#and its cool to see the common thread between them

[holographicbutch]

One thing about travis willingham is he KNOWS he would never resist the allure of a cursed amulet. And I respect that

[thewadapan]

Spent today checking out The Amazing Digital Circus and Murder Drones, and god, the kids today have it so good when it comes to this sort of content. When I was a teen, I was obsessed with Red vs. Blue and RWBY, which I think it's fair to say are the equivalents of the time, and the sheer gulf in terms of writing quality and production value is stunning. I hear there were some rumblings of unprofessional conduct from the production company, which would hardly be surprising considering this is yet another guys-working-from-their-basement success story, but much bigger companies with much shittier business practises consistently put out much worse content than this.

The Amazing Digital Circus is definitely the better show of the two, thanks to its slam-dunk premise and some great writing from Gooseworx. The producers have talked about aiming to fill a perceived gap in the market between kids' cartoons (The Boss Baby) and adult animation (Bojack Horseman), and I think they have successfully threaded the needle to create a very unique tone. There's a sense of these works existing totally outside the mainstream media machine; they're not getting BBFC rated, but you just know millions of kids are watching them. It's on YouTube and the fact that it looks like some Frozen Spider-Man kids' slop just means da parents won't question what their kids are watching.

But truth be told, there's nothing objectionable about the content of The Amazing Digital Circus whatsoever. It's unusually metatextual and loosely apes the aesthetics of much darker media, touching on slightly more existential themes than your typical kids' cartoon, but it still has a lot in common with those same cartoons. The zany characters are all fairly one-note, and the emotional arcs of the episodes are honestly quite straightforward. The second episode in particular has an absolutely textbook plot structure to it. It's a far more self-assured and traditional style of writing than you ever see in this kind of independent work—certainly far more so than Murder Drones, which is written by an insane person.

More than anything, I'm reminded of how I felt watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica: that it's a very solid work of fiction, but that the people who'd get the most out of the work are isolated teens struggling to make the transition into adulthood. Certainly if nothing else, the fandoms of these shows must be bringing a lot of kids together around the world. I adore this soundbite from Goose: "Above anything else, I just wanted it to feel kind of lonely." You see Pomni's worldview shatter, she suddenly finds herself in a body that feels completely wrong, and she has to construct a new kind of belonging for herself.

As for Murder Drones, that show's absolutely fucking nuts, yo. The writing is at once painfully basic and utterly incomprehensible. If someone just sat down and explained the plot straightforwardly, it would be fantastically boring. But man, the presentation, the sheer delight the animators seem to approach every scene with...! I'd say it's clearly trying to use "the characters are robots" as an excuse to expose da kids to some absolutely shocking levels of gore, much like the Transformers movies, but midway through the series it starts straightup swapping the oil and wires for blood and bones and you've got to respect that.

The writing itself is so excruciatingly irony-poisoned that it goes beyond cringe and somehow wraps back around again to being sincerely funny. The show kind of wants to have its cake and eat it in terms of constantly lampshading how flat and cliché the emotional plotting is, but also clearly aiming to genuinely tug at the heartstrings and whip fans into a frenzy. And it kind of succeeds, I think! The way it veers between bizarrely high-effort implementations of memes, seriously cool fight scenes and horror visuals, and big emotional moments is very disarming. If The Amazing Digital Circus is an attempt to faithfully rework the American-cartoon formula for a slightly older audience, Murder Drones aims to crib the aesthetics of high-school cartoons while actively rejecting every traditional narrative technique used in those stories. Which means it's kind of bad, which means it's also kind of great.

If it's not already, then within a couple of years it will be deeply cringe to have ever been into Murder Drones in particular or (to a slightly lesser extent) The Amazing Digital Circus, in much the same way that everyone seems embarrassed to admit they were ever a Homestuck fan. But like with Homestuck, I feel like these series are genuinely pushing at the frontiers of storytelling in a way that's commendable and might inspire new kinds of writing once the fans grow up.

ENA is also pretty good, for the record.

[bilehwit]

Just read your Bilehwit Au on Ao3 and was greetes by the amazing ref for the lamb here on tumblr!

And yes i absolutely love it when people explain clothing choices in character design especially since you wrote Lamb culture is based on the Old English pls do ramble 🙏

Well hello!! This my first ask from someone I've never met before, so I'll ask you to please be patient with my wild trails of thought.

This will be a long one, but I'll focus on two main outfits - the daily wear and the ritual outfit, as they have the most symbolism.

The easiest one is obviously the leaf outfit - cute, I love it so much!

The leaf was chosen for its symbolism in English mythology. The tree itself is well beloved as a symbol of strength and a symbol of fertility - acorns are often depicted as lucky, and an oak full of acorns is a good sign of fertility!

I also chose oak because I think they're very beautiful trees - they can live for up to 1,000 years, and they can grow to 30 meters wide in their leaves. That's amazing to me. They also smell nice, and I remember climbing them when I was little, so it's nice to share the oak with my lambsona.

Next, let's talk about the sacrifice outfit - it's oddly bridal, no?

Well it's intended to be!

The use of white/silver to denote Purity is an old concept, but white wedding dresses in England were only truly popularised after Queen Victoria wore the colour to her wedding - previously a mourning shade.

I chose silver satin as the fabric, and a simple design, as I wanted a bridal look but also something that felt sleek and pure. Bilehwit is a virgin (virgin sacrifice in all ways) and it's a cruel trick to play.

Also, Shamura in my fic struggles to see/differentiate between objects, so having an all white lamb made it easier for them to stay focused.

So while this outfit feels bridal to us, the symbolism in fic is more that it was easier than dying fabric, just raw spider thread spun into a dress.

Shamura did make the veil themself, though, for reasons you will see later ;3

Now, we get to the heavy hitters! First up, the daily outfit.

Now, Anglo-Saxons were all about those layers! So this outfit actually has more layers than you'd even think.

Under the base dress is a thin cotton chemise, or under dress, made to soak up the oils of the skin and sweat, changed most often. Bilehwit would use these as pyjamas in the summer months, too, to keep cool while covered and decent.

The next layer is the linen, with the thin dark band. This would be a slightly tighter layer to the body, and would be long sleeved to offer protection from the sun and the cold. Linen would be the lighter colours, as they'd be protected more, and linen was used as a middling layer to hold heat in winter. Air would be trapped between layers and keep people warm, and also it protected them from any scratchy wool. The woven ribbon at the bottom is decorative.

The next layer is my favourite. This is the red layer, the thicker dress, made often from wool or from linen again. This is made from wool, using a technique called naalbinding, which is what the Anglo-Saxons would have used, as they didn't knit like is common today.

Anglo-Saxon embroidery and weaving was actually really well known in Europe for its fine work and was gifted to Emissaries and Kings. The weaving and sewing business in England went hard as hell, and it's where most people would be employed for personal use or as gifts.

The embroidery of flowers on the cuffs of the red dress, as well as the colar, are those of Achillea millefolium, or 'Red Velvet', flowers. These tiny buds are native to Europe, western Asia and North America, and are small blooms that self seed and explode into colour. I chose them after seeing the flowers on a sketch, and decided that I had to include them.

Red in flower language is always to do with romance and passion. I wanted Bilehwit to show that desire, as they are a hopeless romantic at heart, and they also just feel a deep-seated loneliness that they want filled. The red flowers are the only flowers they've ever been given, and they've spent hours tracing the embroidery threads and staring silently at the sky.

The final apron layer is just that - an apron. It's a thin, boxy piece of fabric that is played on top to ensure the front of the dress stays somewhat clean, and there is a secret pocket behind it that they store honey-sweets in for children (and themself). Just a length of plain cut cloth!

Tied together with a woven belt, this outfit is my second favourite - I love every detail, and when I can talk in fic about it, I will spend thousands of words trying to detail what it means to me, and probably failing.

The final outfit now, one that definitely won't be seen in fic for a good long while - the Fancy/Ritual set.

Look at ittttt ahahahahagahqabqgagagquipqguqugjv

Okay, keysmash over, serious time!

Now, this outfit is interesting, because not only does it have embroidery and styles of old English culture, it also has mixes of Indian influence too!

"Well, that's random to add," I hear you murmur, and you're right. Why would I add that?

Well, because originally I was going to make Narinder have a more Egyptian vibe! I thought; ah, perfect, he'd do great as a Sphynx cat, the Egyptians loved those cats.

See, as it turns out, Narinder is actually a Sanskrit/Hindu name. It's a form of the name Narendra, a masculine name that means "Lord of Men". It's a very formal name, and one I immediately knew I had to switch things around for.

Following this, I was also able to determine the domains and cultures of each other Bishop, by tracing back names and meanings! That's a whole other post I fear.

Back to the dress!

The outline is far more recent than Old English, medieval style dresses, and that's because, uh... I wanted it. (This one is not very historically accurate. Forgive me.)

I wanted a mix of English style embroidery and Indian embroidery styles. Will come back and edit in which style I went with specifically, but I wanted the ritual set to be a touch more dedicated to Narinder, with darker colours, and more Indian fusion embroidery.

The black is velvet, the red is silk, and the white is linen - why? Again, it looks cool.

I can't lie, I have very little explanation for this besides the fact it looks bangin'.

But yes!! That's all my explanations at this current point in time for outfits! However, if you have any further questions, please ask away, and I will happily detail everything and anything about my AU and fic! Thank you for joining me on my rambling!

[peawinkls]

why jfabe is NOT!!!! boring and lifeless and proving that wrong, an informational thread discussing their relationship and dynamic, because honestly im getting tired of ppl saying their boring

contains s3 spoilers!

The relationship between JFK and abe from Clone High is something alot of people within the community discussed, especially before s3, being talked about more after s2's finale. Many speculated that the two would remain friends or even become more than that.

Now with season 3 out, we have a lot more things to work out with, specifically episode 3. It's something a lot of people are too afraid to admit, but jfabe/abefk would make the show a lot more interesting, rather than its repeatable joanabe plotline.

So, I'm here to talk about the inner workings of this pair, why their so interesting, and why they work out so much, whether platonic or not. If ur not a fan of jfabe/abefk, or heavily dislike the ship, I'd recommend turning away from this post.

Introduction, the who, the when, the why, the how...and their differences n similarities

So, we all know these two characters. JFK the beloved, Abe the hated. Something that many people picked out of the 2020 clone high fandom. But what if i told you that the beloved and the hated were truly meant to be together from the start?

What we already know is that they are the complete opposite of each other in many ways. JFK is meant to be a parody on 90s jocks from highschool movies and tv shows. Abe is the weak nerd who desperately wants to be cool.

JFK is buff and shorter, Abe is tall and lanky. JFK is a douchebag, Abe is the nicer guy. The list goes on and on. And they even have stuff in common, such as the fear of abandonment and the fear of ruining things.

