

It was never about winning or losing or strategy. It was about the intentions behind it.

Both Deku VS Kacchan fights so far have always occurred when there was a needed turning point in their relationship. Each time unsaid secrets or opinions between Izuku and Katsuki pile up, the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel’s back is another fight. They’re less of interjected conflicts and more of milestones for their relationship.

(For sure, if DvK 3 does happen in the manga, we’ll definitely be in for a surprise on how Deku and Kacchan develop next.)

[nyan-koii]

Hashira ft. Sabito as genshin impact players

aunotes : Bad grammar ahead! I didnt proofread it so be aware of brain damage. plus i initially wrote it at the 1.6 update

PART 1 : T.Muichiro, R.Kyojuro, K.Shinobu, S.Sanemi, U.Tengen 

Muichiro : he probably would be uninterested at first. He's more to first person shooting game or anything other than this concept of farming or investing. So that's why when he saw yuichirou banging his fist on his desk, trying to get his fav character, he would simply just watch

"Fck this game, i've had enough,"

"But you havent finish your wishing things yet,"

Stares. "How about you give it a try mui. You might get the character i want,"

"You sure about that? You might get angry at me," "better than nothing. Now go go, get em you donkey,"

His first ten pulls on the game brings out a light we all want to see

"Eh is tha-" "AAAA A FUCKING 5 STAR FCK FCKFCK,"

Apparently, it was one of the luckiest wish yuichiro had ever seen so far

"OHMYFUCK, you GOT A GODDAMN KLEE, QIQI AND SUCROSE WTFF???"

"I think i get your fav character?"

"Yeahh!! More than that to be honest. I want klee but you brought me two more person," sniffles and cries "you're really lucky mui. You should try and play the game,"

"It's probably the system. I doubt im that lucky tho,"

Nah, he really is lucky. Apparently he wished for his friends and got what they all really wanted for so long

"Thank you for getting me the aquila favonia, muichiro,"

"It's nothing really. I just simply press the button. It might be the system that's giving you the thing you want when i wish,"

"But still, even if i were to wish, i can get really scared and paranoid over it,"

"That's bad. You shouldnt invest yourself that much in the game tanjiro. It's just a game,"

"Ehehehe, i guess so. But you're really good at it muichiro! If you download it, we can play together :D!"

!!!!

It took the word "play together" to get muichiro down on his knee for that game. Usually the idea of playing with your friends is not that interesting. So when tanjiro said that, you bet he's going to play it

Type of player

Extremely lucky it's not even real. He got a five star on the beginner's banner

Fast farming. He probably will complete all the quest and become an endgame player within one month

"I just wanted to play with tanjiro..." bashfully

He's really good with whatever he's doing. Attack combo, dodging, elemental reaction and all sorts of stuff. If he invest more of his time on artifacts, he would probably even one shot it!!

He's very lucky. Very

Kyojuro : he wouldnt even know the existence of this game. Well, he took a glimpse of it one day and boom, heart stolen. Maybe it was the fiery burning passion in bennett that made him play the game.

'oh wow!! What a determined young boy! Even though he has a very bad luck he still keep pushing forward! Amazing!!'

'I want to be like him'

Kyojuro's the type of player to read and pay attention to every single lore of his fav character. Bennett, oh my how he wish he could've had bennett in his team. Every wishes he made would make him a c6 bennett main if only barbara wont stop coming home

"I really like you barbara but i dont want you!! Thank you for the c6 though!! I promise to use you in the future but just-" he prepares to wish

"not NOW!!" Clicks

The highest con of bennett he had ever gotten is probably c1. One day the paimon's bargain shop offered bennett as their monthly character. Kyojuro had never been so excited over a game before. He usually perks up over academics and not this kind of thing. But it's bennett, the character he admires the most.

Unfortunately he couldnt get it due to low currency. He had never feel so sad in his life.

"I shall not give up. Dont worry, i will be a c6 bennett main!!!"

He will be a c6 bennett haver!!

Type of player :

Carefully reads every stories and listens to their lines attentively. He finds it amazing how the company spent their everything on this game. It amazes him. From the stories, lores and lines, he truly appreciates it.

Balance his team pretty well. He mains bennett so he doesnt need that much of a healer in his team.

