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hekatekun · 4 years

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The metanarrative’s grand narrative: Osomatsu-san’s characterization throughout the franchise

The growing cynicism throughout the entire Osomatsu-san franchise shows itself in season 3 with more prominence than anything prior. I think that’s pretty common amongst any “long-running” gag comedy - replacing a plot with spiteful commentary that’s admittedly pretty hit or miss at times. However, it invariably creates a negative but pretty funny character growth, and I love the way the show (I’m including the movie too as “canon” material considering season 3 has referenced it way too many times for me to disregard) has set up this metanarrative across seasons. Long post ahead.

Obviously, Osomatsu-san is self-aware and has a casual relationship with itself. No linear plot (though S3 seems to be trying it out and I’ve enjoyed it - I love that they’re willing to experiment), rather a collection of unrelated skits; and so it points out its own metanarrative because of this “lack of consequences.” With comedy comes impermancy and Ososan AND -kun will always bounce back from that week’s insanity. From the Oxford Dictionary, a metanarrative is “a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality.” Basically: a story about stories.

On top of this, is what I’m calling the “grand narrative,” which is often used interchangeably with metanarrative, but here I’m making a distinction to make it less confusing. Of course, Ososan is a story about stories, but with that comes a story it’s not directly telling, which is where most of the (little) character development is taking place. This is what I’m going to call the grand narrative of a show whose premise is being a meta-aware comedy. I’ll admit I’m by no means an expert on these subjects, but storytelling methods are something I enjoy trying to analyze. As a media format, Ososan really utilizes the fact that it’s a tv show.

Right off the bat S1E1 makes it clear what to expect: Nothing. Not a damn thing. But, the show had already been cleared for this first season, so it has to be produced. This same episode’s preview is done by Osomatsu, which I’m just gonna quote instead screenshot because there’s too many.

“...we plan on properly starting the anime the next episode.” “...you ended up with an extra minute, so you need me to do something to fill it?! Actually, is this anime going to be okay with episode one being like this? I’m getting worried about how the rest of this is going to be...” “There, I used up a minute! [EPISODE ENDS]”

Episode one is not only batshit referential, but downright mocking the state of anime in 2015. Which, truthfully, I don’t have much to comment on in that regard, as I’m not an avid anime fan. However, it does this under the premise of being indecisive about what kind of anime they wanted the Osokun reboot to be.

They’ll do just about anything to stay popular and relevant considering that is, quite literally, all they have going for them as characters in the series and just being characters in general. They may be pieces of shit, but they’re likeable pieces of shit. The dynamics they’ve built upon to be entertaining is encouraged, and they’re basically just roleplaying different skits and fucking around.

All the AUs! All the skits! They’re just playing! They’re just fuckin’ around!! They couldn’t come up with any interesting plot nor could they “graduate” from being anime protagonists and join the real world, so they just fuck around and make a gag anime!

Even if we follow both as the audience, the show makes a difference between the what’s them in their “normal life” (crazy begets crazy, no?) and what’s their “show.” But, really, that’s just one way to look at it, as they don’t really follow any rules as a show. I could say the Joshimatsus are separate characters from the sextuplets, and it’d be a “correct” interpretation. It doesn’t really matter - I’m choosing to examine it all as being the six of them just running around and playing, because being entertaining and having fun is all they know as characters. Besides, having it blended together beyond recognition reinforces how it prioritizes entertaining us, the audience, above logic. Storytelling doesn’t need to make absolute spatial-temporal sense for it to be enjoyable to fans.

In any case, that mentality really seems to be what pushes their character development negative, as they look to reinforce habits and rituals despite them being really detrimental for them in the long run. They know they’re popular characters as is, and with really everyone from staff to fans encouraging this behavior further, so they see no point in fixing what isn’t really broken.

I found this 4 year old article from Manga.Tokyo discussing the Ososan phenomenon in Japan because while the craze died off pretty quickly in American anime circles (which deserves a whole other post), Japanese fans went fuckin’ nuts.

This portion caught my attention, as it makes sense that entitled and enabled asshole children would grow up to be entitled and enabled asshole adults. The article also goes on to compare them to idols (even beyond the F6 spoof) and that they are rooted in being comfort characters above all else.

It’s worth a read, especially because Japanese fan response is what drives majority of the content post-S1, and, inevitably, ties into their character development.

They know that they’re Characters, particularly Protagonists. You know what happens to protagonists? Everything works out. Just about every single story created has stuff working out for protagonists. In fact, we have a whole genre made that separates stories with bad tragic endings from our Normal Stories. Ososan is a comedy, not a tragedy, so surely there’s gonna be some payoff somewhere along the road, especially as the seasons and other content are still being pumped out. To a self-aware, entitled, enabled protagonist, assuming everything is just gonna work out for you isn’t that far off from your narrative truth.

However, Ososan is a gag anime, and a lot of gag content (like 4koma mangas) is dropped for other projects before any emotional cathartic ending is provided for characters and fans alike. So, three seasons and a movie later, nothing has happened. It’s a great idol cash cow with a Family Guy filter, and the characters (and writers) don’t even bother to hide it anymore. And I know I’m being hypocritical concerning my definition of “canon material” but I think this portion from one of the drama cds “Choroplex” basically summarizes my point:

CHOROMATSU: Wait, don’t make this into a gag! You don’t even care about becoming employed, right? KARAMATSU: There’s no way that could happen... CHOROMATSU: What kind of future are you imagining? Is it nothing but this? [HUGE PAUSE BEFORE THEY MOVE ONTO SOMETHING ELSE]

They’re parodies of themselves and are running out of ideas. Stagnation and decay is normal, if not unavoidable, at this point in time for them. They’re just 20 somethings who’ve hit a wall but they’re too scared and insecure to bring about permanent positive change. It’s easier for them to fall back into normal patterns and joke off the rest.

They have an antagonistic relationship with expectations. They can’t handle a single iota of expectations, or responsibilities. They’ve never needed to worry before, so why bother now? Once the biggest hits on the block, now they’re just guppies in the ocean, and there’s nothing they believe themselves to be able to accomplish to keep up with this big brave new world. This is epitomized in S3E15, where old man Osomatsu tells a bastardized version of the Tortoise and the Hare, blatantly projecting his feelings onto it. Again, too many screenshots so let me pull more quotes (bolding for my own reference):

“The place that the tortoise thought was the goal was not actually the goal. His journey down the road of life still continued on. The tortoise was quite tired, but he continued running anyway.” “No one actually knew who was in front anymore. There are too many people above you.” “After the tortoise found out how society worked, he thought, ‘So this is the difference in talent? No amount of hard work is going to fix this. All right. I’m done competing with others.’”

S3 has left more questionable endings than its counterparts. The last 2 skits I referenced don’t even a gag to them, and the marriage skit doesn’t play music for the entire second half of S3E5. There’s more involved too. I haven’t even brought up the rice ball twins becoming actual entertainers in their universe, or how they introduced this whole AI subplot only to reject it because All Six Of Them aren’t interested in expanding their little corner of the world. Here’s a transcript of the ending preview from S3E1:

“Hey, hey, Osomatsu here. I thought we were saved from being replaced, but I guess we get new characters next week. Man, we’re busy. New encounters, changing surroundings... We’re NEETs to begin with because all that is a pain. I guess a lot can happen after three seasons. [EPISODE ENDS]”

The sextuplets’ mindsets are extremely self-centered, which is also an environmental thing (the parents don’t even really care that they’re NEETs, for one) and an understanding of what they ought to be (epic successful protagonists). They also have a very black and white mentality, all or nothing. They’re extremely sheltered, and once they realized where they stood in society at large, they just gave up. To them the world is divided between winners and losers, and somehow, “inexplicably,” they found themselves to have fallen from grace. But they’re protagonists, that has to count for something! Everything’s gonna end up okay, right? Well... what this show has told them: No, not at all. They are consistently compared and warned of Iyami, and are perfectly aware of this fact, and have come to internalize it as a truth rather than a reversible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Too many screencaps, taken from the S3S5 marriage discussion:

JYUSHIMATSU: I wonder if we’re gonna get married someday, too. CHOROMATSU: Well, I mean... probably? I’m not exactly sure, but... TODOMATSU: What? You’re gonna get married, Choromatsu-niisan? CHOROMATSU: Huh? Well, yeah... someday.

Surprise! They have commitment issues! The same group that couldn’t commit to a fucking plot! Though their personality issues have several factors involved, I can’t overlook the theater motifs abound. Life’s a stage, and they’re performing entirely unscripted and it shows.

Do I think all of this is 100% intentional on the writers’ part? No, probably not. There’s also an extra layer here regarding contemporary Japanese commentary that I’m not familiar with, so I just ended up focusing on the characters. I can’t be in the writers’ heads, but whatever decisions are being made by executives regarding censorship and “compliance” are reflected in these character changes that result in being significantly more bitter and defeatist.

In the all or nothing, winner-take-all mentality, the only way to save face at this point, in their minds, is to own up to it - act like it’s what they wanted all along. And, hey, it’s funny to watch, right?

“Why is Osomatsu all my examples”, you might be asking. Well, he’s the damn blueprint for it all. The leader of the bunch, the first personality to grab your attention, has had all his issues projected and ricocheted in their echo chamber.

Ultimately, my point here is that you could think their “canon characterizations” (though canon means nothing in a show like this) as being intertwined with the nature of their self-aware existence. They’ve shown you all their tricks, the smoke and mirrors are getting boring, and they’re stalling long enough the story seems to be moving on without them - in spite of them. And when something genuinely threatens their way of life, they don’t know how to respond.

You can play it all straight, of course. Remove the meta jokes and all the same plot points can be hit, but, as a slapstick comedy, it’s able to easily add this additional layer in that I appreciate. I’ve said it in my last post and I’ll probably say it in more, but with comedy comes sincerity - the caveat of all the cartoon violence is that, on some level somewhere, this is how they really feel.

#osomatsu san #osomatsu #karamatsu #choromatsu #ichimatsu #jyushimatsu #todomatsu #osomatsu matsuno #karamatsu matsuno #choromatsu matsuno #ichimatsu matsuno #jyushimatsu matsuno #todomatsu matsuno #analysis #confession this was sparked by a convo i had w friends about s3e18 #this is a bit truncated but i couldnt bring myself to make this longer #maybe ill make a pt2 or whatever idk

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everythingsinred · 3 years

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 5)

I'm back on my bullshit. I decided I'd post these, once a day, four days a week. Then I'll go on breaks for the weekend to let interested readers catch up while also further writing more entries. At the time I'm posting this, for example, I'm in the process of analyzing Chapter 39. That way, it's easier for everyone to enjoy this essay. Which I hope people do.

Anyway, this can finally truly be called a ship essay, because one of our key players has FINALLY developed feelings! Going forward, Natsume's behavior will heavily feature his growing affections for Mikan. We'll be analyzing Natsume's self-preserving hesitation as well as his immediate instinct to give up any chance he has from the get-go.

Chapter Seventeen

Natsume next shows up to walk into Class B during a commotion of Mikan’s retelling of the Reo incident. The kids all gather around him now too to ask questions and press about his condition. One kid even asks if he should teach Mikan a lesson for bragging about his rescue. Mikan smiles at him, under the assumption that their shared trauma has brought them closer and maybe even made them friends, but Natsume’s response is to simply turn away and ignore her.

He’s still Natsume after all. This is the first girl he’s ever liked, and she used to be somebody he despised, so the change in feelings is probably very strange to him. He’s confused and possibly embarrassed. He doesn’t know what to say or how to act.

Can't have her getting any ideas that he's completely changed his mind about her or anything.

Most of the people that Natsume likes at the school (although that is just Ruka and Youichi… so… you know) know that he likes them. He spends time with them, is gentle with them, does things for them, and can openly say kind things to and about them. Mikan is different. He used to be her number one enemy, so all of a sudden switching gears and becoming her friend would be quite odd.

Over time, Natsume will find ways to be gentle and sweet to Mikan, but for now his crush is brand new and he doesn’t know how to act quite yet. He’d rather avoid her entirely, or pretend like nothing happened, than openly approach his new feelings.

Furthermore his behavior is always and under all circumstances inseparable from his status as Persona’s favorite and as the Black Cat. He may have some loved ones, but he keeps the number low and tries to avoid getting close to people for a reason. Naturally, nobody could ever really understand his experiences so there will always be a divide between him and the rest of his peers, but even more than that is that considering people precious turns them into targets.

Natsume has probably learned the hard way that displaying closeness and affection for his friends can have dangerous effects, so he might now think of showing that kind of affection as selfish or even cruel. Why subject somebody to something like that, merely because he has feelings for them? It’s not fair.

In either case, it’s really not that Natsume is naturally mean and cold. He just doesn’t trust his situation enough to properly act. It’s safer in every way to just pretend like nothing changed. It’s too much to deal with otherwise. But sooner rather than later, the hard thing will be staying away. Eventually, maintaining coldness with her will be almost impossible.

Chapter Eighteen

This chapter further touches on Natsume’s new-found crush and its consequences.

Class B is used to being in an environment where Natsume hates Mikan and is bothered by everything she does. He gives in to her slightly, in small ways, and it shocks his classmates. Now, it’s understandable that, even if he hadn’t developed a crush on her, he might still be softer to a girl who risked her life to save him, but it’s still odd.

Mikan recalls asking Natsume for help training her alice. She needs an offensive alice to nullify, so Iinchou or Hotaru’s would be ineffectual in training. Natsume is really the best person to ask, and, to everyone’s surprise, he actually agrees to help.

Natsume doesn't need any convincing to help her, but what did she think practicing with a fire alice would entail?

And yes it does seem like he’s only doing it to torture her, because his alice is capable of genuine bodily harm and his admirers snicker with amusement at his antics, but I can’t help but assume there’s more to it.

He doesn’t really hesitate to help. He doesn’t need convincing at all. In some ways I think he did genuinely want to help. Her alice helped save his life, after all. Why not repay the favor by using his alice to help her train? To him, there's a lot of value in her alice, so training it is beneficial in his perspective as well.

And later still, Mikan spots Natsume sitting amongst the principal students. He stands out, as an elementary student next to upperclassmen. This moment is a good introduction to the arc. His crush on Mikan only grows stronger as the festival goes on, but there’s something looming over him too--he’s different from the rest of them. He stands out so much during the festival. He’s a dangerous ability type who’s not allowed to participate while also being a principal who has to sit on the stage for the opening ceremony. That's horribly ironic, but also shows just how singled out and under the spotlight he is. It’s a huge part of why he acts the way he does, so cold and mean and distant despite his growing affections. It’s all he can do.

He may see potential for a future, but he’d be foolish to think he should be able to acquire it, because his current circumstances have not changed at all.

The chapter ends with Natsume being asked by Koko if he wants to try out the special ability class event. He’s looking towards the special ability area, and we can tell the next chapter will be fun.

Chapter Nineteen

And how!

Natsume is here to see Ruka, his best friend, but he’s also here to catch a glimpse of the girl he has a crush on.

Sumire is also there, and it’s interesting to see that Natsume hasn’t changed in his attitude around her either, even though she also helped save him. She tries to embrace him and he dodges her.

This catches some people’s attention and they start to whisper about his presence.

In the anime, this moment is a bit more potent, hearing the murmurs and seeing a darkness over the gossiping kids, but the manga still establishes that the people waiting in line are by-and-large unhappy to see him. They whisper amongst themselves, rudely asking why he’d bother to come here, but that gloom only lasts for a moment (one singular panel and then Natsume’s responding bitterness) before Mikan appears jumping over the wall, calling his name and even smiling.

It’s almost like she was waiting for him to show up, running off from her post the second she heard Natsume was there. The dark looming screentones are replaced with flowery ones, and it’s hard not to think of this as his perspective: all is gloomy and then there is Mikan. All of a sudden, after hating her for so long, he thinks of her as bright sunshine, and he must have showed up just to see her and feel nice for a change.

It's Natsume seeing Mikan through floral-filter lenses for me...

Of course, he ruins the mood. It feels almost as if he does it solely because he knows it will upset her. She was so excited to see him, and he manages to completely turn her mood from eager to angry, just the opposite of how she was able to unwittingly turn his mood from gloomy to... as close to content as he can get.

He’s okay now. He doesn’t want her getting any ideas.