But one difference i can note is that Abe is way more naive than JFK, JFK is portrayed as empty-headed, but not empty-headed enough to not realize whats going on. Of course, despite the differences, both characters make a really good team.

And this was even evident in s2 ep10, aka the finale, where they both realize that they make a great "duo of bros who'll remain friends for the rest of their lives". Jfabe shippers were FEEDING on this shit back then you have no idea

So with this stuff out of the way, it's time to talk about my favorite episode out of season 3.

Bible Humpers: A Much Needed Praycation

This episode revolves around JFK getting tired of having meaningless sex with girls and partying hard, and decides to seek out a new life when he and Abe discovers the prayer pals club, hosted by Lady Godiva. And at first, Abe is happy to see that JFK is taking on new opportunities.

"Where the slut goes, the wing slut follows."

But eventually, JFK starts straying away from Abe and his friendship, to the point of even FORGETTING about the broniversary that Abe had planned for the both of them (he literally baked a giant cake for him, look at me and tell me thats straight cmon now).

Seeing how Abe had already lost Joan and Gandhi, he didn't wanna lose JFK either, and does everything he can to make him happy and thats so clear. And even at the end of the episode, it's revealed that Abe even respected his choice on ultimately choosing celibacy.

He really does care a bunch for JFK, liking him for who he truly was (compared to JFK's other dates) and respecting his choices. And despite choosing celibacy over Abe, the two still remain close, which really tells you how great their bond is.

So something HAS definitely changed throughout the years, from them hating each others guts to potentially becoming clone highs next couple...which didn't happen, and I'm still petty about it i will admit.

But even if they didn't become canon at the end, you could really tell that some people who worked on this episode wanted them to be a thing, and that's a good enough sign for me that they could hopefully become canon in the next season if we ever get one (still petty though).

Let's circle back to season 1 again. I'm not making a jfabe thread without mentioning Litter Kills: Literally, which is another episode that jfabe shippers fed on. In this episode, JFK's close friend Ponce dies, and he's left to grieve over him.

And in this episode, we see a side of JFK that we never saw before. He starts wondering why the hell he's feeling all of these emotions, because he's a Kennedy, and he's not used to them. But Abe helps him realize that emotions like this are normal.

And even if the two hated each other, Abe apologized to him in the end and finally realized his mistakes. It seemed like Abe disliked him, yet he cares about him. Abe never knew what if felt like, because he hasn't lost a friend close to him.

So he starts berating Cleo for comforting JFK and was even aggressive towards JFK as well, believing that he was only doing all of this just to take Cleo away from him. That was all because he NEVER knew what it was like. But he finally understood.

He was sorry, but he felt like he couldn't do much to help because he didn't experience the same thing. So he just hugged JFK and held him...for a really long time.

But that was just enough for JFK, all he needed was comfort, and Abe chose to do that. So even at the episode, he couldn't help but ask JFK if he was alright. And by the next episode, JFK was already feeling better. All it takes is someone to tell you that its gonna be okay.

So what I'm trying to say is despite their own anxieties, flaws, characteristics, whatever, their PERFECT for each other. I don't like how people label them as "boring", when their so much more deeper than that.

Jfabe/AbeFK is one of my comfort ships for this exact reason. Their lore, dynamic and relationship goes beyond that, i don't ship them just because i think their cute, but because their interesting, and it may seem like im going insane over a white boy ship, but i truly, truly, from the bottom of my heart, love this ship to pieces, and hopefully people can see that through me. Thank you, clone high.

[littledigits]

thoughts on the cut episodes and ppls reactions 'n stuff

Since it was confirmed that a few more episodes of Hilda were written but cut, I do think the reaction of people finding this out is really interesting and not just because its fairly common in the industry and isint a sign of anything bad necessarily. I mean heck, in a weird way being behind the scenes and then seeing how people interpret things, what they take as important, what they think is a thread…all of that is interesting. When your job is basically trying to get people to pick up what you're putting down storywise its kind of a neat topic, because everyone communicates in their own way.

BTW before I keep going this is not a post to say dont crit/vent/complain/whatever about whatever the heck you want in hilda or any media, you do you. I think peoples honest takes are fascinating (said in victoria van gale voice) and even just people speaking their mind shows that they are interested and they care so that matters. Also not one singular post triggered this, its just been on my mind as I surface level read things so no stressies.

When It comes to the cut episodes, I'm seeing some people assume that whatever was cut would have fixed some of the crits they may have had about the season..and who knows, maybe yes? But I'd say ultimately probably not. Not because they dont include things that people want to see, or may have some topics people want expanded on ..but because thats just impossible in the grand scheme of things.

I mean this applies to shows in general, not just hilda. Every person who watches a show has their own idea of what the show represents to them. For some of its more of the surface events or characters where as others connect it with a deeper emotion. A lot of people respond to different tones of the episodes, which there are many. Some people prefer the one off adventures that stand alone as their own stories and others want to see more of a stronger through line. Some may see a new character and expect a new arc and thread, while others wonder why we couldn't've used a previously introduced character. Some may read between the lines more and others may take what is presented as very straight forward and literal …and no one is WRONG, because our big wrinkly brain meats all have their own tastes and ways of imputing information.

Television animation is rife with factors that actually futz with the quality and ability of the team to make a beautiful, amazing product like EVERY DAY. The script process and what goes into production is just one. The team is made up of many creatives all with their own varied experiences and voices just like the audience. In order for people to have their own voices and say, you are going to end up with some things that hit better then others, especially if the team is allowed to grow and experiment and play a little. Hilda has always been a show where we've been able to have a lot of creative say, and i think that sincerity comes through ! but with the sincerity and that humanity, it also means that there are going to be things that arnt going to make sense in the grand scheme of things lol. Even the writers and creators and producers have differing opinions on what to explore and dive into, probably more so then fandoms haha. Having more episodes may scratch some itches but not all, HECK, those episodes being cut could have re-allocated resources to other areas that helped elevate your fav ep of the season ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who knows! Schrodinger's episodes! (also ngl I was having cold sweats over the scope of some of them as cool as they were. The season may have been shorter but it was intense..it takes a long time to do stuff that looks that clean and crisp)

Imperfect art is very human! Do the best you can at the time with the factors you have. I was given so much trust and freedom on my episodes, and I was just happy to do something fun that allowed me and my team to grow and learn. I was fucking STOKED to get a one off story because it was way less pressure for me to take my next step directing cuz just doing the thing is a feat. Any sincerity you feel cant come through if that means we're afraid that we cant make mistakes, or do a story choice ppl wont vibe with. All you can do is do the best you can, see if people are picking up what you're putting down, and grow from it for next time.

Anyway, just a thought ramble. Its not to say do or dont do this or think this way blah blah. I just love that storytelling is messy and complex and everyones gonna take it a lil differently, especially if you have a team where you allow lots of voices to have input. It is all just a big experiment to see if people leave with a particular experience by putting your resources into the things you have that matter, and try you best to distract from burnt edges or patched up holes that happened throughout the process of making the dang thing lol.

[firesofdainix]

spacetime continuum is such a cool concept! how did you even create the idea? and did you expect it to grow this much? Asking because I love it, back when you first started publishing them i checked the fwndom tag every day hoping youd uploaded a new one •-• its still my favorite series of fics in this fandom

Thank you so much for reading my stories! I admit I never quite expected people to love them much less be inspired, but here we are! March me would be so happy hearing this! So, there are three things that made me inspired to write Spacetime Continuum:

1. Broken AU and its impact in the Solarballs community, such as the Earth favoritism and evil Gas Giants

2. Earth's character being watered down to an innocent planet void of nothing wrong, which frustrates me greatly

3. The Ice Giants playing at most two roles in the Solarballs universes I had seen that time: being non existent, or being victims of the gas Giants.

For more information of the origins of this AU, click read more:

I mentioned that one of the biggest reasons I created this universe was because I had yet to see an AU where the Ice Giants are just as bad as the Gas Giants, and that they go with what the Gas Giants have for them without any coercion. Uranus' personality had been the very first thing I started writing and thinking about, hence my second work for Solarballs being about Uranus, when the paint dries. He was funny to flesh out, from being the insecure planet he is today to the prideful, boisterous and hot tempered character he'd been in the Proto Era. Jupiter and Saturn were the next to follow different tweaks of their character in canon, because my goal had been turning them into complicated and morally ambiguous characters. The Ice Giants are in POWER, IN CONTROL of their horrible actions (though you can make a case for Neptune being manipulated by Uranus, but it's clear he had no qualms killing the other giants and wiping out smaller bodies) in my universe, especially during the war for the position of Celestial Monarch.

The War had already been an integral part of the story, and it was mentioned in my first, now non-canon fic "Mars, god of war" along with hypothetical planets Antichton and Phaeton, plus their relationships with Venus and Mars. But during that, I didn't know what the war had been about, all I know is that Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune were all allies (to also combat the common fanon that Uranus is afraid of Jupiter) and their enemies are Saturn and Planet X. The character of Hades was born, and this drove me to write and flesh out the aforementioned Uranus fic linked earlier, with the earliest mentions of Jupiter accidentally killing Hades, and the animosity between Saturn and Jupiter/Uranus. I didn't expect myself to see the romantic tension between Jupiter and Uranus until now, so that was my fault LMAO

Since this is a series, and not a multi chapter fic, I didn't have to commit to a linear narrative and begin writing one shots about my universe, expanding the characters and the world revolving around the planets. My third fic I've uploaded was about Titan, aka "Saturn's moons hanging by a thread," and the two fics after it about the moons and how the elder Moons were affected by the war. It was an excuse to give the readers more details and clues about what happened before I immediately hit them with the Truth, which is why Saturn merely admonished his moons' actions against Titan in "moon eater." To set up Clues about WHY Jupiter killed Hades in the first place, but making it clear that the story Saturn told IS NOT the whole thing, as we see in "history is a story told by the winners of the fight," there were other factors at play, along with Uranus's ambitious motives (it'll be seen in a fic I'm uploading tonight!) it exposes Jupiter's mental stability and Hades's abuse towards his own older brother that drove him to kill him, even accidentally. And you have to take note this fic was written AFTER plot heavy and clue filled fics such as "after the battle," where Jupiter is written as a megalomaniac that finally got what he wanted; "you didn't know?" Where we are seeing the new personality of Jupiter, and the Ganymede fic, where Jupiter's actions are INEXCUSABLE and shitty. It's fun to see readers puzzling over what the hell happened in the last billion years.

