#ark's huge text post

[dhl-au]

So, as you may have noticed, I have been working on a lot of redesigns for the au right now. Because the old ones were not relevant this year, my art style has improved.

There are three redesigns for the pre-horror trio of administrators. (One of them will be hidden for some reason, it's not time for that person to appear in the story.)

As you can see, only two have changed a lot. However, in my opinion, they look much better.

The main reason why I changed them was that I was not very happy with how they looked. Basically, I felt a bit weird when I looked at them and just said "I don't know... Feels a bit unfinished." As you may notice, a lot of changes are happening to Abel. He has a more human look and is closer to his horror appearance. Unfortunately, even the third person has undergone many changes. Basically, the body. Most of the work was done to make it look more human and non-human.

I also changed the poses and angles of their poses slightly. Just to feel less uncomfortable about them in my head.

On old ones, you can see color disbalance, weird design decisions, and many other things compared to new ones. Simply, I was not happy with Mushy's idea of Abel fitting into this AU. There is not much to say here, just my own destructive thoughts that I might copy designs and ideas. Now, a bit about Caine. His palette was reworked and simple outfit designs were created, trying to balance all the colors so that they didn't feel unbalanced. I also added special items for them so that they could move around locations much faster than regular players.

And oh well, dear God, there's a lot of text. I never have written so much. Ahaha, sorry about that. I guess it's just my thoughts on these design things and etc.

[canmom]

The themes of NieR Reincarnation

A post about the recurring elements of Drakenier and the use of branching timelines as a storytelling device. I'll be discussing spoilers for basically every DoD/NieR game.

Records

A somewhat understated recurring motif of the Drakengard/NieR series is the idea of stories or memories of humanity being stored in some massive archive.

It's an idea that first entered the series in NieR Gestalt/Replicant. Early drafts of the game focused on the idea of a world built out of stories and fairytale characters, and while most of this was cut, some remained in the Forest of Myth area.

Following NieR's obsessive love of hopping between different game genres, the story here is delivered through prose/text adventure segments. There is a sense that this area of the game exists as prose, with the characters slightly aware of narration - narration which absorbs the characters until you find a way to escape. Eventually you find out - it's rather cryptic in the actual game, but spelled out explicitly in Grimoire NieR - that it's a huge computer system storing records of the deceased humanity.

In your second visit to the area, the story focuses more on distant history, that all these stories are fragments of memory of the lost pre-apocalpytic world. You encounter a Gestalt (human soul extracted from body) that is eating the memories stored in the tree, and kill it, and for Nier and co., this is enough - but for the player, you really don't know half of what is going on.

In the story The Lost World, which was adapted for the additional Ending E added in the Replicant remake, Kainé returns to the Forest of Myth and finds the computer system expanding. She fights clones of herself before eventually speaking to a mysterious administrator and descending into a virtual world that seems like a corrupted version of her memories. But she's able to connect to her memories of NieR, Emil and Grimoire Weiss, and through that connection cause a kind of timeline collapse effect that allows her to resurrect Nier. Terms from DoD3 such as 'singularity' come back again.

In NieR Automata, the idea of the legacy of humanity becomes increasingly central. While the androids believe they are reclaiming Earth for humanity, the Machine Lifeforms' motivation is in large part driven by their efforts to pore over the records of humanity and learn how to evolve their condition, even by blind imitation. Many of the different Machine Lifeforms you encounter are shaped by their interpretations of human society. The motif of human buildings recreated in white blocks recurs at certain points.

In the final sequence of the game, you climb a tower, and inside it visit simulacra of locations from the Replicant/Gestalt. You learn that the machines have infiltrated the androids' network and downloaded basically all the information the androids have, including all their records of humanity. When the machines' 'Ark' is launched into space, it carries their memories and consciousness in data form.

The YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series in FFXIV continues this idea of obsessive, blind reconstruction. The machines you fight here are now all the more explicitly connected to the apocalyptic shit in DoD; they have also been frantically creating duplicates of YoRHa android 2P, the Bunker and so on in corrupted form. Although the story here has mostly other interests, it's another recurrence of the idea of trying to recreate things that were lost.

Along with this idea of the archive comes the idea of preservation of that archive. Whether by accident or deliberate attack, the survival of the archive is not guaranteed.

This is all absolutely central to what Reincarnation is about.

Branches

The Drakenier series has played around with branching narratives pretty much from the start. It's somewhat infamous for it in fact - did you know that NieR is actually a spinoff of ending E of Drakengard, the one where you appear over Tokyo and have to do a rhythm game? Yeah, so...

Most games are fairly cagey (ha ha) about the mechanics of these branches. Indeed, although we speak of branches, the structure of these games is not really a branching one like a visual novel. The branches and 'endings' are usually unlocked sequentially.

Drakengard/Drag-on Dragoon (DoD1) is probably the closest you get to a traditional branching structure. You can unlock routes in certain missions by fulfilling certain conditions. The exact logic of these branches is not really explained - you can go back to a point before you recruit a party member and get a different branch where they're present for example. That said, it's not like a visual novel where you can be 'on' one branch or another - you can always jump to any level from any timeline.

This oddness of the branches is also lampshaded a little more in DoD3, the game that is most explicit about the nature of the branching timeline. DoD3 is, from the player perspective, a linear game. After you complete the first 'ending', you unlock new levels that appear at earlier points in the timeline, and diverging branches appear. In the later branches, the logic of the world is starting to break down. Party members who you'd recruit later in the story are in your party much earlier, in some cases suffering from amnesia, the implication being that it's an effect of the Flower's corruption.

The game is intermittently narrated by a character called Accord, an android 'Recorder' whose job is to document all the different versions of the story for an unknown party. Accord isn't supposed to intervene in the story, though she occasionally talks to protagonist Zero, and in the final D route, she decides to break the rules and save Zero. Otherwise, she's responsible for 'sealing' branches where it seems the world cannot be saved.

This is Accord:

The final cutscene of DoD3, available only after you beat the ludicrously difficult rhythm game that is the 'final song', shows a bunch of other Accords appearing and talking about what a mess this all is.

Accord's other role in the game is to sell weapons. Another series tradition running back to DoD1 is the 'Weapon Stories'. In each game, you can collect weapons, which can be upgraded through a series of four stages. Each stage unlocks another part of a story. These stories tend to be quite brief - each entry is at most a short paragraph. They also, particularly in the DoD games, tend to be comically grimdark.

DoD 3 came out after NieR Replicant/Gestalt, but in every game since then, there have been cryptic mentions of Accord. In Automata she's mentioned in a note as a weapons seller; in the updated version of Replicant she is mentioned as visiting Nier's village while the party is away on her adventures, and you see a documention that mentions the 'Accord Corporation' supplying magic weapons.

OK, so, put a pin in that, we'll come back to her later.

The side material commits further to the branching idea. The original Drakengard is established to follow from the DoD3 Story Side novel, while Branch A gives rise to the Shi ni Itaru Aka manga and the DoD 1.3 novel. The YoRHa stage plays spawned alternative versions, namely YoRHa version 1.3a and Shōjo YoRha version 1.1a, with the gender of the casts flipped. YoRHa 1.3a also has Accord in it. The anime NieR Automata ver. 1.1a also presents an increasingly diverging version of the events of the game - notably, Adam turns into a multi-armed monster.

DoD2, something of the black sheep of the franchise, was originally written to follow DoD1 ending A; later it was retconned to belong to its own branch. Just 'cause.

With me so far? ...no? Yeah, that's fair. You can read about all the details I've gathered so far here, but in short, there are lots of timeline branches, and multiple versions of several stories with small or large divergences.

Reincarnation

NieR Re[in]carnation is a gacha game that's been running for the last three years, and is going to be shut down at the end of April. At the time it came out, it was acknowledge for having unusually nice graphics for a mobile game, but rather desultory, grindy, repetitive gameplay. Which remained true throughout the game's life, so I can't exactly recommend playing Reincarnation, especially at this point.

But! I would definitely say it's worth your time to dig up the story on Youtube/Accord's Library if you're into NieR stuff. I won't be going into all the ins and outs of the story and how it all fits together in this post, but I am gonna talk about how it's structured.

NieR Reincarnation places you in a vast stone city called the Cage, calling to mind the environments in Ico. At the outset, you play as a young girl travelling with a weird ghost-like creature called Mama, tasked with restoring the memories stored in objects called 'dark scarecrows' which are being subverted and corrupted by black birds which form into various monsters.

Within each chapter of NieR Reincarnation, you get a short story in four parts, presented in a kind of cutout style, which are the four segments of a weapon story. You collect the weapon and the character.

The Cage is shaped by the content of the weapon stories somehow bleeding into the simulated setting. A character's memories can be used to restore the stories to their proper course. It is possible to interfere in small ways with the worlds of the stories.

The corruption of the stories tends to involve subverting characterisation to make them crueller, more prone to random violence etc. - or points when a character could be threatened in a narratively unsatisfying way. For example, a peace-loving runaway prince could be turned into a warlike king.

Over the course of the first arc, you discover that the girl you are playing is actually a monster who has taken the form of a human girl and, regretting it, wants to give her her embodiment back. The second half of the arc has you playing the girl trying to reunite with her monster friend; at the end, you get her own backstory as a victim of brutal prejudice. After all is said and done, both characters transform into weapons, which Mama picks up and hides away.

The second arc, The Sun and the Moon, deals with a brother and sister from present-day Tokyo. Both of them have been transported into the Cage by more of the weird ghost thingies, to participate in a strange ritual that is allegedly going to restore the Cage. The rules are highly mystical - a significant sacrifice is needed.

In the most recent arc, The People and The World, the characters all emerge from their stories as the Cage becomes increasingly corrupted. We finally get the long awaited point where these characters can interact with each other, and advance the stories from a series of tragic vignettes to something more. At the same time, we get a lot more allusions to other games in the series - from the Lunar Tear room where Emil memorialised Kainé and later 9S memorialises 2B, to a brief appearance Devola and Popola.

There's even a nod to Yoko Taro's other terminated gacha game, SINoALICE, which is going to be made into a movie oddly enough. There's a wry nod to the game being shut down.

And in the most recent chapters we find out that the Cage is actually a server on the moon containing records of humanity - 10H from A Much Too Silent Sea is one of the main characters. 'Mama' is actually the Pod tasked with overseeing the archive, and wiping 10H's memories whenever she learns too much - though it seems at some point 10H learned the truth and affirmed that she'd protect the archive anyway and they stopped wiping her memory.

Over the course of the chapter, 10H helps the gang make their escape from the moon through the androids network, to Earth. But when they get to Earth, they find themselves in a strange white city more resembling the Cage.