Now, in my opinion, his method of bothering her could be anything and the plot would remain the same. What matters is that he wants to piss her off, and this just so happens to be the way he does it, partially because it’s intended to be funny. Mikan has to get angry at him for this chapter to progress the way it does, but his actions could have been replaced by any other irritating action and it could’ve gone the same way.

Tsubasa then appears, drawn to the sound of a loud commotion. He sees Natsume and vaguely wonders why he’s there. Everyone knows Natsume, at all grade levels, because he’s famous. For Tsubasa, whose only real knowledge of Mikan’s relationship with the kid is that he causes trouble in Class B, it would be strange to see him at the RPG.

Natsume, meanwhile, has no idea who Tsubasa is. Seeing Mikan crawl all over her senpai, seeing him easily comfort her, is something that bugs Natsume. He glares at Tsubasa, somebody whose name he doesn’t even know, and then starts leaving with Ruka.

At first, Tsubasa is confused to be treated like this, until he hugs Mikan tighter and sees both Natsume and Ruka turn in jealousy. Tsubasa gets it immediately. Thus begins a strange and tumultuous frenemy relationship between Tsubasa and Natsume, where they both begrudgingly understand each other while also irritating each other beyond belief.

Natsume is not interested in playing the game, insulting it and wondering how anyone could get hooked on it. Ultimately, it’s not even Mikan who convinces him to give it a shot; it’s Tsubasa taunting him, “then you should be able to win, no problem, right?”

Tsubasa will come to regret saying this, because the answer is yes.

The RPG is designed to be tough. Nobody has won the whole game yet. Beating one or two students is one thing, but being able to outsmart or outmaneuver the entire special ability class is a difficult feat.

Natsume agrees to play, and gets a robot cockroach as a weapon.

Tsubasa is hugging Mikan as Natsume is about to enter, and that pisses him off even more. He decides that Tsubasa will be his slave, his motive being get your hands off her. This is silly considering that just a short time ago, Natsume hated Mikan. His feelings really did a 180.

The challenges pick up in difficulty as he goes on. The first one is effortless. He doesn’t even move from where he’s standing. The mirror-alice girl just freaks out about the cockroach and sends him on his way after two seconds.

The next one is trickier, and Natsume will need to put in more effort than just standing and waiting for the cockroach to do its job. But not that much effort. He sits next to Megane, lights a fire, and waits. It’s a scorching flame, and although Megane tries to tough it out, he gives in with two seconds to spare. Natsume, a smartass, quips sarcastically that he’s sorry--he really can’t tell how hot it is. (This is not actually important or anything, it’s just interesting that Natsume is not affected by his own flames and can’t feel the heat of them. I might end up referring to this a couple times.)

With the exception of the first and last challenges, Natsume uses his alice to beat the maze; either by heating Megane up so his soul goes back into his body, or by writing with fire instead of chalk. The next challenge is the one Natsume has been waiting for and he’ll use his alice here too.

Tsubasa is shocked to find Natsume has progressed so quickly, but he proceeds with the challenge: Natsume has to touch him in thirty seconds, but it’ll be tricky ‘cause he’s held in place by his shadows. He toys with Natsume’s shadows a bit, which really pisses Natsume off. Tsubasa even apologizes nervously, even though he’s the one in control. Or he is, until Natsume uses his alice again and gets rid of the shadows.

Natsume’s anger towards Tsubasa all stems from jealousy. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging and comforting Mikan, it’s that he can. Natsume needs to distance himself from Mikan in order to keep her safe, and he’s aware of that right from the start, but there’s more to it. He’s busy establishing himself as an enemy to Mikan, doing things to bother her to make her angry with him, but nobody rushes to their bully for comfort, and Natsume knows this. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging Mikan; it’s that he feels like he will never get the chance.

And so the next and final challenge is where he gets to be selfish.

Mikan is aggravated to see him, obviously not thrilled that he was able to make it in such a short time. Her task is that he has to get her off the carpet in thirty seconds. He can’t hurt her or force her off the carpet, and because of their alice training together, he can’t use his alice on her either. (They’d apparently practiced so much that she was able to sharpen her skills significantly. Before, her alice was a wildcard and she struggled with using it, but now she’s able to use it with relative ease. That’s a lot of training in a short time, and I’m sure Natsume wasn’t upset at all the time they had to spend together as a result.)

Natsume must feel relief regarding Mikan's nullification alice. She's nullified his alice in pretty big ways already, one time to save his life. The girl he's crushing on is capable of turning off the thing that decreases his lifespan. She really is a breath of fresh air, in more ways than one, and his appreciation for her alice, even if he doesn't voice it, will only grow. This is important, but I'll talk way more about this in the other POV.

He tries the cockroach, but she’s a country girl and unaffected.

Natsume is genuinely stumped by her challenge, admitting to himself that it’s a tough one. He then comes up with a risky idea, no doubt influenced by her rescue of him when they were kidnapped by Reo. He plays sick. This act only works if Mikan falls for it and is concerned enough to jump off the carpet, but he’s a good actor on account of all the sick experience he has and she does fall for it in no time. Her being concerned was a given.

She jumps off, meaning he’s won the game, but that’s not enough of a victory for him. He acts sick until she’s closer, so he can grab her and put his arm around her. Yes, he calls her an idiot, but this is the closest he can get to a hug… for now. It doesn’t matter that she’s annoyed and dismayed that he won. All he cares about is that he got to touch her.

She jumped down. He won already, but it's not enough! (Also sorry about two pictures. If it ruins the format, oh well.)

Natsume was jealous that Tsubasa got to do something he thinks he'll never be able to, and so he got a taste of what he wanted some other, convoluted way. He gets angry that Tsubasa is so touchy, but that's only because he wishes he could be touchy too. Natsume will get bolder and bolder with his physical affection, because he will want more and more to show it. When he starts being honest about this affection, she will be more eager to return it.

Natsume is the first winner, and Tsubasa admits it was never expected for somebody to be able to pass all the challenges. Part of the appeal is that it’s an unbeatable game, but Natsume’s feelings of jealousy and spite were enough to get him over the finish line. Though perhaps knowing it's beatable but only one person could is also appealing. It's possible to pass, but very rare for somebody to be able to, so they can draw in crowds by capitalizing on kids who want to the next person to beat the game.

He gets to choose a lamp, but he has no idea which one is whose. He cheats by asking Koko to tell him which one is the right one, but he ends up picking Mikan’s, because Koko assumed that’s the one he wanted. After all--Natsume was thinking about her. Natsume is lucky that Mikan was too anguished at being a slave to care about Natsume thinking about her, but it’s interesting to know that even when he’s supposed to be angry at Tsubasa, he was only thinking of Mikan.

Chapter Twenty

This chapter’s premise is pretty simple and light: Natsume can’t think of any use for Mikan other than to follow him and Ruka around the festival and carry their stuff. They navigate the technical ability class area and even encounter Hotaru, though only for a short time because she’s quite busy.

Most importantly, their time in the technical area makes Mikan insecure. Everyone in the tech class seems to know what they want to do with their lives, with their alices being perfect for research or creation. I’ll go into more detail with this during Mikan’s essay, but it’s important to note that Mikan asks the people around her if they’re prepared for their future only to see that they all are. Hotaru, Sumire, and even Ruka all have dreams for the future, even if Ruka won’t share his. Natsume has decided to leave the conversation and we don’t hear what his dream is, which makes sense because he doesn’t have one. Natsume doesn’t think he’ll live long enough to graduate, so why even bother wasting his own time and getting his hopes up for something unattainable?

It’s then revealed that Ruka is also a triple, and Mikan can’t tell, but the mood has been soured for Ruka. His triple-star status is a touchy subject that he’s unhappy with. His star rank is representative of Natsume’s suffering and he doesn’t like talking about it. He only says that he didn’t mention it because he didn’t get it on his own talent or effort before Natsume forces Mikan to walk in another direction, claiming to be hungry.

This is literally just a scan of the TokyoPop version, which is better than the other version I see floating around.

He can tell Ruka is uncomfortable and is ready to step in so that his friend can feel better.

As a result, they end up at the cafe where Anna is working (after all, Mikan has been perfecting her puppy-dog eyes routine and I think both Ruka and Natsume are affected, even if the latter would never admit it).

Natsume takes the first bite of Anna’s hell pie, just to see a rot demon (or whatever that thing is) taunt him about the trouble his stomach will be in soon. He really doesn’t have a choice but to throw the tea over the pie. Ruka is grateful, but Mikan is outraged at how rude Natsume is acting, and even angrier when Natsume explains that the pie was horrible. She demands he apologize but Natsume simply walks away, content to be the bad guy because he saved his friends from getting food poisoning while also sparing Anna’s feelings and reputation at her cafe.

"Your stomach will writhe" is such a potent threat. I feel sick just looking at that demon/scoundrel/rot thing.

This scene has more substance than in the anime. In the episode, Natsume sees the rotten scoundrel (or WHATEVER IT IS) before he can take a bite. He tosses the tea for all their sakes and ultimately nobody is hurt. But here, in the manga, Natsume has already taken a bite. We see the missing part of the pie, the residue on the fork. Natsume is already screwed. He's going to have food poisoning from Anna's pie, and he still puts her feelings before his own. He'd rather say that the pie is terrible according to his own tastes than to let everyone around know that she made such a health-risking mistake. He drenches the pie so that Mikan and Ruka don't get food poisoning, even if it's too late for him. Natsume leaves, knowing he will look like an asshole, AND with stomach problems on top of that, but at least he's the only one who will be seriously hurt.

This is a pretty insignificant example of a trait that we have seen before with Natsume but haven't really fully explored. It's going to play a major role for the rest of the manga, because Natsume has something of a martyr complex, where he is quick to sacrifice himself because he sees little to no value in his own happiness. This is a small example, and I'm not saying it's not kind of him, but there are consequences with his line of thinking. He's fine with looking like an asshole to protect people, or giving up things he wants so someone else can have it, or blowing himself up so two girls can escape safely. Whenever there's a chance to sacrifice himself, Natsume will take it every single time.

This may seem noble or romantic or admirable but it's not healthy at all. The way he was raised (no shade to Papa Hyuuga and Kaoru but also.... tentatively side-eyeing them for putting so much responsibility on him) and the way he is now tortured by the school has put him in a position where his self esteem is horribly low. This complex of his results in suicidal tendencies, even after he falls in love with Mikan (and even exacerbated by that love). For Natsume, love is sacrifice. He simply cannot love without feeling like he has to give something up. Ideally, he would grow out of this and maybe start seriously choosing himself sometimes. It's not evil to want yourself to be happy and to choose your own well-being, even if it occasionally makes others sad or upset.

In the context of the actual story though, we have yet another glimpse of a complex that will cause a LOT of trouble down the road for Natsume and Mikan.

Conclusion

Natsume has new feelings for Mikan and is having trouble navigating them. They will cause even more trouble in the next essay. We also touched more on Natsume's self-sacrificing tendencies and how devastating they will turn out to be. These tendencies will be consistent and persistent throughout the manga in regards to NatsuMikan's relationship, and cause more problems. These problems will pop up a bit in the next part, so stay tuned!

Also, small note: I call him Ruka and not Luca because I got used to it after watching the anime and through scans and fanfics. I heard his name pronounced that way and at first thought it was a Japanese name so I simply copied the pronunciation. When I found out it was supposed to be Luca, I'd already been using Ruka for a while. I don't really want to switch to using Luca most of the time because I know people in real life named Luca/Luka and I talk enough about GA on the daily where it might feel strange to me. I use Luca sometimes when I'm talking to others who prefer it, but Ruka is what I'm used to. I hope this isn't frustrating, but understand that I pronounce Killua's name (from HxH) like "Ki-ru-a" as well and in my head "Gakuen Alice" is pronounced "Gakuen Arisu" because I pronounce things based on what I hear when watching the anime ;-; These are things I have no real desire to change because they sound right to me. I'm sorry. (Nobody has said anything or complained, and this is not a vague or anything like that! I just wanted to say that I know it's supposed to be Luca and it's not my intention to be disrespectful when I pronounce/spell it Ruka. I am fucking crazy, but I am free.)

<- Previous Next ->

#gakuen alice #alice academy #hyuuga natsume #natsume hyuuga #natsumikan #sakura mikan #mikan sakura #my meta #ga #mine #ga meta #ga meta: nm #ga meta: manga #ga meta: manga nm #let's talk about natsumikan #let's talk about natsumikan: natsume #because of how jam-packed the alice festival is with nm content this might take two more parts to complete #stay patient with me please i am trying my best ;-;#i couldnt go into the haunted house knowing id only have two pics to work with. it would kill me.#theres just too much #the ten image limit is genuinely such an obstacle so if u wish there was more then blame tumblr and maybe theyll raise the limit to fifteen #they wont. tumblr is a disgusting landfill of a website.#edit for song: stupid by brendan maclean #theres some jealousy and tsundere behavior. love that for early love natsume

33 notes · View notes

cillianmurphy · 4 years

Photo

GIFFING 101 - YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE ON HOW TO GIF

I have gotten many, many asks before about how I gif and I finally decided to make a tutorial. This is going to be very long, very image heavy and with a lot of details and examples. I mean it, I’m going through every, single aspect of giffing that I can possibly think of. From start to finish. And please read the disclaimer at the very start.

* I use a macbook pro but this should probably work on windows too!

I hate doing this but if this helped and you want to, please consider donating to my ko-fi or if you want, commission a theme or page from me at @amaanat <3

tutorial under cut, I hope it helps!

★★★★★

- CONTENTS

disclaimer

what will you need to create gifs?

how to download videos?

extracting your scene from handbrake using VLC / built in video player

opening in photoshop

trimming, cropping and resizing videos

sharpening

colouring and psds

masks

adding subtitles

editing frames / timeline speed

multiple gifs in one grid.

actions

exporting the gif

last minute tips and extra links.

★★★★★

- DISCLAIMER

First off, this is not meant as a post where I am saying look here, this is the only and perfect way of giffing. Not at all. When I started out, there were many tutorials available that helped me figure out how to gif, and I slowly developed my own style and I would like to create an in depth tutorial that helps you grasp the basics. Heck, make your gifs whatever way you want, go absolutely crazy on colours or whatever, this tutorial is just here to guide you through the process of gifmaking, because I know it can be very intimidating to people who are just getting into it. That is why I made this and why I spent 8 hours writing this, because I want others to know too and this is the kind of in depth tutorial I needed when I was starting out 4 years ago. Thanks for reading, hope it helps and go crazy ahhh go stupid.

★★★★★

- what will you need to create gifs?

photoshop. I use photoshop CC 2020 on a mac and I pay monthly bc of student discount. There are many, many links you can find on @completeresources for downloads. You can use any photoshop you like, as long as you have the timeline option.

Handbrake. This nifty program is used mostly to convert MKV files to MP4, but I also use it to quickly extract the part of the video I want, because opening an entire movie in photoshop can quickly clog up space bc of cache and it’s a pain to find that one second scene you want with that tiny scrollbar. Download it from here.

your video (downloading explained down below)

extras: VLC, just to find how many seconds the scene is at, so we can input the time in Handbrake. You can use any other player though for that step, I use VLC or Quicktime. Download VLC from here.

★★★★★

- how to download videos

Ok so I will quickly go through a few methods here for getting your clips.

1. t*rrenting.

This is the most popular method for getting your film or tv episode. I personally get my t/rrents from rarbg dot to or if I am having trouble finding one, I go to 1337x dot to, because they compile them from different sites. I copy the magnet link and go to the qbittorrent application, import magnet link, choose the files I want and it downloads. Remember, the higher the seeder leecher ratio, the quicker it will download.

But which file should I choose?? there’s so many? Well yes there are many many files for different movies. On RAR, I found more than 40 t/rrent files for Endgame. I think that generally, the 4/5 GB 1080p copies are just fine. I have compared giffing with a 60GB Interstellar Remux (which is directly ripped from bluray) file to giffing from a 4GB 1080 file, it literally gave me the same quality and the 1080 looked crisper. So yeah don’t kill your computers space, just go for those 3/4/5GB files.

hot tip - don’t download from yify, the quality is way worse.

2. movies from twitter accounts such as logolessHD.

these accounts post MEGA links to movies and shows, but you will have to request to follow them to be able to get the links. Then you can download the movie from there. The accounts you can get these links from are here: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4. The quality can be a bit less though compared to t/rrents. Here is a link to a tumblr blog with these kinds of downloads too.