However, since the series is built upon ideas that have taken a long time to consider and new ideas keep popping up, there are times when older fics contradict my new ones, such as changing Earth and Tierra from being the same person to different entities. But I hopefully usually keep my ideas and message consistent. I love having the creativity and using a show about talking planets as my muse and a sandbox for the different kinds of characters and themes which usually play out in the story. I know broken AU gets a whole lot of flack for being the main reason why Earth, Jupiter and Saturn's characters became damaged, but honestly I saw it as an opportunity. A way to integrate the "evil" gas Giants into my AU.

My goal is to keep everyone consistent, well-rounded, and having a defining set of goals and characteristics, including those who are used to drive the story or a character forward, such as Hades, Vulcan, Theia, Antichton and Phaeton, who already have SOME established depth to them other than being the partners of existing planets. I mean... Have you guys READ Antichton in "the consequences of our actions"? He was a bastard, as well-meaning POS who thought he was doing the best. And Hades, aka the planet I created to give Jupiter a character arc, only serving as a plot device? He STILL continues to haunt the narrative. He continues to make Jupiter uncomfortable at the mere mention of him. His murder is seen as Jupiter's power play and not retaliation. That's where I've been going.

Writing the characters who are alive with complex characteristics is something I enjoyed. I enjoyed writing Earth being an unapologetic, arrogant, insensitive asshole who gets on the nerves of other rocky planets. I enjoy writing Saturn as an unrepentant, vain, and self-centered planet who can't apologize without sounding like he forced it. I love writing Sun and how his favoritism, his greenhorn nature when he's been given his system led to the downfall of the solar system and cast permanent wounds to his Giants. And I enjoy writing Planet X, Tyche, Nemesis and Iris, who are up to no good.

The main themes or lessons in my series are as follows:

1. There is more sides to a story than what is given.

2. No one is right. No one is wrong. It all depends on what you're fighting for and the beliefs you have.

3. You need to learn responsibility. You are a born leader, use your talent to the utmost power. Don't play favorites, and discipline them when they go too far.

4. Revenge is a fickle thing: will it make you feel satisfied, or will it just fill your empty heart with negativity?

5. Immortality is sacred. One wrong move against those you love the most and you'll be dead.

6. Favoritism kills.

And a whole lot more I'm not getting into because they'd be spoilers, or they're not fully fleshed out as ideas yet! Thank you for enjoying spacetime continuum, and I hope to upload something about it soon! (Tonight lmao). I... Didn't think thisd get long but IT DID

[direct0rhutao]

hello everyone welcome back to my youtube channel my tumblr blog and today we’re going to be roasting the interior design choices of enstars idols. bc i was looking at the starmony dorm cgs on the wiki for certain reasons and the closer i looked at them the more i was like. why do they look like that.

tldr the starmony dorm rooms are interior design nightmares

mika ritsu dorm: actually this is one of the most decent dorms in terms of aethestics and how well they match the people in the room. mika has plushies on his nightstand! so cute!! ritsu has a goth looking bed with a thing at the end that my common sense says is probably a pillow but my eyes say is a very small coffin! huh!

wataru sora subaru madara dorm: why would you put a cactus right next to the foot of a bed that is an accident waiting to happen. whose bed even is that. idk whose bed is whose in this room

himeru arashi tetora dorm: sorry but arashi’s and tetora’s beds being next to each other is so funny. i like the flower vase and i think the frames arashi put up are cute. i think tetora’s gym equipment smells very strongly of sweat and i think arashi’s solution to this would be to constantly spray perfume at the room. every day himeru wakes up and is assaulted by Odors

mayoi tomoya dorm: what is that one bar above mayoi’s bed for. but other than that mayoi has pretty good taste his bed looks cool. tomoya’s bed is way more “normal” but still looks nicer that some of the other beds we’ll see later

tatsumi koga dorm: why is there a motorcycle in the frame on the wall. what is that ornament on the other wall and why does it look like a sun. why does this room look like the kind of fake model “bedroom” you find in a furniture store

jun kohaku dorm: this room probably also smells like sweat but unfortunately i don’t think kohaku has that much perfume or room spray on hand. also i think one of these days jun’s post-workout selfie mirror will fall over and break and jun will cry

yuzuru tori dorm: what are the round things on the walls next to tori’s bed. are they nightlights. does tori still need nightlights. why doesn’t tori get himself the cutesy nightlights that are shaped like stars and clouds and stuff instead of those things that make the walls look like they have pimples

kaoru nagisa yuta dorm: i think yuta’s bed is the blue one bc it looks a bit like hinata’s but the other two beds look like something you’d find in a 3 star hotel. no personality whatsoever. what’s with the abstract splotch art on the wall. nagisa is part of one of the Big Three units of ES so he should be paid well he can definitely afford some nicer decorations like a large chart illustrating the differences between igneous sedimentary and metamorphic rocks or smth. i do feel like nagisa chose the beanbags that look like rocks tho.. theyre the only saving grace of this room so good job nagisa

keito hajime hokuto dorm: we still don’t know what this one looks like at all.. i think keito’s bed is Boring, hajime’s bed has cute bedsheets in calming pastel colors, and hokuto’s bed has matching bedsheets and pillows in tasteful shades of blue. the rest of trickstar helped pick these bc hokuto’s parents sent him a matching set of bedding with HIDAKA HOKUTO embroidered in gold thread on everything as a “moving-out gift” and hokuto was mortified and shoved them under his bed never again to see the light of day

ibara tsumugi midori mitsuru dorm: midori’s and mitsuru’s beds are cute. i love midori’s vegetable plushies and mitsuru’s bread pillows. ibara and tsumugi’s beds look miserable and devoid of personality, perhaps representing their owners’ mental anguish and despair. and since they have no other large pieces of furniture aside from the beds this room also looks a bit like a showroom in a mattress store

makoto adonis chiaki dorm: i’m guessing chiaki’s bed is the one with bright posters above it, makoto’s bed is the one with the post its and other posters above it, and adonis’s bed is the one with the snuggly blanket with the lovely pattern. they also have a nice long couch, a tv, and a rug with some bean bags. overall it’s a very nice room! my only major complaint is that i refuse to believe that chiaki uses a plain gray blanket and not the same power ranger bedsheets he’s had since he was 10 years old

hinata hiiro niki dorm: hinata’s bed has the blue blanket and hanging plants right? i assume hiiro’s bed has the pillows with blue and orange stripes just because it reminds me of the colors on his jacket. i refuse to believe that niki’s bed is that neat i know he has a secret stash of snacks next to his desk or under the bed or something. i think after crazyB has paid off all their debts and are no longer seriously struggling financially and niki is able to save some of his paycheck i think he’d buy a minifridge and put it next to his bed

rei eichi aira dorm: everyone always talks about rei and eichi’s petty divorce curtain but nobody mentions how aira’s bed looks like it’s made out of cardboard

leo natsume nazuna dorm: why is leo’s the only visibly messy bed we’ve seen. why are nazuna’s and natsume’s beds so average. i can see nazuna as the kind to go for a simple blanket with stripes but you cannot tell me that natsume does not have the most headache-inducing blankets and pillows known to mankind. natsume has 3 pillows each with a different pattern and combination of complimentary colors on them and 2 blankets one of which he found in one of the secret passageways in yumenosaki and one of which has a bunch of constellations printed on it and all of it clashes horribly

kuro mao izumi shu dorm: oh this is one of the worst rooms in general. let’s start with the beds. all four of them look like they have the exact same bedframe. how come mika gets a fancy victorian bedframe and shu doesn’t. is all of shu’s special fancy furniture in france. i genuinely can’t tell whose bed is whose. is mao’s bed the black one on the far left or the red and gray one on the far right (bc ritsu was involved in choosing the bedsheets). why doesn’t kuro have any gym equipment next to his bed like tetora and jun. do you think kuro used to have some gym equipment in the dorm but shu and izumi complained too much about the sweaty smell so he had to leave it at his family’s house. what’s with the four-part abstract art piece. who put that there. did izumi put that there because i cannot imagine shu putting that up there. i do not think shu likes that sort of modern art he probably says it’s meaningless or derivative or smth. he’d probably prefer a high-quality print of a reinassance painting or framed pictures actually scratch that last one because if the kuro mao izumi shu dorm was allowed to hang personal photos on the walls izumi might put up some pictures of the rest of knights and then every night shu would have to go to sleep haunted by the vaguely threatening (to him) smile of Narukami Arashi

rinne kanata hiyori dorm: obv kanata’s bed is the one with the aquarium next to it, which means rinne’s and hiyori’s beds are probably the ones with the slightly different zigzag stripe patterns and honestly i’m disappointed. you mean to tell me amagi rinne doesn’t have insufferably gaudy bright red bedsheets? he doesn’t have a blanket with cartoon bees on it that he bought as a joke when he went to the supermarket with the rest of crazyB? he doesn’t have a stack of coupons and discount vouchers and half-finished loyalty cards and a bunch of misshapen plushies that he got out of a claw machine while trying to get the hamburger plushie for niki as an anniversary gift? and hiyori. eichi’s bed probably came straight from his family’s mansion and looks like it came from a 5 star hotel and hiyori just has. that?? i refuse to belive that hiyori would allow himself to be one-upped by tenshouin eichi in this manner. hiyori has a humongous fluffy princess bed with hearts and flourishes carved into the bedframe and a whole ass canopy with fairy lights that took jun four hours to assemble and you cannot convince me otherwise

tsukasa souma shinobu dorm: where is tsukasa’s trading card collection. where is souma’s sword rack. where are shinobu’s lego ninjago bedsheets

[rightpastnowhere]

Zone of Truth with the twins? >:D

hurt/comfort spell ask meme

so... i know who you meant by "the twins"........ but since you didn't specify in words i am going to be mean >:D

ZONE OF TRUTH: You create a magical zone that guards against deception in a 15-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range. Until the spell ends, a creature that enters the spell's area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there must make a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, a creature can't speak a deliberate lie while in the radius. You know whether each creature succeeds or fails on its saving throw.

An affected creature is aware of the spell and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. Such creatures can be evasive in its answers as long as it remains within the boundaries of the truth.

also this prompt got way out of control whoopsie. i used this as a warm-up to get back into writing after my very long hiatus, so it's not my best, but i love the twins <3 so here you go!!!

~

It's dark.

Not dark enough to blind - he has darkvision to thank for that, enough elven blood passed down for that - but dark enough to obscure details, to mess with his sense of where he is. His hands are tied, but not his feet, so theoretically he could try to get up and flee, but-

A panicked whimper, small and quiet, from beside him reminds him why he can't just up and run. They'd taken Leona's glasses, smashing them under heel, and darkvision doesn't amount to shit when your vision's that bad.