We'll finally get some answers, maybe, later this month. Anyway...

So, these records come from multiple diverging timelines, and they take the form of weapon stories. You have a unity of the ideas of character - weapon - memory - world. A record is simultaneously a tragic series of events, a person who can manifest inside the Cage itself, a simulated world which other people can visit, and a weapon.

In addition to the main storyline chapters and 'character stories', each character is associated with two additional 'EX' storylines, termed Dark Memories and Recollections of Dusk. Each one is a much more substantial narrative than most in the game.

Some of these EX stories clearly take place in different timelines to the first ones we encounter. Akeha's story, for example, takes place after her death in the original version. For the brother and sister from the Sun and the Moon arc, originally from present-day Tokyo, their Dark Memories take place in the backstory to NieR Gestalt/Replicant - the period where humanity is dying out to White Chlorination Syndrome and fighting monsters called the Legion. In this one, before the siblings could be torn apart by family drama and resentment, the apocalypse happens. Both of them end up coming into their own as heroic fighters. In the finale arc, the characters learn a bit about these alter egos, and it's made very explicit that this is a different timeline.

The monster Levania's Dark Memory is especially weird. It's the story of a salaryman who plays a monster called Levania in an MMORPG. His MMO character inspires him to live more bravely in the real world, and his life seems to be improving, but he is murdered by a jealous coworker. He wishes for reincarnation as he dies - classic isekai stuff. But the connection to the Levania you encounter in the main story is far from clear. Are all versions of Levania derived essentially from this man's tulpa?

The nature of the 'enemies' attacking the Cage is still not yet clear. They take the form of black birds. The birds are given a small amount of dialogue and characterisation, and they seem to not be malicious, just confused. The girl from the first arc in particular tends to interact with them sympathetically. However, they seem to be connected with the mysterious 'God' who was trying to destroy the world in DoD1, and the Angels and Flower of DoD3.

The birds are able to gathe together to manifest much larger monsters, the largest being giant elk and fish called Cursed Gods. During the finale arc, one of these becomes something that resembles the Mother Angel from DoD1 - and yes, there is a rhythm game - though mercifully a pretty easy one.

In the same arc, the character Yurie, an AI city overlord with grandiose ambitions and a loathing of imperfection attempts to download the entire history of humanity from the Cage and become a more perfect being. She succeeds, only to find the answers disappointing...

This is perhaps the closest thing we ever get to an explicit statement of what all these stories and histories add up to, but despite all this, the throughline is very strongly that these stories are essential to preserve. NieR characters exist in small groups, and it is their intense connections to these others, their treasured memories of travelling together, that motivate them to fight to preserve that thing, even if the results are destructive.

Similar themes emerge for example in Noelle's Recollection of Dusk story, which sees her travelling to preserve a place valued by her sister in crystal. And they also connect to the theme of sacrifice - the recurring ending device where the player must delete their save data in order to help someone (something echoed in Hina and Yuzuki at the altar of the sun and moon, or Levania and Fio). It's perhaps fair to say that nothing is more valued in the world of Nier than memories of a treasured person.

What about Accord? She has in fact made a brief cameo in Reincarnation already...

It seems incredibly likely that Accord originates from the Cage, and the accumulation of weapon stories is accomplished by androids like her. Definitely in the fandom there's a lot of excitement for the idea that Accord - something of a fan favourite - will show up at Reincarnation's ending.

So mystery solved, the Cage exists in the world of NieR Automata on the moon server? Not so fast - there are various discrepancies which seem to suggest that the world of the Cage exists in a separate branch than the one we see in Automata. For example, the androids are aware that the humans are dead and what remains on the moon is a huge archive of their memories; the humans seem to have survived much longer; 2B and 9S seem to have died in different circumstances. There are other oddities which fans have compiled.

And yet, despite being a divergent timeline with a much older point of divergence, some things seem to be fixed. There is still a YoRHa, still a 10H deceived about being on the moon, still a 2B and 9S.

One popular fan theory is that Reincarnation belongs to the NieR Automata anime (ver1.1a), since Adam turns into a monster there similar to the ones in Reincarnation. The black birds are reasoned to be the Machine Lifeforms, since we know they come from Earth. I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe?

Anyway, that's basically the gist of it.

A story told through permutations

In many fictional series with a shared universe, there is an effort to maintain a consistent shared universe, so all the different events can fit into a timeline with understandable cause and effect and characters living out their lives. Even when this proves impossibly unwieldy, as in comic books or Star Wars, the attempt is made.

NieR does not really take this approach. The creators leave many details of the world, such as place names, incredibly vague - the focus is always on telling an emotional story with characters. There is, as we've seen, an almost gleeful willingness to declare another new timeline.

There is also a certain aspect of repetition, or more kindly reiteration - the same core character dynamic revisited and retold in various forms. (2B9S gets the worst of it). A character is something like a principle or ideal, and each story shines another light on that 'core'. In the earlier storylines of Reincarnation, it became quite frustrating because it seemed like e.g. the character event stories were just rehashing the same idea rather than advance the story.

However, the more accustomed I get to this style of storyline, the more I think this kinda works. It is of course quite similar to the ideas proposed towards the end of Homestuck, or to time loop stories - the idea of varying the contingent circumstances to try to better illustrate the core characterisations and dynamics.

Yoko Taro has talked about how he constructs stories from a very simple idea, typically a moment of high emotional impact at the climax, and then works backwards to figure out what sort of story could lead into that. In Reincarnation, each character gets fairly limited time to establish themselves, so they tend to be defined in terms of a pretty narrow high concept.

For example, Akeha is an assassin in a vague historical Japanese setting; her introductory story sees her decide for the first time to disobey her lord after she finds another person who has been treated as instrumentally as her. Most Akeha stories focus on her assassinations, her relationship to her retainer, and what she sacrifices to perform the duty. Only her Dark Memory lets us see an Akeha who has escaped that life - it's a simple story about preparing food, but that's given meaning by all the other Akeha stories.

Hina and Yuzuki are defined by the same traits in their flashy scifi Dark Memory stories as in the more mundane ones - Yuzuki the quiet outcast, Hina the self-sacrificing star. Fio is defined by kindness in the context of abjection, seeing the good in monsters. Levania stories are about the desire for escape and transformation. Argo is always a shitty dad who only feels alive while climbing mountains.

The staticness of these characters seems on some level to be the point - in that we are told in Hina and Yuzuki's story that the mechanism of the Cage is to sort characters into 'Light' and 'Dark' natures, and push them to inevitable conflict, even if they try to break free. In the final arc, the characters seem to finally approach some resolution as they leave their contexts behind. Given the themes of Automata in rejecting an inevitable tragic fate, similar movement may be at work. There's an ambiguity - the need to hold on to even tragic histories, vs the wish to not be confined to them. (Perhaps it's significant that it's called the Cage...)

With so many balls in the air and so many mysteries still unanswered, it's hard to figure out how Reincarnation can deliver a satisfying resolution in just one remaining chapter, but the final arc has been really cooking so who knows! But I'm also coming to appreciate it as a kind of broader lens to notice all these recurring elements and tie them together.

Stories about alternate timelines and branching narratives are very common nowadays, particularly as a tool for revisiting a nostalgic franchise. Something something effect of the fan wiki era. So I can't exactly say NieR is doing something completely unique, but I do think there is something to its fragmented, collage-like approach to putting together story elements. There's something quite honest about it - an ability to say 'these details aren't important'.

Yoko Taro always talks about himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. And probably it is true that a lot of this eemerged from an iterative design process rather than being the plan from the beginning (the first draft of NieR envisioned it as something closer to what SINoALICE ended up being, about a world of fairytale characters; NieR Automata began life as backstory for an idol project). There's definitely a strong sense that it's being improvised. And yet despite that, it does feel like it is cohering into some sort of picture, that there is an artistic throughline to all this.

Or perhaps that's just the effect of getting way too invested in something. I won't deny that NieR brings out the fan in me.

Anyway Accord had better show up next month. Guys. You've been teasing us for so long...

[arkadiaasks]

Notice how your posts never get any notes. Why even be in a fandom if all you do is COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING THAT EVER HAPPENED. I scrolled so far down your profile & didn’t find a single positive thing about yugioh. Do you even like the series? Genuinely?

Let's go down this list.

Notice how your posts never get any notes.

This is an intentionally small ask blog that is isolated from the rest of Tumblr that I moved to here from CuriousCat after that service died for like a month. I'm not expecting to nor want a large audience.

Why even be in a fandom if all you do is COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING THAT EVER HAPPENED

I don't complain, or at least, not intentionally, the problem here is the only questions I get are from weirdly neurotic micro minutiae obsessed anons who insist on asking me huge text block questions, which I hate reading (because they won't break up their questions into more sensible blocks)

I'd love to talk about how much I love Go Rush!!, Utena, Dandadan, Granblue Fantasy, Girls' Last Tour, Devilman, Space Pirate Mito, but that's not the type of questions I get.

The questions I get are stuff about Rian Johnson, why isn't the Pokemon Anime like the Video Games, or Why is the Funny Kung Fu Sci-Fantasy Journey to the West series not written like War and Peace. Or "I'm a pedophile who is sexually interested in Kotori from ZEXAL".

Do you even like the series? Genuinely?

Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, ZEXAL and SEVENS are my favorite series.

I love translating the cards and putting up articles and try to read the comment section at YGOrganization, even though a lot of the comments are weirdly toxic.

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a special place in my heart because it's how I met my friends of close to 20 years. Yuki Judai was a hero I always liked, Yubel probably helped kick start my understanding of queerness before anyone in the wider world had the vocabulary to discuss it. I think the Supreme King is cool, I just wish his arc was a tiny bit more polished and cooked.

I think ZEXAL is highly underrated (and done super dirty by a slapshod dub). Even as it turns into space opera, it keeps a warm tight internal core of Yuma and Astral's bromance, and tries to keep the Number Club involved even up to the end as best as possible. (Also Vector is so cool)

I think VRAINS is honestly something very special if extremely flawed as a Shonen that is more of a Seinen, discussing about how heroism easily becomes vigilantism or an excuse to not face real problems, and the tragedy of losing loved ones, and how No The Revolution Won't Save You, but maybe you can make a better world, and a better sense of self, while casting false or unfounded heroism aside.