3. downloading from youtube.

ok, use 4kvideodownloader for this. It is incredibly easy to use, you just need the youtube link. Always Always go for 1080p, if you can’t then 720 at the most because otherwise quality gets really bad really fast.

4. netflix / screenrecording

If you don’t want to download / can’t find something, try using netflix and screen recording. In my experience, SC only works on google chrome and not safari so jsyk!! Here is a tutorial on how to screen record on mac (or for quick access, click command+shift+5) and windows.

NOTE: quicktime screen records at 60fps, which is nearly thrice the frame rate of movies and shows, so at the end you may end up with duplicate frames in the timeline of photoshop, so you will have to delete those frames one by one sorry.

★★★★★

- extracting your scene from handbrake using VLC / built in video player

muahaha here’s where the magic starts to happen. Open handbrake and import your video. For this part I am going to use a scene of Keanu Reeves from the 2019 movie Always be my Maybe. I will demonstrate with that scene up until colouring, because then I will show how I colour different scenes!

So when you have opened the image in HB, you get this layout. (link to imgur)

it is a bit intimidating, I know. So basically, first, click on where it says chapters near the top right and click seconds. then, input the time you want to extract from the entire video. For the Keanu scene, that scene starts at 00:57:18 and ends at 00:57:21. These are not exact timings, I usually add an extra second so the entire scene is captured and I heavily recommend you do the same.

Now down below, you can click browse and edit where your new video will be saved and you can also change the name of the new clip. Always ALWAYS remember to keep the .mp4 ending do not cut that part out!!! If the ending says .m4v change it to mp4!!

Ok then I undertake the following steps to ensure the video that will be exported is of the highest quality possible:

Firstly, I uncheck all these three boxes:

Then you see this bar here right? Well I will edit the dimensions, filters and video now. You don’t have to do anything for audio, subtitles or chapters so leaving that alone is best. Lets go to dimensions first.

Here are my settings for dimensions:

The storage size depends on if your file is 1080p or 720p. Most movies are shot in a ratio of 2.35:1, so if it does not say 1920x1080 like a 1080 file should be, don’t fret. The cut off parts are just the black bars you see when watching the movie. Handbrake doesn’t recognise nor convert them so that’s one less thing we have to worry about.

Now onto filters. Literally do NOT change anything there. Leave the settings as they are, which is like this:

Finally, go to video. You will see this kind of window and these are my settings (imgur)

Firstly, leave video encoder at H264 or 265 depending on how your video is encoded. For the FPS, choose same as source for the framerate and click constant instead of variable!!! This will ensure your video is smooth. For quality, bring the slider all the way to the right. RF0 means it will be at the best quality possible. I didn’t edit the settings at the bottom at all so just leave them be.

Now click this green icon (imgur) at the top and your video will start encoding! It does not take long at all and then your video is ready to made into a nice lil gif!

★★★★★

- opening in photoshop

woohooo we got our video!! Ok now open photoshop. Click on file -> open:

now search for the file you extracted from VLC and import it! Now your screen will look like this (imgur). With a different video, of course lol.

★★★★★

- trimming, cropping and resizing videos

ok so firstly, we will trim the video. As you can see in the image I linked in the step before, the screencap you see is of someone else in ABMM, not Keanu, like I want. So use this slider:

and click and drag it to where your scene begins and shows up in the window. Then, click the following button to split at playhead.

This will split the clip and so the timeline and layers section will look like this (imgur) (mine has three sections because there was space before and after the keanu scene so I cut two parts which made three clips)

so now all there is left in trimming is delete the layers of the video you do not need! For me in that image it was layer 1 and 3!

cropping and resizing

This depends on the kind of gifset you want to make. This picture is a handy guide for resizing:

This post is also very very useful for resizing info

Ok now I will crop my gif. Click on this tool:

and now my interface looks like this. I am using the ratio 6 by 4 but you can use whatever you want.

Ok now you may need to crop some black bars but since I don’t have to, I just moved the crop area around a bit and clicked enter to crop it. Just play around with sizes and whatnot, and get a feel of what you like!!

cropping tip: crop as close as you can to the edges. The more you zoom in, the more pixels that will be visible and it will make your gif extremely grainy!!

So now for resizing, go to image -> image size or click command-shift-i

and you will get this window.

A LITTLE NOTE - I personally do not use automatic but a friend who shared her sharpening psd would prefer if I kept it secret, but automatic is what most people use and it is what I used up until november 2019 and it worked just fine.

Ok anyway now I want to make my gif 268px wide so I will input that as width and make sure you click this!! It makes sure your height and width are proportional!

ok now we have this. After you’ve done that, click ok!

congrats, you just resized a gif!! Your gif probably looks smaller now in the main window once you click ok, just zoom in to it! don’t worry about it looking bad quality, sharpening is next!

This is how my gif looks with trimming, cropping and resizing (with 0.05 speed)

★★★★★

- sharpening

Now we sharpen! Make sure your layer is selected Go to filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen and this window will pop up:

These are my settings which most people use. Just remove gaussian blur

I have more accurate and use legacy checked too!

click ok! Now ... your gif might look a bit oversharpened. That’s why we use a bit of gaussian blur. Go to filter -> blur -> gaussian blur.

now I think most people also use a 1.0 radius so set that and click ok.

But now your gif looks too blurry. Lets fix that. Double click the icon below in the layers panel

and adjust the opacity! My go to is between 25 to 35, just so the gif looks smooth!

Now we’re done with sharpening! This is how our gif looks with sharpening with 0.05 speed:

sweet right? Now .... the best and hardest part ... colouring!!!!

★★★★★

- colouring and psds

First I will shortly talk about psds. They are photoshop files, that save the entire document which means you can share it with someone after uploading it and when they download and open it, they can edit the layers, tweak things just like they made the file in the first place. Many people upload psds of gifs with colouring so others can use that colouring. You can find so many psds on completeresources (I only linked gif psds but they have psds for icons and headers too) or allresources. I do not use psds but colour from scratch every time so I will not be explaining them further, sorry.

So for colouring, I will go very in depth into different styles. Here are the main types of colouring I have noticed people use on here:

simple - I normally use this for scenes with people in it

vibrant, bright - I use this for scenes with lots of colours in them

pale

black and white

gradients - I use this to spice scenes up a bit

colour palette

I only go for simple, vibrant and gradients and never do cp, pale or black and white, but I will link a few tutorials by talented creators who do and after that I will explain the three ways I colour by showing you three different examples :)

Some useful tutorials I have found for pale/bw/cp colouring are:

this pale tutorial by @samecoin. Especially useful read because Tippy explains how to avoid whitewashing in pale edits.

this pale tutorial by @kateausten. Very easy to read and to follow.

this colour palette tutorial by @freddyfreemen. They explain the basics and provide a psd too.

this colour palette tutorial by @stenbranlons. Very image heavy which guides you through every step of the way.

A blog dedicated to pale resources is @finesources and is definitely worth checking out!

this tutorials page by completeresources has many many tutorials on how to do different kinds of styles

Btw, this is a useful website that explains all the different adjustment layers in photoshop if you’re still getting the hang of them

ok now onto my examples for the colouring. I will first do simple colouring for which I will use the keanu gif. For vibrant and gradient I will use two different gifs. I usually put my colouring into a group so first, close the video group layer and click this to make a new group which will contain the adjustment layers for our colouring:

SIMPLE COLOURING

First I will brighten the gif up with some curves. That is this tool:

Then you get this window:

As you see, I have selected that white eyedropper tool. Using that I will brighten the image. Basically, you want to click on the whitest part of the gif using that tool. This is because wherever you click, the eyedropper will turn that part into white and adjust the entire gif that way so if you click somewhere dark, you’ll get this white bright fuzzy mess. So I clicked on the lightest place which imo is the white specks near the glass in front of his hand and now my gif looks like this:

Ok now if you look at the above image, there is a black eyedropper two steps above the white one. You want to use that to click on the darkest place of the gif bc it’ll turn that to pure black. Here is my gif when I did that:

not a massive difference but it balances things out. Now I will add some saturation. Click this icon:

which brings up this window. I have already set saturation to around 15 to make it a bit warmer:

and the gif looks like this now:

I think it looks nice, but I would like to add something extra. That is why I am going to play around with selective colour to make the background pop a bit and make the black colour more dark. So click this icon:

and you get this window and these colours (imgur). You can play around a lot with selective colour and manipulate colours! So if I turned the black dial on reds to +100, they would become wayyyy darker. However because I want the background to pop, I would use the colours magenta and blue (and black for the final touch). For those my settings are this: 1 - 2 - 3 (imgur). So now my gif looks like this:

And now i think we are done! For comparison, this is what the gif looked like with absolutely no colouring or sharpening:

And that was all for simple colouring!! Lets move on to vibrant colours!!

VIBRANT COLOURING

For this I will use an example from Thor: Ragnarok bc thor is my soft bb. I did not do much for this first example except play around a lot with selective colour and I used the exact way of adding saturation and curves as shown before. Honestly just playing around with selective is the best bet to get vibrant colouring. The gif without sharpening etc was this:

the gif after colouring and sharpening is this:

pretty sweet huh? Just play a lot with saturation, hue and selective colour and channel mixer and you can create a lot of styles that way!

GRADIENT

for this I will use another clip from Thor, but from The Dark World. It is a bare clip where it is raining and I will add a gradient on it. This is the gif without colouring nor sharpening:

now we will do the sharpening and colouring. I already applied a basic curves and saturation layer so now it looks like this:

It looks a bit better right? Ok lets get that gradient applied. Click here:

and click on gradient, NOT gradient maps bc those are different things and I honestly dont know how maps work.

now this is what will appear, I haven’t changed anything to this yet:

What style, colours, angle you choose is up to you. I personally am going for 0 angle because I want it going right. Now, to choose colours, double click on the colour shown next to the word gradient. This window will show up:

The fun part is you can do what you want here. Just experiment, click the buttons, adjust opacity etc. When you click at the bottom of the bar somewhere another stop marker appears meaning you can have even more colours! Just click on the bottom markers and edit to your hearts content! Use the top button to adjust opacities. Personally I went for this gradient:

Ok but now we have a problem because our gradient is fully covering the image and you can’t see anything. That is where blending modes come in. Right click on the gradient layer and click blending options. This window will pop up (ingur). When you click blending mode, these options appear (imgur).

Here is a good guide explaining the blending modes

I just recommend playing around seeing which one suits you. I went for overlay, which makes my final gif look like this:

and that was that on colouring!! Let me know if u have questions about it! Onto the next part, masks!

★★★★★

- masks

I will not go in depth here, but instead I will link some tutorials but the amazing @thepunisher who has explained it much better than I ever will be able to. The tutorials are all in this link. If you have any questions do lmk but idk how I could explain it.

★★★★★

- adding subtitles

although we wish we could, we can’t all lip read so we need subtitles also I’m hard of hearing and need them anyway but yeah, I will quickly highlight how I add subs! I use the font Arial Rounded MT Bold Regular.

I will first link to this post because it helped me a lot and may explain stuff better than I do.

Lets take the keanu gif we had earlier. In it, he says ‘fish flakes’. Now what I do is this. Click on this icon:

and drag a box around the gif fully. Add your text. Mine looks like this now:

Well that ... does not look like a subtitle. BTW my settings are:

*when there are two people speaking I change the colour of the second person to #ffff00 - also for 540px gifs I usually use 12/13px text.

Ok now I will add the stroke and drop shadow. Right click on the layer of text, click blending options and change your stroke and drop shadow settings to this and this (imgur). Now just click the move tool or hit V on keyboard to select it and drag the gif down wherever you want. Now my final gif looks like this:

Ok, now if you have two gifs and you want them to be the same distance from the bottom, right click the text layer of the first gif document, click duplicate layer and you will get this window:

now click on destination and depending on what files you have open in PS, you will get this window:

now just choose where you want the text to go and if the gifs are the same sizes itll appear exactly where it did in the first one and you can edit the text for the second. You can do this with adjustment layers, groups etc too!!

Now text is done! Off to the next part!

★★★★★

- editing frames / timeline speed

We are done editing, now time to convert to frame animation and edit the speed!

Ok click on the four bars on the right side of the video timeline. It will bring up a menu. From there, select this:

This will make individual layers of every frame into clips. Now, click this at the bottom left side of the video timeline:

This will convert your video timeline to a frame animation timeline. Now it looks like this (imgur). you’re probably wondering wait where the heck did my layers go well don’t fret, lets click the four bars on the right side again and click this:

now look! We have got all our frames into the timeline! Just delete the excessive frames at the front. Now click the four bars again, select all frames and then click the number at the bottom and change it to 0.05 or 0.06 or whatever speed you want:

Now we are done with this step!

★★★★★

- multiple gifs in one grid

I myself am not going to explain this, instead here are links to a few amazing tutorials that will help you further

this tut by @brolinjosh

this tut by @futurist

★★★★★

- actions

Now actions ... man they make everything so much easier. Basically actions are a sequence of steps you undertake in photoshop that are recorded which you can then save and use on multiple files. This makes the giffing process much much faster!!! For instance, these are the actions I have saved (mind the doubles lol I am experimenting a bit!)

As you can see, I have one for undertaking the entire video timeline to frame animation process and one for sharpening and the subtitles. It has saved me around 75% of the original time I put into creating sets before which is a lifesaver.

I cannot explain how to make actions bc I am really bad at explaining stuff, but here are some tutorials:

- https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/creating-actions.html

- https://completeresources.tumblr.com/post/66560261468/how-make-action-%D0%B7

- https://completeresources.tumblr.com/post/50583786863/how-to-use-an-action

- https://completeresources.tumblr.com/post/50362731526/how-to-use-actions-on-gifs

https://www.creativebloq.com/adobe/create-own-photoshop-actions-61411918

★★★★★

- exporting the gif

now we’re at the final stage! When you have your gif ready, go to file -> export -> save for web legacy

ok now the next window is this which looks intimidating I know

Well basically, those are my settings above. Make sure the looping option is set at forever. Also on the left size you see how big your gif is, make sure it is under 8mb but tumblr is unstable so keep it under 5MB and it should be fine.

I use different exporting types at times. Sometimes I use selective and pattern, sometimes diffusion or adaptive+dif. Just remember that the gif size depends on which you choose so keep that in mind. Here’s the difference (if u can even spot it).

selective + pattern

selective + diffusion

adaptive + diffusion

Personally I mostly only use selective + pattern!

btw make sure your matte is at NONE!!! This is because otherwise you have those whitish transparent borders on your gif, esp noticable on dark gifs, like shown in this tutorial by the talented @joewright !

And congrats, you have officially made a gif! Now go experiment, have the time of your life and do whatever the heck u want with your gifs. And if you want me to see them, tag me!! I track #usernums !!!

★★★★★

- last minute tips and extra links

man idk what to say here really but here goes:

@completeresources and @allresources are amazing places to learn more about gifmaking, pls take advantage of the opportunity

reminder: quicktime records at 60FPS, so unless you want a laggy gif delete the extra duplicate frames in the frame animation timeline!!

When opening import video frames to layers, do not click skip every second frame!! do not!!!!

Do not steal gifs. Try making them. I know it takes time and it can get frustrating but don’t post someone elses gifs as your own. Even the ugliest gifset in existence made originally by someone is better than a stunning set put together full of stolen gifs from various users. Don’t be that person

Don’t be afraid to ask for help pls just go on anon if u want!!

use the tumblr dimensions!!! I cannot stress enough how important this is because if you don’t, your gifs will look stretched af and lose quality so like .. don’t do that

#completeresources #itsphotoshop #tutorial #resources #gif tutorial #allresources #my tutorials

1K notes · View notes

rpbetter · 4 years

Text

Reblog Etiquette (and ships)

At this point, we all know about “reblog karma” and “reblogging from source.” Though, I say that...and am questioning it. You should fucking know this by now, but in the event you don’t, let me define that shit for you.

Reblog Karma: the RPC’s oldest attempt at keeping people from clogging notifications and using others as meme resources. Essentially, don’t reblog a meme from a mutual unless you are sending them something from that meme first. Not all blogs practice it, or practice it the same way, please see their rules.