"What are we gonna do?" Leona whispers, a shrill string of her voice threading through in her panic, and he doesn't want to snap but she's being too loud. "Mum and Dad don't know where we are, we don't know where we are, we don't know what they want-"

"It's okay, Leo," he hisses, not to scold but just to interrupt - he's switched into elvish, too, just in case none of them speak it. He wishes, more than ever, that he'd paid more attention in any of Mum's other language lessons. "They'll be able to find us. Mum can find anything, remember? Like when Egg dropped her necklace in the garden that one time?"

He can see Leo's eyes when she turns, and meets them as steadily as he can, even knowing that she can't see the details of his face from this close. "It's okay," he whispers again, as fierce and solid as he can. "We'll be okay."

The door to the room they're in opens, allowing a single woman to step through. She walks over slowly, heeled boots clicking on the floor; each click is in time with his heart until the latter picks up pace, gradually running out of sync until his pulse is in his ears.

Breathe. Calm down. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. Dad's voice in his head, Mum's hands on his shoulders, a memory of a panic attack curled between the bookshelves of the family library.

Wolfe is usually one of the first to panic with things like this. He hates to admit it, especially in comparison to his siblings, some older-brother instinct

Leona's hand, somehow having found its way into his, squeezes so tight he feels his knuckles roll together; it hurts, but just enough to ground him.

"Do you know why you're here?" the woman asks, her words scraped at the edges by rough-accented Common.

"Because you brought us here?" The words trip out unbidden, stumbling past his lips in a shaky mockery of his usual snark, and he almost winces. This isn't the time to act smart.

You might want to throw out some cheesy one-liner or whatever to act cool, but it's not worth the risk, his mother's voice chimes from a memory, the three oldest kids sitting in on interrogation training with the newest Grey Hunt recruits. It might seem like a way of keeping the power on your side, but it's just as likely to make your captors even angrier.

Lesson one failed.

Luckily, the woman doesn't rise to the bait; she just chuckles, stepping closer to crouch down in front of them both. He shifts his body best he can, trying to put himself between her and Leona, trying to shield her.

"How cute," she says, "but you know that's not what I meant."

Wolfe swallows thickly.

"You're little de Rolo brats, aren't 'ya?" The woman leans forward, and Wolfe fights the instinctive urge to cower away. "I bet you know alllll sorts of secret entrances and whatnot into the castle, right?"

Shit.

"We never used those," Leona croaks from behind him. "Guess you fucked up and got the wrong kids."

She still manages to sound smug and haughty, even with her voice wobbling with fear. He would be proud in any other circumstance, but now he just holds back a wince, meeting the woman's eyes best he can as she frowns.

"If that's how it's gonna be," she growls, sending a shiver down Wolfe's arms. He feels a mirrored shudder go through his sister, trembling in her hands like an echo.

Another figure steps in through the door, this one cloaked and their face obscured. They're carrying an old, thick tome, and Wolfe has spent enough time around magic users to recognize a spellbook when he sees one.

"I'd just beat the answer out of you," the woman says, far too casual for Wolfe's liking, "but we don't have that kind of time. Your parents will probably catch on soon. So."

The cloaked one begins to murmur under their breath, and Wolfe curls back, bracing himself for whatever is about to hit them. Leona goes tense, squeezing his hand again and burying her face against his shoulder.

He feels the magic as it hits him, but it doesn't hurt. It... it feels like something is pushing at his mind, in his mind, like a Message or a Sending but much, much stronger. Like pushing through a locked door. He thinks to brace himself, somehow, but before he can, the lock is broken, and magic floods through his head.

"Let's try this again." The woman leans closer, too close, he can smell her breath from here. "Do you know where the secret tunnels into the castle are?"

Wolfe tries to say No, with as much force and conviction as when he tried to convince Mum that he hadn't snuck out or that it was Leona who'd pranked the Curator. But when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is a choked, strangled sound.

He and Leona tense up at the same time. Zone of Truth.

The woman grins at their realization. "You kids are smart, I'll give'ya that. Now are you smart enough to stay alive?"

Half-truths, his father's voice reminds him, a sudden reminder of an old lesson. Mum had called him paranoid, and Dad had said he was just cautious. If staying silent is too much of a danger, try and get by on half-truths. Don't give away anything that you don't have to.

He scrambles to think of something to say, something that's just true enough to get by. He can't deny the existence of the secret passageways, and he can't say he's never used them... dammit, think think think-

He feels Leona pinch at his hand, breaking his train of thought. He resists the urge to snap at her, wondering what the hell she's getting at, when he remembers the scar that sits right under her thumb and forefinger.

The scar he got from climbing in their bedroom window - or, more specifically, from the tree just outside it that he'd hastily scrambled up to avoid being caught by the guards. The tree that he always climbed to get back in after sneaking out.

Gods, his sister is a fucking genius.

"I've never gotten into the castle using secret entrances," he says, confident and certain, locking eyes with the woman as her lip curls into a snarl. He thinks of his mother, every time Syldor has come to visit; he thinks of his father, every time someone questions the integrity of Whitestone.

He thinks of them both as they tell him, be brave.

The woman growls, and he does not flinch. She doesn't do anything, just turns to his sister, and somehow that is harder to stay strong in the face of.

"What about you?" the woman hisses. "You gonna be more useful to us?"

He feels Leona's hand tighten around his before she says, "I've never used them in my life."

Wolfe swallows down a shocked noise, because yes the fuck she has. Leona was the first one of the twins to discover them - she'd been tailing Vesper through the halls, and turned a corner to find their older sister had disappeared. Leona used them far more than Wolfe did, even if it was mostly for traveling within the castle than getting out of it.

But if she was able to say that, bold-faced, then... she must have resisted the spell. Leona, with the lowest constitution out of all of the family, managed to resist the spell.

Holy shit.

The woman snarls again, but turns her ire to the cloaked figure instead. "Did your stupid fucking spell even work?"

"I - I knew I felt it catch, but I..." The cloaked figure pulls out the spell book again and hastily flips through it, ripping at least one page along the way.

He never gets a chance to find it; there's two arrows through his neck before he can, and his book falls to the ground only a second before he does. The woman barely has a chance to draw the crude-looking axe from behind her back before the crack of a gun fills the air, and her head bursts into a bright-red spray. Wolfe cringes back instinctively, and covers his face with his arm as well, but that's more to spare his own eyes from the gorey details.

Footsteps rush into the room, and Wolfe feels a gentle hand on his cheek - his mother's, from the uneven pattern of leather-covered and bare fingers, a signature of her archery gloves - and lowers his arm at her frantic voice calling his name.

She's kneeling in front of him, with her other hand a mirror on Leona's face, and Wolfe smiles in relief. He feels tears prick at his eyes when she sweeps a thumb across his cheekbone. "Hi, Mum," he chokes out, his throat thick with a building sob.

Leona echoes him, sounding similarly fragile, and their mother's face crumples into a shaky smile, her own eyes welling up with tears. "Hello, darlings."

Dad runs up just behind her, looking even more fraught than when Gwen had gone missing with one of his guns. "Are you two alright? Are you hurt?" He falls to his knees beside Mum, and Wolfe winces, thinking of his bad knee.

"We're fine, Dad," Leona says, her voice a little stronger. "I just can't fucking see."

Wolfe surprises himself with how loud he laughs. Maybe it's the stress of the situation, but something about Leona taking advantage of being actually fucking kidnapped to swear in front of their parents without consequences - because he knows they're going to be too relieved to have them back to lecture her, of course they are - just fucking breaks him.

Then Mum starts laughing too, and Dad looks at her the most bewildered Wolfe's ever seen, and that just makes him laugh even louder.

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Obvious focus this time is seemingly the end of the broadcast. Maybe there's a coda, maybe it's done here. This was a weird chapter and potentially the hardest one in Egghead to write about. Bring honest, it's a common complaint these days but this was the first time I felt it was just spinning its wheels a bit. I'm also really confused. I think it'll flow better reading as part of a binge later but parts of this feels like they may have worked better before stuff last week.

Otherwise...Vegapunk's climax. It's a perfect microcosm of how I feel about this segment. It's kinda like how "Roger Laughed" told us about the One Piece without telling us about the One Piece. A big theme here, part of what Wano and Egghead share, is setting the stage for the finale. We've used the phrase separating the wheat from the chaff. I've made the comparison to how Wano acts like a lot of school play arcs in slice of life anime, that little bit of distance allowing you to narrow down on what's really important. Tie off your loose ends that don't need to be here anymore. This chapter really does that.

Heh, I love this joke with the reactions. Skypiea has continued to grow over time. It makes sense serving as somewhat of an overture to this main thrust of the series. They have nothing to fear from sea level rise but their plight was very much the results of that. Nice to see Conis again. But we have a more important reaction.

Hey Marco! You can call it a reach if you want but I think this one is a little sneakier than some of the fluff reactions. Part of doing this is nudging you what some of these characters are doing. Marco alone here does tell us one thing, Bakkin seems to have moved along. It's also kinda interesting he's lumped in with this more functional scene. A lot of them have just been seeing a character listening, Marco is used more as a tie to the content and it's here with Pudding who is also one of the oddballs at the periphery of this arc.

I still wonder about these two. So their placement here together is intriguing. We could just be checking them off the list, we could be nudging they still have threads in this arc. It's tricky right? The line between reactions to this broadcast and scenes we're seeing around it.

...Cmon Robonosuke. *Nudges with stick.*

This robot's a trip. Really felt like he was about to do something cool. Maybe we get it next time but it's weird how this was such a non entity. Let me put it this way. I with these two chapters would have just done a full split on the two levels the main cast has coalesced around. It almost does that. But it doesn't.

Special note for the title too...very cool it uses part of Roger's classic speech. The destiny of an age. All in all it does frame this message in an interesting way. It's good for pulling back on the image of Luffy as a unique chosen one, same with Bonney learning to mimic his ability. I love the big splash with the main players at the end. Now can we please get to the fireworks factory and draw out a clearer point to all this?

[sanctissimx]

Capernoited - Slightly intoxicated or tipsy.

+

Sphallolalia - Flirtatious talk that leads no where.

- From Ais.

meme.

The Wet Wick was not a common destination for Kuras, especially so late in the evening when the tavern was sure to be most crowded with the lonely and the inebriated. There was no shortage of preparation or organization that could be tended to every evening, no lack of sick and injured who might find themselves at his doorstep. However, it was just one night. And the invitation to attend could not possibly be declined when it was proposed by arguably his favorite patient.

Ais had been nothing less than a solicitous host, asking after him so often that Kuras became conscious of the discomfited displeasure that was too evident upon his own face. Adjusting his posture to something more relaxed, Kuras had made an effort to smile brilliantly at the subsequent "Are you sure?" check-ins, assuring him he was having a perfectly fine time.

Ais could not have been convinced by such a poor pantomime on Kuras's part, but had ultimately nodded following his last response and wandered towards the bar to grab another round of drinks. But his return path to Kuras had been interrupted by a drunk who had crashed into the bar between them, laughing uproriously as he spilled his drink on Kuras's trousers.