I wish ARC-V had been done less dirty because it's clear nearly everyone on that show was putting love and passion into the characters, the designs, the music, the monsters, the lush artwork, that you can tell even the staff working on Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links are huge fans, and my god, nearly everyone working on that show wanted that show to be so much better than it was.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's is so full of passion, that that alone kept its reputation alive despite whatever one things of the Pre-WRGP and WRGP arcs, and the Fortune Cup and first half of the Dark Signer arc and the Ark Cradle arcs are some of the strongest to come out of Yu-Gi-Oh! The first time I saw and heard Clear Mind still puts chills down my spine. That show shows how much, in a good way, vibes alone can keep a positive reputation alive even if there's other issues.

Exodia's summon in the first episode still lives rent free in my head.

I thought the Doma/Waking the Dragons arc was much cooler like everyone did when we were all younger, and god I hope some day the Armor monsters get printed and they unfuck Rafael's Guardians.

I vigorously defend Dark Side of Dimensions for not being the source of ARC-V falling apart. (It wasn't)

I think SEVENS, despite the childish/Kodomo exterior, is a pretty decent social satire needling on Japan's post-Bubble society as well as interrogating Who Actually Owns An Thing, the fans or the creators? And Nail vs Yuga is yes, absolutely one of the strongest Duels put out in the franchise that it still puts chills down my spine.

I think Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!! despite a very rocky first year, grew into its own, and has had a decent conversation on the police, the dangers of putting too much power into the hands of the wealthy, what do you do when you aren't allowed to die and need to find a life worth living, and the problems of fanaticism and zealotry.

There is so much good in this franchise, and I wish the more shiny/cutesy entries, which are my favorites, would be given more time in the sun.

But ultimately.

If you want me gushing about things, ask me questions that make me gush.

Don't ask me about micro minutiae.

Or keep interrogating me on things.

Or Rian Johnson Spells.

[herrscherofmagic]

I wrote more about this idea in a reddit post I made just now, but I'll go ahead and copy that over here too! though I'm still not 100% familiar w/ how reblogging works, so if I'm doing this correctly then the lengthy text-heavy explanation should be a different rebloggable post than the original one that's just the two images and one sentence.

Anyways, explanation below VVV

As a quick disclaimer, it's not my intention to put down the current design of the Luofu, nor do I think this concept would "100% improve the Luofu without any doubt", it's just a spontaneous thought of mine, lol

So, I've been into Sci-Fi for pretty much most of my life, though I've been a huge fan of fantasy too. Star Rail is interesting with how it combines a lot of the elements of the two, especially with the Luofu. But I've seen some other people discussing how they wish the Luofu could've been more "sci-fi" themed, and while I kinda agree with that, I don't think that's the biggest issue with the Luofu.

I haven't watched the show Stargate myself, but having read a bit about it and seen videos on its story, I think it might be a great example of how a story can use a few core motifs/themes to serve as a sci-fi foundation, while still diverging from typical sci-fi aesthetics of shiny sleek metal and hovercars everywhere.

As I understand it, one of the key ideas in that show is that there are "Stargates" (duh) scattered across the galaxy(?) and the human civilization on Earth finds one and figures out how to use it, traveling to other worlds with their own stargates and human civilizations.

But many of these civilizations developed differently from Earth as a result of their environment; for instance, worlds that were ruled as subjects under an empire would've had their development stunted, or a civilization that had a heavily theocratic leadership might've prioritized ritual and appearance over pure utilitarianism. Hence why there's scenes of fancy laser-shooting spear warriors fighting off against a bunch of guys from Earth with submachines, lol

While Stargate has the concept of stargates to serve as it's "sci-fi" anchor, Honkai: Star Rail has some obvious things like the Astral Express (space train!). For the Luofu specifically, we're told and shown that it's a big boat flying in space, part of the Xianzhou fleet.

However, aside from the perpetually starry sky, there's not much that tells you you're on a giant space boat. Of course the Luofu is a whole civilization/nation, and not just a crew of people stuck in a cramped spaceship that's built like a submarine. So it makes sense for there to be planetary features like clouds in the sky, because they built these ships to mimic their homeworld as they travel the stars.

But I think there's one way Mihoyo could've seriously hammered in the concept of "spacefaring civilization on a world-ship", and that would be by depicting it as an O'Neill cylinder.

O'Neill cylinders are a theoretical construct, specifically one variation of the concept of a habitable megastructure. Similar concepts include ring-worlds and Dyson spheres.

The most popular/mainstream sci-fi franchise I can think of that demonstrates this concept would be the Halo franchise, with the Halo rings, the Ark, and the Shield Worlds. Whether it's the wrapping Halo ring that cuts the sky in half, or the massive ceiling (much like Belobog's underworld) of Requim, or the huge, distant arms of the Ark reaching out into space, these megastructures have identifiable features that remind you that you're standing on the surface of an artificial world. The scale is absolutely mind-blowing, and it serves to remind the player that the the Forerunners which built these megastructures were an unfathomably powerful space-faring civilization.

The Luofu could've been an interesting way for Mihoyo to incorporate a classic sci-fi concept (the megastructure), with the added benefit of giving the Luofu a really memorable feature that would clearly signal the sci-fi nature of this world.

No matter how traditional the clothes may be, no matter if the soldiers use spears and bows, no matter if they have wooden starskiffs for aircraft, as long as you can look into the sky and see the massive wrapping walls of an O'Neill cylinder surrounding you, you'll be reminded that you're on an artificial world. It's a concept that's such a staple of sci-fi and so distant from most forms of fantasy, much more noticeable than just the starry-sky the Luofu currently has.

It's a totally different way of visualizing a 3D space, thinking of the inside of cylinder rather than the seemingly-flat surface of a typical world. Not to mention that the interior can still host structures, and it could've been an absolutely breath-taking sight to see the roots of the Ambrosial Arbor breaking through the "surface" of the Luofu and reaching out into the center, filling the sky with hauntingly beautiful branches.

And of course, if the Luofu is visualized as having a cylindrical module for the interior habitable zone and an exterior series of modules for the rest of the ship's systems, you can still give it a recognizable space-faring boat silhouette like it currently has; just instead of the "deck" of the boat being the habitable surface, it'd be a different set of structures, and the world itself would be safely nestled inside.

Obviously there's no way this can change now, and it's possible that Mihoyo even tried out the concept themselves before deciding it wasn't a fit. Still, though, I think it's a neat "what-if" to think about ^.^

Just a thought... what if the Xianzhou ships were built like O'Neill cylinders instead of the current design of "planet's surface built on top of a boat-shaped spaceship" that the Luofu has?

[the-puffinry]

Look at these pictures from a thread by AntiokhosE on twitter! I was going to just share the tweets but twitter and tumblr formats being what they are this looked kind of unreadable, so here’s the thread text (and link beneath a picture post instead):

“Jumping forward a few centuries in the National Antiquities Museum, on to Sogdian pieces from Panjakent and the Zeravshan and Ferghana valleys. Burnt to the ground after the Arab conquest, archaeologists would find the charred in situ remains - Tajikistan’s Pompeii. Easily the most impressive from Panjakent are the huge murals found in the temples and royal citadel - some now in St Petersburg, but a good chunk still in Dushanbe. Some more fantastic frescoes from Panjakent and the other Sogdian citadels. My favourite find, however, is this larger than life statue of Shiva and his consort Parvati, carved in a deeply Hellenistic style and found in the excavations.” (thread link)

I couldn’t find an official site for the museum (?), but I did find this wikimedia page where you can see more of their collection. It really looks very interesting! 

I also found this short 2018 paper: Restoration of Murals of the National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan.

excerpt: “The study of monumental wall painting in Tajikistan started in the middle of the 20th century when, in 1946 the group of archeologists led by experts from the State Hermitage Museum began excavation works in the ancient city Panjekent. The excavation is still on-going. The ancient city Panjekent represents a complex monument. It consists of an extensive ark with three strengthening pillars, the Shakhristan city surrounded by a defensive wall, as well as suburban houses and a necropolis. Archaeological expeditions in Panjekent revealed a large variety of cultural artifacts impressively portraying the routines of citizens of the ancient city.”

[hachama]

Facebook post by Paige Leitman

"I would like to put this in context for you. A synagogue in Beverly Hills was vandalized and the Torah scrolls were damaged. Let me explain how serious this is to the Jews.

Damaging a Torah is not like damaging a bible, even an expensive and valuable one.

A Torah scroll is written, BY HAND, with a quill, and specially prepared ink on specially prepared animal hides. Every one. It takes a scribe the better part of a year to write it, and there are special calligraphic standards. ALSO if the scribe screws up one single letter, the whole scroll must be destroyed. They are not mass-produced. You won't find them in your nightstand in a hotel.

A Torah scroll is a historic object. For instance, many of them are hundreds of years old and few new ones are made. The Torah in my temple was smuggled out of a Jewish town in Russia before it was burned to the ground. Bibles are mass-produced and have been for years. There are a few priceless bibles. EVERY Torah scroll is a historic object.

A Torah scroll is HELLA expensive. Many are literally priceless - as in no amount of money can buy them. They are gifted, loaned, and tracked carefully. A person doesn't own one - a person really can't. ONE. There are too few and they are too valuable for one person (generally speaking). A **congregation** owns one. ONE. Unlike bibles where each congregant may own many copies.

A Torah scroll is paraded proudly around the synagogue while people stand in respect and sing the special Torah-appreciation song. People reach out their prayer shawl or prayer book to touch it so it's not accidentally gotten dirty by someone's hand. People on the edges of the pews that touched the Torah "transfer" the touch by touching prayer shawls or prayer books to their neighbors and then kiss that book spine or prayer shawl because THAT is how important a Torah scroll is.

The Torah is so valuable that we do not touch the scroll with a hand while reading it. We have a special pointer stick, often with a tiny sculpture of a human hand at the end, made of metal or wood, to hold one's place in the line of text just so your hands don't accidentally get dirt on it, and so generations of use don't smudge the text.

The Torah scroll has specially made rollers to put it on, a special belt to put around it, a decorated velvet or brocade cover to put over it, and the gold and silver crowns are placed on the top of the rollers. Every one of them. ALL of them. It is a huge production to make. We literally put jeweled crowns on every Torah.

The Torah must be held in a special ark, which is a huge and valuable large cabinet. Every single one. You can't just throw it in a nightstand, a backpack, or a classroom.

The Torah is so spiritually important to us that we will never allow it to be in the dark. A special light burns in every sanctuary, never to be extinguished (nowadays with special generators in case of a power outage). My last name is Leitman, which meant my family were the people who showed up at the sanctuary in snowstorms, in the middle of the night, to make sure that light never went out. Just keeping the Torah under light is a job so important that it becomes a family legacy for the rest of the line.

In Judaism, you need a minimum quorum of ten Jews to have official prayers. The Torah is so important, it's considered as counting for a whole Jew so you need only 9 if you have Torah scrolls.