Reblogging from Source: another effort to stop being used as a meme/aesthetics resource. Many RPers would like you to reblog quotes, aesthetics, and memes from their source (original post location or the meme/aesthetics/quotes resource blog they got it from), even if you are sending them a meme. This is especially applicable when not interacting with the RPer.

Okay, that’s out of the way.

There is more to Reblog Etiquette than this!

And, when that etiquette is nonexistent, it almost always deals with a RPer’s ship. Mentioning ship partners and/or tagging ships on a reblog from another RPer, not removing that RPer’s mentions or tags, and even dropping a mention or outright RPing in the comments of another RPer’s reblog.

Don’t reblog from another mun and tag your ship or mention (@) your ship partner(s).

Don’t reblog a post with someone else’s mention still stuck to it.

Don’t reblog a post and leave the previous mun’s tags still in the tags.

Don’t go into the comments on someone’s post and mention your ship partner(s).

Don’t roleplay in the comments of someone else’s post.

None of this is alright, I have no idea what would make anyone think this is appropriate reblog etiquette, but it very much is not. It’s incredibly rude and lazy. Because I know that many people have similar ship aesthetics and so on, I’m not saying you shouldn’t reblog something for your own ships that a mutual has for theirs. (That’s a whole other in depth conversation we’ll have later.)

I’m saying that this is how you should be going about it:

Reblog from the source.

-What if there is no source because it’s deactivated, or there is another reason why I can’t access it?

Go into the post’s notes. At some point, damn near every post that could be used as an aesthetic, quote, or prompt for a ship (and RP in general) has been reblogged by at least one source blog. Look for RP meme, aesthetic, help, and other resource blog urls. If you cannot find one of those, look for urls that are general resource-style blogs. Personal blogs reblog aesthetics etc. as well, and there are many such resource blogs out there. -If you’re uncomfortable reblogging from a personal, that’s tough shit; I hate to break it to you, but most of your resources came from personal blogs. Deal with it, or don’t reblog anything you can’t find filtered through a RP specific resource.

-- “But this takes time/effort lol I just want to use it for my ship.” Again, tough shit. Sometimes, it does take energy not to be rude and do the right the thing. In all honesty, it’s fairly rare that doing the right thing is effortless, even when it’s something as simple as RP. Grow up.

--- You went through the notes, but there’s no appropriate blog to reblog from, now what?

Just because it’s a rare occurrence doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I know this one isn’t, I’ve had it happen too! My choice was to not reblog it at all, I just sent the link to my ship partner privately instead. If you don’t have that kind of friendship, you really wanted it on the dash, or another reason, you are now left with one option, and you’re not going to like it. Message the mutual you want to reblog from. Politely, explain that you’d like to reblog the post for your ship, and ask if they’re comfortable with it. No guilting, begging, or general, weird ass rudeness. If they decline, accept it just as politely, thank them for their response. If they accept, thank them, and especially if this isn’t a mutual you interact with much, be sure you’re showing them continued support on the dash by reading and liking/commenting on their headcanon posts and other appropriate material. (You should be anyway.)

Remove any mentions present (@’s)

Seriously, this is incredibly rude! Yet, with the typical lack of self-reflection and awareness of others in the RPC here, I see it multiple times a day on my dash. Not just with RP-blog-to-RP-blog interaction either, I also see RPers reblogging from personals and leaving their mentions attached. (I see it the other way around too, but I’m not here to school personal blogs.) For all the excessive emphasis RPers put on appearance, you’d think they’d want to get rid of something that looks this sloppy, but no. Not if it takes one extra second of effort!

-I know that xkit’s editable reblogs tends to break whenever tumblr gives us a new, exciting, hideous, insulting, limitation, I mean update, but come the fuck on. It is also one of the quickest things to regain functionality, so, maybe you should save the reblog to drafts, be following xkit’s blog for updates, and edit it once there has been a patch. If it’s worth it to you, it’s worth a short wait. When it’s working, you can easily remove that mention with editable reblogs.

--If you’re going to use being mobile as an excuse, or if you don’t want to wait on it/don’t use xkit, again, go to the source. And, also again, if that isn’t an option, you can find where it has been reblogged by an appropriate blog at some point in its history, sans mentions. Reblog from there.

Do not reblog someone else’s tags (#)

Some people have their xkit set up to reblog automatically with the previous poster’s tags. While that can be useful in some situations, I can think of, very literally, no situation this is appropriate for an RPer to use. If you have this set up on your personal/resource blog/wtfe and your RP blog is a sideblog (or you are using certain methods of having your browser open to two separate blog accounts where your xkit settings are transferring over), it’s up to you to delete the tags on these posts.

-It takes maybe one full second to click in the tag field and hit your delete button a few times to clear it. Do that. It’s never, ever, appropriate to keep someone’s ship, muse, verse, or other personalized tags attached to a reblog.

--If you are a personal blog reading this somehow, maybe you’re wanting to get into RP, please take note of this. This is one of the many reasons why most RPers will not interact with personals. We don’t like you reblogging an aesthetic post and keeping our tags on it.

In the case of both situations, not only is it rude and lazy, it’s fucking with someone else’s tags and privacy. Most RPers don’t want their content showing up in generally searchable tags, it’s one of the reasons that personalizing tags came about. Furthermore, if I’m on my dash and click a mutual’s custom tag for aesthetics, verses, ships, and so on, it’s now going to come up with instances of those tags on someone else’s blog as well.

Delete the fucking tags if they auto-populate. Don’t use someone else’s custom tags of your own volition either.

“Subverting” reblogs to mention in comments is a hard no, too

-So, you don’t want to reblog the post, but do want to @ your ship partner(s) in it? There’s no way to do that without being rude and strange. To be honest, this is even worse than just reblogging and tagging your ship.

I may not be the OP, but you came onto a post on my blog, one very likely tagged for my ships and/or having my ship partners mentioned on it, and commented on it mentioning your ship partner. It’s every bit as offensive and more so than someone reblogging from me and using it for a ship I’m not a part of. I don’t know what’s worse, when that other mun is a ship partner, casual mutual who doesn’t interact, or a writing partner but not ship partner. It’s all deeply fucked up. No one’s RP blog is here for your use like this!

--You’re also not subverting anything. I think the idea is to be polite or go unnoticed. People seem to lack a basic grasp on how tumblr works; you get notifications on reblogged posts you are not the OP of when someone comments on them just like you get a notif when someone likes it. The only way to genuinely be secretive about this would be to comment on it from the source or a resource blog. They will get the notification.

If you are commenting on, liking, or reblogging a post you see on the dash, the person having reblogged it, putting it there for you to encounter, will be notified of your interaction with it.

---What I’m saying, just in case it isn’t abundantly clear, for the third time now: you’re not being slick. Your mutuals will see that you weirdly @’ed someone in a comment on their reblog. They know.

----The appropriate behavior is to do just as advised in the above points: GO TO THE SOURCE. If no source exists, find an appropriate resource blog in the notes. You may then, and only then, give that mention in a comment.

Frankly, it’s still weird, and I would recommend you just reblog it from the source to interact with it. There is always the option of sending it to the intended party by way of tumblr’s messenger or linking the post in an off tumblr messenger like discord.

I say this because it hasn’t escaped my attention that the only time I have this issue on my own RP blog is when the imagery or text is fucking filthy. As in, Other Mun didn’t want something that sexual, kinky, violent, and so on to be posted to their own blog. You need to grow up if that’s your deal. Like writing smut or violence, if you need to do it in private only, you’re obviously not adult enough to handle the topic.

Keep your roleplay where it belongs; in your inbox and threads

-It’s not appropriate to start up RP in the comments of another RPer’s reblogged ship aesthetic. (Or anything else, this just happens to be the most common.) It’s incredibly odd and offensive to look in your notifications and see that a mutual and their ship partner are flirting, or outright fucking, in the comments of a post you reblogged for your ship.

It’s just as awkward feeling and offensive when someone reblogs the post and begins full-blown RP on it. It’s one thing when it’s a post originating from an RP resource blog, or when it’s kept to something like a mention and a short line that your writing partner can start their original post in inspiration of. But...

--You know how I said above that auto-copying tags thing is one of the reasons why RPers are iffy about personal blogs? Well, this is one of the reasons why personal blogs think RPers are exceedingly weird members of fandom that need to be excluded and devalued. It’s odd, especially if you’ve never encountered RP, to see someone reblogging your quote, moodboard, or other original post and RPing on it.

Listen, we all need to RP some crack and commentary sometimes, but it’s best left in the tags or put into a new post.

---Instead of RPing (not sorry, especially if it is smut) on that post, link the image to show in a new post, and go from there.

Please remember to be polite about artists, including photographers and gifers, when you do this! Tumblr automatically gives the source of imagery when you use a link to display the picture, that’s why I recommended doing that instead of saving, then re-uploading the image as though it is your own. If you’re going to do that, even if it’s just silliness going on, give mention of the artist, photographer’s blog/site, or gifer’s blog in the tag or below the image.

Tumblr is deeply unfriendly to artists of all sorts, don’t be fuel that. When you upload artwork for the sake of RP, again, even if it’s just crack, that’s literally violating what artists ask people not to do; you’re reposting their art without permission and credit.

#rp better #reblog etiquette #rp advice #rp help #psa #rp psa #mun behavior #ships #tumblr rpc

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twiceblackvelvet · 4 years

Text

Username: xNotYourJoyx

A/N; hi. i have no clue where this idea came from. i don’t know why my brain always tells me to start more red velvet series’ randomly. but here is the latest spawn from it. this will have more parts to it because i’m interested in expanding on the dynamics of this trio plus i signed up for things that have since blown up my emails for this because i’m dedicated like that. anyway! enjoy. or don’t. idk anymore.

It was only a suggestion. A quick mention, really. “There’s this site, Seungwan,” is how it started. Except for that brief conversation spiraled rapidly into a whirlwind of curiosity and excitement. Perhaps, discussing the lack of sex life and the frustration that comes with that whilst you’re supposed to be busy working on the latest financial development wasn’t the smartest move, and yet, the conversation ended in a better resolution than she imagined when Joohyun had managed to pry the information out of her about why she’s been so on edge lately.

On edge being both literal and metaphorical. Getting to the high is easy, however, toppling over into the rush of being able to feel the full experience of pleasure has been evading her for the last few weeks now. Nothing seems to do the trick and though you may think it’d be fun to simply keep trying, it’s starting to become an issue with the more extreme methods she attempts. So, it desperately needs to be fixed, just not in front of all of her colleagues who are idly typing away the dull workday.

The rest of the day drags along. Nothing particularly interesting happens which Seungwan is grateful for, she could do without the extra stress. Though, she’s sure the new sponsorship to promote a dead-end product that everyone had warned their boss about will cause a headache in the future, she ignores the nagging feeling in the back of her mind. Joohyun was kind enough to buy dinner for the both of them which her stomach is currently grateful for as she’s certain her fridge at home is empty. But, watching her friend and colleague suckle on the ice cream bar she purchased for herself should not have resulted in her needing to press her legs together on instinct.

Joohyun didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t say anything and continued to lap her tongue across the cold strawberry flavored ice cream. Probably for the best. Nothing good ever comes from getting too involved with people you have to work alongside every day, even if that person does look like Aphrodite herself. The awkward looks between you both, everyone else knowing that the two of you have slept together but are now deciding on which color scheme to use for an advertisement, it just isn’t something that Seungwan wants to deal with. So, she and Joohyun will have to remain platonic. Unfortunately.

It’s late by the time she gets home. The hallway lights leading up to the apartment door flicker every few seconds and the apartment across the hall has the television turned up loud enough that Seungwan is sure they’re trying to let those in hell hear the latest episode of whichever show they’re currently watching. The keys in her hand rattle as she unlocks the stiff door that barely wants to open anymore. The loudness doesn’t disappear once she closes it behind her but it’s home and somewhere she can erase the feeling of being stuck, in more ways than one.

The latest routine of ordering in unhealthy food that is slowly destroying her insides, a cold shower to wash away some of the exhaustion, and then listening to the same songs for about an hour feels almost robotic but it’s what she’s grown used to now. Once the darkness begins to creep in across the apartment, cold air making the hairs on her arm stand to attention and the neighbors suddenly growing quiet, it’s the small bed in the corner of the room that calls out and the only thing echoing inside her head.

Well, it would be, had she not suddenly recalled Joohyun’s description of a site where many people frolic and entertain those who perhaps need a little extra help with their more sinful needs. She moves on auto-pilot toward the jacket hanging on the coat rack and reaches into the left side pocket for the small piece of paper where only the web address is scrawled upon it in Joohyun’s perfect handwriting. The laptop she bought years before and barely runs anymore rests on the dining table she never sits at, closed, and with a line of dust taking up home upon it. Grabbing it, she plops herself down onto the bed after removing her dressing gown and the towel around her hair which has long since dried and throwing it into a corner of the room to be cleaned up tomorrow.

Her fingers trace the keyboard idly, never pressing in a single key, simply going back and forth over the letters whilst her brain tries to decipher if this is something she wants to try out.

“Fuck it.” She thinks. Soon enough, the site is loading, slowly, and asking for her to confirm she is of legal age to enter it.

The screen finally loads and brings up a bunch of profiles under the “popular” banner. To say that the sight of all the various people before her is overwhelming would be an understatement. A sidebar reveals that she can choose a category as well as filter out specific things that are not of her interest. Some of the categories are the standard you would expect, for example, she immediately filters to only see profiles of women. However, others are a little more out there and specific toward what Seungwan assumes are people’s fetishes. A lot of them are things that she would never consider a person could find interesting sexually, and yet, the option is right before her. She ignores the curious voice inside of her head telling her to click on some of them.

A screen full of women now presents itself in front of her. All of them are beautiful and there’s a whole variety to choose from. The profile pictures range from selfies where they’re simply smiling to some of them being without clothing whatsoever. She scrolls for quite some time simply admiring all of the choices before her until one, in particular, captures her attention.

Wide dark eyes with hair of the same shade of brown, plump lips that are sporting a small smirk that’s both enticing and teasing. Part of the girl’s neck is on display for Seungwan to imagine herself kissing and biting softly. Without hesitation, she hovers over the username and clicks onto the profile.

“xNotYourJoyx” she repeats mentally a few times.

The next page reveals a sign-up box that doesn’t allow Seungwan to venture any further. She’s quick to type in her email address, a username not as clever as she would like and the same password she uses for everything else. The next step is to add her bank details in order to be able to subscribe to various pages. She hesitates at this portion realizing that it’s probably very easy for people to fall too far down this rabbit hole. Thus she promises herself not to subscribe to anything until she’s 100% sure.

After completing her profile, she’s brought back to the girl she assumes is named Joy or at least uses that name here. Her subscription rate is the first thing to appear. Her price is low Seungwan thinks, around $10 when she was expecting something far higher based on the type of content Joohyun had told her the people on the site create. The next part is an Amazon wishlist with various items in it ranging from hair extensions, expensive perfume, and medical equipment? She must be a nurse, Seungwan thinks.

Further down the page reveals a VIP service which is more expensive than the standard subscription but allows for you to request specific pictures or videos. There are rules that come along with it which Seungwan reads multiple times over.

Don’t ask me to say or tell you anything personal about me, we are not friends. You don’t know me like that.

No, you can’t have my Instagram or any other social media so don’t ask.

Don’t be a dick.

My amazon wishlist is not for me. I am not a doctor. But I’m down to dress as one for you if you’re into that.

“Well, that clears that up I guess.” She thinks.

For the next ten minutes, Seungwan simply scrolls through the free content on offer from Joy. A few shots of her without clothes but covering her body up with her hands or a sheet, all of which look professionally done which is surprising. She’s captivated and drawn in by this girl a lot quicker than she thought she would be, she can see why Joohyun would recommend such a thing to her now. The possibilities are endless and there are no strings attached. It’s an ideal situation for both parties.

Despite making the promise to herself, she’s quick to subscribe to Joy’s feed but ignores the large “upgrade to VIP” logo that’s glistening in gold below the payment button. It would seem strange or suspicious surely to her if someone new to her profile was suddenly paying for the premium option Seungwan tries to logic with herself.

A few seconds pass as the page reloads itself before finally Joy’s profile is unlocked for Seungwan’s eyes to devour. The same type of photos as previously, however, without anything covering herself up. The same natural reaction to jam her thighs together that she felt earlier with Joohyun ends up happening again except this time she positions her hand under the waistband of her bed shorts.