Enjoys bennett's hangout very much!! He tried to not get him killed by the dungeon's trap but ended up having to sacrifice him which ultimately ends the route. He had never felt so down and guilty before.

Not much of a damage dealer. He prefers to play it in normal mode and doesnt care that much about one shotting monster.

He feeds his character three meals a day!! If only there's a sleep option, he would be sending bennett to sleep first before the rest.

Everyone loves his teapot

Shinobu : found the game while she's scrolling through the app store out of boredom. Initially she played it on her phone but due to the fps and a really bad ping, so bad that douma wouldnt find her interesting anymore, she finally downloaded the game on her pc where things has starting to get real

"Ara, shinobu chan, it's lunch time already. Come downstairs please,"

"Sis give me five more minutes, JUST FIVE PLEASE I NEED TO KICK CHILDE's ASS,"

"he's not going anywhere sweetie,"

"yEAHH BUT MY BP IS,"

'Bp?'

"DIE DIE DIE!!" Aggresive clicking intensifies

"Shinobu chan dont hurt the keyboard that much!!"

She got lucky on the beginner's banner too and pulled a 5 star along with bennett and noelle. Who's the 5 star? Diluc Ragnvindr in all of his glory. Shinobu benched him sadly. She prefers sword over any other weapon

"I mean he's cool i guess but i just really dont get that 'WOAHHH COOL' vibe from him you know?"

"then give your diluc to me! I really want him so bad shinobu chan!"

Deep sighs "yeah sure. You can have my c2 diluc mitsuri..."

Loses 50/50 to diluc everytime everyone would think she either is lucky or cursed by the amount of that man greeting him on the screen. She still bench him though, sadly

"Im begging you, give me jEANN THE GRANDMASTER I NEED HEALER iN MY PARTY TO DO ABYSS

Type of player :

Suffers a lot in the abyss because she just want the primos which is a valid reason to do because that's the only thing that keeps her going

She's a sword character main. She'll properly build every character as either support or dps. The support would be kaeya and bennett, and her main dps ayaka

Ayaka main btw

Honestly at some point she wanted to quit the game because of how tiring it is but then inazuma came out

Fragile resin = 0

Resin = 160/160 happens once in a blue moon

"i should probably control myself with the amount of resin i've used,"

"But i cant,"

Hates domain but always can be seen playing in there

Only coops if mitsuri is there

"So that someone can calm me down,"

"That's not a really good reason shinobu chan,"

Sanemi : dude probably know the game through obanai. He watched the latter play and finds it interesting on how high the numbers he dealt. He loves challenges so a game like genshin impact would probably satisfy his need.

"Obanai, are you hearing this shit?"

"What is it sanemi, im busy doing this event,"

"That loser giyuu is also playing the game,"

"Oh yeah i know,"

"YOU KNOW? WHY YOU DIDNT TELL ME??"

"i just know right after you told me,"

"...."

Sanemi's a meta but a mediocre one. He's meta but he doesnt show it that much. Probably buys welkin once in every three months or when he really needs it same goes with battle pass too. Honestly, he really just use his money when he really needs something

"Donno if my allowance can buy me a welkin so i'll probably skip,"

"But the next banner is zhongli's,"

"....."

"Ah fuck it," buys

My man cant dodge after he got zhongli. Its very painful because he used to studies the enemies movement in the early game so that he can utilizes it on the team but zhongli's shield is so tank he forgot that dodging exists

"Im gonna kill you and you and you hhahaahhaah just you wait im gonna shred all of yo- oh shit zhongli's shield. puT IT BACK PUT IT BACK ON,"

That one event where zhongli's shield plays an important role in the domain? Yeah, he felt like a god at that time. Even got his c2 on his rerun. Sanemi just really like zhongli because it kinda reminds him of himejima. Calm and wise and strong too. He looks up on that kind of person

"Zhongli sama, im in debt for all of your hard work protecting my team," bows and wipes tears

Type of player :

Spends a little money on the game to get what he wants

Zhongli main

Is that one player that has hoards of food but doesnt even use it

"Why need healer when you have zhongli's shield,"

Compare to kyojuro, he doesnt even touch the teapot because he finds it ridiculous and bothersome to create and design everything in it

Loves one shotting bosses and compares it to giyuu. He ask for advices from obanai regarding team build supports and stuffs

Doesnt do character's story quest. The key is full every single time. He unlocks it but leaves the quest like that.