What ensued was a torrent of heated words initiated by Ais, a flurry of fists that ended with a very clear demonic winner, culminating finally with Kuras hooking an arm about Ais's waist and gently but insistently leading him out of the tavern door. The night air was bracing: crisp and cool, the fraicheur of it clearing the thick, cloying scent of sweat and sin from his lungs. If it had any sobering effect at all on Ais, Kuras did not know, but lifted the demon's heavy arm and draped it over his own steady shoulders nonetheless.

That particular stretch of cobblestone leading to Kuras's clinic had deteriorated after years of wear, and the unevenness of the tread was what Kuras had attributed the noticeable lean of Ais into his side. That, or the alcohol, surely. The slender hand at Ais's hip drew him closer therefore, the other reaching up to thread its fingers between Ais' bruised and bleeding hand, hung upon his shoulder.

He couldn't be sure if it was Ais' fingers or his own that tightened, but neither set seemed willing to let go. A tense and unsure breath passed in silence before Ais ventured a joke of sorts: "This feels almost romantic. You, me, the moonlight. I can almost see stars beyond the clouds there. You keep holding my hand like this, I might start to think this is a date."

Kuras nearly laughed, but stifled it with a purse of his lips that slowly, unwillingly curled into a smile. "Wasn't it?" he asked, the question steady, the lilt of it only slightly teasing. "You asked me out, bought me a few drinks—you didn't have to spring for the top shelf, by the way, but my tastebuds thank you nonetheless—and now I'm walking you home. Based on those criteria alone, one might deduce the time we've spent together tonight as a date." His smile widened then. "And the moonlight only exacerbates the romanticism of it all, really."

If Ais had any witty or insouciant remarks, they were inauspiciously precluded by their arrival upon the threshold of Kuras's clinic door. The wood scraped inelegantly as Kuras pushed the door opened, old hinges groaning. Kuras's smile was almost shy as he invited him inside with a sweep of his hand. "Don't be stubborn about it," he inisted softly. The sweetest admonition. "I'll mend your hand and brew you some tea. Just like any other visit to my clinic. Only with a little more candlelight and far more .. moonlight."

A pause, a breath before he said at last, "You can stay over if you like." Kuras turned his face away as he lit another candle, occluding the faint blush upon his cheeks within the bower of the shadows. "The clinic never feels quite so lonesome as when you're here, anyhow."

Part 1 ....

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Pluto

Naoki Urasawa is fascinated with the darkness of childhood imagination.

Admittedly, I've only watched two anime based on his work so far- Madhouse's masterclass adaptation of Monster and now this- so I can't say how common a thread it is in his other stories. But even just from those two, his fixation on twisting childhood into something sinister and unsettling is undeniable. Nursery rhymes and half-remembered country folk songs repurposed as grim omens of doom, picture books foreshadowing real world nightmares, the innocence of his child characters and childlike imagery juxtaposed against a creeping darkness that seems born from the pits of hell itself... the mind of a kid is frequently the most terrifying place to be in Urasawa's work. Whether there's any greater meaning to it or if it's just something he things is cool, I don't know. But it certainly makes him the ideal artist for a story like Pluto. Who else but a guy like him could take one of Japan's most iconic mascots of childhood fun and use his world as the basis of a serious minded political/philosophical thriller that seeks to explore the nature of hatred itself?

Now, as someone who only knows Astro Boy by reputation and has never so much as seen a single episode of any show bearing his name, I can't comment on this story's relation to its source material. Luckily, I don't need to; Pluto is fully stand-alone and you don't need to know a scrap of Astro Boy lore to understand or appreciate it. Although I imagine it would make some of the goofier robot designs a little less immersion-breaking. I dunno, there's something inherently funny about seeing Urasawa's grounded, realistic style of character and world design, his thickly textured and non-exaggerated human faces with realistic proportions and naturalistic wear and tear, next to some of these robots looking like they were pulled straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. It makes me wonder how certain American cartoons would look if given this treatment. Imagine if someone, like, re-imagined The Powerpuff Girls this way, and you had to see these realistic child versions of Blossom et al next to Mojo Jojo or whatever. Oh well, it would probably be better than that CW show they cancelled, at least.

But I'm getting off track. Pluto is a story about a futuristic sci-fi world where robotics have gotten advanced enough for robots and humans to life side-by-side as part of the same civilization. Every year, it seems, robots and humans are growing closer together, to the point where people are genuinely starting to wonder if there's still any meaningful difference between them. But the seeming peace is shattered by a mysterious attacker, an unknown, unseen killer targeting the seven strongest robots in the world and destroying them one by one. One of these robots, a Europol detective named Gesicht with a robot wife of his own, decides to dedicate himself to tracking this killer down. But as his journey takes him all over the world, meeting countless different robots and humans all with their own bit of commentary to offer on the relationship between man and machine, we slowly peel back the sins this world is built on, uncovering a darkness much greater than a single mysterious killer... and a hatred that may change the nature of robotkind as we know it.

It's a heady, thought-provoking affair, and despite my jokes earlier in the review, it's shockingly good at justifying its bizarre premise. The world feels real and lived-in, from its complex alt-history to its eerily familiar present. It feels like a world that would arise from robots growing increasingly close to humans, and it makes all its musings on the distinction between them genuinely compelling. What would anti-robot bigotry look like in such an accepting time? What things would come naturally to humans that might be impossible for robots, and vice-versa? How would the presence of highly advanced AI effect the political history of warfare and diplomacy? And, most unnervingly, what new atrocities could result from a world this advanced? It's a show that's deeply interested in what ultimately makes us human, and what it would take for an inhuman machine to be considered human as well. But it's also interested in what is already inhuman about us, and if there's anything we, in turn, can learn about our own humanity from a "species" still living just outside it. And while there's plenty of action throughout its run, it's not afraid to take its time on conversations and machinations to really let those ideas settle.

Of course, it's been many years since the manga this was based on was published, and those kinds of "Can a robot learn to feel?" questions have been pretty beaten to death in other media that's come out since then. These days, a story can come off as pretty corny trying to tackle such topis. And truth be told, Pluto can't help but make you roll your eyes with its attempt to explore these ideas a lot of the time. Some of that's due to the oversaturation I just mentioned, but some of that's down to Pluto itself being a very corny show, in ways I don't think it's really aware of. It tends to deliver its story in the most on-the-nose, telegraphed way imaginable.This cranky old musician doesn't think robots can understand art but watch as he learns how to feel again! This robot just wants to paint pictures of flowers but his inner nature as a brutal rage machine is dragging him down! People make promises to their family to see them again right before they're brutally killed! You can see every emotional beat coming miles away but it still expects you to be surprised when it finally arrives there. And considering that the tension of uncertainty is one of the most important parts of any good thriller, it kinda makes it hard to get invested at points.

Sadly, that isn't the only problem holding Pluto back from greatness. Aside from the corny delivery, a lot of plot points feel pretty contrived and stupid, the hand of the author shoving the pieces across the game board with little regard to making sure it feels natural. I also don't think structure this show as eight hour-long Netflix specials was good for the pacing; it means every episode meanders over countless subplots that don't always fit together smoothly and melt into a sludge of Things Happening with little connective tissue to justify putting them together. You can practically see the points where there would be episode breaks if they were a normal 24-minute length, but then they just keep going into what feels like an entirely new episode with no breathing room. So it ends up feeling like a 24 episode show Frankensteined together into a series of bloated triple-length episode booster packs, rather than a story carefully curated to take advantage of its extended episode runtime.

And yet, for all its faults, I found myself getting drawn back in over and over again. Say what you will about Urasawa, the man knows how to keep your eyes glued to the screen. And for all the shows and movies I've seen exploring what it takes for a robot to be human, Pluto's take is still unique and fascinating enough to be worth the watch. It's nowhere near the simple, offensive allegories of, say, Detroit Become Human, nor is it so intellectual that it robs the story of its humanity. It's a genuine attempt to contend with humanity in its entirety, light and darkness alike, and what we may need to sacrifice- or what we might gain- by bringing artificial intelligence over the threshold to join us. It also helps that it looks fantastic; aside from a few moments that just plain look ugly (Atom's first fight with the mysterious killer made my eyes hurt, I swear), the thick lines and fluid animation bring this world to life in stunning fashion. Even outside the impressive action scenes, Pluto is a show worth looking at. Sometimes, that sweet Netflix money hits just right.

Is Pluto a great anime? I'd argue no; it's got too many basic issues holding it back. In my opinion, Monster is a superior Urasawa offering, and I didn't even particularly love that show either. But masterpiece or no, Pluto is a work of remarkable ambition, and it demands your attention regardless of its faults. It's a thoughtful, potent, sometimes frustrating, often eye-rolling, but always compelling work of sci-fi reimagining, proof that even something as simple as a cartoon robot with rockets on its feet can be fertile ground for so much more. And I give Pluto a score of:

6.5/10

And now we wait to see if Netflix struck gold again with its upcoming Scott Pilgrim adaptation. See you next time!

[my-jokes-are-my-armour]

...

I don't really know why I suddenly returned to my old series during my vacations, but revisiting some Star Trek series I consumed in my teenager years to late teenager years made me realise something : I always loved the character that was the most unearthly for each series. Spok, Data, Odo, Seven of Nine.

And then I stumbled on that on a reddit thread...

I feel so seen 😅.

I won't go to much for Spok and Data (for the moment at least), but they were almost my first blorblos ever ☺️. I may come to Seven though.

I wanna talk about Odo today and especially in a ace point of view.

Important : this is just a character analysis through my own experience and how i connected not any formal lecture on the subject !

Note : I will switch sometimes between "he" and "it" for Odo. As his specie is basically a fluid with technically no gender at all. He primarily imitated a male person and stayed that way. Has Odo self gendered male in the end ? Maybe. Let say he is gendered that way in the show. That's why I use "he".

A little bit of my trekky journey

The funny part is that I was a real trekky for many many years. My father wanted me to discover the show he liked when he was younger and I became the 2.0 version of him, being obsessed with it ☺️. My parents kindly participated with my passion. They bought me the first parts of the officials Star Trek files. But then they choose to teach me the value of the product they were offering me with work.

I didn't have pocket money except from my grand parents sometimes. So they told me : you do things in the house, we give you a bit of money for it and you can buy your own stuff with it. It was 10Fr for each helpful stuff.

Needless to say, I became very good at washing dishes, cooking and doing the laundry very early 🤣. I needed 70Fr, which is about 10-11€, every two weeks to buy my files and VHS. It became a bit harder when we switched to euros, because 10Fr became 1€ earn for the house chore, and the price of the files grew rapidly... So I never finished that collection. But as you can see I have a solid one lol. They kept the VHS collection as I had no place to store it when I first moved out.