The further she explores everything Joy has posted the more the need to be touched becomes overwhelming Before she knows it her fingers are gently caressing her soft skin slowly yet with desperation. Many of the images have comments from other people praising the effortless beauty that Joy manages to convey with ease. Seungwan thinks that Joy must be someone with great confidence to display herself so openly like this. She wishes she too were able to picture herself in the way that Joy likely does.

Her body aches for some release but once more she’s not able to reach the peak as the page of images suddenly comes to an end. Once more, the gold button for premium appears and tells Seungwan she’s reached the limit of what she can see. A blurring effect does a good job of hiding what follows next, however, what it doesn’t do is stop her from being enticed further when she spots that Joy has also uploaded videos of herself, they are simply hidden from those on the basic subscription as her.

Almost sub-consciously she finds herself going against every warning sign inside of her mind telling her that paying to watch Joy rather than just look at her is a bad decision, one she will definitely come to regret or become too attached to doing, and yet, it’s too late once she’s confirmed the upgrade and clicked onto the first video that appears.

White background, likely a wall in her home, Seungwan thinks, until finally the girl steps into the frame with yet another smirk on her lips.

“Hello, welcome to premium. Thank you for subscribing. I hope you enjoy all of the videos and pictures that only a select few of you will ever get to see. If you’re feeling even more generous please be sure to check out my wishlist. Now, let’s have fun together.”

Her voice is silky smooth, Seungwan thinks. She replays the simple video a few times just to hear her make this decision sound like she’s part of an exclusive club where only she is invited, though, she’s aware that isn’t true at all. Joy likely has a ton of people paying to see the most intimate parts of her. The comments on this simple welcoming video are at 59 which means at least that many people have also fallen into the trap, though if Joy is the prize, Seungwan wonders if be tricked into paying extra like this is worth it in the end.

She decides to read through some of them just to get a sense of how people communicate with her here.

ksgeees says: can’t wait for you to send me my video Joy😏

canudoit2609 says: so hot🔥

r4bb1tfr13nd says: damn i should have subbed earlier🥵🥵🥵

speedzoom0408 says: YOU CAN HAVE ALL MY MONEY

HYUNSKY says: most beautiful girl ever

Strangely, the latter comment is the only one Joy has bothered to give a reply to.

xNotYourJoyx says: @HYUNSKY wow, thank you😳

The compliment is definitely correct and deserving of a reply, yet, Seungwan wishes she were the one to tell Joy such things and have her respond solely to her. Jealousy is a green-eyed monster and though she probably shouldn’t be feeling it toward a complete stranger, she does. The sound of the keys as she types out her own comment with her free hand that hasn’t been teasing herself is the only thing she can hear now. Not even the wind outside is able to pierce her eardrums and break her from this spell that Joy has put her under.

Wannie2102 says: you are so perfect, Joy.

It’s simple and Seungwan hates it, but she simply must tell this girl something, anything, in hopes that she sees it and feels happy to be complimented.

Silence now, nothing but the screen before her for light inside the cold bedroom. The list of videos, 71 in total, tempting Seungwan, taunting almost. Her left hand numb now from just resting against her own body whilst her right-hand clicks onto the next one in the list after the welcoming video.

The same white background, however, Joy is positioned in the video as soon as it starts this time. Laying down on a black crushed velvet sofa in only her underwear. Her right hand gently caressing her breasts as she grunts out a few low moans. Her left hand in a similar position to where Seungwan is resting her own. The tired and slow circles in which she moves her hand causes her eyes to roll into the back of her head as Seungwan changes her own pace to match that of Joy’s on the screen.

Her bed creaks with every movement of Joy’s that she mimics, the headboard bashing against the wall behind her whenever Joy quickens her pace and then sounds like a light drumming whenever she slows. The neighbor next door has definitely been awakened by the rhythmic sound of Seungwan rocking her body against her fingers.

“You’re enjoying this, huh?” The words surprise Seungwan out of her reverie as it’s as if Joy is present and asking her specifically and knowing that she too is pleasuring herself as she is doing. Without even thinking she manages to gasp out a yes in reply that only she can hear, yet gains a response from Joy almost like she can magically hear her. “I wish I could watch you touch yourself to me.” she pauses to lowly moan. “For me.”

The pressure rises between her thighs once more except this time her body allows her to release every bit of tension she’s had to keep trying to get rid of for weeks. Her entire body collapses against itself as she indulges herself in what she’s convinced is the longest orgasm to ever exist. Her legs shaking wildly as her arm tenses up and flex to make sure she feels every bit of her undoing. The sound of Joy finishing up her own continues to play in the background for further motivation but the deed has already been done.

She rests momentarily, staring up at the ceiling as gentle pants fill the room both from herself and the laptop. Nothing else in the world matters at this very moment. However, once more Joy manages to surprise Seungwan with her telepathic way of just knowing somehow when to speak to her viewer.

“Thank you for that, I hope you come back soon for more.” and then the video ends.

A dark screen replacing the beautiful image of Joy just as spent as Seungwan feels. But, now she’s left to think about everything that has just transpired between herself, the screen and a girl she doesn’t even know. Guilt wells up in her chest and she slams the screen shut almost shattering the glass. “Why did you do this?” is the only thing that repeats inside of her mind. No longer focused on the pulsating feeling against her hand as she pulls it out of her shorts too fast and whips herself with the waistband which will no doubt sting in the morning.

Her legs shakily drag her body to the bathroom almost tripping over various clothes that have sat there waiting to be cleaned for way too long now. She turns on the shower for the second time tonight and steps into it, almost falling immediately. The cold water shocks her body into feeling something other than the after-effects of pleasuring herself. Scrubbing every inch of her body intensely and repeating inside of her mind that she’ll cancel the subscription tomorrow and never do anything like this ever again. She can’t. Joy is a stranger and she shouldn’t be doing these things.

By the time she’s finished almost burning her skin with the washcloth to make sure she’s rid herself of her sins and changing her fair skin to a reddish shade, the clock on the bedside table shows that there are only three hours before she’s due to wake up for work. The bed seems tainted now, so she grabs the blanket and sleeps on the sofa that is far less comfortable.

Joohyun is definitely going to ask her about whether or not she used the site, definitely going to notice the dark circles under her eyes from the lack of sleep and will definitely draw up her own conclusion anyway no matter what her answer is. She tries her best not to think about any of this but there’s just a constant loop of the images of Joy, the sound of her voice, and the way she encouraged Seungwan to feel again.

She dreams of dark hair and brown eyes that night and moans that could be the most heavenly sound in the world or a new addiction that Seungwan isn’t ready for but may not have a choice but to indulge in it.

pt. ii

#red velvet #bae joohyun #son seungwan #park sooyoung #red velvet scenarios #girl group scenarios #irene #wendy #joy

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hoedameron · 3 years

Photo

i’ve been absolutely SLACKING on talking about my gifsets so i will discuss them here <3 this gif was made a week ago to test out new settings and to color this was ATROCIOUS because the scene has a yellow filter (to probably make the scene be set “in the past” because of where sam and cas are at) so....everyone big round of applause for ME because i think i did a solid mf job here <3 kissing a mirror after i hit post.

anyways! i’ve already talked about my bucky vs. lucky cat gifset, right? anyways, so the next gifset i made was actually a set i didn’t release because, again, i’m trying out new settings and they weren’t working the way i wanted them to until i figured it out MUCH later (even after the gif above). it was a zemo gifset where we first get introduced to him in tfatws where he’s in his jail cell. i wanted to drop it but i just did NOT like how it turned out so....that set is in the vault :(

the next set i made was the zemo dance (extended cut) !! that was very fun to make. when i saw that mcu direct said that marvel dropped the #zemocut i was like HOLD UP!! and i couldn’t stop laughing at it ajskdsjakldsa there was so much pure joy there....then i saw that the only footage they had that wasn’t in a square format was the hour long extended cut....and that took CENTURIES to download just 25 seconds of the video. before i knew it, as i was making the set, somebody already put out their own gifset and it raked in a lot of notes so i was super insecure to keep going. i was unsure of how to color it, i still didn’t have the sharpening settings that i wanted on lock...gosh, making that set was so damn messy and anxiety-inducing because i was just all over the place :/ y’all know i’m a zemogirl so i wanted this to be made with love and well-crafted so of course i was extra harsh on myself. anyways, like i said before, i still didn’t get my settings all down so there was a lot of old methods i had to resort to that i hadn’t resorted to since 2013....I WENT OLD SCHOOL ON THIS SET. the scenes were easy to make into sections and i didn’t gif EVERY single move that he made because some were like a second short and i was like...i can’t really make this into a solid gif. anyways! i actually used a coloring that i used to make my discord pfp when we only had the original dance move so i really liked how that coloring came out and thought it could easily transfer to the other gifs. it needed a little tweaking on some of the “lighter” scenes where there is a bunch of lights all about his face but overall i really like the coloring and i am glad to y’all did as well!! <3

when i came to making the caption, i was SO stumped because i wanted to be funny but at the same time, i remember when i tried to be funny on a caption and i got thesis papers of tags on the gifset...so i didn’t want a repeat of that. i was asking the asteroids for their opinions on what i should make it and GOSH, the way i laughed so mf hard at what they replied asjdkasjkdlsak what a bummer that i ended up captioning it pretty generically because their messages were gold xx hours after i posted the set, i took a bath and realized that i could’ve used the quote daniel bruhl said about how he improvised the dance and i was like....MISSED OPPORTUNITY :(( but i do like the caption and i do like my own tags that i put on there like MWAHHH my mind :3c

the other gifset is the chilling john walker scene. wyatt did not have to snap the way that he did but thank you, sir <33 i had the idea to do make everything black and white and only the red stand out while i was in the bathroom?? SO funny like all my ideas come from silly little places. anyways, so i hopped on and grabbed the scene then the rest is just easy. it’s a psd that i use that i sadly do not remember who made it :// but their legacy lives on wherever their new blog name is! anyways, my photoshop actually....stopped when i tried to make the second gif and i was like NAURRR because i didn’t remember exactly where i cut the second part from....messy xx but i had to restart my entire computer then make it all over again. still, i actually did have my sharpen atn settings down to a T so what you have is what the sharpen atn does without me messing with it. the zemo one is me trying to work with the atn and reverse engineering that shit. i actually don’t like the speed that the john walker set is at because i think it’s a bit slow but i know that a lot of gifsets on here are actually taking a slower approach? which, that’s great! but it’s simply not for me miss. speedy gonzalez and all. anyways, easy gifset where i left that sharpen atn do it’s thing and let the psd do it’s thing (with minor adjustments). overall, i really do like the coloring in this!! super mf sexy.

and that is IT! what a busy little bee i’ve been. i’ve also made some other gifs on the side for myself and for friends so even if i’m not actually posting that much, i am still trying to work on my skills on being a better content creator. one big thing that i mastered is the sharpen atn and though i feel like it takes some time to do, it really is worth it in the end. still debating whether to make gifs at a .04 speed o a .05 speed because sometimes gifs do far better with a faster speed than a slower one. all my gifs are set at a .05 and not sure if i should venture off into creating more....faster speeds that result in something a bit more “crisper” as some will say.

mwahh!! i love y’all for letting me ramble here!!

#also b4 y'all think sumn this gif is switzerland and has nothing to do with what happened in the past 24 hours #gif making can be soooooooooooooo time consuming like parker almost convinced me to actually pay for photoshop since my cr@cked one #is SOOO damn slow and is super laggy like HELLO does anybody have a ps6 cr@cked download i have the 2017 one :(

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sweetboybucky · 5 years

Text

In October

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 1300

Warnings: Total pointless sap, because literally nothing has changed. Brought to you by Rae, that one girl who can’t stop giving a 100 year old former assassin fluffy animals to mother to death.

Summary: This is what Bucky dreamed of, in those years of ice, and even before.

A/N: This is my piece for my beautiful love @barnesrogersvstheworld‘s Are You Afraid of the Dark Halloween Challenge, and my prompt was black cat. Attie - I adore you. I know this challenge was meant for scary stuff, but I hope you like this one anyway.

I’ve missed you, my loves. Thank you for your kindness this year. I have appreciated it more than you could ever know. Some more notes at the end, to keep this author’s note from getting offensively long. I’m pretty rusty with this writing thing, but I hope you guys enjoy this one.

*** October settles softly in Brooklyn, with leaves of crimson and ochre and wind whistling through the trees. The smell of maple syrup lingering in the kitchen. Morning sunlight filtering through sheer curtains.

Eyes of winter gray hide themselves from the sun. Body curled tightly under the blanket he knitted for himself, fingers closing around the soft fabric, drawing it up higher to cover the little smile on his lips as he listens to you - humming something under your breath, making Bucky’s apartment feel like home.

A sigh slips into the air, and you chuckle a little on the exhale. Bucky’s grin grows wider.

There is quiet, measured amusement in your voice when you ask, “You going to help me with this, honey?”

He groans. “Too early.”

“Not that early, Buck.”

“Still too early.”

“You said you would help me decorate.”

He lets his eyes open when the couch shifts with your weight, when he feels you press into his side, warm and solid and real. Looks up at you through a bleary gaze, your beautiful face, your kind eyes. Hums when you stroke your fingers through his hair, lips pressing to his temple.

“How did I ever manage to wind up with such a lump?” you tease. “Don’t you want to decorate for Halloween?”

“Too tired,” he argues. Startles when a slight weight lands on his legs, little paws digging into his thighs, moving up to his belly. An all too familiar chirp sounds through the air.

“Look who’s awake,” you say, and Bucky turns his face down, finds those gorgeous green eyes, that expanse of shiny, smooth black fur.

“Good morning, Princess Cricket,” Flesh fingers stroke behind her ears, down her back. Affection bubbles in him when she goes pliant, flopping down to lay on top of him on her side, chirping and extending her face up for more attention.

You echo him, smiling as you pet at Cricket’s side. “Good morning, Cricket,” turning to him, you add, “Wait here a second,” then you stand, taking your heat with you. Bucky misses it in an instant.

He whines, reaches a hand out to you as you walk over to the bin of decorations you abandoned on the floor, digging through it, “What are you doing? Come back.”

“I bought a present for the baby, I’ll be back in a second.”

Bucky grins, mock innocence in his voice as he calls back, “Am I the baby getting the present?”

“Well,” you say, turning back once you’ve found whatever it is you were looking for, a small object hidden between your hands, “you’re certainly a baby.” He tickles your side when you take your seat next to him again, tender warmth curling in his heart as you laugh and swat at his hand. “But this present isn’t for you.”

A frown pulls at his lips, but it’s teasing. “No fair.”

“Because Halloween is practically your holiday, Miss Cricket,” ignoring his words, tapping Cricket’s nose with your finger, “I got something to help you look the part.

Winter eyes track your hands as the move, settling the gift on Cricket’s head, pulling back once it’s in place, pressing sweet into his side.

And he can see Cricket now, as she stares up at him with a tiny, jet black witch’s hat on her head.

Laughter comes deep from his chest, rumbling through the room. He tweaks the point of the hat with one hand, goes back to stroking Cricket’s face as he wraps his metal arm around you. Drawing you closer, feeling something too soft for him to name beneath his skin as he looks from you to the cat.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it,” he tells you, moving his fingers to take yours in his grip. Kissing your knuckles once, twice before continuing, “I think Cricket does, too.” She chirps at him, holding very still. “You’re so scary, sweetpea, my little demon witch.”

“She’s cute, not scary.”

“You do know that she’s a demon in a million trashy horror movies, right?” He taps the hat again, looks at Cricket as he continues, “She was a total demon when she was a kitten.”

“Cricket is too cute to be a demon.”

“You didn’t find her eating a brand new loaf of bread after she tore through the plastic with her tiny daggers for teeth.”

“Guess I didn’t.” You scratch at Cricket’s belly, just to get her to stretch out across Bucky’s chest. “But I bet she had you whipped, anyway.”

And he remembers, with a surge of something fierce and overwhelming, when he had first brought her home, between after everything and before you, when she was tiny and warm and so curious. How he had worried over her, but how grateful he was to have her.

“She did,” he concedes. But he lets his smile turn teasing again. “Doesn’t mean she wasn’t a demon.”

“Does this,” you gesture to the cat, nuzzling her face into Bucky’s belly and purring, “look like a demon to you?”