Sure SOME folks are buried with bibles. However, when a Torah scroll is damaged beyond repair, the SCROLL ITSELF gets a full Jewish burial. Individual cemetery plot in a place of honor, a full headstone, a nice casket. Everyone shows up and mourns. It's a big honkin' deal and hugely expensive, but they are THAT important.

Anything less than this and a Torah is not considered kosher and may not be used in a synagogue. Yes, there are plenty of knock offs out there to buy that are machine printed, or not calligraphied appropriately, or whatever. But they're not real.

Please, I beg you, don't say a Torah is anything like a bible or that Torahs are treated like bibles are treated. Vandalism of Torah scrolls is a HUGE thing."

[random-thought-depository]

Reading the last part of Shamus Young’s big Mass Effect review, where they talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda... I haven’t played the games, but it sounds to me like Andromeda didn’t follow a potentially interesting aspect of its premise.

The Andromeda galaxy doesn’t have Reapers, right? So what does a galaxy where death robots don’t kill everybody every 50,000 years look like?

Imagine going from a setting that’s kind of like Star Trek with more alien aliens to a setting that’s kind of like David Brin’s Five Galaxies civilization. Or, to put it another way, imagine going from a setting that’s kind of like Star Trek to a setting that’s kind of like a mix of the Star Wars Galactic Empire and the Orion’s Arm Terragen Sphere. Just this tremendously vast and old civilization, because in Andromeda there are no Reapers so civilizations actually get a chance to flourish and grow and develop for more than an eyeblink in cosmic time. It wouldn’t necessarily even have to be technologically super-advanced, just huge because civilization has had so much time to spread.

Maybe have the colonists arrive during a Dark Age, so they can still be a locally significant faction instead of just a curiosity. The antagonists of the game could be the local pirates and post-apocalyptic warlords. Shamus Young had a “how I’d have done it” idea I like that would mesh well with this with only a small modification.

One idea, inspired by this: instead of the colonists having trouble because the worlds they intended to settle are less habitable than they expected, they have trouble because more-or-less every nice planet is already inhabited. The Milky Way is mostly empty because civilization gets razed every 50,000 years, but in Andromeda civilization has been growing and spreading for so long that most nice worlds in the galaxy have been colonized (which implies billions of inhabited worlds and a galactic population in the quintillions or more). Andromeda looks like Earth, where basically all habitable land already has people on it and most of the true Terra Nullius you’re going to find is the equivalent of Antarctica (Mars-like worlds, airless moons, etc.).

Maybe one of the big decision points in the game could be something like this:

You have surveyed all worlds within 40 light years. This region of Andromeda seems to be thickly inhabited; of the 78 habitable worlds within that volume, 68 are already inhabited. You must choose between these options:

1) The surveys have revealed 9 marginally habitable worlds that remain uninhabited. These include ocean worlds with small islands the only land, desert worlds with only small seas and vegetated areas, etc.. You may choose to settle these. While some of these worlds would be habitable enough in the short term, a few centuries of plausible population growth would render them cramped homes for any new society.

2) The survey has revealed one very habitable and lush world that remains uninhabited. Ancient beacons mark this world as having a status in the Old Empire similar to a national park; it was set aside to remain uncolonized, as a gift to the future or to any intelligent species which might one day evolve on it. The message implies this policy was in continuity with a practice that far pre-dated the Old Empire, and a number of huge monuments in varying locations around the planet, its moon, and in orbit of the planet suggest this may be the case, although we cannot read the text on the older monuments. The oldest of these monuments is a skyscraper size monolith that stands on the summit of the highest mountain of the planet’s airless moon, and analysis of micrometeorite erosion suggests it may be over seventy million years old. The world has remained uncolonized because of the reverence this law is held in even after the fall of the Old Empire. You may choose to settle this world; the survey team has thoroughly checked for ancient defense systems and other dangers and found none, and it is a rich world which would provide an excellent home for Humans or other species with similar environmental needs. The only apparent worry is alienating the neighbors - though of course with the disclaimer that there is still much you do not know about this galaxy.

3) You may attempt to liberate some of the worlds ruled by some of the nastier warlords and settle the colonists on them. It would not be difficult to offer the locals a better deal than some of these warlords, which should win their cooperation in the short term. The colonist population is small enough that it would not greatly burden an already inhabited world with a sizable population in the short term. While settling on an already inhabited world has obvious risks and disadvantages, it would also mean gaining access to pre-existing infrastructure instead of having to build it, as well as gaining access to a labor force much bigger than the colonist population. The obvious risk is, well, the obvious bad places that “settle on a world that already has people on it” might lead.

4) You may send survey teams farther afield to try to find more empty habitable worlds. The risk is there’s no guarantee you’ll have better luck elsewhere, sending out survey probes and expeditions uses up resources, and the colonists are burning through supplies while they wait for the survey teams to find new homes for them.

5) You may attempt to establish air-sealed colonies on various uninhabited barren worlds and/or convert some of the Arks into self-sufficient space habitats. Upside is you’ll have plenty of empty asteroids, airless moons, etc. to choose from. Downside is the technological challenges of establishing a society of this type will be formidable and if you fail everyone might die, maybe too quickly to make any attempt to change strategy. The prospect of spending the rest of their lives in a sealed artificial habitat may also lower colonist morale and generate political resistance.

[blood-orange-juice]

I am sorry I am new to the game and I don't know why do you think Childe is going to die? I don't care about the spoilers btw so I would be happy If you could explain this to me, thanks

Thank you for giving me motivation to actually structure my thoughts about it. :D

Mihoyo are notorious for killing off characters, main cast included. They may not do it as much in Genshin as they did in Honkai, but they are obviously not afraid to kill someone if it makes the story better.

Childe is a mix of an insane amount of contradicting tropes and most of them usually lead to a character dying. This makes him a good option for killing off.

*

If I go into the exact tropes in detail... Oh boi, this is going to be a long post. Wall of text incoming.

So... let's count the red flags: - Childe's real name is Ajax. That's a pretty bizarre name for a Russian character so it has to mean something. The original Greek hero Ajax went mad and killed himself because of his pride and desire for glory (extra trivia: the exact story varies, but in all versions, it happens due to his conflict with Odysseus and the closest thing we have to Odysseus is the mc). I think Mihoyo may be setting him up to be a hero of a classic tragedy, "a superior man destroyed by a single flaw". I don't have any real arguments for this (I even have counterarguments, see below), but he certainly gives off that air. And pride/arrogance is his main flaw. - His foul legacy skill is dangerous and might backfire. Probably killing him or making him mad. *looks at the Ajax myth* Not to mention it literally feeds on his hp. - He just generally likes playing with death. "The encounters he craves the most are those that bring him closest to his own demise." - says Pulcinella. - We met and befriended his brother, and Childe invited us to meet the rest of his family. These are common death flags in media. - He's a Char Aznable clone and Char dies in manga and is implied to be dead in the anime. Char or not, mc rivals generally have a 50/50 chance of dying. - I mentioned earlier how he lives by fairytale rules, and people who wandered into fae land and were changed by it usually either die or have to go back to the fae. They have no place in the human world. - Considering some of the shit he says, he will become a huge problem if he doesn't die. He'll just keep trying to conquer the world. So he either succeeds at this (and becomes one of the final bosses), or dies before he can accomplish it, or changes his mind. I can't imagine what would make him change his mind. - Cursed knights usually die. He plays knight a lot and he is definitely cursed. - Enemy officers helping the mc often die. - He just doesn't look like a person who wants to live. Dead eyes and all that.

Not exactly red flags, but dangerous: - Personally, I'm very worried about his desire to keep all his promises no matter how silly they are. It will be tested at some point. Chekhov's gun, don't @ me. - He is a very conflicted character, trying to juggle his loyalty to the Fatui, the call of the Abyss, and basic humanity. He actually repeats the central conflict of the story (”Abyss vs. the world”, or rather "principles that govern the world vs. what's fair and right") in his own life. A conflict of this scale calls for someone dying.

Why I think he could actually live: - He has some traits of a trickster and tricksters usually survive. He might just happily ride off into the sunset with nothing gained and nothing of importance lost. - To be fair, he isn’t the case of a “single fatal flaw”. This guy *consists* of flaws and contradictions. His life is a mess, nothing ever works the way he planned and this might eventually be what saves him. The same way the human condition stopped the Apocalypse in Good Omens. - He might not even be important and will just be used for comic relief. In Commedia dell'arte Tartaglia is normally a farsighted character who stutters and can't really help anyone. His farsightedness doesn't have any impact. He may be tied to the central conflict of the story and have no impact on it despite him wishing otherwise. - Battlemaniacs have a chance to survive if they get a battle bro who looks out for them. The main candidates are mc and Zhongli. - Mihoyo likes to play with tropes in a really clever way. They might let him live precisely because it’s very natural for him to die.

He would definitely die as "Childe" tho and become someone else. His lifestyle is unsustainable. This would be a beautiful ark and I hope they go this way. The world needs more stories like that.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

The British Assyriologist Irving Finkel on Herodotus and the Mesopotamian coracle boat

Assyrian quffa, with four oarsmen and a load of large building stone. Note the fishermen astride inflated hide floats to the left and right. (From Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World). Source: http://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/2011/08/ancient-and-occasionally-huge-coracle.html

“Further south, a little later, we get hard information on Babylonian coracles in Greek, from the redoubtable Herodotus, writing his Histories in the second half of the fifth century BC when cuneiform writers were very alive and fertile; his book is one of the world’s ultimate bestsellers. An ongoing dispute persists about whether or not Herodotus actually went to Babylon himself, or about how reliable his statements are, and so forth, but when it came to facts about coracles he knew which way was up: 

They have boats plying the river down to Babylon which are completely round and are made of leather. In Armenia, which is upstream from Assyria, they cut branches of willow and make them up into a frame, around the outside of which they stretch watertight skins to act as a hull; they do not broaden the sides of the boat to form a stern or narrow them into a prow, but they make it round, like a shield. Then they line the whole boat with straw and send it off down the river laden with goods. Their cargo is most commonly palm-wood casks filled with wine. The boats are steered by two men, who stand upright and wield a paddle each; one of them pulls the paddle towards his body and the other pushes the paddle away from his body. These boats vary in size from very large downwards; the largest of them can manage cargo weighing five thousand talents. Each boat carries a live donkey – or, in the case of larger boats, several donkeys. At the end of their voyage to Babylon, when they have sold their cargo, they sell off the frame of the boat and all the straw, load up the donkeys with the skins, and drive them back to Armenia. They do this because the current of the river is too strong for boats to sail up it, and that is why they make these boats out of skin rather than wood. Once they have got back to Armenia with their donkeys, they make themselves more boats in the usual way. 