I remember liking a lot this period because I could buy my stuff and then we had a cool moment of bonding together with my parents watching the VHS in the weekend.

The sad part is that is that I never could complete my collection. Too expensive to a point. Saddly, I don't have much about Odo in my files, except for its Starfleet one and worse for Seven of Nine, with nothing at all. But I guess the character was not added yet to the show. I had very few VHS of Voyager at the time.

First impression on Odo and comparison to Data

As many I guess, I wasn't really thrilled at DS9 in the first place, but rewatching it, I found it extremely good now. I had the same feeling with Voyager which I was really appealed to, once Seven was added to the crew.

Those four characters I relate to the most have in common a rejection or a lack of comprehension of human emotions or behaviours. But Odo was different in a way that I can recognise a lot of myself nowadays in terms of development around my own journey discovering my sexuality.

I remember that when I first saw its design I was like. Oh they are trying to make a new Data character.

But no, it is very different. Odo has emotions, strong emotions, and understands them but he cannot fit, because basically it is not humanoid, he is a sentient puddle of goo... It learned to take a humanoid male shape to interact with the most common form of sentient beings around and the equipment of the ships.

If his shape technically makes it difficult to express clear emotions as he is sleek as butter, he can, and does it a lot. So he is not an emotionless or emotional repressed character (although in some aspect yes... 🤔). And through the series, Odo grew on me for its grumpy personality hiding a very sensible and traumatised being.

There is a common ground between Odo and Data in the fact that they are "unique" creature of there kind evolving around people and trying the best they can to be a part of the community. They have a similar arc or steps of development : strange to others, link with some people, explore emotions, try to mimick what they don't understand, link with more, acceptation, deep frienships to even love experiences, sacrifice. But they have opposite feedbacks and starting points.

Data don't feel per se and even with the integration of the emotion ship he has a lot to learn. But he is ready for all experiences, to learn to feel, and explore humanity.

Odo doesn't need to learn emotions, he already feels. But he begins his life among humanoids with abuses. Everything that he has learned to become more "human" comes from pain. So even if he tries to fit, he is extremely shielded and tries to prevent other to see how vulnerable he feels in reality, to escape the inevitable pain if he is not what people expect. Also, Odo can connect with people only if he makes the constent effort to be something he is not.

They are both children learning, but one of them is beginning his journey with strong traumas. So each of their step towards fulfilment is hard but not for the same reasons.

Also Odo has a big journey about love and discovering what he needs and how different his experience is. He doesn't understand sexual attraction and mating. And the traumas make it even harder for him to figure out how it works for him. He needs a lot of guidance that he cannot always accept or precise rules to know how to function as expected in certain situations. He tends to toss aside violently (verbally) those who cannot give him that when he feels cornered.

I think there can be a lot of readings for this character for many people but, in my case, looking back at him now, I find that this strange position Odo had in a community, I subconsciously felt it on the sexuality part of myself. I couldn't connect with anyone, even my friends on the subject... I was the alien. I tried a lot, I mimicked but it failed and it made me sad, until I understood how it worked for me.

Which leads me to my next point.

Love stories and unearthlyness

Of all my blorbos in Star Trek, I feel like Odo is the most unearthly and in the same time the most relatable for me.

For my three other blorblos, I never been really interested in their love stories or sexuality - I was attracted for other things in them - but I appreciated that "love" was not much part of their main journey or that they discussed more about the general feeling than making out with other characters. But for Odo... dear lord! I dived head first in his loved stories because it was speaking to me. He has several love stories and some are central to his character. But in many aspects of this part I was finding myself in his struggles.

He had feelings for others, he could clearly fall in love sometimes, but couldn't experience it like everyone. He had some pationate kisses and some intimate moments here and there, but the love moments I connect the most were when he shared what he is with some characters, in a non flesh way, if I can say so.

If I could make some conclusions directly, I would say that Odo begins as a hetero asexual, sex repulsed, to demisexual after he discovers how to connect with people and he creates a deep emotional link with some of them. He even discovers that, even with members of his own race which have the perfect form to union for him, he doesn't feel anything because the emotional link is not there. And to discover that, he goes from mimicking and mimicking again and again, failing over and over until he muddles his way out of it, finding fulfilment and finally can love the way he needs.

The fact that he isn't humanoid, even solid, is central to him. He states so many times and tries to formulate in many ways that what we can see is not what he is.

For a long time he rejects parts of humanoid's interactions that involve feelings. He freezes most of the time when being hugged. And avoid people with those kind of behaviours.

Me in my corner 🥲👋. Not to this extend but the inconfort is real.

In a way those scenes have a comic aspect but for those who can relate to him, even little, this isn't as funny.

For him, a big part of these reactions comes from the fact that in his experience, what he doesn't understand and doesn't know how to react to, means pain. This is how he was taught in the first place. Also, he is so different in nature that his needs on the subject are totally unreachable. So he has to learn to find the middle ground to live his experience in a group of people that technically cannot match.

For the most part, he is pushed by his friends to open up to the experience of bounding first and then making out, which became the hardest part.

Through his interactions, he becomes more and more aware of how to express love and he shares with some people that way, but he discovers also he is so different than his love isn't understood. Misunderstood for what his feelings are, in nature for him to the others, and misunderstood for what he can feel sharing the physical love with his partners.

I was so heartbroken by some of those moments as the link is created but the difference is too big to make the link hold. And I was so rewarded in others when he is accepted as he is.

The main emotional links

- Quark frienship.

Odo develops some friendships and interesting connections along the way, but the strongest for me is with Quark.

Basically this is the bromance involving one grumpy and closed character, and another that is very loud and annoying to the grumpy one. They are opposite. Odo is order. Quark is chaos.

They have a love/hate relationship with a lot of humour resulting of their interactions but they read each other is many occasions and sometimes it becomes emotional.

I won't get over that face Quark make when Odo (fusionned with someone else's personality) freely expresses his affection for him ☺️. I could ship them all day.

- Garak friendship

Garak is a very strong character with many layers. Odo and him link for good through a very tough experience, as Garak needs to torture him at some point.

In a lot of aspect that illustrates what Odo went through to become a valid humanoid form. But this time we can connect as he is not a suffering in silence puddle but a visible hurting humanoid.

But Garak and Odo link because they mirror themselves, through pride, loyalty and betrayal. Through the pain they feel, hidden inside, and their sense of belonging, or should I say not belonging...

The pain Odo is enduring turns back on Garak and makes a difference for his future moral choices. Also Garak will keep Odo secret he learnt from the torture. The secret that makes then alike. They are homesick because they are desperately lonely. They are the enemy of the community they try to fit in because their species are.

From that comes a strange friendship rooted in suspicion but understanding.

And by the end, even Garak wanna help Odo finding his way through his love experiences.

- His love story with Lwaxana

This one is rewarding and heartbreaking to me. Lwaxana is a Betazoid with a huge libido. She crushes on Odo who tries to avoid her at all coast as she tends to cornering him into a physical interactions and a need for mating that doesn't suit him at all.

But she is the first to show him he can be loved as he is. We discover with her that he is ashamed to be different. That he doesn't want people to see him in his natural form (liquid) even when overdoing staying in a solid form is painful to him.

But stuck in an elevator with Lwaxana he refuses to return to his natural state in front of her, even if he reach his limit. She teaches him that she also is more than what people sees, and offers him a safe place to be what he is.

Much later, they develop some bounds as she is trying to escape her husband who wanna take the baby she carries as soon as she gives birth. At first he is guarded, but Lwaxana finds her way to share some soft moments with him, in a way he didn't know he was capable of. She needs confort, he doesn't know how to give her. Cornered, he find a way.

That moment unlock some other moments where she participates in his own way of bounding as a shape-shifter. They are on common ground, with no sexual things in the middle and they are happy together.

He offers to marry her to counteract in a legal way the fact that her current husband has a property right on the child she carries. And during the ceremony, this is the first time he expresses his love for her.

First he tries mimicking what is excepted of him, telling that she is intelleigent and beautiful. But the husband, present to the ceremony to stop it, sees through it and Odo finally tells the way he feels. Even his friends that know him for years are embarrassed to discover on this occasion how lonely he was feeling all this time and that they don't know him that much, whereas this woman who he met so little changed his life for the better.

This love is sincere but as an empathe she understands than Odo does not love her the way she needs. Odo would be fine with her company, sharing moments like they did before. But she needs more than he can offer her.

He loves her. But she is in love with him. And he learns that is different and not sufficient. Also she spotted his true repressed feelings for Kira, who I would speak about after. So she breaks with him.

She did it in the most gentle way she could, but I had this experience, without knowing that I was actually asexual and it hurts a lot. I tried. I made some tough choices for me, just to be rejected without explanation (or one that I couldn't understand fully on the moment). The real explanation was that I couldn't give the man what he needed. But he never realised how much efforts I put in this relationship and it broke me in the end. So this is what I see there.

- The love of his life, Kira

Kira is a very strong character that can be harsh to others, because of her own harmful past. She is passionate and all fire sometimes. She is very loving and tender on the other side.

The development of this story is more classical, with two people loving each other but don't express their feelings, waiting for the other to make the first step to no end.

There are misunderstandings and errors made on both side, they struggle, living their life away from each other, having other experiences, but then true love wins (almost).

This is the kind of love he is ready to betray for. This is the kind of love she is ready to let go for his happiness.

Kira is the one Odo wants to connect the proper way for this to work and all his struggles in other love relationships prepares him for that and in the same way prevent that from happening for a long time.

They learn each other progressively but the guarded nature of Odo is an obstacle. In the end, she is the one he finally opens up to everything that he is, even if the experience may not suit a humanoid form. It happens when Kira realises that Odo doesn't think she can love him the way he really is.

I love deeply that moment when he takes a pure energy form and envelopes her and she responds with wonderment and joy.

Kira proves her love for him several times, especially in the way she knows him and respects how he is. She is the one to understand the best his pride and need to keep some things hidden. She puts words on it when he can't so other wouldn't hurt him trying to make him react in a way they consider better.

They are two hurt people who learn the shape of the other through love.

Unfortunately like most of pure love stories, it is doomed. He has to return to his people to save the entire species so... they won't live together happy ever after. But we learn at some point that his love for her never faltered, even centuries later.

I love those kind of story with pure feelings and emotions ☺️.

From nothing to something

They had unearthly creature before in Star Trek, but when they were not machines, they were almost exclusively humanoid for evident reason of human playing them 😅. I liked the different society point of views making points for our own. But to me, Odo is the first really unearthly main character. Because he is technically not relatable in his true form.

How should I connect emotionally with a puddle ?