“Yes,” he answers. “Look at her. I can’t believe I’m still alive. She’s drawing it out, the anticipation is killing me.” He curls his flesh arm around her little body, hauling her up so she can nestle her wet nose against the skin of his neck, grinning up at you, “Put me out of my misery already, Demon Cricket.”

“She’s about as scary as you, Buck.”

Breath hitches in his throat. He looks up at you, watching your face and that careful measure of fondness in your expression for a long moment, turning those words over in his head. Admiring the way the sun makes your skin glow gold. Slowly lifting fingers of cool metal, tracing the line of your cheek, staring as you grip them in your own, press a few lingering kisses to the knuckles, the palm of his hand.

“I love you.”

It is a quiet, tentative and breathless statement. A feeling that has been stirring in his mind since he first met you, since your warmth first touched his heart. A fierce kind of emotion he has felt for you for so long without naming, without breathing it into the air.

Your eyes are wide, and there’s something he can’t name in your expression now. But it gives way to a smile too tender for words. A small, private thing meant for the two of you alone.

“I love you, too, Buck.”

And this is what he dreamed of - what he longed for in the years of cold, and even before then.

His next exhale is shaky, but a grin comes with it anyway. Because he loves you, more than those words alone could ever explain, can feel it in his bones, and you love him, too.

Shifting on the couch, he keeps a hand on Cricket to keep her in place, hearing her chirp as he makes room for you. Tugs on your hand, pulls you down next to him.

“I guess decorating can wait for a little while,” you murmur, indulgent and so sweet as you curl into his side. Hook your arm over his belly, your cheek pressed to his shoulder.

Eyes trace over your face for long, peaceful minutes, his lips making a path from your hairline to your cheek to your nose to your mouth, kissing you slowly, sighing into your mouth when your hands thread through his hair. Keeping him close, drawing him in.

He pulls away to tuck you against his side, one last lingering press of his mouth to your hair before resting his nose in the strands. Breathing against you, letting every loose part of him settle.

Cricket’s fur is soft beneath his fingers, and you are so warm against his side, and there’s so much sunshine spilling into the room. Such an easy, mundane morning, made beautiful by the simplest of things.

“Baby?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

“Can we get hats to match with Cricket for Halloween?”

You chuckle into his neck, pull back to look at him. “Sure, honey.” Fingers trace the line of his jaw, and your lips follow soon after, affectionate kisses pressed into his skin, filling him with light and love.

Notes:

Title and inspiration for this one from girl in red’s gorgeous song, “we fell in love in october” because it made my gay little heart feel something.

A special thanks to @panicfob for posting about the handwriting method and how helpful it is during a writing slump, it was how I got the first draft of this one done. You’re lovely, darling, and thank you for sharing your tips with us.

Cricket the Demon Cat is mildly based on my own cat, Maddie, because she is very chirpy, lovey and cuddly, and she also once tore through the plastic on a brand new loaf of bread and ate half of it when she was a kitten. I love her.

More love to all of you, and my amazing friends, for all the support. This year has been hard. Just trying to hope for better in these last few months, and the upcoming decade. I hope your days are filled with so much light, darlings.

MAIN TAG LIST:

@solarbarnes II @akamaiden II @my-meant-to-find-blog II @marvelous-avengers II @jack4xx II @buckyforbreakfast II @theglowstickofdestiny II @bucky-at-bedtime II @notimetoblog II @deceivedeer II @teawithbucky II @veronicalei II @part-time-patronus II @thunderous-flower II @thelostverse II @delicatecapnerd II @pizzarollpatrol II @laurfangirl424 II @stevieboyharrington II @yknott81 II @bucky-smiles II @buckysb-tch II @a-watson-in-search-of-a-sherlock II @heartssick II @spxder-bxck II @bottled-starr II @buckybarneshairpullingkink II @yenneffersstuff II @fangirlfictionmain II @creideamhgradochas II @queenofstarliqht II @dessinemoiunehistoire II @ellaxiv II @mercurie-evans II @princess-evans-addict II @desibarnes II @miss-nxvxcaine II @youclickedthislink II @fcntasia

#AYAOTDchallenge #Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fluff #bucky fanfiction #bucky imagine #bucky fluff #reader insert #reader #fluff #oneshot #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #My writing

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misterewrites · 4 years

Text

Threads of Fate, Jason Todd x reader: Challenge

Hiya everyone! E here and basically I am going to keep this short because I’ve been having on and off internet connection for the last 3 weeks. It’s not too bad but it does randomly cut out so I’m kinda speeding through this.

Umm my good friend @hains-mae whom I’ve accidentally gotten addicted to DC movies *Gotham by gaslight cough cough* Has been on a bit of a batman bender and challenge me to write something for her and since I owe her birthday gifts, why not? Specifically Someone x reader drabbles which I’ve always wanted to do anyway so here we are! She chose Jason Todd.

This a soulmate au kinda. The reader (that’s you!) and Jason are of the same age though he is currently the Red Hood.

I hope you all have an amazing week. I will be trying to write my original story and post it sometime this week but we’ll see what happens. Stay safe, take care of yourself, for the love of all that is holy stay inside! wear masks! PLEASE!

E out, byeeeeeee!

He was coming tonight.

Probably only a few minutes away knowing him.

I could feel it in my bones, the anticipation gnawing at me uneasily, preventing any chance of getting a good night’s rest.

Okay, so I’m lying. This is Gotham after all. Nobody ever got a good night’s sleep in Gotham. Insomnia was par for the course for 90 percent of us.

I sigh heavily as the torrent downpour of the rain crashes against my windows relentlessly.

Threads of fate.

My superpower though it’s not as cool as than it sounds or useful. My mom coined the phase when I was a little kid and I kinda just went along it. Seems to much of a bother to change it now and frankly it’s not impressive when you got an alien lifeform flying around at the speed of sound living the next town over.

Still she swore I was special. I thought she was crazy but she’s mom.

What are you going to do but love her anyway?

There’s a soft groan as my dusty apartment settles against the harsh night air.

He’s here and he knows that I know despite his best attempts to remain stealthy. I mean to be fair he can’t hide from my eyes no matter how much he tries.

I take a sip of my tea and let the warmth fill my body, relaxing for the moment.

A thrum of thunder booms in my ears and a crack of lightning streaks across the sky, utterly blinding.

When my eyes readjust, there he is standing tall and menacingly like the drama queen he is.

Red Hood.

Yeah, that Red Hood in my apartment.

So many questions I bet. Same to be honest.

It started about a year ago when there was a nasty mugging near my apartment complex. I had been working at the time luckily but the news still caused more than a few of us to start carrying our keys between our knuckles and try to avoid eye contact with everyone.

He says he was cleaning up the streets. I know he was looking out for us, no matter how much he tries to deny it.

Jury’s still out with public opinion on Red Hood. Half the town wants him arrested and the other approves of his violent methods.

Everyone knew he was the second Robin, the wayward child of Batman at odds with his mentor.

I knew him as Jay.

I don’t think he meant to tell me. I don’t think he meant to stay long.

But he did and I let him in, out of morbid curiosity and no regard for my safety.

It was awkward at first, as typical of a normal citizen and a masked crime fighter in a room together but I guess he was lonely.

I mean I was lonely too so I can’t really blame him.

It was small things at first: Would you like some coffee? Local troublemakers, any dealers pushing on the street and where? Did you want to take off your jacket, it’s hot in here. Who was out of Arkham?

Our little back and forths.

Then it got a bit more personal: How was work? Did you kill anyone today? Anyone bother you on the street?

And before I knew it, he was checking up on me. Regularly. Once a month meetings became every other day.

Hence the whole standing in my apartment dramatically. He was probably waiting for the lightning.

I lazily gesture to the mug next to me, his favorite drink all nice and toasty for him.

He takes a seat, tension from his shoulders easing out of his body.

He doesn’t take off the mask of course. I think he regretted it after the first time.

But there was no taking back what I saw: A handsome face with a streak of white in his messy black hair and piercing blue eyes, lost and seeking.

The face of Jason Todd.

I cough loudly trying to get that image out of my head.

Didn’t work.

“So” I began, fiddling with my mug nervously “You okay? You were a little louder than usual. Practically shouting in my ear with that landing.”

He gives a playful chuckle filtered through the mask “You should’ve been asleep like you promised.”

I wave him off with a hand “I said I’d try, not do. Besides, if I was, I’d never see you”

“I was personally trained by Batman himself. You wouldn’t be able to see me if you tried.”

“Yet” I flush, taking a sip of my coffee for the dramatic tension “I see you all the same.”

He laughed even louder.

“I guess I like bugging you” he admitted “Need to practice my barbs.”

“Your barbs as sharp as a butter knife.” I shot back playfully.

“At least I can cook without burning down the place.”

I say nothing, ears bright pink as I drink deeply from my mug. I can practically hear his grin through that mask.

Jason Todd.

I didn’t grow up in Gotham but the first thing you learn is to keep track of the Wayne’s.

Bruce Wayne was the only real light in this godforsaken shithole. He likes to get drunk and was an idiot and never meet a healthy coping mechanism in his whole life but he’s our drunken idiotic mess and his biggest scandal was usually him accidentally setting a fire in his kitchen.

Of course Jason Todd was Bruce’s ward and he’s also Red Hood which means that’s as far as I’m willing to deduce.

Sometimes, it’s better to play dumb. Safer too.

We were the same age, Jason and I, yet he had gone through so much in such a short time.

I think that’s why he’s here. I think that’s why he’s lonely.

He was stubborn. He stuck to his guns and beliefs even when they cost him the only family’s he’s ever known.

He still loved them and I think they love him but that belief parts them.

I can’t exactly blame him for having a different set of standards: He grew up on the streets. He knew crime firsthand. Of course he knows how terrible it is.

“….Thank you….”

I snap out of my stupor.

“Wha?” I reply smartly.

He doesn’t move but I can feel his nervousness, his anxiety.

“Thank you” he whispers softly “For….this.”

“Thank you too.” I answer gently “This….this is nice.”

“Just a little”

I narrow my eyes” You’re smirking, aren’t you?”

The smooth features of his mask might be indifferent but the light heaving of shoulders? HE’S LAUGHING AT ME!

“You are such a jerk!” I playfully smack his arm.

He burst out with unrestrained laugh.

“That’s it” I cry, rising to my feet “I’mma kick your ass.”

His head tilts quizzically “Can you even lift anything?”

My hand reaches for a pillow “No mercy!”

“Oh no, I’m shaking in my boots.”

“You will be” I mutter darkly, lunging at him without warning.

Threads of Fate. The chord that ties two people together in destiny.

I see them everywhere. Ever since I was little. Red lines pulling at each other, scattered in all directions across endless miles. Soulmates searching for each other, hoping to close the distance one day.

And as my hand grips the pillow tightly, the bright red thread wrapped around my wrist since birth stretches only a few feet, its end wound tightly around his wrist as I chase him through my home.

My soulmate, my destiny who I am currently trying to murder with a pillow.

Life has a sense of humor. I’m still trying to figure out if I like it or not.

#DC #My stuff #Jason Todd #Reader #Jason x reader

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mashounen2003 · 4 years

Video

youtube

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

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Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

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Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

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We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

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Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

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Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

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Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

--------------------------------------------------

I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

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Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

#conspirative theories #Analysis

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ailinaline · 4 years

Text

The Untamed: unsorted

Well... I am nothing, if not eccentric, after all. Why not publish a huge post all of a sudden? :)

The Untamed (СQL) is an abyss, and I am still falling, grasping at some scattered thoughts... that tend to arrange themselves in equally chaotic blocks of thoughts, which, in turn, multiply questions successfully.

Spoilers ahead, I guess...

The timeline of СQL is more than a little blurry, and when I try to calculate, how old Wei Ying was, when he died, I come up with the sorrowful conclusion he couldn’t be more that 21, probably younger. Which, in turn, means that the post-time-skip Sizhui is, actually, of the same age or even older than Wei Ying and Lan Wangji were, when they did a lot of things I honestly can’t imagine the new generation pulling off, even physically/magically, let alone psychologically (although I wouldn’t go as far as to call young LWJ and WWX mature - they clearly were not, and that was a huge part of the tragedy foundation, in my opinion). The young disciples are referred to as ‘children’, and they truly are. Compared to 16-17 year old LWJ and WWX, they are very, very young, inexperienced and not especially capable – while still being quite skilled and smart. And it’s both fabulous and painful to watch. Fabulous because it’s a very vivid and authentic demonstration of how exceptionally gifted LWJ and WWX are (and were); and painful because, unfortunately, not all of their greatness comes just from inborn talents.

II.

I am easily charmed by languages, but СQL, being the third Chinese dorama I have ever watched, is still the first one to so profusely tempt me to learn Chinese – in order to translate the songs and to understand the subtleties of the dialogues.

III.

I can’t get rid of the impression that the concept of rules/order breaking and punishment/atonement is fundamental for СQL (and its world). As far as I am aware, the Chinese culture does tend to be quite severe in this regard, but right now I am considering the symbolic layer of the process rather than the harm/good/efficiency of any particular method. And I wonder, whether I am imagining things or Wangji’s history of ‘transgressions’ and punishments within his sect is really openly symbolic and not merely coincidental.

My interpretation certainly lacks some special cultural insight because I can’t help being of European origin, so I read all the codes as a European would, first, and only then make an attempt to switch lenses and decipher the message, taking into account my scarce knowledge of the Chinese (and Asian) culture.

And yet...

The first time (drinking) Wangji is not only completely innocent, but also a ‘victim’ of Wei Ying’s careless (and questionable) mischief. They share the punishment (and we encounter the number 300, by the way), but Wangji is obviously (and rather fiercely) on his own here, and evidently by choice, despite Wei Ying’s sincere efforts first to exclude and then to include him. Wangji, just as obviously, truly believes he deserves the punishment – not for drinking as such, I think, but for lowering his guard and being not attentive enough: internally, he substitutes one transgression with another, and the equation works for him (actually, it might be unfair, but quite fortunate for their future relationship that Wangji blames himself or, at least, blames himself more than Wei Ying). To put it in a nutshell, for Wangji, the system and order are intact and non-contradictory: he is understandably upset, even angry, but hardly shaken, and simply intends to do better than that in the future, so to say. It’s hard to speculate, if this is Wangji’s most unpleasant experience so far or not, but in any case, the psychological pressure is minimal and reproach is rather mild (and I am really surprised, Lan Xichen didn’t find all that story highly suspicious… or was it his indirect method of showing WWX that he hadn’t been told on?..)

The copying of the rules happens after a considerable amount of… experience, if not time. And the transgression is not specified, but hinted at very heavily. I also wonder, if Lan Qiren realized an additional message he conveyed through his choice as well as through his general treatment of his nephew during that meeting: a strict reminder that, a war hero or not, LWJ is still too young to have an opinion. Wangji accepts the book of rules reverently, accepts the punishment… the word, that springs to mind is ‘habitually’: he doesn’t disregard it, per se, he doesn’t devalue the fact his uncle is not happy with him, he still wants to do better, but… there are things of greater importance to him now, and LWJ is so focused on them that he makes the request about the restricted books at the least suitable moment, really. (And I believe this dismissal does cut him rather deep.) The system still works, but the seed of the conflict is already planted.

The third episode seems pivotal in itself: we actually don’t know, what the punishment for letting WWX and the Wens go was, except for having to kneel, while being lectured, but this time this is a result of a conscious choice to do something that definitely wouldn’t be approved. And I can’t remember a single second of the screen-time, when Wangji would look repentant: conflicted, upset, slapped (when Lan Qiren mentions his mother), stressed (his uncle uses some pretty cruel techniques that border on manipulation, to my mind), but not sorry at all – not for letting the fugitives go, at least. And comparing the shades of Wangji’s silence here and on the previous occasion, this one seems somehow more determined. And closed-off. And there is no intention to do better, in regard to this transgression: the alternative he is being pushed to is unacceptable.

