#arbitrarily sort them. <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[reanimatestar]

non-exhaustive list of top x things on itch.io that fuck severely

[homunculus-argument]

The thing about perfect pitch is that it's a combination of having an inherent knack for it, and having that skill honed with a musical education. Someone who could recognise a specific note by the ear but was never taught notes cannot do it, and someone who simply wasn't born with the potential for it can't learn it no matter how thorough of a musical education they have.

I think the same thing applies to what I've come to refer to as "a few raisins is five raisins" type of instruction-giving. The ability to instinctively assess how much information and detail somebody wants or needs when they're asking for instructions. People who cannot do this are enraged by the idea that someone thinks they can, btw. How dare somebody arbitrarily decide to withdraw information and take away someone's agency concerning choices that they don't want to make and whose outcome doesn't matter much.

I'd consider that I have a pretty good knack for it, myself. It's been honed by working both with people who refuse to give exact instructions, my own difficulties in asking for sufficiently exact instructions when I've needed them, and working with people with varying preferences towards instruction-exactness.

People who refuse to give clarifications to their instructions and guidelines in things that they are familiar with leave you no other choice than to demonstrate just how wrong their vague answers can be interprated before they're willing to clarify. If you ask someone "how long does this usually roughly take?" and they just go "I cannot answer that, it varies so much from person to person, every single individual case is different" on and on, refusing to give the roughest of rough estimates, all you can do is say "okay so it can take anything between 20 minutes and 20 years." And only then will they say "oh no, it's more like 3-6 years on average", which was the exact answer you wanted in the first place.

It's not really a comprehension thing, but a moral code to them. I don't believe in having ethical principles that serve no other role than inconvenience absolutely everyone including myself, so I have no qualms about giving simplified instructions. If someone who needs exact instructions is trying to follow a recipe that tells them to add "a few raisins" freezes at the vagueness and asks "how much is 'a few' raisins?" they want an exact number.

Someone who isn't comfortable trusting their own assessment of how much is 'a few' won't be helped by being told to follow their heart and make their own choices. They specifically want somebody to just give some sort of a guideline about this. And being the type that's more comfortable just eyeballing things, I can assess that in this context "a few" means roughly half of a small handful of raisins, and quickly estimate that one half of a small handful is roughly 4-6 individual raisins.

And instead of getting needlessly difficult about refusing to say it, I can just say "oh, that's about five raisins", and everyone can carry on with their day.

[insanelyadd]

Found a way to combine the SkeleChara and Fingers In His Ass Prompts. ANYWAYS! Happy Let Papyrus Say Fuck Day! I hope you all have a fun time seeing him swear today! <3 I feel like this sort of thing is essential if you have a kid tbh. Growing up I was only ever told after I used a swear that I shouldn't use it, and then I got in trouble for using a word I didn't know was arbitrarily designated as "bad", so I think teaching your kids about swearing and when it is appropriate to use them is a good thing.

[cloversnstrawberries]

oc intro post ! ! alien!scientist & human teen!reader

masterlist | requests open !

warnings; Dehumanization(?), non-human doesn't have human morals, experimentation, very brief mention/implication of violence/death, possessive behavior, and i cannot think of anymore :( once i write it down, its gone from my brain </3

additional notes; i don't think i've ever spoken about it on here, but i am a SUCKER for retro futurism. i love it so much, it's so funny watching old movies (cough cough blade runner) and get suckerpunched by the fact it's meant to be set in 2019??!? HUH?? i love retro futurism sm,, this is based more on the 50s/60s idea of it, more than the 80s version (cassette futurism) :]

i also had to take a screenshot of the ask, to try and allow the 'keep reading' button to work, please lmk if i should keep doing that!!

! ! introduction blurb & moodboard below the cut ! !

In the grand scheme of things, humans are pretty much the outer-space equivalent of a deep sea creature, in a way. Earth was never on the radar for any other type of people-- it was a place just out of their reach, and the ones who could, in theory, reach it, had no interest in it.

Until the Humans started coming to them, and it was hard to ignore it. Loud, noisy things they were-- it held a certain amount of novelty at first, like you'd feel after hearing that a fish found thousands of meters down in the ocean had suddenly washed up on a Californian beach.

But at some point, when beaches start to become covered in them-- when you could seldom get a look at the sand anymore, covered with what was previously unknown (and now known too well), it's expected to get tired of it all.

There are, obviously, language barriers. Some planets utilize rudimentary vocalizations, their biology not made to facilitate any sorts of complex languages, while others used gestures and body language. Some were telepathic,

'Michael', as he's come to be known, was apart of a race that were highly independent-- spread across the cosmos, not having a specific, designated planet. Their biology is developed in a way where they can achieve all sorts of communication. As long as they learn it, of course.

When humans first started reaching out to other races, many races adapted human names. Michael didn't have a name before, that's not something that his race did. Didn't have a gender either, but arbitrarily picked one for the heck of it.

He didn't particularly like or dislike humans, but found them interesting in a detached kind of way. When given the opportunity to join about 20-or-so other researchers, he didn't hesitate.

It was aggravating, dealing with other people after being happily solitary for so long; having to learn a couple different dialects as well, so he could communicate with who was most necessary.

They were studying human young, children-- in a pool of about 14 subjects, all within the ages of 13-17, he doesn't know what made him chose to take you as his charge.

At first, you were like all the others. Scared stiff, not knowing what was happening-- All of you were snatched from various human colonies, launched by different countries. The higher ups tried to limit any possible overlap in language, to prevent any possible coups and what not.

It's not like you were the easiest, or the most challenging. Some chose their charges on the base that they'd be easy to deal with, or that it'd be a reward challenge to have the charge warm up to them.