"Ah shit, i accidentally activate the quest,"

His friend list only has obanai in it. Whenever people sent him friend request, he wouldnt hesitate, more like wouldnt care to accept it

They either have to coop in obanai's world or his world and after that, unfriend immediately

Says thank you after coop because he has manners and then completely disappears

"Zhongli main forever,"

Tengen : played since 1.0 this madlad has been staying loyal to the game ever since. Quite huge amount of money he spend on this game to be honest but he never gets broke by it. You can see his regular donation to the game by purchasing welkin and battle pass and some genesis crystal too. He's loaded with money, he didnt know what to do with it.

Uzui also plays honkai impact and guns girl Z so when he saw the unknown god at the intro , he was not surprised.

"Oh we have to pick between the siblings? Cool cool co- oh hi kiana,"

"Thats so herrscher of void hahahahah,"

Although he is a loyal fan to MihoYo games, he lost his composure when he saw the 1st genshin anniversary reward because what was that. Imagine getting billions of money and they give us this? Tengen cant believe this shit

"Oh god wtf was that reward, i have to draw to get a welkin and some primos?? aND I ALSO HAVE TO BE LUCKY? WHAT-"

"WHERE'S MY FREE MONA,"

In need of mona. He needs mona so bad he literally spent his money on standard banner to get mona but always ends up with qiqi. Not that he's complaining but he just wants the astrologist to complete the support team

"GOD QIQI YOU AGAIN? WTF WFF WTF-" converts genesis crystal to primigems

"Tengen, you should control yourself!"

"SHUT UP KYOJURO, IM GONNA WASTE MY MONEY TILL I GET HER,"

"yeah but my f2p ass is hurting with how many bennett cons you got," droops

Tengen sees potential in every character. Everyone has their weakness and strength so when kokomi comes out, he diss her at first but then realize maybe its a new way for a character. Adds the uniqueness if he may say so.

"Meh i dont care honestly. You guys should pull whoever you find nice or beautiful. Like me ;)"

"Who do you main uzui?"

"Beidou,"

Type of player

Spoils the storylines, lores, leaks A LOT THE REST HAVE TO BLOCK HIM ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Speed runs the game and has become an endgame player ever since but he still does his daily commission and helps people with domains and stuffs

R5 every battle pass weapon

Fights azhdaha for fun and to test out his characters rather than ruin guards and stuff

Mona wanter

Puts traveller as the pfp and doesnt display any showcase of his characters and namecards. You can only see his achievements and spiral abyss ( 12-3 ). Says its for fun and mystery

Throws a lot of pickup lines and roleplays a lot. Spams your chatbox messages with stickers and censored stuffs

Probably steals your ores and exotic things like violetgrass, qingxin and silk flowers

Screams in the chatbox whenever he saw Mona until Kyojuro had to calm him down

Changes signature every single time and sometimes put spoilers in it

In every survey he would complain "MihoYo where the fuck is my Mona,"

Doesnt heals his characters

[outbythehighwind]

Tifa’s Fighting Style

One of the things that impressed me most about FF7R is Tifa Lockhart’s combat. Her mechanics were dazzling. Her combos left me awed. Her style was so realistic, but... what was it? Naturally, I did some digging, and happened to stumble across a blog where most of the work had already been done. So this post is courtesy of Flowerslightning, with thoughts and elaboration on my part. THANKS AND CREDIT TO THIS WONDERFULLY INSIGHTFUL BLOGGER (do check out her tumblr for more fantastic content).

First, let’s note that Tifa’s combat design is very much in the field of fighting games. To some degree at least, developers take inspiration from real-life arts. The style of Tekken’s Lei Wulong, for instance, is based on the Drunken First. Street Fighter’s Chun Li uses the model of Chinese Kenpo.