And for a very long time, in the show this is the underlying issue Odo has with everyone but for the reversed reason. He is puddle, how could he connect with solids ?

The thing is that Odo is seen through the filter of those who are the norm. And we meet him when he has a stable apparent relationship with others. We learn the underlying struggles and pains he experiences, discovering the differences. And those differences are relatable because we can question ours.

The thing is that we don't see for a long time that he hurts to be different as he appears rejecting or snobing humanoids. Attack is the best defense...

And as I said before, this comes from how he learned to adapt.

His very existence is "nothing" and he has to grow from that in a very traumatising way.

He learns very late that his own people abandoned him to be found by humanoids as an experiment to connect with us. But if he was aware of himself, he wasn't aware of anything else. Changelings are not meant to be alone. They live in total fusion in a sort of sea of them.

So from the start, he is fucked up. And those who found him didn't understand it was a sentient creature for a long time. They experiment on him as it was a inert matter. He exists but has no properties that we can attribute to a living organism.

He was found and labeled as "unknown sample / nothing" in cardassian (Odo'itil - in short Odo). He was one of its kind in a world of entities that couldn't understand him and that he couldn't understand either. So basically he experienced torture until he found a way to communicate, through changing form and mimick. But yet again the experiments continued until it was proven to be sentient.

Odo has a lot of resentment from that period.

Ironically, he was not a good shape-shifter, that why his face looks the way it is. And his face is a pale copie of the face of the man who experimented on him, this harmful "father". Also he kept the name Odo as designation. Nothing.

His relation with his "father" is very conflicted. The first time they met after Odo went away from his lab, it triggers a very powerful unconscious emotional response. And his father recognise the extend of the harm he did to him, and he never was aware causing it. He finally found a way to bound with this man, recognising that his father loves him and is hurt from the cold separation. Odo doesn't forgive totally but he opens a door to a future collaboration.

I like the evolution of his psychology around it and through his name also. He explains that at first when people called him Odo, he was hearing "nothing". So for him, people considered him to be nothing. And when he made some real friends, he finally came over that pejorarive meaning around his existence, he began to hear a name.

He achieved to become something out of nothing.

The desire to link and the demisexuality

Odo doesn't know much about himself except that he is. Though he has a need to link with other that comes from his own nature. He doesn't know where it leads.

His first links are made in the most humanoid way possible. He doesn't want to be weird. He is mimicking some things to share moments with others, like drinking or eating. He doesn't need to and cannot really absorb things. But he does it anyway and find some fulfilment to simply be with them, talk and share.

The Changellings (his species) don't like solids forms of life and abhor connecting with them. They are almost repulsed by the idea of binding physically with a solid, because their link (fusion) is much more. But the links Odo makes aren't physical ones.

While he doesn't know the existence of his own species, Odo has the same internal repulsion over everything that imply physical link, so especially everything around sexuality, because to him the way it is done by humanoids is uncanny. It lacks something but he doesn't know what exactly. But he knows that what is the most strange to him is realated to the love feeling. For him what he observes from people in love isn't what he experiences and all physical attraction is weird and disgusting.

He often verbally states in a very crude way that he doesn't understand the need humanoids have to mate and they biological needs for pleasure. Also their rituals to link for love is the most abstract thing to him. He acknowledges the feeling, not what can accompany it.

But he does develop feelings for others and some attraction. He is even attracted to female humanoids in general. He doesn't want to make out but he can experience a kind of pull and curiosity. But as soon as he has to interact and he recognises attraction from the other part, he bails. He has to be forced into something to begin to understand bits of it.

He continues to live the experiences about linking with others the same way he was taught to interact with people in the first place. Meaning, escape from pain to find where it doesn't hurt. And it is painful to see him to go through that for love too. He naturally tries to avoid pain where he thinks it is and ends up in being forced into a situation extremely inconfortable for him, struggling to find the best way to find a new balance in his emotions and in sensations in which he finds no pleasure.

When he meets Lwaxana, she is the most disruptive and invasive person ever. He doesn't have any feelings for her and she is forcing her way through him to get that response out of him. But she is the first to see what is the problem and offer a solution that his not harmful to him. She is the first whose love reaches him. And he began to love her in his own ways. This is not enough of course...

When he meets his people, he experiences the first fusion of his life and the experience is the definition of what he needs. But... soon he realises that even if this is the equivalent of his biological needs, he doesn't feel for it at all. Later, after some other steps in his journey to discover love, he tries to share with a Changelling what he has learned and the experience is unconclusive for both of them. The Changelling doesn't feel anything for the act as a solid. Neither does Odo, even if he is sure he made it right. The Changelling tries to force the idea that their natural way of linking is the best for him and he has to abandon his humanoid habits. But still he doesn't feel that way. Like yes, this is the most rewarding thing except there are no feelings.

At some point, because he choses humanoids over his own kind, killing a Changelling that was harmful to his friends, he is punished by his people and rejected. They made him human, keeping his imperfect face as a reminder to how bad he was even as what he was supposed to be. So he has to live like what they consider a poor and disgusting life. Odo has to learn a lot of things back but in the same time, he experiences for the first time some simple pleasures he couldn't grasp before. When he can finally revert to his natural form, he uses this experience to connect better with others has he understands now a bit more about their needs.

Odo is the one that has to make the extra steps in every direction. Steps toward humanoids who can learn to accept him and care for him but without fully understanding what he is and ignoring a lot of time is personal needs. Steps toward Changellings who can understands what he is and can offer him to fulfil a lot of his needs but won't understand some of them that are vital to him, like the need to be loved and to love, something that he developed staying with humanoids and that they consider a defect.

To both side, on the aspect of love he is incomplete.

The Changellings are purely asexual and sex repulsed, if I had to make a comparison. They are experiencing things completely detached from love in all its forms. In their norms, he has to remove the idea that this feeling is necessary to his existence. They try to cure him from that, educating him to the way his species do things. But to him their way to link is incomplete for his personal development.

On the other hands, to him, the humanoids are sexual beings with a lot of needs he can't grab. To their norms he is just not trying hard enough to get what he wants. They see his need for love, they recognise that he can feel, but the answer is often the same and not very helpful in the form that that is take. Try again. They don't acknowledge that pain and fear on this subject are two overwhelming obstacles for him and that they pushes are, more often than not, harmful. But with them, he develops those feelings, painful steps after another, finding the shape they have.

He cannot find fulfilment in both of the worlds he knows, until Kira.

Well, to be fair, he has an experience with someone else, with whom he falls in love. He has sex with her and discovers he can find pleasure in it. In the demisexual way. And that's the key for him.

But that person has to leave him behind. And as I explained before, his own experience of life made that kind of thing very harmful to him. That is a step that pushes him backwards for quite some times.

The thing I relate the most in this experience is when he asks the woman if he did good as it was his first sexual experience ever. She replies that she couldn't tell it was. And he is happy to have satisfy her needs and feel pleasure too. But for me, the way it is said is a lot like, I hope I did everything right as a solid demands it, so I won't be punished. Well I had this experiences too. Trying to match expectation and being punished for not doing good enough...

And what kills me is that Odo does good. He makes real progress and is about to maybe have a positive experience from it. And in the end he is punished by the events themselves, not that he didn't anything wrong on the thing, but he did wrong to have even tried...

So his first real step forward in his journey is rewarded with pain shortly after. Something he will struggle to overcome to try new experiences and many are pushing him. So you can guess the reaction...

But from this experience he has to learn that, for him, love is possible only if a strong emotional connection is made. He will need some more time to assimilate this.

And of course, in the end, Kira is the one that checks all the points.

After that he will try to overcome his problems to express his feelings and fear to lose the only one with whom failing would be too painful. And, once again, because he always experience the things the same way, it is cornered that he makes the final step.

In the end, he has to leave her but their separation, even if bittersweet, is tender, full of understanding and love.

Final word

I hope that I wasn't too boring with this long analysis for a character that is not in the fandom of this blog.

Odo is a complexe character, and quite gray. Yeah he did bad things too. I made this analysis through the specter of my reading of his sexuality mostly and my own experience pov. But this is a character interesting in many other aspects. He keeps a lot inside and when things come out we aren't really prepared.

I don't want to go specially far in the fandom online. I don't know what is the state of it really, and I stopped in the middle of Entreprise show as I didn't connect with the characters. I don't know either if you would like to learn more on my blorblos from the past. Those from Star Trek but I have some others. I inaugurate the tag "blorblo from the attic" for the occasion lol.

Have a nice day, and I leave you on a Odo Quark smiling to each other moment ☺️.

Additional image ressources [x] [x] and [x]

[aviculor]

Twitter is not a safe place to critique pokemon designs, so I'm going to dump a lot of my thoughts here.

Spidops. It's not a bad idea, like a black ops special agent ogre-faced spider. But the execution of its design needed a bit more oomph. The bouncy ball of thread -> kevlar vest idea would make more sense if Spidops' vest was its silk rather than a pattern that looks more like it's wearing an apron. It's not even black to make it look more like a stereotypical covert assassin. There's also a seamstress motif happening at the same time where its abdomen is a spool of thread and it has the aforementioned "apron", but there's not enough synergy between these concepts and it just looks confusing and unfinished as a result. Like they had two separate ideas for a new spider pokemon and ended up mashing them together to save space for their three dog lines. Of course, a lot of this could just be me having high standards and expectations because I want there to be a "perfect" spider pokemon. If I came up with my own take on a Tarountula evo, I would have made it a jorogumo wearing its own silk as a dress. Which is a concept I already had, it was sitting in my list for over a year because I couldn't get its design off the ground. You can dig through my "fakemon ideas" tag for proof. I'm actually ashamed of myself for that.

Slither Wing is another very...interesting pokemon to me. It's a dinosaur-like 'kaijuu' akin to what was common in Gen 1. It could easily have been our first bug/dragon, but instead it's a bug/fighting. I like it a lot, but I don't quite understand why it's fighting type or why its name is that. It doesn't slither, it has feet that it stands up on. Its wings don't slither either, it's not as if they're weird tentacles that resemble Larvesta's horns. Which is a strange thing to say, but having slithering wings that it punches you with would have at least justified it being a fighting type called "Slither Wing". The way Khu described it in his leaks, I was expecting a neotenous caterpillar-like creature, like some horrible flightless moth with tiny vestigial wings. Which is a pretty spicy idea, and one I should take for myself since by all rights it is my thought that I thunk.

Even though I would have preferred a more standard toothed chest for our first genuine rpg-style mimic pokemon, I'll admit it would be a cop-out to strip Gimmighoul of what makes it unique from all the other mimic monsters out there. But Gholdengo. Gholdengo does not look like a mass of coins, it looks like Cinna Mon the old Apple Jacks mascot. It looks like a shiny string cheese man. I get that it would have been difficult to properly render a humanoid stack of coins in a way that would remain easy to draw, but they could have just not done that and gone in another direction. You know what would have been neat? If it was a genie made of loose coins floating out from the chest like it was a lamp. It is still a ghost type after all, and collecting 999 coins to evolve Gimmighoul is basically having a wish that gets granted.