You were just there-- at first, he thought there was nothing truly special about you. He hadn't even bothered to learn your language, since it was proving just fine to communicate with you via rudimentary hand gestures and what not.

Until he observed you more closely-- there were some tests they did, to test the intellect of their subjects. You refused to participate, even under the threat of violence, starvation, or even termination.

At first, he assumed you just being stubborn for the sake of it. Until he put two-and-two together-- you were trying to get punished, because you knew they took you into a different sector of the compound to do so.

You were trying a very roundabout way of escaping, or maybe trying to get access to the main console and contact some help. There was a large chance you wouldn't make it, and you seemed to know it.

He caught onto it faster than the others, and had to put into solitary under false pretenses. No one would interact with you but him, unless given express permission.

That same night, he started learning your language. Something about you intrigued him, beyond just scientific reasons. You were probably a dime-a-dozen, humans were known to be incredibly stubborn, driven by emotions and often willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.

Something about you was just-- he doesn't know how to explain it. His kind don't raise their young, not like humans do, or even most other races did. He'd never understood the instincts other races had toward their young, because, again-- his kind is very solitary.

Something about you made him want to protect you, to hold you close. Maybe he was a defect-- maybe it was him who was different, while you were perfectly normal. Maybe it was just right place, right time (or wrong place, wrong time from your perspective), that it was you he latched onto.

Or maybe it was something deeper-- either way, you weren't a subject in his eyes. Not anymore, you weren't disposable; he hopes he could make that clear in the near future, both by verbal communication, and by his actions.

Your solitary cell was more like a bedroom-- he'd started to have things imported for you, making it look like an average human young's room. He got away with it, because he claimed you were going to be a control group. Have you in an environment most similar to the one you were in before, to see if you got on better or worse than the other subjects. Held in a compound, of the likes they'd never seen before most likely.

It was a lie, in a way. But he got away with it-- you seemed put off by it, but that was understandable. Your language was proving a little more difficult to learn than he'd expected, so he couldn't just tell you the change in plans. You had a right to be wary of it.

[mayordeas-clone]

Vocaloid Familiarity Survey...DATA!!!

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

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

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

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

FIRST OF ALL: EXCLUSIONS

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

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

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

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

1 - what went down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 - regarding fan designs

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

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

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

3 - the sqeakwel?!?

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

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

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

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

<3

[lucky-clover-gazette]

right so with s7e1 common people, my main thoughts that i haven’t seen specifically mentioned by anyone else are:

1) the woman who works for the company is such a subtle but brilliant demonstration of how people willingly submit themselves to these sorts of systems for the illusion of control and autonomy. she herself had the life saving operation and pays for the highest tier of service, and in exchange she spends every day giving soulless ad reads and telling people their lives are meaningless if they cannot afford them. it’s an entirely different kind of tragedy that demonstrates that not even the richest people can truly benefit from this system (also seen in the commercial, sourcing emotional catharsis and physical ability from the minds of poorer people bc you can’t produce it yourself. really underscores how these people don’t belong to themselves, aren’t living full lives. would be curious to hear thoughts from like chronically disabled people about how this hyperbolic/allegorical episode does or does not relate to their personal experiences. it’s true that a lot of people cannot live without some kind of support, but there are ethical and ultimately empowering ways to give and receive that support while maintaining and respecting the personhood of everyone involved.)

2. this technology that can literally save a person’s life and consciousness from an otherwise fatal brain tumor being so arbitrarily paywalled by a corporation without any kind of legal or ethical checks is so deeply demonstrative of the american healthcare system. it was a smart idea for the usually british-by-default show to make this episode based in america and then cast a non-american as one of the two leads. also there’s no way the american government would not eventually purchase this technology once it’s perfected and use it to commit war crimes

3. i liked that the doctor in the very beginning told the husband outright that she could not formally recommend rivermind. she told him about it as a personal favor, but it was clear that as a medical professional she did not find it reputable. just a nice detail that kind of shifts the blame off individual practitioners and towards the healthcare and insurance industries, as well as the way things like medical care are privatized and therefore not upheld to universal standards. it’s even a sort of foreshadowing to what the husband proceeds to do later in the episode, submitting himself to humiliation and abuse out of desperation for any way to help his wife (and, to be honest, himself. there are some interesting gender things going on here too—the way they argue, his complex about working, their sex life, everything going on with the idea of pregnancy. the fact that he didn’t let her go much sooner, and that he held onto baby money that she didn’t know about for so long without asking for her input, is notable).

[slugtranslation-hypmic]

Hi Slug! If possible could you please translate the new updated timeline from the second guidebook? Thank you so much 🙏

I typically don't want to translate any sort of paid content, but I'll make an exception just this once so we can publicly shame Hypmic for its ludicrous timeline have this as a resource.

The guidebook's timeline is split into two halves corresponding to Chuuouku and the six Divisions featured in the storyline. For ease of reading, I've combined them into one and placed them in order (as much as possible).

The translation is as direct as possible. I do not translate word by word by the dictionary when there are more straightforward or natural-sounding equivalents available, and I do not incorporate features of the source grammar and punctuation that are nonsensical in English. Apart from that, this is super cut-and-dry. It's a timeline lol.

Finally, a note about the "H Age" (H歴) year system: While treated as its own calendar system similar to BCE and CE (or BC/AD), the H Age notation is otherwise similar to Japanese "eras." In real life, a new era corresponds to a new emperor taking the throne, so Otome's rise to power and the subsequent beginning of the H Age marks a paradigm shift. Eras can start in the middle of a calendar year, so Year 1 of the H Age isn't necessarily from January to December (in so much as Hypmic has months anyway). Let's arbitrarily say it started in June 2024. (Did it? No idea. I made this up for argument's sake.) That means Year 1 is June - December of 2024 while "one year prior" is January - May also of 2024. Therefore, "two years prior" is January - December of 2023. And so on and so forth.