The FFVII devs - to my knowledge - have revealed nothing on Tifa’s inspired martial arts background. She adopted the monk style (the fisticuffs of FF-verse) from a traveler named Zangan. That’s all we know. She trained (obviously very hard) as his pupil for the 2 years between Cloud leaving Nibelheim and Sephiroth burning the town. Zangan then brought her to Midgar and continued his travels. The only path for discerning real-arts inspiration is through observing Tifa’s fights - though even such attempt is limited. Her style is not as straightforward as Lei’s or Chun Li’s. She seems to employ a mix of martial arts, specializing in the offense and using speed and dexterity to her advantage.

Here are the main styles that Flowerslightning deduced, supported by some of Tifa’s abilities.

1. Muay Thai [demonstrated by Somersault].

This is the known as the “Art of Eight Limbs” and is commonly referred to as “Thai boxing”. It differs from traditional kickboxing (which has its roots in Japan) most notably in being an 8-point instead of 4-point striking system. In other words, Muay Thai employs elbow and shin strikes in addition to kicks and punches. Tifa’s kicks, I would say, are actually more akin to kickboxing, for Muay Thai places emphasis on heavy kicks involving the shin bone. Yet her acrobatic style is very akin to the latter.

In addition to the key boxing techniques of both the Thai and Japanese art, Tifa’s elbow maneuvers provide further evidence for the former. This is most evident during her fight with Loz, where she uses her elbows for offense and defense. One could say she expanded her Thai-based skills during in the 2 years that followed saving the world.

Running a new bar and raising two under-10-year-olds would have left at least a... smidgen of free time, right?

2. Muay Thai [demonstrated by Refocus].

Some may suggest this move of Tifa’s is a Taekwondo technique (we’ll get to that lovable sport soon, don’t you worry), but I agree with Flowerslightning in that her jumping style is more Muay Thai. Almost all Muay Thai techniques use movement of the entire body, rotating the hip with each kick, punch, elbow and block. This to me is the obvious discerning factor. Tifa exquisitely throws her whole body into the majority of her combos and limit breaks, ground and aerial alike. Specifically through that neat hip rotation. Refocus is but one example of many.

PS. Don’t you just love her boots? The gloves are really something but, those red boots... Just look at them.

3. Taekwondo [shown in Overpower].

Literally the “Way of the Hand and Foot”, this is a Korean martial art set apart by its emphasis on kicks. Head-height kicks, jump spin kicks, swift kicks, the list goes on. (But of course, there’s plenty of hand blocking and take-downs too.) Did you know that Taekwondo is part of South Korea’s military training program as well as their national sport? Its skillset is heavy in self-defense.

Tifa is mostly an offensive attacker (and wow, do her strikes deal devastating damage). Yet her aerial maneuvers and acrobatic footwork certainly have elements of Taekwondo. What makes the Taekwondo kick-style unique is its elaborate, advanced forms. Xtreme 720s, for instance, are underpinned by precise technical soundness and accuracy.

Yes, these are literal 720° mid-air turns with a SERIES of kicks timed in utmost precision. They require extraordinary strength. Something Tifa deceptively pulls off with ease, no?

4. Hēi-Hǔ-Quán [displayed in Starshower].

Flowerslightning deduces this ATB ability to be a Boxing combo. Though to me it looks more like Hēi-Hǔ-Quán (lit. ‘Black Tiger Fist’, a Shaolin striking art from China). Watch her hands closely: the thumbs are curled like the fingers rather than wrapped around them to form a fist. Tifa’s wide stances and acrostic kicks are a little less tiger-esque than Hēi-Hǔ-Quán, but there is definitely resemblance of the style there too.

All in all, she seems to employ a mixture of Shaolin arts and Boxing. Her finger-positions for fast jabs (as in Starshower and the Loz fight) are predominantly of the Tiger Fist. Her more powerful strikes, meanwhile, include Boxing crosses, hooks and uppercuts. The sewer cutscene demonstrates this clearly, when Tifa & Cloud encounter the Sahagin.

And damn, do we love the back-to-back Cloti in that scene. Surely I’m not just speaking for myself here.

5. Boxing [displayed in Unbridled Strength].

Tifa’s aforementioned fist moves and powerful finishing punches are no doubt reminiscent of boxing. Also, she always enters a fight with her fists closed in a boxing stance (whether she will employ Shaolin or other hand techniques is irrelevant). Take her cutscene against the Whispers where she, Cloud and Aerith arrive at Sector 7. She begins with a cross and follows with a rotated hook - one of the most basic boxing combos.