All of the future paradox pokemon being robots is something of a shame since we could have gotten some real speculative evolution happening. But that is a wholly deliberate choice that I do respect. It kind of is more fitting in Violet than in Scarlet where you see a Donphan with spikes and fur and everyone's like "is that thing even a pokemon!?". But in both cases, they could have pushed the envelope even more with separating the paradox from the "original". Take Iron Jugulis for example- it's just a robotic Hydreigon. You want to know one example of what they could have done? Bring back the tank treads from Hydreigon's early concept stage. I also think it would have been cool if its wings were like spider legs, but at that point it would be a bit hard to call it a flying type. Granted, I'm 99% sure we haven't gotten the full story about paradox pokemon anyway, but there's a reason I find myself liking fan takes on the concept more than the actual ones we got.

I don't have any quarrel with Tatsugiri, but I think it would have been interesting if instead of a little guppy fish it was based on a tongue louse...or even better, a liver fluke. It would have still looked like a piece of nigiri, and being a parasitic animal would have meshed perfectly with its relationship to Dondozo. Plus, humans can get infected by Clonorchis by eating raw fish. The thematics would have been very interwoven.

I don't hate Quaquavel, it's not my thing but no starter ever really is. I'm not going to furiously scribble it out and suggest a "cooler" ducky man that abandons the original intent and inspiration behind it. That's not what any of this is about. But I bring Quaquavel up because when I look at Quaxwell, I feel as if there was a missed opportunity for a ballerina swan. Swan Lake and such. Like, it's pretty much low-hanging fruit right there for you to pick.

Pawmi's evolutions...I mean, obviously they deliberately wanted it to barely change, but there's no practical reason behind it. It's not even like Palafin who is a superhero with a "civilian identity". They just made Pawmi stand up and get scruffier. It doesn't even have any visual connection to a defibrillator, which is the whole point behind it knowing Revival Blessing.

As I said, I'm not typing all this because I want to scrap certain pokemon or rob them of their original design processes. I just think some of them could have used a couple last-minute tweaks to improve synergy, or they otherwise gave me ideas that I could potentially use for my own fakemon using the same general concept. For instance, I'm not a fan of Tandemaus and Maushold, but I can still respect their existence and the thought that was put behind them. With them, I think they need more visual interest. Something as small as making their mouths visible when closed or giving the "shirt" and "pants" some contrast so they're actually visible. And when they evolve into Maushold, do just a tiny baby bit of change to the "parent" duo. I don't know, like a mustache on one and a hair bun on the other or something. I don't get why "it looks the same when it evolves" is such a running theme in Paldea.

Bellibolt could have afforded to look more frog-like, closer to the beta Politoed that inspired it. Basing it on a real species would have been ideal. But at bare minimum, if I was allowed to make just one singular tweak, I'd make the false eyes have their "pupils" at the edge of the bumps, dilated and staring off into space. You know, like Iono's Magnemite hairclips? They just look too much like its actual eyes imo. I know that's the point, but the illusion is too convincing and it becomes distracting. I'm also not in love with how they rendered the plasma ball belly when it lights up.

Wugtrio threw out a subtle differences between Wiglett and Diglett: where Wiglett's face is positioned on its head. It would have been neat if Wugtrio had some more differences from Dugtrio the way Toedscruel does from Tentacruel, but the face thing actually almost bothers me. They need to be at the end of the bodies which need to be curved forward.

Glimmet and Glimmora have some great thought and aesthetic behind them, but I'm honestly not a fan of Glimmet's body shape which people have compared to a bike horn or a rubber chicken. If it was up to me, I would have configured it like Yokomon from Digimon- the bulb being the actual core of its body. Maybe the flower on top would even be just a bud rather than a full bloom. As for Glimmora, some people believe it's partially based on the Passiflora, so its flower could have been a lot more elaborate even if you kept Glimmora as just a floating head. Although personally I think this would have been a great opportunity to make a pokemon based on a sessile invertebrate like an anemone, sea sponge (ie a glass sponge or ping pong tree), or feather duster worm. The existing "flower made of toxic minerals" theme would remain perfectly intact, but the designs would have been given a more focused direction. Coral or barnacles would be good choices too, even though there are already pokemon based on them. A Bryozoan would also fit the bill, but there isn't as much brand recognition so to speak.

[xamassed]

⟬ @clavicula-ovis ⟭

The little human had arrived back from RAD a bit late today.

Normally he would let people know if he was going to veer off unexpectedly to go visit this place or that, if he was going to be later than anticipated. But this time a good hour or so had passed before he sent a message to the group chat simply reading

{ Sorry for the delay. I'm coming home now. }

It felt... weird. No explanation what held him up, no fanfare, nothing. But when he got home, the answer was as clear as the moon in the sky. Littered all over his body were bruises and mud caused by his blood mixing with dirt — blood that came from a few noticeable lacerations over his arms, a couple on his chest, and one that split his lip in a diagonal slice.

Yet he seemed serene, unbothered by the injuries. Sure he stumbled and needed a moment to set his bag down and catch his breath, but he wasn't upset in the slightest beyond a hiss or a wince there when something hurt. Even when he had spotted Mammon approaching, his expression was so relaxed with those soft eyes of his.

"Oh, Mammon!" Xavier spoke with a small smile, as best he could with his damaged lips. "Sorry I took so long. I need to wash up, but I'll be able to spend some time with you after that."

[ xav ]

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎That's all ya got to say?! ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Sorry for the delay?? ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Ya owe me more than just an apology!

The initial text had been sent to the group chat, but the messages sent in return spammed the private thread between the exchange student and the second-born.

"Are you being weird again?"

Mammon sat in the common room with his brothers, the one sitting closest to him spotting the name at the top of his DDD screen. "I ain't!"

"He totally is."

"Listen, ya don't think it's a little weird the way he apologized? How d'we know somethin' ain't wr——?!" The sound of the front doors opening snapped Mammon from the start of his rant and pulled him through the hallway like a fish snagged on a hook. Despite their cool heads and mocking words, the others followed behind him.

Mammon readied himself a lengthy complaint about the one casual text and the lack of replies, but the discoloration along Xavier's skin and the open wounds made each and every scathing word die in his throat.

Behind him, his brothers stared in stunned horror.

"Are you hurt?!"

"What happened?"

"Xavier, you have to tell us. . ."

Mammon gave all of the oncoming questions and comments a wave, the gesture sharp and decisive enough that it silenced his brothers. He didn't show it outwardly, but his brothers knew that something was brewing.

It was a deeply hidden, tightly chained anger that was so rarely touched on. It was terrifying when it rattled at the bars of its cage, but it remained restrained for now.

"Mammon. . ."

"Shut up. I'm gonna take care of 'im." The normally flippant and carefree demon came closer, a hand cupping Xavier's cheek. He was careful not to press on tender skin and do more damage, but he did sweep his thumb just shy of the gash on the human's lip.

"Get in the tub, wash up." The hand that caressed at his cheek moved up into his hair, where he pushed the strands away from his sweat and mud-stained face. "I'll be there in a second, and I better find ya in there."

He wouldn't accept excuses. He expected to see Xavier soaking in a few minutes time. But while he guided his human out of the foyer, he scowled to his siblings and muttered to them in a low, growling tone.

"Find who did it, but don't touch 'em. I'll take care of it."

[aluminiumrepair]

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[allthemusic]

Week ending: 12th May

And we're caught up to "real time" (in terms of days and months, not years obviously!) I enjoy it when that happens, and I also enjoy seeing a new artist around. And it's a band, too - that feels like it's not been as common so far, or they've been dedicated backing groups that get credited, but I know we're going to see more and more actual bands as the years wear on.

Melody of Love - The Ink Spots (peaked at Number 10)

I've heard of the Ink Spots - I think they did the song "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire"? So I'm expecting some tight vocal harmonies and a doo-wop-ish or barbershop sound, possibly. Let's see if I'm right!

Oooh, okay, so we start with some jazzy soft saxophone, and gentle crooning "oooh" backing over a 3/4 organ line. The organ's barely audible in the background, and it gives the whole thing an echoey, slightly ethereal atmosphere. It's slow and gentle, and I do like it, with its easy listening vibes.

And then we get a spoken word intro! I can't remember if we've had voice over segments before, and normally I'm not the biggest fan of them, but I do appreciate how different it sounds to everything else we've heard so far. If anything, it's giving Barry White, or some other later soul singer - all deep and smooth and earnest. It's also specific to this version, I think; from what I can tell, the song was originally an instrumental, and though a guy called Tom Glazer added lyrics, they don't seem to be the lyrics we see here.

Which is a shame, because they're pretty cool. It's some romantic stuff, as whoever is speaking proclaims: Why do I love you? I love you not only for what you are, but what I am when I'm with you. I love you not only for what you've made of yourself, but darling, what you're making of me. I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool in me, and laying firm hold of the possibilities of the good in me.

There's an argument to be made that it's a pretty self-centred view of love, loving somebody purely because of how they make you better and not for any quality that's purely theirs. But I think that's a rather mean-spirited thing to say, especially when the opening lyric describes loving somebody "not only" for what they are. Which tells me that the singer also appreciates their love on their own terms, it's just that that's not what this song is about. This song is about loving somebody who brings out the best in you, and you know what, that's kind of beautiful!

There's barely any singing throughout, apart from a brief line between the two spoken sections, as the band sing Love is everywhere / Love is in the air. Which is more a refrain, just to break up the whole thing and make it feel like it's moving along.

And then we're back to the extended metaphors of the spoken segment, as the singer croons about how I love you for ignoring the dischords in me and for adding to the music in me by worshipful listening. That's probably the most complex metaphor in the whole thing, actually, and it's got something to say, if you tease it out, about the role of music and musical harmony as a metaphor for something deeper and more transcendental about you, and your inner "harmony" and balance.

I like the track. It does leave me with some questions about how and why people listened to this, though. It just feels so intimate and intense, you really can only listen alone or (preferably) with one special person. Can you imagine listening to this in public, or with friends, or blasting from a radio? This is a track you put on at home, at night, in private, and only then. Which is fine, but I'm surprised it made the charts, to be honest.

I liked this. It chilled me out, and made me think things about love. It threaded the needle of being earnest without feeling overblown. The minimalism of the rest of the track forms a background on which the spoken poetry of it - because it is poetry - can really shine. Not a song to listen to every day, but I'm glad this song exists, still.

Favourite "song" of the bunch: Melody of Love