Under a cut for length

19 years prior to the H Age

Rei joins a military R&D program.

Otome founds the Party of Words.

13 years prior to the H Age

World War III begins.

11 years prior to the H Age

World War III ends, but smaller violent conflicts continue.

Rei leaves the military and assembles an independent Hypnosis Mic development team.

4 years prior to the H Age

Rei creates a working Hypnosis Mic.

3 years prior to the H Age

Otome purchases the Hypnosis Mics from Rei.

The military creates a working Hypnosis Mic prototype.

Rei begins development of the Hypnosis Canceler.

2 years prior to the H Age

Rei creates a working True Hypnosis Mic.

1 year prior to the H Age

The Party of Words stages a coup d'tat.

Rei creates a working Hypnosis Canceler and gives the first Ramuda to Otome.

Year 1 of the H Age

The H Age begins, ending violent conflict with weapons.

The Party of Words overwhelms the preexisting government, thus subverting the state.

The Party of Words founds Chuuouku and distributes Hypnosis Mics to select candidates.

Ichirou and Kuukou form Naughty Busters.

Samatoki and Sasara form Mad Comic Dialogue.

Ramuda meets Jakurai and Yotsutsuji. The former two go on to form Kuujaku Posse.

Otome purchases the True Hypnosis Mic from Rei.

Ichirou and Kuukou begin working with Mad Comic Dialogue.

Year 2 of the H Age

Ramuda clones use the True Hypnosis Mic to brainwash Sasara and Kuukou. Kuukou tells Ichirou their friendship is over and leaves for Nagoya. Sasara does the same and returns to Osaka.

Ichirou, Samatoki, Ramuda, and Jakurai form The Dirty Dawg.

The Dirty Dawg gains supremacy over every Division in Japan. A Ramuda clone puts Yotsutsuji in a brainwashing-induced coma.

A Ramuda clone brainwashes Nemu. She goes on to join the Party of Words.

Ichirou and Samatoki battle one another in accordance with a Chuuouku plot. At the same time, Jakurai and Ramuda fight over the Yotsutsuji situation. This leads to The Dirty Dawg disbanding.

The Party of Words disables all preexisting Hypnosis Mics distributed [through their program in Year 1] and recalls the mics.

The Party of Words creates the Division Rap Battle program.

Year 3 of the H Age

Ichirou, Samatoki, Ramuda, and Jakurai receive mics from Chuuouku.

The Division Rap Battle program begins.

Ichirou forms the Buster Bros with Jirou and Saburou.

Samatoki forms Mad Trigger Crew with Juuto and Riou.

Jakurai forms Matenrou with Hifumi and Doppo.

Ramuda forms Fling Posse with Gentarou and Dice.

Preliminary matches begin within each Division. The Buster Bros, Mad Trigger Crew, Fling Posse, and Matenrou win their respective preliminaries, thus advancing to the finals.

Ichijiku uses a Hypnosis Canceler for the first time.

In the first DRB tournament, Mad Trigger Crew wins round 1 against the Buster Bros.

In the first DRB tournament, Matenrou wins round 2 against Fling Posse.

In the first DRB tournament, Matenrou wins the final match against Mad Trigger Crew and takes the championship.

Hitaki Tsumabira, Vice Director General of the Criminal Bureau, and the Tobari brothers attempt to lay a trap for the Buster Bros, Mad Trigger Crew, Fling Posse, and Matenrou. Their plot fails.

Ichijiku has Tsumabira purged from the Party of Words for using the Tobari brothers to traffic the Grasshopper drug.

The Party of Words announces the second DRB.

Kuukou and Sasara receive mics from Chuuouku.

Rei meets Sasara and Roshou. The three go on to form Dotsuitare Hompo.

Hitoya introduces Juushi to Kuukou, who takes Juushi under his wing as an apprentice. The three go on to form Bad Ass Temple.

Ichirou notices Nemu's name on a list of missing persons and meets up with Sasara and Roshou to find out more. Rei meets with Jirou and Saburou. He reveals that he is their father and that Ichirou has been lying to them.

Nemu becomes the Vice Director General of the Administrative Inspection Bureau.

Nemu, still brainwashed, shows up in front of Samatoki with other Chuuouku members. Ramuda confesses to Samatoki that he brainwashed her.

Gentarou and Dice learn that Ramuda is a clone.

Chuuouku approaches Jakurai for his crucial assistance in improving the True Hypnosis Mic in order to bring Yotsutsuji out of his coma. Jakurai and Hitoya reunite. Meanwhile, Hifumi and Doppo meet Kuukou and Juushi.

Chuuouku decides to have Ramuda killed. Honobono enlists the Word Wreckers to join her in hunting him down. Gentarou and Dice come to his rescue and spirit him away to safety, but now all three are wanted as outlaws.

Dice performs a trade with Otome, giving her the Chuuouku expose left behind by Gentarou's older brother. Ramuda is allowed to go free, and Fling Posse is granted permission to participate in the second DRB.

Jakurai agrees to cooperate with Chuuouku under certain conditions. Honobono pays a visit to Hifumi's club.

Juuto arrests Sekirei Hanmyou, the man responsible for the drug that led to Juuto's friend and parents' deaths.

Nemu arrests Tsumabira, now escaped from prison, and her coconspirator in crime Misago Haebaru. Honobono rises to position of Vice Director General of the Criminal Bureau in Tsumabira's place.

Ichirou battles Jirou while Saburou battles Rei. The brothers make up afterward.

After receiving advice from Rei, Sasara and Roshou battle one another and come clean about their feelings. With that bad blood washed away, the team comes together stronger than ever.