Herodotus, Histories Bk 1″

Irving Finkel “The Ark Before Noah, Decoding the Story of the Flood”, available on https://files.secure.website/wscfus/10582237/26182627/the-ark-before-noah-decoding-the-story-of-the-flood-by-finkel-irving-l-team-enki.pdf

Irving Finkel, Source:https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jan/24/babylonian-tablet-noah-ark-constructed-british-museum

Just some remarks on Dr. Finkel’s text: 

1/ It is true that it is not sure whether Herodotus visited or not Babylon, but, on the other hand, Herodotus does not claim unambiguously such a visit. If he did visit Babylon, he was there for a brief period of time. Personally I believe that a journey of Herodotus to Babylon is rather improbable, given the historical conditions of the time (Babylon was too deep in the Persian Empire and it does not seem that there was there in the fifth century a Greek community on which Herodotus could rely for hospitality and support). Most probably his sources on Babylonia were indirect (Greeks who had worked for the Persian administration or/and Persians living in Asia Minor).

2/ The “ongoing dispute” in the scholarly community more generally on the value and reliability of Herodotus’ work has taken the last decades a decisive turn in favor of Herodotus, as I have shown in many posts on this blog of mine.

3/ What Dr. Finkel writes on Herodotus and the coracle is another confirmation of the solidity of the thesis that Herodotus is not peddling products of his imagination, but he did a real and difficult investigation to distinguish truth from fiction and to record the reality of the world of his era, that he had a keen interest not only in the “big history” of the empires and their wars, but also in the material and everyday life of the different peoples about whom he writes, and that he provides reliable information about the non-Greek world when he observes personally things or when his sources don’t have their own confusions and agendas. 

[soundwavereporting]

*insert catchy text post title here*

So! WFC Siege thoughts, now that I’m home from work and slightly more awake.

Under a cut because spoilers (obviously) and because I rambled:

Soundwave (which is my usual metric for judging anything tf) is pretty much what I expected him to be, which is...not much. lmao. I’d half expected him to sound like autotuned Hazbin Hotel Alastor, so having the flat voice was almost a shock, but honestly it kinda fits his not having a personality, except for that one line and him once again getting the brain cell of the Decepticons. But honestly, rarely does Soundwave have an explicit personality that doesn’t require digging into supplemental material and rewatching/rereading the media to find a few snippets of characterization from which to spin a whole character, so really it’s nothing new. No. I’m not bitter at all. Do I sound bitter? Also. I want to know what happened to him. Did he get blown away by the Ark’s engines????

However

I am SO INTRIGUED by the tiny hints given about Soundblaster...why was he made...what does Soundwave think of him? I don’t care about the war anymore. I just want a whole show about Soundblaster. I want a novel. I want a whole series. PLEASE Hasbro. PLEASE.

IRT the actual conflict between Autobots and Decepticoons......I’m gonna admit I breathed a sigh of relief when there was some actual effort into making the conflict actually dimensional, rather than ‘good Autobots vs evil Decepticons’. Maybe I’m still burned by the tfp discourse but it was so, so nice to see the nods to Functionism, to the class differences between Autobots and Decepticons, etc. And Impactor/Mirage’s argument, with Impactor practically quoting Towards Peace? *chef’s kiss* (and Ratchpactor...good)

However, the fact that the writers couldn’t decide whether to make it a war of ideals (nice) or a war of different races (not nice) left me wanting...I would’ve liked someone to give a full backstory on the OP/Megs/Mags thing, as well as a coherent explanation of...the actual central conflict. Was it initially an ‘us [op/mags/megs/alpha trion] vs them [wfc equivalent functionists]’ that ended with megs going too far, splintering the initial ‘good guys’? Was it something else entirely? As it stands, the conflict feels like it was written by someone who was forced to read the entire IDW1 comic run in a couple days.

The whole macguffin allspark/reprogramming plot is a whole other post (as is the depiction of the female characters) so I don’t want to get into it, but I do want to talk about Optimus, and Magnus, and their honor (aka pride). I love me some moral conflicts but Mangoes....if you can literally end the war by shooting someone in the back, is it not worth it to sacrifice your honor in order to save the lives of your friends, the people you love, and also allow them to keep their ‘‘‘honor’’’?

I know the conflict was probably supposed to be interpreted in a different way, but I can only see it as:

“is your personal sense of honor really worth the lives of your friends. the survival of the species you are so determined to save. (yes)”

(this is why I’d make an absolutely TERRIBLE autobot.)

Also. Optimus blatantly disregarding the (very valid) concerns of his lieutenants because......he loves his friends and has faith and hope...and everyone raises a stink for half a minute and then goes along with him anyway? I understand that he’s not the military leader, but he made patently terrible decisions throughout the entire show.

The decisions worked out, because he’s Optimus and he’s a good guy, but honestly, it might benefit you to take a few minutes to ponder the potential fallout of your actions before putting your plan into place. I don’t think Megatron should be the one telling you to consider the consequences of your actions because you disregarded your lieutenants telling you the exact same thing.

Just saying.

Finally, it’s a first for me, but Bumblebee was a whole #mood, at least until he got the macguffin Alpha Trion protocols and suddenly became all about the Autobots :/

tl;dr I’d give it a solid 6/10. I’m definitely gonna rewatch it again, if only for the Soundwave (and Soundblaster!) parts. I’d love it if the sequel series focused on the people left on Cybertron, but I have a feeling that’s....probably not gonna happen, since. Earth. Eugh. I also really want an actual, thoughtful exploration of the moral differences/reasonings between Autobots and Decepticons, so if anyone has those kinds of fics to rec, hmu. It also means that I’m more determined than ever to finish some of my current WIPs so I can write a fic that attempts to do just that.

Anyway. This got long. If y’all want to chat about the show, I’ll be on for a while, either here or on discord.

ETA: ASTROTRAIN!  I want more Astrotrain asap! He is so huge and looked absolutely terrifying when compared to tiny Prowl. Why did he only get like three seconds of screentime, smh

[iristial]

@thornstone8773 replied to your post “How about Umika and Aruto for the blog thing”

what kind of blogs naki, horobi and jin would have?

Here’s a whole other post for that (aka this is a long overdue reply I’ve had in the drafts for months)

Jin

their blog url

He’ll take pride in being the first person to snag kamen-rider-jin. If he can’t take the name, he’ll whine a bit but try to find something ‘equally cool’. Sometime later, he revamps his blog and goes with burning-falcon, because some things don’t change

the kind of posts they reblog

Birds. Plenty of birds

Art ranging from aesthetically pleasing to scaring you at 3am when you look at your phone because you can’t sleep

Posts from the blogs he follows

Freedom fighting posts that aren’t that deep. He rectifies this later on by reblogging posts with proper advice on how to escape an oppressive environment, and how to cope afterwards

the first person they followed

Horobi!

what kind of theme they’d have

He’ll labour over it for several hours and settle for the ones that are perfect for pictures. Some time later, he’ll go with the ones that are custom made and have plenty of graphics (he gets Horobi to help him)

what kind of text posts they make at 2am

He posts whatever’s on his mind - like the following exchanges:

Jin: I can’t sleep T-T Horobi, in the replies: Jin, you’re a Humagear. You don’t need sleep. Jin: Oh yeah, I don’t! ...but do you think I can? Horobi: ...try it. Jin, several hours later: Horobi, I pulled out a red wire and now everything’s going to bknl,.,,

Jin, posting a picture of a lobster: I wanted to do this to Vulcan Aruto: Give him a lobster? Jin: Oh wait, wrong picture. I meant lobotomy

Jin: What would happen if I drink a milkshake... Aruto, in the replies: JIN NO Jin: ZERO ONE YES

Or he could say something very ambiguous and then the whole of Tumblr try to figure it out. In reality, he went out and bought that milkshake. Also he tried to liberate a Humagear or two so later on, he’ll reblog it and go “I was kinda joking” and someone reblogs that addition with kinda written in huge letters

Horobi (We’re running with the assumption that he has no Ark buzzing like a mosquito in his head)

their blog url

Drumroll please - horobi

the kind of posts they reblog

Appreciation for historical Japan. Ranging from weapons to clothing, maybe even old movies

Whatever Jin posts

The posts that get 100 000+ notes which start off with a simple sentence, and it gets longer because OP added onto it until finally, they’ve shared a story that’s not unlike Horobi’s time with the Ark. Horobi tags this with #me.

the first person they followed

Jin

what kind of theme they’d have

The default one with one or two shades of purple

what kind of text posts they make at 2am

Updating his progress on a project because Jin asked him to do it

Telling his human comrades that he won’t have any mercy if they can’t get up tomorrow in one simple sentence. The green light on Aruto’s “active” status conspicuously disappears moments after Horobi posts this

Naki

their blog url

naki. Predictable

the kind of posts they reblog

Dumb puns. They know Fuwa follows them

Pictures of amusement parks and food, because their stint in Fuwa’s body left them fascinated with conventional human activities

Posts from fellow Humagears to support them. They have a specific tagging system for that

Wolf pictures

One of those “reblog if you’re against Gai Amatsu being ZAIA’s president” posts

Advice on how to accomplish dreams

Encouragement posts (i.e. it’s okay to take this amount of time to fulfill your goals. Not everyone follows the same trajectory)

the first person they followed

A hard toss between Fuwa, Delmo and Horobi

what kind of theme they’d have

Minimalist. Their bio reads “#not a tool” and that’s it

what kind of text posts they make at 2am

They’re more like experiments with how posting works

[Text] . [Tags] #I’ve observed that Jin likes to make commentary in his tags #and according to him it’s #very enjoyable #where is the #quotation marks

Maybe every now and then, it’s something like “please support [insert Humagear name] in their endeavors”

[fyeah-terranigma]

Some more thoughts about the game

Hi, I’m glad to see you uploaded some of the things I posted on your other blog. I recently played through the game again in Japanese and here are some more observations: 1. One thing I never quite understood were the references to a “star of darkness” that Kumari and Meihou make after you wake up in Lhasa. Supposedly Beruga “revealed it to the world” and it has something to do with the Neotokio event but the game doesn’t state clearly what it is. It seems clear that the city is wiped out by Asmodeus, especially judging by the way the virus spreads like a kind of cloud (again, reminiscent of the Sarin attack), so where does a “star” come into this? My first thought was that it was maybe supposed to allude to nuclear weapons somehow, or maybe it’s a satellite that spreads the virus? It also seems like a callback to Illusion of Gaia where the star is a comet that showers the planet in mutating radiation, or something. I don’t know and even playing through the game again this one still stumps me.