Kneeling again, for the whole day, in the cold, lifting a… what is it, as a matter of fact? It does look like a slightly smaller version of ‘the discipline whip’ we’ll see later, and if it is really so, then it’s beyond prophetic symbolic – it looks more like a promise on Lan Qiren’s part. :/ Anyway, my impression is that, for the first time in the series, LWJ is actively absent from the scene of his own punishment: he doesn’t reflect on it (I think he expected something like that), he also doesn’t mentally substitute one transgression with another to restore the balance (his inability to help Wei Ying is not something to atone for by kneeling). He simply endures. And thinks. And feels. Just not what he is expected and obliged to be thinking and feeling at the moment. And through all of this, Wangji is utterly, hopelessly and stoically alone and unaccepted. His concerns have been dismissed and care rejected by Wei Ying. His actions and decisions have been castigated by a significant authority figure (whom he loves and respects). If I am not mistaken, in the special edition Wangji’s loss-and-loneliness are somewhat artificially heightened through the pseudo-contrast because his moments are mixed with the moments of Wei Ying’s drinking with his new family, who values and appreciates him. (In reality their situations are just the same: they are both in anguish and feel helpless to change things they wish to change.) And, a cherry on top: we don’t know, what has been said initially, and by whom, however, we see that Wangji is released not by his uncle, but by some adept (or disciple). It might be a normal procedure, but it completes the picture of being unequivocally separated from any supportive figure and hints at a lack of closure, in a way, as there was no forgivenes-and-reconnection after the punishment.

I am struggling to verbalize, why exactly, but to me, this scene is, in a sense, more bitter than the next one, despite the circumstances.

During the next punishment Wangji is as actively present as he was absent during the previous one. And if then he was frozen in sadness, now he is all fire (fueled by grief, and guilt, and fury, and despair, yes, but fire, nonetheless). And the system and order get burned down: what Wangji re-builds during his seclusion is his very own set of rules. They do coincide with the Gusu Lan set, but not fully. And this is a point of no return because, filtered through Wangji’s own system of values, now they are more than just the elders’ lessons learned and tested – they are the only valid reference point for recognizing transgressions and ‘living with no regrets’.

(On another level, I am more than a little puzzled by several details here:

1) linguistics: do they really call this thing a discipline ‘whip’ in Chinese?

2) cultural message: as literally nothing could get in the way of filming a beating with an actual whip, the type of instrument has to make some sense, doesn’t it? (For now, I can’t think of any reason to choose this tool, though. Except the number 300 as 300 lashes are hardly survivable, even with a golden core.)

3) application: I can understand, why Wangji has his shirt on (although this is a more dangerous and torturous option: such a thin layer is no protection at all, but it will be hell to clean the wounds afterwards), but why is his hair down his back like that?..

4) consequences: the scarring looks rather odd, considering. (And again: it was definitely not a problem to paint whatever they had to, so – why?)

The only (and vague) explanation I can come up with is that the type and form of the tool is not important at all: it’s the intent and sentence that count, so the wounds and pain would be the same, even if the instrument looked like a rod or a cane. (Still doesn’t explain the hair, though.) And as for the scars, perhaps, not all of them have to stay forever, especially if the cultivator is very strong.

Well, no: unsatisfactory...)

IV.

I wonder... My first impression after watching the scene, where Lan Wangji cuts off Jin Guangyao’s arm, was that he was actually saving him from Baxia, separating Guangyao from the mark on his hand. And the only reason, why the spirit of the sword attacks Jin Ling next, are the drops of the bad/damned blood on the boy’s shoulder. But after the special edition I am not so sure.

Lacunae and plotholes (or what I subjectively perceive as such) are extremely challenging and thought-provoking in this series. Right now, I wonder about the Wens: Wen Qing clearly stated she had asked one of the clansmen to look after WWX, so not all of them were going to surrender. Could it be that they were attacked at the Burial Mounds, when seeing the siblings off, and taken away by force?

...Enough. For now.

#the untamed #lan wangji #wei wuxian #suddenly #questions and more questions #just thinking

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olliya · 5 years

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How popular is MadaSaku in context of other Madara’s and Sakura’s ships? Part 1

@madasakuweek

For MadaSaku Weekend, in addition to fics, I wanted to make something different, something that always interested me. Wait for it, wait for it… statistics!! Ok, I know that this post has just lost 90% of readers this very second. Lol.

I’m not a popular author, but even I tend to get messages “why do you write madasaku, no one wants to read it anyway”. Organizing this event was a huge effort from the side of @purple-possibilities (thank you for that!!) and spurred me to look into the question just how popular MadaSaku really is?

I will break down this analysis into 3 parts: AO3 (coming today), ffnet, and an attempt on counting the real number of MadaSaku works (not so trivial).

I decided to write it in a really scientific (i.e. stiff, boring and indigestible for most) style in order to describe all my steps as accurately as possible. Every method of analysis has its limitations, biases and certain number of false positives and negatives that it generates. But I aim to describe everything precisely and point out all the weak points. This analysis was done as objectively as possible, and if there are any inaccuracies, I am more than happy to correct them.

With this preamble, let’s dive in!

Let’s start with AO3, because it is supposed to be easier thanks to the tagging system. The key word is, unfortunately, “supposed to”, because since I cannot write data-scraping scripts, I had to approach the problem manually.

The section below contains a detailed description of methods used. If you’re not interested in technical details, skip to Results.

Methods

After choosing a character, a menu appears on the righthand side of the page that allows the user to choose ratings, categories, etc. The same menu allows to see which relationships appear most frequently in the context of the chosen character (example shown in Figure 1.)

Attention: This menu doesn’t provide with neither Top Ten most popular ship for a given character nor with actual number of any of the ships listed, because:

a) Many ships listed in the menu involve platonic pairings (“&” relationships according to AO3 nomenclature) and while one can argue whether those are ships or not, the aim of this analysis was to find the prevalence of romantic ships.

b) Many ships listed involve characters different than the character of interest. For example: Senju Hashirama/Uzumaki Mito is the third most popular pairing written in the fics that contain Uchiha Madara as a character.

c) Not every author tags character in question when tagging him/her as part of a ship. For example: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara features in the above menu with 1173 fics (at the moment of writing this text). When the ship “Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara” is chosen through clicking into the tag, AO3 provides us with 1250 fic. I.e. in case of 77 MadaTobi fics, Uchiha Madara was not tagged as a character. Therefore, to obtain the real numbers of fics for any given pairing, one has to always click directly into ship tag.

The ships listed in the righthand menu can nevertheless provide orientation and hints about which ships should be inspected manually in order to get true number of fics for a given ship.

In case of Uchiha Madara the menu features only three romantic ships involving Madara, namely:

Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara

Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara

Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Madara

How to find out more ships featuring Madara?

I tried two approaches:

Method 1

I excluded one relationship from the list of ten most popular and iterated the search excluding the first most popular relationship only, the second most popular relationship only, and so on, together 10 searches.

During every search I noted the “new” romantic relationships involving Madara that popped up in the list.

In the second step, I excluded 2 most popular relationships simultaneously and again, searched all possible combinations, together 45 searches because it is combination without repetitions:

Again, during every search I noted the “new” romantic relationships involving Madara that popped up in the list.

When excluding 3 relationships I would need to perform 120 searches to cover all combinations. Therefore, I limited myself with searches: excluding 1st, 2nd and 3rd ship; excluding 1st, 2nd and 4th ship; excluding 1st, 2nd and 5th ship; etc.

All things taken together, this method proved to be very laborious, and didn’t bring expected results, i.e. “new” romantic relationships were showing up very rarely in relation to the workload.

Therefore, a different method was employed:

Method 2

I excluded increasing number of ships from the list of ten most popular relationships. I.e. I excluded 1st most popular ship and checked for appearance of “new” ships. Then I excluded first two most popular relationships (1st and 2nd) and checked for “new” ships, then excluded 1st, 2nd and 3rd most popular ships etc…

This method proved to be both efficient (i.e. new ships appear relatively quickly in respect to the workload) and much less error-prone.

This was therefore the method of choice for this analysis.

Figure 2. illustrates an example where the most popular ship (Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara) was excluded (Figure 2.a.) and a new ship (Uchiha Izuna/Uchiha Madara) appeared during the search. (Figure 2.b.)

Table 1 summarizes the romantic ships of Uchiha Madara found using Method 2. Data was collected on 22.10.2019. 40 most popular relationships written in context of Uchiha Madara were excluded sequentially, and new ships were noted in order of their appearance. The searches that didn’t brought any new romantic ship involving Uchiha Madara were omitted from Table 1. (for example: excluding 1st and 2nd most popular relationships didn’t bring any new romantic ship for Madara, therefore this search was not listed in the Table 1.).

Disclaimer: the order of appearance in Table 1. doesn’t necessarily reflect the ship’s popularity. Because of the fact that the list is composed using ‘exclude’ filter, the order of appearance is heavily influenced by which pairings are written together with which other pairing (as AO3 allows tagging multiple ships in one fic).

The list of ships in Table 1. was used to obtain final, numerical results for popularity of the ships of Uchiha Madara (see: Results).

Additionally, I manually checked popularity of several other Madara’s ships, and two of them (with Pein and with Kakuzu) ended up scoring high enough to be included in final results.

Same approach was used to find most popular ships of Haruno Sakura.

Sakura’s righthand menu lists 5 romantic ship involving Sakura herself, namely:

Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke

Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi

Haruno Sakura/Uzumaki Naruto

Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino

Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Itachi

To find further ships for Haruno Sakura I employed Method 2 as described above. Table 2 summarizes the results.

Additionally, other ships of Sakura where manually examined, and ships with Senju Tobirama and Uchiha Obito scored high enough to be included in final results.

Limitations of the used method

The employed method of searching for popular ship has its limitations. Due to the mechanism of finding the ships to check for popularity (usage of ‘exclude filter’) it cannot be excluded that certain ships have been overlooked. Four such cases were actually detected through manual checks: Method 2 failed to show Madara/Pein and Madara/Kakuzu as ships qualified for checking for actual fic number, but when those ships were checked, their respective fic number was high enough to earn them 14th and 17th places among Madara’s most popular ships (see: Results). Haruno Sakura/Senju Tobirama and Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Obito scored high enough to be Sakura’s 20th and 21st most popular ship even though neither was detected via Method 2. This is entirely possible that certain other ships remained ‘undetected’ and therefore not included in the final results, but the risk of non-detection concerns mostly the less-prominent ships.

Due to AO3 tagging system, if a ship is tagged as “background” or “past” it will also be detected, and not differentiated from proper shipping fics. Possibility of tagging multiple ships in one fic causes collections of multishipping fics to be counted multiple times (which skews the numbers when percentages are concerned - see Figures 5 and 6). From this perspective, the relatively meager tagging system of fanfiction.net brings cleaner results.

Results

Numerical values of fic numbers for every given ship were collected on 26.12.2019.

Romantic ships of Uchiha Madara are shown in Figure 3.

Romantic ships of Haruno Sakura are shown in Figure 4.

Discussion

Sakura is the third most popular Madara’s ship partner, and his most popular F/M ship, however it lags far behind the more popular “Founders Cluster” ships. Sakura is by far most popular F/M ship of Madara, next being OFC with 54 fic and Mito with 34 fics.

Madara’s fics are very focused on ships with few partners (Tobirama, Hashirama and Sakura), to the extend that various “exotic” ships rank high enough to appear in this breakdown (OC with 101 fics, OFC with 54, Reader with 41 and Harry Potter (LOL) with 10 fics).

Madara is Sakura’s eighth most popular ship partner (or seventh if you don’t count the polyship Sakura/Sasuke/Naruto as both Sasuke and Naruto feature already on the list as separate ship partners). One has to take into account that Madara appeared on-panel in February 2008 (i.e. almost 9 years after Naruto started publishing) and in person in the story in October 2011 (12 years after start of publishing). Nevertheless, MadaSaku accumulated more fics than many characters with much longer on-panel time, and that even though Madara is considered villain of the story.

When one takes under consideration the total number of Uchiha Madara fics (3913 at the point of writing this text) and Haruno Sakura (13397) it turns that MadaSaku fics form 5,3% of all Madara’s fics and 1,6% of all Sakura’s fics (Figures 5. and 6.).

It is surprising that Sakura, being famously (and infamously) shippable character, has as much as almost 40% of fics where she is not part of a romantic pair. Such high percentage of “other fics” may also mean that she is part of great number of very rare ships that were not investigated in this analysis (the analysis was stopped after excluding 40 most popular ships).

Outlook

Employing a direct data-scraping script would eliminate risks of non-detecting of certain ships. Such script would potentially also allow to examine ship’s popularity development over time.

Since this analysis was done before MadaSaku Weekend, it will be interesting to re-examine the data some time after the event to see if our participation influenced the popularity of the ship.

OK, so who managed to the end??? No one? So I thought, lol

#madasaku #multisaku #fandom statistics #madasakuweekend2019 #naruto stats

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fourangers · 4 years

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Fate and Choices (ch.03)

Summary: When Naruto discovered who was going to be his soulmate, he jumped straight at this opportunity, looking forward to spending the rest of his life with his better half. Sasuke well…he was less eager in this regard though. NaruSasu. Soulmates tattoos. M-rated.

Content: AU!Office, Romance, Comedy, Drama, it’ll get a little too philosophical in some parts talking about free will Vs fate, basically Sasuke is a cynic ass and Naruto is an idealistic moron (great amirite), Anal Sex, tattoos soulmates

Chapter 02 here

AO3 link

--.--

Itachi knocked on Sasuke’s door to catch his attention, muttering. “We have the first polyamorous client that succeeded finding her soulmates using Shinrei. Maybe we should post it on our Instagram.”

“Oh? How many?”

“Four.”

Sasuke blinked. “Four? That’s quite unusual. What’s the biggest number recorded in history?”

“Seven, if I’m not mistaken. But you’re right, at least in recent history the biggest demographic is monogamous relationships first, and then polygamy with three people.”

“I guess it is pretty complicated having to deal with that many people in your plate that even the soulmate system limits its number.” Sasuke wondered out loud.

“Maybe you’re right, but I also have a couple of friends happily married with their soulmates where they both enjoy an open relationship. Another proof that the system that you claim to despise so much, knows how to match people with similar interests together.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’m not going to waste my time to convince you otherwise.”

“Talking about soulmates…contact Naruto-kun so he can schedule this post ok. We’ve been gaining new potential clients every day so I don’t want to lose the momentum.”

Sighing, Sasuke obeyed his older brother, also ignoring how his heart skipped a beat when Naruto answered his call.

“Aren’t you too early for a booty call, Sasuke-chan?”

“Moron, it’s nothing like that. It’s about work.”

“Mmm.” There was a long pause then Naruto’s voice was a little rough from yawning. “Lemme get some coffee first. Can I call you in the next five minutes?”

“Five minutes, nothing more.”

“Yeah yeah.”

Seven minutes and thirty seconds later, Naruto returned his call, his voice chirpier. “Alright, now I’m ready for the booty call.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Usuratonkachi…”

“Oh hey, it’s been years since you used this nickname!” Naruto’s boisterous laugh made his mood lighter, and Sasuke did not notice a smile curling on his own lips. “Are we going back to pet names? What should I call you then, darling? Honey? My smooching buddy?”

“I’m hanging up.”

“No, no! I’ll behave, I prooomise.” Naruto singsonged on the other side of his phone. “So, what do you want to talk about?”

Sipping his coffee, Sasuke said. “One of our clients managed to find her partners using Shinrei and we’re going to post about our first successful polyamorous example.”

“Really? Congrats to them! Imagine, being able to have more than one option while I’m here stuck with an uptight, inconsiderate bastard.”

“Your observation while accurate is wholly unnecessary.”

Naruto chuckled. “At least you admitted that you’re a bastard.”

“No point denying it.” Grunting, Sasuke considered asking the next set of questions but shook his head. “Anyways, I need this post as soon as you can. Do you need any help with it?”

“Yeah, for now we’re going to post about this milestone but in the future maybe it’s better to ask if they want to talk about this experience and all…you know, to keep feeding the account. You have a contract for them to sign about allowing us to publish their story?”

“We do, but your company is more experienced, I’d prefer if you can handle it.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to Neji ‘bout it. I’ll send you the layout and the script and if everything goes well we’ll be able to post it in the next three days.”

“You can’t for tonight?” Sasuke enquired, slightly annoyed.

“Hah. Ah, that’s the biggest issue about clients, they really think that we take care of only you, and no one else. I have five other accounts aside yours, bastard, my team is crammed with other stuff to do and you just asked out of the blue, we’re gonna reorganize to fit with this request.”

“Hn.”

“And I’m not giving you special treatment just ‘cuz you’re my soulmate.”