Juushi comes face to face with the boy who bullied him and took his grandmother's life. Through his own fortitude, Juushi prevails through the mental distress. After talking with Kuukou, Hitoya lets go of the past in seeking revenge for the death of his brother. The team comes together stronger than ever.

The second DRB preliminaries come to an end. The Buster Bros, Mad Trigger Crew, Fling Posse, Matenrou, Dotsuitare Hompo, and Bad Ass Temple advance to the finals.

In the second DRB tournament, the Buster Bros win round 1 against Dotsuitare Hompo.

In the second DRB tournament, Matenrou wins round 2 against Bad Ass Temple.

In the second DRB tournament, Fling Posse wins round 3 against Mad Trigger Crew.

In the second DRB tournament, Fling Posse wins the final match against the Buster Bros and Matenrou, thus claiming the championship.

Sasara and Kuukou learn that they were brainwashed. Ramuda opens up to Jakurai and tells him the truth. Ichirou and Samatoki learn the truth as well, thereby resolving the feuds between the team leaders.

The Party of Words announces the third DRB.

The Party of Words locates and seizes control of Rei's laboratory. In an exchange of hostages, the Party gains control of the True Hypnosis Mic and Ramuda clones.

Otome announces plans for world domination before Rei attempts a coup d'tat. All Hypnosis Mics are disabled, and Otome and Ichijiku are sent to maximum security prison by the very Ramuda clones Rei created.

Public order breaks down following the disabling of the mics.

Ichirou discovers Rei's connection to the Hypnosis Mics due to Gentarou's brother's expose. The main cast, led by Jirou and Saburou, hold a music festival to bring courage to everyone struggling with the political turmoil.

Honobono frees the inmates of Chuuouku's maximum security prison. After staging an attack on the music festival, she disappears from the eye of Chuuouku.

Rei and Ichirou have a fistfight over their respective moral positions. Rei acknowledges his defeat, reconsiders his moral stance, and reactivates all Hypnosis Mics.

Armed with a working mic once more, Nemu takes command and restores order within Chuuouku. Otome decides to step down from her position in government.

[iglowindark]

@sideguitars and @makicarn you may regret engaging me about my 2025 Pasta Shape Rubric of Awesome (TM). 😜

i was getting quite annoyed with the New Year's Resolution questions from friends and fam - like, i consistently fail to overhaul my life during the other 11 months of the year, why would January be a magical success month? but i was also bumming everyone out during Resolution Reveals so i decided to pick something that would be fun for me and mildly upsetting for my elders!

the initial format was to "try every pasta shape in 2025". but. there are more than 400 pasta shapes. do you know how often i would have to eat pasta to accomplish this? i mean, i had to use a calculator because i forgot a year had 365 days, but it's MORE THAN ONCE PER DAY. i love pasta, but i also love other food, and i need to leave room in my life for every other cuisine.

so then i settled on "52 pasta shapes in 2025" - but glowy! (you might say) how will you decide which 52 pasta shapes to eat??? out of more than 400???

the answer is, of course: arbitrarily! but with a spreadsheet twist, because my first love in life is hot sauce, and my second love in life is a spreadsheet - no, i lied, i forgot about ms underfoot 😸, ok, she's #1, then hot sauce, then spreadsheets, then probably my family i guess.

ok, so please understand, i literally spent 7 hours and 40ish minutes over the past week assembling, editing, auditing, and admiring this spreadsheet. i started with trusty wikipedia, which helpfully broke down pasta shapes into groups like "long/medium" and "short cut" and "soup". it also had a group for "filled", but maki, sorry to say, this group i eliminated wholesale. there was just so much variation in what they might be filled WITH, and i needed some sort of control element. i didn't think it would be fair to compare cheese ravioli with 3-cheese tortellini? the cheeses are not equal! 🧀🧀🧀

so THEN: i did my own sub-grouping. (actually, first i split long and medium into their own groups, because, duh, they're different) long-flat and long-rolled, for example. i also started combining shapes that were really similar. like linguini and tagliatelle are kinda just the same noodle with slightly different widths/shapes/ingredients? (please, nonnas of the world, do not come for me in the comments, this was SO HARD). this part involved a lot of googling. my ad content for the next 4 months is gonna be all pasta related. through many gruelling rounds of re-googling to remind myself what shape was what, and some painful, tearful cuts (lasagne noodles are for lasagne, not for unserious noodle frippery) i finally finally finally culled my list down to 52 pasta shapes. 🍝 (editor's note: the single emoji does not represent this publication's favored pasta shape)

then the FUN part: how was i going to score these 52 pasta shapes? every google result went to pains to insist that different shapes were meant for specific sauces, and i'm sure that's true, but what's the fun in scoring something based on what it's meant to do? (also i didn't want to commit to having to make 52 different sauces/soups) so i came up with this scientifically rigorous scoring rubric:

BUTTERED/RED SAUCED (depending on my mood and whether or not i have red sauce available)

a pasta may earn up to one (1) point for being really good at holding butter/red sauce

a pasta cannot lose points in this category

PRIMAVERA (my version of primavera just means that i diced up whatever veggies i had handy and tossed them w/ the pasta)

a pasta may earn up to one (1) point if i can make one perfect bite that includes veggies/sauce/pasta

a pasta cannot lose points in this category

ALTERNATE USES

a pasta may earn one (1) point (max 5 points) for every non-food alternate use that i can dream up. for example, orecchiette could be used as hats for frogs! or to decorate the ramparts of a sand castle! 2 points for orecchiette!

a pasta may not lose points in this category

MISC/GENERAL (here's where i let my freak flag fly)

a pasta may earn one (1) point if i think the name is fun to say

a pasta may earn one (1) point if i think the shape is "cute"

a pasta may earn one (1) point if it works in a soup

a pasta may earn one (1) point if it might stick (cooked) on the ceiling

a pasta may earn one (1) point if it could probably be used to build a bridge for matchbox cars

a pasta may lose one (1) point if it sticks together unreasonably

a pasta may lose one (1) point if water gets stuck in it and surprises me with pasta water bites

a pasta may lose one (1) point if i can't eat it with a spoon

a pasta may lose one (1) point if it won't fit in a pot without being broken up

a pasta may lose one (1) point if it breaks when dropped from 5 feet (dried and uncooked)

all pasta shapes must be eaten twice (once with butter or red sauce, and once in a primavera), and once i've submitted my scores to myself, i cannot be influenced or bribed to change them. at the end of the year, a Champion Pasta Shape will be announced and celebrated.

so... was that a lot of senseless work for an absolutely pointless goal just so i can eat lots of pasta? heck yeah it was!!