2. It’s weird how you can take pictures in some towns even though you can’t develop them, like Liotto. Maybe you were supposed to develop them but they cut out this feature? In general I don’t really get how the camera system works, my guess is that if you spread pictures of cities to a tourism bureau, this raises the “development level” that Keynes mentions, which in turn raises the odds that the city will grow any time you exit an overworld map. But the true triggers for town development are fixed events, like giving Matisse’s painting to Rich, so where does this probability come in? It seems a bit pointless.

3. Some bits about the ending are weird and make it seem like the plot was changed around in a rushed manner. Ark thanks Yomi for having been with him for the whole trip at the end of the game, but that version of Yomi has only been with him for the last chapter. Yomi turning out evil just doesn’t really make much sense, maybe the writers didn’t really know what to do with him so they added in that twist at the last minute. Maybe this is supposed to mean that the light/dark versions of people have some kind of shared memory, so that the second Yomi is in some sense the same dude as the first, but not evil? Like a “I remember you from a previous life” kind of thing, that some characters (Fyda, Kumari) seem to feel about Ark.

4. Some things about Loire: this whole segment is clearly based on The Rose of Versailles, a popular comic. Fyda seems a lot like Oscar, a girl pretending to be a man. I don’t remember if this is in the English version, but in the Japanese text the king is Henri XIIIth, as in the 13th hour.

5. Another thing I still don’t understand is why exactly Beruga/Wong/Henri want the Storkolm treasure so badly. The treasure is just a set of armor and a weapon that belongs to the hero, I guess they want it to prevent the hero from getting it? But they don’t really seem like the types to believe in legends like that. Columbus also suggests that Bloody Mary was part of the bad guy team in some way; he says that the reason he was tortured wasn’t because of the death of the princes but “because of human greed”, perhaps because he knew the Storkolm secret? He does seem to be aware of the savior/hero legend so that seems to be it. So was Bloody Mary torturing him to get the secret? But Bloody Mary is just an insane monster created by the grief over the death of her sons. Beruga’s computer password is also “Bloody Mary”, but is that because he knows her or is using her somehow? It doesn’t really add up and the game doesn’t make clear exactly what’s going on in this part.

6. What’s the deal with Royd/Lloyd? He seems to be infiltrating Beruga’s organization to try and find out more about it, but he also behaves like a huge dick for most of the game and his plot twist kind of comes out of nowhere, like Yomi’s. He mentions that his friends got killed in some way, who are these friends and when did this happen?

7. Ark seems very similar to a very popular Japanese story called Urashimataro, which is about a sort of good natured but carefree kid who one day helps a turtle who, in return, takes him to a seafloor palace where a princess lives. He hangs out there for a long time having fun but eventually misses his parents and goes back up to the surface, but the princess gives him a little box which she tells him never to open. When he gets back to the surface the whole world has changed and his parents are long gone, when he then stupidly opens the box, he instantly turns into an old man. The plot is of course nothing like Tenchisouzou but Urashimataro’s personality, and the way he exists outside of time are very similar to Ark, and then there’s the box.

8. This is a long running mystery but I still don’t get what the boy at the chicken races is supposed to be? In the Japanese he also just says “Catherine…” (カートーリーナ I think are the exact characters), the name has a “tori” (meaning “bird”) sound in it, so maybe it’s the name of a chicken. There’s a girl there who says he’s creepy and just stares at the chickens all day murmuring something. Maybe he’s just a boy who wants to fuck a chicken, I dunno, I thought playing the Japanese version would clear this up but it doesn’t.

I’ll post more if I find out more things.

[natsuxlucyfanfiction]

Superhero Part 3 (nalu fanfiction)

Yo so what’s good, this is Superhero Part 3 but like...what I wanted to write is a longer idea which in no way I could have written with one post. So basically there’s gonna be a part 4 and possibly a part 5. If you read this and think, “wait, how is this related to Superhero?” it’ll all start to make more sense with the upcoming chapter(s).

*********

“Congratulations, your highschool days are officially over! Please leave already!” Everyone’s graduation caps flew up as people cheered with excitement, joy, and jubilation. The caps came down in a flurry onto the ex-students. The celebration continued, everyone too caught up in the moment to make a complaint.

Lucy and I did our secret handshake to celebrate while everyone screamed and hugged and cried and leapt for joy. Through our entire lives, we always knew it would happen one day but now it was real. Neat, I guess.

“We did it, we did it, we did it,” Lucy chanted jovially with a sing-song tone. She was the fourth in our class.

“We did it,” I nearly wept with relief.

“This is the start to a whole new chapter of our lives!”

“tHiS iS tHe sTaRt tO a wHoLe nEw cHaPtEr oF oUr LiVeS,” I mocked her. “Lucy, you realize you’re gonna wake up tomorrow and you’re gonna feel zero different and then feel dumb for acting all cliché at your graduation.”

“I hate you!” Lucy whined, hands on her hips. “Why can’t you just let me enjoy the moment for once?”

“What moment? We’re graduating! Why are we all pretending that we liked school? You know how many times I’ve heard people complain about this dumb place?” Giving her a hard time was the best. Her nose always scrunches up and she thinks she looks intimidating, which makes it like 10 times better.

“You are literally the worst, you’re making me want to move to Crocus more and more by the second,” she joked. Freaking Crocus.

“You think you’re soooo much better than me now since you’ve been accepted into Crocus University.”

“No, of course not! Just because it’s the second most prestigious school in the entire world and is extremely hard to get into especially with a scholarship like mine, doesn’t mean that I’m gonna flex that privilege.”

“Very reassuring, thanks,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. It’s not even the best school, it’s the second best. I don’t know why she cares so much. She should just stay here.

“You’re just salty that in less than two months I’m moving hours and hours away,” she said again to tease me, but she wasn’t wrong. There are good universities nearby. Sure, attending Crocus University was a great opportunity for Luce, but she’s leaving everything behind. Even me.

“Yeah, sure. Maybe when you’re gone I can finally get myself a girlfriend,” I said.

“That’s as likely as you attending Crocus University,” Lucy giggled. “It’s the second best university in the entire world, just a quick reminder. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m going there.”

“All bow for Lucy Heartfilia!” I’d miss our little banter.

“You’re kinda right though, I’m over this. Wanna go get wings?” Lucy was bouncing up and down with her typical boundless energy. She’s always so excited and full of happiness.

“Tonight, we eat ‘till we drop.” We bumped fists and left graduation in my truck. I gave her the aux cord and hoped she wouldn’t play trash. To my great fortune, the sweet music by Queen flooded my ears. Lucy grabbed the fake microphone we always kept in the back and began singing along.

“Get your party gown and your pigtail down

And get your heart beating baby

Got my timing right, got my act all tight

It’s gonna be tonight my little school baby”

These are the moments I’ll miss. Her next to me, carefree and happy. It’s not like she’s dying, I don’t know why this is affecting me as much as it is. There’s social media which will keep us connected. And she’ll be happy there. She’s been nothing but excited since the second she read “Congratulations!” on her acceptance letter. I spent all my time hoping she would make it in, so I was surprised by how much my stomach dropped when she read the letter to me.

I need to forget about it right now and savor the time I have left. I sped up, way over the speed limit, and lowered the windows. The wind blew through our hair as we both blurted the lyrics to the next song, Hot Blood by Kaleo. I looked cool as heck, but Lucy’s hair flew in every possible direction because it was so long.

Life is good.

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

The airport was freaking huge. It took us forever to find Lucy’s terminal. Maybe this was a sign that she shouldn’t go to Crocus. Stop being selfish, Natsu! I kept reminding myself.

“Flight 442, first class passengers please board.” That was Lucy’s flight. Soon they’d call for coach or economy class, whatever it was called.

“This is actually happening,” Lucy said with an out-of-breath tone. After months and months of excitement, it seemed as if reality just hit her. She looked pale and shaky. “Natsu, I can’t go, I’m not ready-”

“Lucy.” I took a deep breath. “Your dreams are coming true. No one ever feels ready to leap into a new era of their life. It’s the few who leap anyway that are the ones who live their happy lives.” I looked in her eyes and saw the same nervousness that I felt. “This is what you’ve always wanted. There’s nothing more that I could’ve wished for than this opportunity for you. I 100% think that this is a great idea.” I 100% want you to stay home, Lucy. Please don’t listen to a word I’m saying.

“You tryna get rid of me or something?” Lucy laughed while wiping unshed tears from her eyes.

“Am I making it too obvious?” I joked along. Of course I don’t want to get rid of her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that she’s going and about to live her dream. I just... wish I could be a part of it.

“Flight 442, economy class passengers please board,” the annoying flight attendant announced.

“That’s me,” Lucy whispered with a soft smile on her face. She wrapped me into a hug, squeezing tightly. I hugged her back, knowing this was the last one for a long time. Be happy for her, Natsu. Be supportive, stop thinking about yourself. It was our last moments in person together for who knows how long yet I was silent. I couldn’t think of what to say. Think, Natsu! Come on dude! She pulled away from the hug and I saw more unshed tears in her eyes. I knew she wouldn’t cry here, but the second she sat down in that plane she’d let the tears fall loosely.

Lucy picked up her carry on and pulled out her passport and ticket for the attendant to check. I just stood here and watched her like some creep as she waited in the line. Finally, she was about to go through the gate, I think it’s called, when I shouted out:

“Goodbye, Little Luce!”

She turned around and smiled, a gorgeous smile I’d never forget. “Goodbye my Superhero!” Lucy called out with no shame. She was probably too far away to notice the tears streaming down my face.

The plane left 20 minutes ago, but here I was still at the terminal, as if somehow the plane would turn around and she’d come back running into my arms. A boy could dream. It felt like I was mourning Luce, but she wasn’t leaving my life permanently. We’d still talk everyday.

I drove to my apartment. Usually I’d play some sort of music to fill the silence, but today I just wanted the quietness. Both in the car and at my apartment I just contemplated. What would life look like without Lucy?

A week later I’d start learning at some Automotive school nearby to become a mechanic. I’ve already been working on cars for years so it won’t be too much of a challenge.

I grabbed the remote and switched on Netflix. After a bit of scrolling, I found out all of the Indiana Jones movies were on Netflix. “Sweet!” I selected Raiders of the Lost Ark then grabbed blankets, snacks, and drinks for Lucy and I. It was only when I got back to the couch that I remembered Lucy wasn’t there anymore. Force of habit, I guess.

Man, getting used to this is gonna be tough.