BONUS FACT: Rather than orthodox, Tifa always employs a southpaw stance (right hand and right foot forward). This is the preferred stance of a left-hand fighter. Is Tifa left-handed? Considering her fighting alone, yes is the plausible assumption. Here are a few examples:

     - Unbridled Strength has her delivering a finishing blow with her left hand. We would expect such a move to be done with the power hand.

     - Her single strike that hurls Loz across the church is also with the left hand. This punch is not part of a combo; she could have used either hand.

     - In guard position, her left is the rear hand, to both attack and protect herself.

     - And of course, in southpaw stance, she always begins with a left-hand strike.

However, all of Tifa’s general actions (to my observance) - like bartending, catching Aerith in the sewer, carrying the Buster Sword into Corneo’s quarters, etc. - suggest that she is right-handed. So why use the left, the weaker, as her dominant hand in fighting? Could she actually be ambidextrous? That is a possibility. But weighing up the evidence in addition to Tifa's ingenuity, this could well be out of fighting strategy.

Southpaw can give Tifa a strategic advantage, you see, because of the tactical and cognitive difficulties her enemies would have of coping with a fighter who moves in a mirror-reverse of the norm. In other words, she takes advantage of the fact that most fighters lack experience against lefties. Doing this:

     - opens up chance for a variety of surprise combos;

     - puts her human enemies in danger of KOs by what would otherwise be ordinary strikes; and

     - enables her to trick her opponents should she unexpectedly convert to orthodox during fights.

Pretty damn awesome, huh?

6. Gymnastics [dodging maneuvers].

Gymnastics, like fighting arts, enhances balance, strength, flexibility and agility - the four areas Tifa excels at. Now, we’ve talked a lot about her strong points. But what of her weaknesses? Players will have noticed immediately that Tifa has a major setback. She can accurately be described as a glass cannon, due to her low HP and defenses that counter-balance her speed and dexterity. That is precisely what makes playing as her so compelling; you get that sense of life or death intensity. The fight feels REAL. She is the least OP character in the party, in addition to by far being the most difficult to master. Utilized properly, she can be the strongest of them all. And wow, is that rewarding or what?

Because of her weak defenses, Tifa must constantly remain on the move, and gymnastics is the quintessential means in doing so. Hand springs, aerial cartwheels - you name it, she’s got it. As if those kicks and uppercuts don’t scream epic enough already. Doesn’t it just make her even MORE amazing?

So I’ve added Hēi-Hǔ-Quán to Flowerslightning’s conclusion: that Tifa’s combat is Mixed Martial Arts, with her dominant skills as Kickboxing, Taekwondo and Muay Thai. And of course, the interweaving of Gymnastics, which adds an elegance to her epic kickassery.

Tifa lost her teacher after just two years, and spent the last five managing & running a bar, serving as AVALANCHE’s funder & treasurer, and effectively solo-raising Barret’s little daughter. Add two more years, and we have a completely absent Barret, a very sick child in addition to the one she is (now permanently) raising, and a depressed, distant Cloud who has left her to struggle as a solo barkeep, full-time nurse and single mother. How on earth did she find the time and will to master her fighting techniques?

Yes, we are talking about fiction, but this woman is nothing short of incredible. Not simply as a fighter - that isn’t even the start of it. Tifa is, to me, the character who has had it the hardest. Yet she perseveres. And not only that, but she gives. She gives and gives, and doesn’t give up, even when everyone else around her has. In addition, she is the only ‘ordinary’ member of the party: Cloud, on top of military training, had his senses enhanced with Mako & Jenova cells; Barret literally has a gun for an arm; and Aerith as the last Cetra possesses exceedingly strong magic. Tifa, like with everything she does, worked hard to hone her skills. And that, to me, is incontestably admirable.

As Flowerslightning put it, she was “ready to go through hell and yet still remain soft”. And those virtues she held to, where most people would have quit. Compassion and perseverance to the end, the two traits that uphold her - to me - as the most inspiring hero of fiction.