[bat-connoisseur]

I turned your Baldurs Gate 3 characters into furries. Sorry. Actually no I'm not I won't pretend anymore.

General notes and specific species under the cut.

Astarion: He is a Ghost Bat! I like to think him being a vampire and being a bat are entirely unrelated, it's just a coincidence and he's honestly pretty mad about it. Ever since I first started playing bg3 I had him assigned as a Ghost Bat or a Spectral Bat in my brain, just arbitrarily, and I went for the former just because the colours work.

Gale: He's a Eurasian Lynx! I had to make him a cat. I just had to. And I trawled through the wikipedia pages for pretty much every type of cat and Lynx was about the only one that fit in my brain. The fluff kinda evokes his beard and hair I think, and I almost didn't have him have proper hair, just the fur, but in the end I wanted to be consistent about it so he got it. Peep the greying muzzle because mans is stressed and dying.

Karlach: She's a Bongo Antelope! I knew I wanted her to be some kind of large hooved mammal, because of the horns but also because their builds and general sturdiness really suit her I think. It was a tough pick, there's so many cool ones, and when sketching I was actually going to have her be a Mountain Nyala, but I changed my mind last minute just because the colours of the Bongo fit SO well. They're also my favourite antelope. Let me have this. She's so cool and she gets to be one of my favourite animals.

Lae'zel: She is a Pterosaur! My specific reference was Dorygnathus, but I was fairly loose on the details and so she doesn't super resemble them beyond the teeth and tail. I wanted her to be something prehistoric since the Gith are aliens or something (i dont know dnd lore that well), and so I wanted her to be in her own sort of category apart from the rest so, prehistoric! I considered making her a dinosaur but the idea of a Pterosaur just really appealed for whatever reason. Kind of parallels their dragon riding if they can fly, I suppose? And their Enhanced 10 Foot Vertical Leap.

Shadowheart: She's a Hare! Very specifically a Hare rather than a rabbit. Hopefully that comes across. I wasn't super sure what to do for her honestly, but in several scenes she has these big scared eyes, and she's generally just kind of having an awful time and being harmed by the gods for the whole game and I was like 'hey I know an animal that looks like it's been personally slighted by the gods' and so Shadowhare was born. There is a part of me that wishes I'd made her a cat for the warrior cats joke though.

Wyll: He's a Pine Marten! I just kind of got it in my head he should be a Mustelid of some kind, I'm not sure why, he just has that kind of vibe to me? Maybe it's the way he moves, maybe it's his skill at killing, maybe I'm just biassed because I love him and I love mustelids, who knows. I looked through em all and I didn't want one of the bigger sturdier ones like a Wolverine because. Strength stat of 8. So I went for one of my smaller favourites, the Pine Marten. The reason he's not an animal with horns naturally like Karlach is because I still wanted them to look out of place on him! I toyed with giving him wings (because they're cool) but ultimately didn't wanna stray toooo far from Pine Marten.

And that's all! Perhaps I'll get around to anthropomorphising the non origin characters, but who even knows. Halsin would almost be too easy. I could make Jaheria a cool ass fox or something though. Much to consider. If I do them then I'm gonna be doing my Tav Deimos and my Durge Lethe though. That's da law.

[adobe-outdesign]

Have you reviewed nimmos by any chance? They arent my favourite pet but i do think my dislike of them comes from how theyre posed rather than their actual design

We actually have two different frog Neopets, but I will say they're pretty different from each other. While Quiggles are inherently silly guys and very short, Nimmos are tall and considerably less silly. In contrast, hey have a sort of meditative guru vibe to them, which is sort of evident in the pose with the hands and the stance.

In terms of the design, I like them overall. The wide mouth makes for a fun kind of :3 expression, and the body has a pretty distinct shape to it that makes it so they're not too much like a real frog. I could kind of take or leave the underbelly—I don't mind it, but they're thin enough that it doesn't feel like it's needed to break up the space, and it feels like it should go under the mouth as well or something.

I also agree that the posing of these guys is a little weird, as they're stuck in like a weird sideways slav squat. I like the idea of them having long frog legs in contrast with the Quiggle, but the problem is that the knees of the legs go to the side instead of the front, when in reality they should be facing forward like at least 20% more and the top part should be more horizontal to the body. The butt being above the ground rather than on it also doesn't help anything. Oddly, there also aren't many options that let you break from this pose—even colors like Faerie maintain the same off putting leg structure.

Nimmos have mostly stayed the same after customization and arguably improved, with minor fixes like adjusting the feet so they're actually at the right perspective relative to the body.

Favorite Colours:

Baby: First off, having the baby Nimmo just be a tadpole is a great concept, and secondly, it's pretty cute as well. The face is just similar enough for it to still look like a Nimmo, and the dark spots on the body provide nice contrast with the more teal-ish colored tail. There's both a converted and UC/styled version, though this is a rare instance where the converted is way better—the pose is more lively, the pupils are larger so it looks less dead-eyed, and the shading has been improved.