———-

*9 months after graduation, 7 months since Lucy left*

The thing that surprised me the most was that I was actually learning a lot in school, I thought I knew everything. A mechanic at the nicest shop around took me in as his assistant. My schedule was full between school and the shop. When I get my certificate in a year and a half, I’d begin working there full time.

Lucy and I used to talk every single day for hours. We‘d constantly text or facetime or snapchat, but both our lives have gotten so busy. We still talk everyday (streaks) but not one conversation hasn’t been cut short due to one of us needing to do something.

“Morning Luce!”

“Good morning! Dude have you seen the trailer for the new Avengers movie?”

“No, it’s out?! I’ll check it out when I get home. Class is starting, I’ll call you later.”

Looking back at these past conversations made me realize how short and choppy they were. That wasn’t either of our intentions but that’s how it was turning out and it just really sucks.

--------

*11 months since graduation, 9 months since Lucy left*

My phone vibrated from the charger when I was watching Brooklyn Nine Nine. I checked it, hoping it wasn’t anything important and I wasn’t called in to work so I could enjoy my day off. It was an instagram notification from Lucy. Apparently she just posted something. After switching my phone off silent, I opened instagram to check it out but was stopped when I got a call from her.

“Sup Luce.”

“Did you see my post on instagram?!” She practically screamed. I turned down the volume a bit.

“You mean the one you just posted literal seconds ago?” She ignored my comment and continued on.

“Check out the post now! Do it! Open Instagram! Like the post so I know you saw it!” I opened up the app and her post was the first one on my feed.

“‘Mark the day, everybody,’” I read, “‘because today is the beginning of Mark and I’s relationship’? Lucy you have a boyfriend?!” She never even told me she was talking to somebody! I know communication has been tough with both of our busy schedules but I didn’t think we were drifting apart so much so that she wouldn’t tell me something like this!

“Yup, he asked me out today. We’ve been talking for a while now, if you know what I mean,” she said with a suggestive tone.

“Congratulations, though I don’t even know who this mystery Mark is.” Making sure to add a laugh so it didn’t look like I was calling her out, I awaited her response.

“If you did know him, you’d love him Natsu. You guys would get along so well.”

“But I don’t know him.” My voice conveyed the frustration that was starting to stir in me, becoming a little louder and more aggressive. Luckily, it was subtle enough for Lucy not to catch.

“Stop being a little wuss,” Lucy joked. “He’s my boyfriend, not yours. You don’t need to know him.” Her tone was so lighthearted, yet I took the words so seriously.

Is that supposed to sting? This whole conversation really just isn’t doing it for me. Not only that, but for some reason now I feel sick too. My gut feels weird. “Well I hope y’all live happily ever after in that dream castle you’d always draw on the back of your tests. Wanna continue this conversation later? I gotta deal with a client for the shop.” I was currently sitting on my couch with a show on Hulu paused.

“For sure, see ya!” And with that, one of the hardest phone calls of my life came to a close. I don’t know how I feel about this Mark guy. Whoever he is, I don’t want Lucy dating him. It’s not my choice, that’s obvious, but I thought she’d at least consult me about whether she should date him. Or, you know, tell me about him! Is our friendship slowly deteriorating? Maybe I’m just thinking about myself too much, or like, being too possessive of a best friend. She doesn’t have to tell me everything. Lucy can do whatever she wants.

I ignored the tight feeling in my chest and continued watching Brooklyn Nine Nine. The episodes passed by but they didn’t register. My thoughts consumed me. Anxiety about my friendship with Lucy just made that already weird chest pain feel worse. I didn’t cry but boy did it feel like I was gonna. Was our friendship dying? All I know for certain now is that I’m the king of overthinking.

***************

As I said earlier, there will be more. Please leave a comment, for real, I legitimately wanna know what’s good and what’s not and how I can fix whatever to make the experience better for y’all.

[lost-n-stereo]

draw back your bow (let your arrow go)

Summary: Clarke Griffin doesn’t want to join Cupid’s Arrow, Los Angeles’ newest online dating site but her mother insists she at least give it a try. Enter “Fake Blake”, a man claiming to be Bellamy Blake, TV’s hottest new up and coming actor. With a profile photo that can’t be found on the internet, to stories only the man himself could tell, Clarke starts to wonder if her online crush could be her celebrity crush too. Modern Romantic Comedy AU

Part 1 - [Tumblr] [AO3]

Part 2 - Bellamy

Bellamy is always surprised when people stop him and ask for autographs.

He’s currently stopped in the middle of Target, a group of teenage girls surrounding him, but he loves it. The fact that people care enough about him to want a photo or his signature on some random scrap of paper is humbling.

“Can you sign my pop figure?” A girl no older than twelve or thirteen hands over a Robert Moore boxed figurine that Bellamy has at home, sitting next to a framed copy of the pilot script.

“Yeah, of course,” he grins and signs his name over the plastic sheeting on the front of the box. “This thing is pretty cool, I have one too.” The girl blushes when he smiles at her.

Her mother thanks him after they take a couple of selfies and then he’s making his way around the circle until everyone has gotten a photo with him.

When he’s alone again, and he hates to think finally because he loves his fans but yeah, sometimes it’s a little overwhelming.

Eight years ago he was auditioning for anything and everything, working as a waiter to make the rent. Six months after moving to Los Angeles he auditioned for The Ark, a new CW show that had high hopes of being the next Battlestar Galactica. He won the role of Robert Moore, a young but determined Ark guard, and almost a year to the day after he moved here the first episode premiered.

Seven years later and he can honestly say he never thought any of this would be happening.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he grins when he sees a text from Clarke.

Clarke: Morning Fake Blake. How goes the “entertainment business” on this fine Friday afternoon?

This girl, he thinks as he thumbs in a response. She’s so quick to assume that he’s not being truthful with her but she still makes a point to text him. It doesn’t make any sense but he loves it.

Bellamy: I just got cornered in the cereal aisle by fifteen teenage girls.

Clarke: Ooh. And what kind of cereal did you decide on?

Bellamy: Chex .

Clarke: Gross! What are you, 50 years old?

Bellamy: I’m 26, brat.

He laughs at her response, a series of side eye emojis, and pushes his cart to the checkout. His phone buzzes again but this time it’s a call from his ex that he immediately silences. Why she would be calling him when they have been broken up for weeks is beyond him.

There’s another text from Clarke waiting for him when he’s done packing his groceries up in the back of his Jeep.

Clarke: So tell me the truth…when are you going to give up this Bellamy Blake thing?

Bellamy: Uhh…when I’m dead, I guess?

Clarke: …….

Clarke: I wish you could just be real with me.

Bellamy sighs and rests his head on his seat. He really likes this girl but he doesn’t know how to make her take him seriously. They have been texting back and forth for a week, after she agreed to give him her phone number so they didn’t have to use the Cupid’s Arrow app anymore. He saved her profile photo so it pops up whenever she texts him. He even asked his little sister Octavia the best way to go about this. Her advice was to man up and ask her to meet which he’s starting to think might be his only option.

Bellamy: Have you stopped to think, even once, that maybe I’m telling you the truth? Honestly, Clarke. What do I have to gain by lying to you?

Clarke: I really don’t know.

His phone rings, his manager this time, and he rolls his eyes as he takes the call.

“Blake, do I have news for you!”

Bellamy switches from his phone to Bluetooth and starts the drive back to his place.

“What’s up, Tom?”

“How do you feel about starring in a romantic comedy?”

Bellamy groans as he gets on the 101. “Is it a lame romantic comedy?”

His agent laughs. “No! It’s going to be hilarious. Written by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.  This could be great for your career, Bell. The audition is next Thursday but it’s just a formality. They want you, so think about it!”

Tom hangs up without saying goodbye, which seems to be the L.A. way, and Bellamy does think about what a movie of this caliber could do for his career. So far he’s only starred in a few features, low budget horror films or indie stuff he did with friends. This could be his chance to break into mainstream movies, even if it’s not necessarily in his wheelhouse.

When he’s stuck in traffic, he looks around to make sure no cops are in the general vicinity before pulling his phone into his lap.

Bellamy: Do you think I could pull off a romantic lead?

Clarke: If you’re asking if I think Bellamy Blake could be a romantic lead, then sure. I don’t see why not.

Bellamy rolls his eyes. There she goes again with the distrust.

Bellamy: Thanks. I think.

She sends a string of laughing emojis, so he calls her a brat again and tosses his phone in the passenger seat so he doesn’t get a ticket.

***

“That’s a wrap for today! See you all tomorrow, bright and early at 8 am.”

Bellamy sags against the prop couch he’s sitting on and pulls his phone out of his pocket. There are no less than thirty new notifications since the last time he checked but none are from Clarke.

His best friend Monty drops down onto the couch next to him and sighs. “These seventeen hour days are fucking killing me.”

Bellamy nods and puts his phone back into his pocket. “Yeah, they suck. I just want to go home and crash.”

Monty grins and nudges him with his elbow. “Don’t lie to me. You want to go home and message the hot girl from that dating app.”

Fuck, he never should have told Monty about Clarke. The only reason he did was because Monty caught him sending her a text in the middle of a scene when the camera wasn’t on him.

“She doesn’t believe that I’m me,” Bellamy tells him. “Basically all of our messages so far are me telling her that I’m being real with her and then her telling me that I’m some crazy guy trying to lie to get girls.”

“So, send her a picture. Won’t that prove it?”

Bellamy thinks it over and then shrugs. “Maybe but anything can be photoshopped these days. I doubt anything I send would be real enough for her.”

He’s not really sure why he even cares. Yeah, Clarke is gorgeous. The photo she posted on Cupid’s Arrow, with her windblown blonde curls and shy smile made him instantly want to get to know her.  There was something about how free and calm she looked that made him wonder if she could be different than most of the women that he knows in this town.

Women like his ex, Echo.

The complete train wreck that was their relationship is the exact reason he stepped away from the Hollywood dating scene in the first place. They got along great at first, having met when Echo played a character on his show before moving on to the spinoff. It was the long hours on set that bonded them quickly and they went from coworkers to lovers in a very short span of time. He thinks not truly knowing the other person was the reason for their breakup. She took it harder than he thought she would when he ended things, and he’s still dealing with the repercussions today.

He tells Monty he’ll see him tomorrow as he pushes himself off the couch and calls for a car to drive him back to his house. It’s nearing one am and there’s no way he trusts himself to drive even though it’s barely a fifteen minute trip.

To say he’s surprised when he gets a message from Clarke on the ride home would be an understatement.

Clarke: Let’s pretend for a minute that you ARE Bellamy Blake. Tell me something only he would know.