Sasuke snorted. “Good, because I don’t want any. I’ll talk with my older brother about it, but I’d appreciate it if you guys can manage to deliver sooner. By the way…” He scrolled down his calendar and muttered. “Are you available tomorrow afternoon for a meeting? I’m going to talk with a potential investor but he’s an older generation that won’t understand much about social media, so if you could help out…”

“Tomorrow afternoon? Hm, sure, I think I can help you out. I’ll just talk to Neji ‘bout it first and I’ll give the confirmation later.” There was a noise of flapping of pages, then Naruto paused and exclaimed. “Hey, maybe we can have lunch together before we go to this meeting! How about that? Remember all the good ol’ times, catching up and so on.”

“Hm…if you manage to send me the polyamorous post today, I’ll consider it.”

“Whoa, you can’t dangle the possibility of a date right on my face just so you can bribe me to do your things!” Naruto said incredulously, even if he laughed afterwards.

“I’ll strongly consider it.”

Naruto was still laughing, Sasuke could picture him shaking his head too. “Nah, I really can’t. I’m not the only one involved ya know, so I can’t force my colleagues to drop everything just so I can have some special lunch with you. Anyways, Neji’s here, gotta talk to him. See you soon!”

“Hn.” Turning the phone off, Sasuke felt someone appearing close to him, so he raised his head, narrowing his eyes from Itachi’s knowing smile. “What?” He barked.

“Nothing, nothing at all…you look pretty happy, otouto-kun.” Itachi’s beam widened despite his younger brother’s growing suspicion. “You talked with Naruto-kun?”

“Yes, he said that he’ll only be able to send that post you talked about in the next three days.”

“Oh. While I appreciate you informing me, that wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for.”

“I know what you are expecting but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction, so beat it, nii-san.” Sasuke growled, focusing back on his laptop.

Itachi chuckled, before sobering up. “Tomorrow you’re going to talk with Takashi-sama right? She’s the chairman of Essity’s branch in Japan, so I really hope she’ll invest in us. It’ll bring us closer to our first goal.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it. Leave it to me.”

⏤.⏤

The opulent decoration in the rich marbled walls intimidated him at first, but it didn’t deter him from fulfilling this mission. Steeling his nerves, Sasuke took a deep inhale and glanced to the side, Naruto was rechecking the speech he’d give alongside the presentation. The comforting knowledge that he had Naruto by his side calmed him somehow.

The blond man was also a very pleasant addition during the trip, with his playful banter peppered in between adjustments and touch ups. It’s been so long since Sasuke had felt so relaxed around anyone, almost as if all the years without Naruto never happened in the first place. And even if he’s adjusting to seeing the teenager Naruto to now a professional adult one, at least their interaction didn’t change one bit.

Takashi was a middle-aged businesswoman that accumulated many exploits due to shrewd decisions and flexible strategies using Western offensive attacks, mixed with Japanese well-rounded management. She must have heard many starry eyed, inexperienced men trying to sell their product in the past, so in her point of view, Sasuke must be just the umpteenth one. It was rattling the look of apathy she gave while he summarized.

“Based on our clan’s background, my brother and I decided to create a new technology to help people find their respective soulmates, and we named this technology Shinrei. We first catalogued all the types of tattoos, if it’s written words, or animals, or symbols, all based with the long list of most tattoos that existed in history. Then, once we identify the type of tattoo the client has, the database will search using all social media that match with the tattoo, and then we’ll personally select and filter till we find his or her soulmate, or soulmates. Actually, we recently found a case with four people being their soulmates using Shinrei.”

“Your competitors all claim that they have similar technology, how is yours any different?” Takashi countered in a bored tone.

“We choose quality over quantity, limiting the numbers of clients we’ll help so we’ll ensure 100% successful cases. Also…” Sasuke thinned his lips, taking a deep breath. “Our clan has a long history in being able to find soulmates using our unique abilities.”

“What? Are you talking about mystical powers? This doesn’t look good on paper, how are you going to convince people to trust your technology if you don’t have scientific proof that your method works?”

Blue eyes peered Sasuke’s distressed expression, so Naruto stepped in. “Well…the soulmate system by itself is also shrouded in mystery right? All that we know is part of humanity’s nature, if it’s due to some higher power or anything else, it just exists. Scientists can’t explain how it works, only that they have successful rates in improving people’s lives. So I think that using some inexplicable abilities makes Shinrei unique.”

The old woman contemplated for a while, crossing her arms.

“Also, the Uchiha clan must have a long list of successful examples, even before the advance of technology, we can show for you Takashi-sama as proof to trust Shinrei’s technology. I’m sure that Sasuke can look for some documents stored in their headquarters, right?”

“Of course, I’ll make sure I’ll inspect thoroughly if necessary if it pleases you Takashi-sama.” Sasuke agreed.

Takashi stared and focused her eyes on the blond man. “You called Uchiha-san by his name, are you two close friends or…?”

Before Sasuke could react, Naruto grabbed his left hand to show their palms, broadening his grin.

“We’re soulmates!”

This piqued her attention, she even tilted her body closer to study their matching tattoos. “Oh, congratulations! You used Shinrei’s technology to track your soulmate?”

Sasuke opened his mouth but Naruto intervened. “Oh no, back then we were just 18. But Sasuke used Uchiha’s clairvoyant abilities to find me, so here I am.”

“Well, at least then I have a successful example right before my eyes.” She nodded, picked her name card and scribbled some numbers on it. “Here’s my personal cellphone number, I look forward to your older brother to contact me so we can continue our conversation. Send me all the statistics as soon as you can, and also send me this presentation you just gave so I can properly study later.” She stood up, and shook hands with both of them. “We’ll talk soon, I hope.”

They both bowed respectfully, thanking for her time as they exited the building, breathing a sigh of relief at the same time.

“Thanks for the save.” Sasuke muttered, Naruto grinned back. “I’m not entirely comfortable that you lied about how we realized we’re soulmates though.” He added.

The blond man rolled his eyes, shrugging. “The only people that know about our history are our close friends, there’s no harm lying a little. Plus, we were fooling around for so long that anyone would also consider that you might be the one who knew that we’re soulmates too.”

“Right…”

It felt weird that they talked about their entanglement in the past tense, like Naruto was some sort of ex that was trying to get back to him. Except that Naruto was his soulmate, so it complicated this situation even further.

Sasuke cleared his throat. “Anyways, since we’re already in the same city of the Uchiha’s shrine and I’m going to take a quick detour so I can get the documents Takashi-sama asked. You can go back to Tokyo if you’d like.”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t mind waiting a little, the trip back to Tokyo is 1 hour and a half long, man. It’s really boring going by myself so if you’re around at least you can provide some entertainment and let me tease you all the way through.”

“Do I look like I’m some kind of toy to you?” When Naruto curled a mischievous grin, Sasuke harrumphed unimpressed. “Whatever, I’m not going to rush for you, usuratonkachi. I might take the whole afternoon, so if you wait for too long it’s going to be your loss.”

⏤.⏤

No matter how many times he went, being in the Uchiha shrine always made him uneasy. He could practically feel the millenia age weighing down on his shoulders. While he was using his own hand to fan his face, Naruto excused himself for a second to buy some beverage in a nearby kiosk.

“Sasuke, hey Sasuke!”

Raising an eyebrow, Sasuke obeyed this call and approached the ditsy blond. Naruto gesticulated in excitement, next to two elderly women that appeared to be the owners of the shop.

“Those two nice ladies, Yachi-san and Kiyoko-san are married for over 50 years! Can you imagine⏤being in such a happy relationship with your soulmate for so long⏤”

Sasuke huffed, but responded politely. “Congratulations to you both for such a long and happy matrimony. Well Naruto, unfortunately the Uchiha shrine doesn’t allow strangers, even though I talked to my mother to try authorizing your entrance.”

Naruto waved his hand, untroubled. “Eh, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. I can use this opportunity to have a nice chat with those two young and jovial ladies.” He beamed and the women giggled in return. “Is that ok for you though?”

“…sure, why not?”

“Uh, it’s just that, I don’t know. You looked kinda uncomfortable somehow.” He rubbed the back of his blond head.

At this admission, Sasuke could feel his shoulders relax somehow. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it. But thanks for getting worried over me.”

Naruto snorted, and puffed his chest. “Well, of course! After all, I’m your soulm⏤”

“See you later.” Sasuke turned around and ignored the squawk of indignation.

As expected, the Uchiha clan contained a long array of documents and ancient scrolls neatly put in the huge archive. There was no point collecting all information since day one, so Sasuke concentrated getting most information from the latest decade, and photographed some old scrolls in case he needed it to impress future sponsors. He took for about half an hour or more, patting the dust away from his clothes as he went to retrieve Naruto.

However, as he was approaching the blond man, he noticed the frantic and desperate look while he chattered with the old ladies. Naruto noticed him, giving a quick bow to them and sprinted towards him.

Quirking an eyebrow, Sasuke mumbled. “You look pale. Is everything alright?”

“Uh, yeah! Sure! Everythin’ ‘s alright, they were just telling me some sad story. But we gotta go right?”

Sasuke observed in silence, but didn’t ask anything further. On the way back to Tokyo, Naruto managed to find his usual lively mood, though sometimes he still appeared to be rattled with whatever news the ladies had delivered.

⏤.⏤

Several weeks have passed without a hitch, as Sasuke and Itachi managed to accumulate more capital for further investment in developing Shinrei. So far with Naruto’s strategies, they have been the talk between youtube influencers, Itachi even gave some interviews to further explain their product.

Sasuke figured it was time for him to look for some international sponsors, at least those in the neighboring countries. After contacting and rescheduling, he called Naruto.

“Naruto, I’ll not be able to attend our meeting tomorrow. Can we change to Friday?”

“Yeah sure, no problem. Why? Is everything going alright for you?”

“Hm, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. I have to go to Beijing to show to some potential sponsors.”

“Oh? You know how to speak Chinese?” Naruto perked up, curious.

“No, we’re going to talk in English.”

“Hey, if it’s English I can help you out! You want me to go with you on this trip?” Naruto exclaimed.

Pausing in mild surprise, Sasuke said. “You can? It’s not too much trouble for you?”

“Nah. I think. Neji said that you guys are now giving a percentage of your profit to our company right? So he’s pretty onboard with anything that will help Shinrei. I think I can get some plane tickets for a good discount, we can meet at the airport.”

It was becoming increasingly disconcerting how he was getting used to having Naruto by his side, giving presentations, sharing meetings, to the point that he was looking forward to seeing the familiar grin and brilliant pair of blue eyes. Sasuke sighed.

Stop. This is nothing. Those emotions are fabricated, some lingering primitive vestiges that he’s forced to face from time to time.

And yet, he appreciated knowing that Naruto would aid him, swift response to defend their position whenever they were in a dispute with a potential sponsor. After four meetings or so, they finished their meal and took a cab to their hotel, laying tiredly on the seat.

Sasuke was first to give his name to the hotel receptionist, mirroring Naruto’s yawn as the blond man slugged over the reception desk.

“Excuse me, Mr. Sasuke Uchiha? I think there must be some kind of mistake, but we’re not finding your name in our reservation system.”

Sasuke tsked, and grumbled. “Maybe my older brother booked with his own name. Try to find Itachi Uchiha.”

There were efficient typing noises, and the receptionist mumbled embarrassed. “We’re very sorry, but we’re not finding your older brother’s name either.”

Sasuke furrowed his eyebrows.

“Yes? What’s the matter Sasuke?” Itachi answered his call.

“For some reason, the hotel you booked is not finding my name.”

“What hotel?”

“Hotel? In Beijing? I’m spending the night here nii-san.”

“Oh.” There was a pause and then. “I forgot.”

Sasuke blinked. “You forgot.”

“Yes, how foolish of me. So sorry my dearest otouto-kun.” Itachi’s amused tone raised red flags in his mind.

“Don’t bullshit me Itachi. Are you telling me that you, that can practically remember how you exited mom’s womb, forgot to book one room for me??”

“I guess I was so busy programming and talking with clients and everything…I’m just human otouto-kun.”

Sasuke wasn’t having any of this. “You’re not human, you’re an evil demon. I’m going to kill you when I get back to Japan.”

He heard Itachi’s amused chuckle in response. “Sure sure. Say hi to Naruto-kun for me ok? I got to go.”

Sasuke groaned loudly, picking Naruto’s attention while the blond man was signing the papers. “Jesus, what happened?”

Sasuke glared at the receptionist, causing him to yip in terror. Sasuke rubbed his eyebrows, and enquired in a calmer voice. “Alright, give me a single room, I’ll pay with my credit card now.”

“I’m…very sorry Mr. Sasuke, but we don’t have any vacant single room.”

“Oh?” Naruto’s face was now 90% wide grin. “Did I just hear that Uchiha Sasuke-sama doesn’t have any place to stay? What tragedy!”

This is karma, this had to be. There was no way Sasuke would be so ill-fated to be surrounded by utter sadists.

“Hey, lucky for you I booked a double bed room!”

“You and Itachi didn’t plan this stupid idea together once again, did you?”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “Obviously we didn’t, have you forgotten the fact that I offered on the last minute to go to Beijing with you, while you booked this flight last week right? Ugh, you’re so skeptical over everything.”

Sasuke wrinkled his nose, and muttered back to the receptionist. “What kind room do you have available then?”

“Well…VIP, Deluxe and presidential rooms.”

“They all sound very expensive. You sure you don’t want to share the room with lil ol’ me?” Naruto offered, impish beam stamped on his face.

Fuck this. Picking up his suitcase, Sasuke turned around towards the exit.

“Whoa, where are you going?”

“Any other hotel, so I can avoid whatever trap you’re laying on me.” Sasuke glared.

Naruto didn’t even bat an eye, cooing in a fake, shrill girlish voice. “I mean, maybe you’re right, maybe you need to go to another hotel. Poor wibble, delicate Sasuke-chan can’t defend himself against my evil clutches because I’m a very bad, bad boy.”

⏤.⏤

One day, one day, he’ll stop falling for whatever goading Naruto would do to rile him up. The blond man was practically skipping on the way to their room, doing an exceptional extra flair with his hand as he allowed Sasuke to enter first.

Graphite eyes scanned everywhere, unfortunately the room wasn’t big enough for one adult man to sleep on the floor.

“Hey Sasuke⏤”

“Just to be clear, we’re not going to have any sex.”

Naruto gawked, tilting his head to one side. “I just wanted to ask if you mind if I put my luggage over there geez. We’re just going to share a bed, not prepare for some fucking sex marathon.”

Sasuke’s eyes were still narrowed, sharp and cautious.

“I mean, unless you were thinking ‘bout it⏤” Naruto curled a sly smirk.

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, so what’s the fuss is all about. ‘M going to take a bath first, I stink.” Naruto picked up a set of clean clothes and went to the bathroom.

Naruto’s complete lackadaisical attitude, however, just increased his suspicion even further. He used his laptop with a guarded stance, steering clear from the blond man, especially after he exited fresh from the bath, all golden locks dewy, tanned skin glowing good GOD he’s not falling for this. Sasuke grabbed his pyjamas and shut the door with a loud click.

The warm droplets coming from the shower managed to calm him, savoring how it massaged his tense shoulders. Sighing contentedly, Sasuke was ready to call it a day and jump on the bed when he saw Naruto sprawled all over it, patting on the empty spot in front of him.

Sasuke growled. “You’re not spooning me.” Besides, if they really need to spoon, he’d be the bigger spoon.

“You’re always such a ray of sunshine. Just lie down here ok? It’s not like we've never done this before.”

Pursing his lips, Sasuke sat on the edge of the bed, gradually lying down his body stiff. Naruto turned off his lights, his back turned to Sasuke.

After several minutes, the brunet was getting sleepy and adjusted the covers, shutting his eyes. He felt arms enveloping around his waist. “Naruto…” He growled.

Naruto’s voice was sluggish and tired, already ready to slumber. “Mm, ‘s just som’ thing, you’re so grouchy, I swear to God…” he continued muttering until he quieted down at last.

Sasuke sighed, revelling the warm body breathing close to him. Just this once, he’d indulge himself. Next time would be different.

(little did he knew, he slept with a pleased smile)

Chapter 04

--.--

AN: Aw, I noticed how much I missed writing Naruto and Sasuke bantering. It was really entertaining.

#NaruSasu #snstext #sn fic #sns fic #drabble

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