Toy: The toy Nimmo is actually based on the IRL Sand Critters frog plush, but even if you didn't recognize it off the bat, it's still a great design all around. The green and orange striping makes for a nice palette, the subtle spotting adds a nice texture, and the red eyes pop. Also, this kind of highlights what I was talking about earlier with the underbelly—it looks a lot more natural extended up onto the jaw.

Wraith: The wraith Nimmo is not the best wraith pet or anything—the swirls are very arbitrarily placed over the body instead of contouring and playing with the body's actual shapes, and the bulk of the swirls are a bit too low-contrast. However, the big thing here is the lovingly detailed face... on the stomach, with a regular face to match. I have no idea why it's like this because no other Wraith pet does this, but damn if it doesn't look cool as hell, and more than makes up for the lack of flow in the rest of the body. I also really like the neat swirly pupils they used here.

BONUS: The Maraquan Nimmo is both one of the worst and yet also one of the best Maraquan pets, and I absolutely hate and love it. Why is it a spider crab? Why does it just look like a normal crab with a Nimmo's face? Who cares. 10/10 get this thing out of my house

[tedious-malcontent]

skin for sy, torture for caspian, and heartbreak for khara.

PLUS 💎✂️🍕 for each of them! <3 (@stabbyfoxandrew)

this ended up being literally 1.2k words, so it's under the cut.

SY

💎 (Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?): yes, actually. I've written at least one version of his story where he commits suicide after Hunter (his partner and lover) dies, although I can't see myself killing him off after he meets Caspian. We'll see, though— out of everyone, I'm most likely to kill him off.

✂️ (What is one of your OC’s worst memories?): It's only the worst in retrospect, but: his mother smiling at him (a liar's smile, the same smile he has to this day) and telling him that he was going to be going away, to learn new things, and that it would be okay, and that it would even be fun. He spent the next two weeks in a dirty crate, got labelled a rebel and uncooperative, and sold to a guy that trained kids that were given away by their parents to be killers-for-hire. He went through a whole lot of nasty shit afterwards, but that smile still takes the crown. It makes him sick to think about how she lied so blatantly and cruelly to her six year old son.

🍕 (What is their favorite food?): He's the kind of man to like some sort of fancy steak, but I couldn't tell you what kind because I rarely eat steak. He does really like tiramisu, though, even though he had it for the first time when he was like twenty five, because Khara (his best friend) insisted on treating him on the day she arbitrarily decided they would be celebrating his birthday.

Skin (How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?):

Sy is very good at pretending to feel comfortable in his skin, but in reality, he isn't really. He still feels like he failed his first love, Hunter, and has nightmares about it near daily (nightly?)— he blames himself for Hunter's death, and he can't separate the cruel, vicious person he was after Hunter's death from the person he's trying to rebuild. He was desperate and angry and upset, and he took it out both on himself and on people who had hurt Hunter. The monster he let himself be so that he could destroy them is always trying to claw its way free from his skin. Sometimes he thinks it would be easier to go back to that, to get drunk or violent or both and kill until he feels less broken. He hates it about himself, sometimes, and views that monster as something that was created by the horrific place he was raised in, something that was never supposed to be a part of him and yet also a fundamental part of him. He acknowledges it pretty well, honestly, and embraces it once in a while, although always dressing it up as pretty and coy and cruel, and hiding a lot of the messy anger and grief behind the monster. He hates it, but for a long time it was all that he was, and sometimes he thinks being that monster was easier.

-

CASPIAN

💎 (Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?): no he's my baby </3

✂️ (What is one of your OC’s worst memories?): The night he thought he was finally free of Temperance, the man who convinced him to join a gang and then groomed and abused him, until Temperance showed up at the inn he was staying at and made it clear that he wouldn't be free of him unless he was willing to risk his friends' lives. He still has regular PTSD flashbacks to that night, and hates himself for going along and Temperance for refusing to let him go.

🍕 (What is their favorite food?): soup/stew, with potatoes and beef and random veggies n shit. reminds him of the friends he lived with after escaping the gang he joined. however, Sy is slowly getting him hooked on nicer meat dishes and he would be particularly partial to lamb curry

Torture (Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?):

Not in a typical sense. His parents put him through some pretty nasty shit, but none of it was actually torture (and it wasn't really intended to be nasty). After he ran away from home, he joined a gang who were pretty liberal with doling out violence as punishment, but again, no actual torture. Would he torture someone else? Probably not. (he's boring like that - he wants to be all the kindness and protection he wasn't given, but he wouldn't be above simply stepping aside and letting Sy do the torturing if that was something that they felt was necessary)

-

KHARA

💎 (Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?): actually, I don't — she wants to live so badly, and I want her to thrive like she deserves to.

✂️ (What is one of your OC’s worst memories?): A job that she was working went horrifically, brutally wrong, and a section of a small town ended up on fire— it was partially her fault, although it was an accident, and she worked on the cleanup team afterwards. She found the corpses of a kid trying to protect his younger, baby, sibling. She still has nightmares about it, almost fifteen years later. She blames herself for their deaths, even though there was nothing she could've done.

🍕 (What is their favorite food?): Chicken noodle soup, but spicier than usual and specifically out of a mug.

heartbreak (Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?): Yeah— a girlfriend she had as a teenager that abandoned her to marry someone else. Khara had spent a couple months convincing her that they could build a life together, even if it would be an unconventional one, and the girlfriend had agreed, until one day she showed up to their meeting place and announced that she was betrothed. The girlfriend was the first person Khara had told that she was trans, that she was a woman, and it felt like a betrayal on so many levels. When Khara tried to argue with her, convince her to stay, the girlfriend threatened to out her to her parents, to the entire village— she would've had to flee and leave her home, and she didn't want to do that, alone, at sixteen. She lost the only person she thought understood her, and it was a heartbreak it took her years to recover from. Leaving her family was also heartbreaking, because they had taught her so much about, well, mostly spy shit, but she did really love them and they loved her but couldn't understand that she was trans, and so she chose to leave instead of keep trying to argue with people who would never listen. She still misses them, and thinks about them every time she uses the skills they taught her.

[spotsupstuff]

Questions about the recent art post!

1. You said the first karma/natural urge glyph relates to the Anemons’ chitin skeletons— how so? I can see it as a pictograph of a few different things, but it’s so simplified that the connection ain’t obvious- at least to me.

3. Why were the lower caste kept intentionally stressed? That seems particularly spiteful.. though of course real life class- and casteism is just as arbitrarily cruel.

2. What role did the CitID drones play in population control? Was it primarily as a surveillance tool, and thus an implicit threat? Or were they like, literally designed to kill people

The relation is in the question of ,,Why would the very first prohibition/warning be related to violence?" and the answer of ,,Most likely because they indulged a lot in it at some point. It says not to do indulge in something, so the opposite had to be true beforehand to a meaningful degree." A religion spawns out of a prompt from physical reality, so what real events inspired pieces of their religion? It's related to my ideas about their "technological" development. Rather than evolving their abilities likes us through machines, they went through the biological aspects (getting to those purposed organisms not out of sadism, but because that is how they knew how to do elaborate complicated things). To know biology, they had to do a lot of research and, with the "respawn" mechanic real to them, they could have had the means to "ethically" brutalize each other (and animals) for the sake of researching how things work, what the limits are, how can they be used and augmented. Mentioning they are of chitin, not of bone, is a reassurance that they are not wearing the remains of their own species.

It's related to the idea of the Caste system, but also to keep them more vigilant since they are down there with all the animals (you could say the High castes can allow themselves the pleasure to be calm and slow about things) and then the fact that stress does cause physical issues and kills. This is a major wip currently that I'm trying to figure out: they could be biologically immortal, what with sea anemones sharing phylum with such things as the Hydra and the Immortal Jellyfish. They have incredible regenerative ability, one of the traits defining the Cnidaria phylum. They have the Small Cycle, which is the respawn mechanic from the game explained in-world (though might be changed around yet for better definition). But I'm a writer and I want my characters to die, have to confront it as a fate and as on-lookers (Sparrows dying is important for Caper's character, for example), I want them to have different past lives that could plague them, that they would need to reflect on. There needs to be some kind of stake in the story to make it interesting. There's also no explanation for how they don't overpopulate the planet (just Sparrows is one of 13 children from one pair of parents), from sociological outlook immortal people who remember things are also disadvantegous to manipulators with political power. So I'm trying to figure out limits for their abilities, what *could* kill them enough to result in a reincarnation we are familiar with, what they should be afraid of, give good reasons that make sense. Stressing out the Low castes to make them die and therefore have them in a sort of monstrous rotation and in somewhat controllable numbers would be beneficial for the Elites, while they get to live on for as long as they want. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections I imagine was over 900 when he took the Void way out. Sparrows dies in her 110s, some of her siblings in their 70s-90s. Still a wip though, needs troubleshooting and confirming it doesn't poke holes Somewhere in the logic and if things feel right.

Surveillance tool, yes. Secretly keeping track of the citizens' indulgence and location next to the public knowledge of being helpful tools for things like navigation and circumventing karma gates.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Sorry, on that last question they referenced (I’m just going by the covers they presented with the caption “Since people apparently havent kept up with the comics they claim to read. Marvel officially made Magneto the Maximoffs' adopted father after saving them from the mob before conscripting them to his Brotherhood years later This is why they all call each other family now.”):

- Who Is... The Scarlet Witch Infinity Comic Vol. 1 #1 [2022] (they referenced this one multiple times so this is probably the basis for what they’re saying)

- The Trial of Magneto Vol. 1 #1 [2021]

- Scarlet Witch Vol. 3 #3 [2023] +

- Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver Vol. 1 #1 [2024]

.... Right, so, my point stands that it was never retconned, they just started arbitrarily referring to Magneto as Wanda and Pietro's adoptive father. And by "they," I mean Steve Orlando. He wrote three out of those four comics and contributed to Trial behind the scenes. This is his angle and he's been pushing it consistently in his work, but there was never a true retroactive statement that Magneto adopted the twins.

Who Is... The Scarlet Witch was a recap montage of Wanda's history, not a canon plot event, and it was published as a standalone issue on Marvel Unlimited, so I don't think it's fair to blame people for not reading it. There is one interesting line here, which sort of implies that Magneto took the twins in as a guardian, but it's really vague and the comic makes no effort to reconcile the fact that it contradicts canon. Which, you know, is what a retcon is supposed to do.

[archduchessgortash]

Banite Ranks

For my fics, I'm reworking Banite lore, the church ranks in particular.

In the established lore, after Bane was killed in his mortal form, Cyric stole most of his worshipers and wiped out nearly all of the rest (Circa 1361 DR). During this time, the High Imperceptor of the Church of Bane was on the verge of converting to open worship of Cyric. There had already been a schism, and the church was kind of a mess. An offshoot group began worshipping Iyachtu Xvim, Bane's son, and Bane would eventually use him for his own resurrection. Upon reclaiming his portfolio, I imagine the Dark One would have been none too pleased with his faithless previous High Imperceptor.

Fzoul Chembryl, a Chosen of Bane, helped bring about Cyric's downfall and aided greatly in restoring the church of Bane, but I haven't found reference to Chembryl having the rank of High Imperceptor. He was so loyal that Bane raised him up as an Exarch for his service.

Fast-forward the age of Bilbo Baggins at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring (111 yrs for the unlettered, spoken in a Gale-like voice), and we have the Banite-laden plot of Baldur's Gate 3, without a single character I can find using the rank names in the previous century's lore for the church. Because of this fact, I arbitrarily decided, for the purposes of my fics, that Bane recreated all the positions in his new church so I could have rank names to use that felt less off than incorprating the old ones. Deleting the entire rank system that included the unfaithful feels like a Bane thing to do, ya know?

I decided that since, in more recent years, the church fosters cooperation to gain power and influence, I'd create a small ruling body with new titles, incorporate the titles found in-game into the ranks and flesh those out a bit.

Thus was born the Black Hand of the Church of Bane...

The Black Hand includes the Chosen and four others, or the Chosen may sit above all five ranks if they prefer to be less hands-on (pun intended). Should they wish to be part of the Hand, the Chosen is granted the highest rank, whether or not that seat is currently occupied. What happens to the current occupant is entirely at the whim of the Chosen.

The Chosen's rank will be the Prime Digit, Black Sovereign, or Dread Patriarch/Matriarch. All these names are the same rank/person. The leader of the cult (the Chosen in this case) selects their preferred title.

The Chosen corresponds to the thumb of the hand. It is the digit without which a hand loses the most versatility. Hence, one of the names for the top rank in the cult is simply the Prime Digit.

The other four are the 1st - 4th Digits and are sometimes called the Fingers of the Hand. They have titles as well. They work in conjunction with one another and report directly to Gortash. He doles out the orders, but status reports, etc, go to his assistant.

The thumb is the Black Sovereign (Gortash).

The first finger/digit is the Black Claw.

The second is the Black Gavel.

The third is the Black Binder.

The fourth is the Black Needle.

Sometimes, we drop Black from the titles.

For Gortash, when he isn't called simply the Chosen or Director, he prefers Sovereign and Prime. The leader he replaced in my fics preferred Patriarch, and to say Gortash did not get along with him is putting it lightly.

Classes:

The Claw and Gavel are usually high-level fighters or clerics.

The Binder is invariably the most powerful magic-user in the cult.

The Needle is always an alchemist.

Black Gauntlets are the most numerous Banites in-game. I've placed their ranking directly below the Hand, as the stronger ones act as Gortash's guards in Wyrm's Rock. Low rank Banites wouldn't be given that responsibility, though some Iron Consuls are considered his bodyguards, so I put them directly below the Gauntlets. I've decided that Black Gauntlets are similar to high-ranking military, and the Iron Consuls are lower ranking but still are officers of a sort.

For my purposes, I've decided that the strongest Black Gauntlets can obtain a rank on the Black Hand. Thus, some in-game Black Gauntlets will have Hand ranks in my fics.

Almost every Banite we fight is a cleric or a fighter, and this feels truly silly to me. (Though I do love how laughable their clerical powers actually are, befitting Bane's current status as a quasi-deity). I've also seen no instances of them using healing magic. It makes sense from a might-makes-right deity, but it also makes his clerics comparatively weak.

I've created additional consul ranks for more variety in function.

The new consul ranks I've added are as follows:

Iron: Fighters (and the uncleric-like clerics), Rangers & Monks

Bronze: Rogues & Warlocks

Gold: Wizards, Sorcerers & Bards

Obsidian: non-combatant thinker types (Gortash's assistant is this rank)

Malachite: bottom rung office workers

Below these are the Fists of Bane.

I'm debating whether it was Bane who changed the rank names or if Gortash did it instead. His memoir notes say he re-established the Banite cult (though I have beef with so much in that document's timeline, particularly in how it deviates from the tiny bits of Durge's actual memory that come through in narration). The scrunkly tyrant is arrogant and ambitious enough to have arbitrarily decided to alter a hierarchy that had been in play for thousands of years. He's going to rule the world, after all.

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

1 and 3 for the end of year books ask :)

1 How many books did you read this year?

Well, the year's not over yet and it sort of depends where you draw the line between something being a book or a zine or whatever, but I'm currently counting it as 37. Hoping to finish The Nice and the Good soon though.

3 What were your top five books of the year?

Ooh, I'm very bad at ranking things but I'm going to arbitrarily say Claire Dederer - Monsters, Anne Boyer - Garments Against Women, Miranda July - All Fours, Hilary White - Holes, and Don DeLillo - White Noise. Listed in order of when I read them. But 1982, Janine or Humboldt's Gift or Zone One or Goblinhood or Thank You For Everything could all totally be equally deserving of a spot on the list, if TYFE counts as a book. And I think the Nice and the Good will be among my favourites once I've finished it.

Thanks!

[snubbery]

dramione post of the day (kinda):

1. slytherins say gryffindors the way people in real life say liberals lol. bleeding heart gryffyindor is sooo funny and they say it so much

2. i said i'd quit because muggleborns are secretly also descended from wizards annoy me but not with a bang... approved for having a reasonable level of groveling

3. there are just so many marriage law fics i do not even slightly understand why but i have come to basically accept it as a quirk of the genre. a way to make everyone more miserable i suppose and an easy shortcut to a plot

4. i think it's funny when hermione is really behind a cause and that's like the whole plot and draco is just sort of there letting her throw him under the bus so that she'll say he's useful. tbf he doesn't not suck in these fics generally

5.

i mean they're living in a rape dystopia and he's like i need to fix this. so she'll like me

6. my collection of draco malfoy being jealous of cats quotes is like if the library of alexandria instead of burning down was just really messy. and made up entirely of dramione fanfiction quotes about draco malfoy being jealous of cats

7. i seriously need to stop reading fanfiction and romance in general my brain is rotting my sinuses are failing. finished all the romance i have arbitrarily decided i have to finish before the year ends though so that's a good start

8. you always need to make all dramione posts unrebloggable because you never know when a rando will come around and reblog all of them no exceptions