He laughs out loud and thumbs in a response.

Bellamy: And how would you know something that I would say when you don’t know me? Also, why are you up so late?

Her message comes back right away.

Clarke: I don’t know, figure something out. And I’m studying for a test. Why are you up so late?

Bellamy: Pushing 12+ hour days this week filming. Today ended up being almost 17. I’m just now heading home.

There’s no response for awhile so he pockets his phone and rests his head back with his eyes closed until he reaches his place. It’s not a huge mansion or anything, just a decent sized house that he purchased when The Ark went into its third season. The network had basically promised them at least six seasons so he figured it was a good time to put down some roots. Now they are in their seventh season with no end in sight so he’s happy to have a real home to come back to every night and not some shitty apartment in the city.

Clarke still hasn’t responded by the time he’s getting into bed almost an hour later. After he showered and washed off the past seventeen hours of work, he practically fell into bed. He lies there for awhile, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what he could tell her to make her believe him. A thought pops into his head and he smiles, reaching for his phone to send her a message.

Bellamy: Are you a fan of the show?

He doesn’t have to wait long before her reply comes through.

Clarke: If I’m being honest, it’s my favorite. Why?

He mentally pumps his fist in the air because this? This he can work with. His sister was right. The only way she’s going to believe him is if she meets him.

Bellamy: Come by the set and visit me. I can get you and a friend day passes to come meet the cast.

Her response is immediate.

Clarke: There is no way this is real. I can’t give you my address to send some imaginary passes to my doorstep.

Bellamy: I’ll send you an address. Give them your name and they will let you in. Next Wednesday?

It’s less than a week away and he hopes that she’ll give him a chance to prove he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t know why he wants her to believe him so badly, maybe because he really thinks there could be a connection there.

Clarke: Fine. But if I show up at some abandoned warehouse, I’m out.

Bellamy laughs and types in the address of the studio, tells her to be there Wednesday at noon.

Maybe, just maybe, when she sees her name on the approved guest list, she’ll finally see that he’s been telling her the truth all along.

[sometimesrosy]

Hey Rosy! I see you are not Team The Bunker Is Full of Religious Cannibals. That's cool. I thought calling it dumbass was a little over the top but to each their own. Personally I think there's a lot more "evidence" (quotes bc obvs we are all just assembling circumstantial spec for funsies, no disrespect intended) supporting then bunker theory vs your Cannibal!Vincint pov (though I would LOVE if it were both, might as well go big or go home) but I'm open to your rebuttal if you care to share.

Sorry, meg. I was rude. 

I wasn’t addressing you or anyone in specific, but rather the widespread acceptance of cannibalism as canon that I’ve seen all over tumblr and twitter and in reviews. It’s not canon at all. It’s a theory. It’s a speculation, and the evidence used to prove it is implication and rumor. Which isn’t canon evidence. There is no canon evidence of cannibalism in the show. It has not been proven explicitly that there HASN’T been, but there’s no evidence that there is. I am not looking to argue with anyone. I kept it on my blog and expressed my feelings. I did not even read your post until it was pointed out to me, but those were all the reasons I’ve seen around that caused my response. 

I’m getting frustrated that people are considering any discussion of food, rations, short supplies or bodies to be evidence of cannibalism. They have a canon problem of short rations. This is true. That’s why they started the fight club, to lower population, right? Essentially. Control the population and limit the mouths to feed. They’ve said this is what happened. And because they didn’t explicitly mention cannibalism people are assuming there’s some secret that’s being kept. And now every time someone brings up the CANON problem of low food supply, it’s taken out of context to be about cannibalism instead.

I don’t know why our fandom always leaps to cannibalism as some hidden explanation. We did it in season 3 with Pike, too. Do you remember that? Pike said that Azgeda had massacred Farm Station, but somehow, fandom translated it into being Pike killed and ate his own people and then lied about it? With absolutely no canon evidence. Just for funsies. This feels the same to me. 

I mean. People were saying bunkerkru were cannibals back during SDCC. And I think you used that as evidence. That was a rumor and theory. Not evidence. And people were already taking it as canon, and they never stopped. And you used BTS pictures of severed limbs and someone joking about eating them as evidence, and yet. We’ve now seen where those limbs came from. They were from the mining weapon that blew people apart in Polis. The BTS pictures were SET above ground. Which means they WEREN’T in the bunker, and weren’t cannibalism. But this is taken as evidence, too. 

I’m afraid that people got attached to the theory of cannibalism and now that we’ve seen the show and there is no evidence of cannibalism, people are using “kara didn’t like the rations questioned” as evidence of their theory instead. That is a huge leap. It sounds more like confirmation bias than evidence to me. You want there to be cannibalism, so you stretch evidence to fit cannibalism.

People are talking about in fun, because it’s a fun theory, which I don’t have a problem with. Extra is as extra does. And I didn’t have a problem with it before the season, I was waiting to see if it was true. Then we saw what happened in the bunker, and IT WASN’T CANNIBALISM, at ALL, but people are still talking about it as if it is. Circumstantial spec for funsies is one thing but the fun theory is being treated as canon, and the speculation is being treated as already proved, and the canon explanations for things are being brushed aside and attributed to hidden cannibalism. People think it’s canon. And if we’re going to say that our fandom wouldn’t do that because we’re just joking, we know that’s not true, because our fandom does that ALL THE TIME. 

Rationing is not code for cannibalism. It’s rationing. And there was rationing on the Ark, too. And it’s not like this show won’t DO cannibalism, because it will. They had Lincoln eating a guard on screen. There was no vague implication about it. There’s is already more canon evidence for cannibal!Vinson than there is for cannibalkru.

I am not on this team because the evidence being used to prove it is not canon. And I stick to the text. Sorry. And I can’t promise not to get testy about it either. I am not always rosy, sometimes I am salty. 

[kaialone]

Yokai Watch Corocoro Leaks (March 2018)

Corocoro leaks have been coming out, so I will translate under the readmore.

Beware of spoilers, naturally!

This month’s issue of corocoro does not have much on Yokai Watch,

it mostly shows off the new toy version of the “Yokai Watch Eruda” that will be released in 2018, the “Arcs” that will work with it, being something like new versions of the familiar Yokai Medals, and a reminder that the new Shadowside anime will begin soon.

As usual I’ve tried to translate as much as possible from the snapshots I’ve seen, and I do think it’s interesting.

--

First we have this page:

(images source)

This one is just a little intro, showing us that this segment will be about this toy version of the Yokai Watch Eruda.

The Eruda is called エルダ/Eruda in Japanese, which can also be romanized as Eluda, Elda, and Erda, among other things. But since I’m personally not sure which is the intended meaning, I stick to a direct romanization for now.

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古のウォッチが An ancient Watch...

今、開放される- ...will now be unleashed-

妖怪ウォッチシャドウサイド 新生ホビー開発スクープ！！ The scoop on the development of the Shadowside's rebirth as hobby merchandise!!

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Note:

Don’t read too much into them using big words like “rebirth”, or “unleashed”, this is mostly to sound cool.

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Next is this page:

(images source)

Here we get a bit of a look at the new Arcs, which seemingly function similar to Yokai Medals. In Japanese they’re called アーク/Āku, which can be romanzed as “arc”, but technically also as “ark” or similar things.

On this page there is a small decription for Natsume that I can’t read, but I presume it’s nothing we haven’t heard before?

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DX妖怪ウォッチエルダで シャドウ＆ライトサイド妖怪を召喚!! Summon Shadow & Light Yokai with the Deluxe Yokai Watch Eruda!!

「映画妖怪ウォッチ」第４弾で大活躍し、 アニメ・シャドウサイドでも重要な役割を担う新ウォッチ誕生！！ Having been a huge success in the 4th "Yokai Watch Movie", a new Watch that will also play an important role in the Shadowside Anime is born!!

現在開発中！！ ２０１８年発売予定！！ Currently in Development!! Scheduled to be released in 2018!!

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アークを集めて ともだち妖怪を増やそう！！ Try collecting Arcs and get more yokai friends!!

１本のアーク裏表にシャドウ＆ライトサイド妖怪が宿るぞ。 The Shadow & Lightside yokai appear on the front and back of a single Arc.

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コマさん Komasan

ライトサイド シャドウサイド Lightside Shadowside

各地を放浪しているコマ犬妖怪。 シャドウサイドのギャップが大！？ A komainu yokai what wanders all across the land. There is a huge gap to his Shadowside!? (1)

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ジバニャン Jibanyan

ライトサイド シャドウサイド Lightside Shadowside

おなじみのネコ妖怪。 シャドウサイドになると戦闘力が急激に上昇！！ A familiar cat yokai. When he turns into his Shadowside, his battle power rises sharply!!

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新妖怪は コイツに注目！！ New yokai take note of this one here!!

ぞくぞく登場する新妖怪の中でも 得に注目なのがジュニア！！ ある妖怪と深い関係が！？ Even among the exciting new yokai, Junior is one you'd better pay attention to!! Has a deep relationship with (a) certain yokai!? (2)

ジュニア Junior

かわいい姿のライトサイド。 シャドウサイドになると姿が激変！？ The adorable Lightside form. Changes drastically when turning into Shadowside!?

早くもホビー化 アークも登場！！ Will become hobby merchandise and appear as an Arc as soon as possible!!

４月２０日 放送で 判明！？ Set to be revealed during the broadcast of the 20th of April!? (3)

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Notes:

I’m fairly sure this refers to the gap between his Lightside and Shadowside, but it’s unclear if it means a gap in power, or another kind of gap.

Since there is no clear plural in Japanese, its unclear if this line refers to Junior having a strong relationship/connection with one or multiple yokai.

I’m unsure if this refers to Junior himself appearing on that day’s episode, or the Shadowside form of Junior, or maybe just a reveal for the Arc toy.

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And then we have this page:

(images sources)

This shows how the Arcs will work when used together with the Eruda.

It also features a tiny bit on the new anime, but most of it is what I already translated before, regarding when it will start, and that it will begin with a 1 hour special.

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エルダを開いて アークをかざせ！！ Open the Eruda and hold out the Arc!!

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謎のキー アイテム The Mysterious Key Item

「アーク」が召喚のカギに！！ "Arcs" become the key for summoning!!

ともだち妖怪の力を宿した鍵型のニューアイテム「アーク」。 これをエルダに差し込み回すと、 カバーがオーペン！！ ウォッチの盤面に 「アーク」をかざすと、妖怪を召喚できるぞ！！ Arcs, the new, key-like items that house the power of your yokai friends. If you insert one into the Eruda and turned it, the cover opens!! If you hold an Arc over the Watch's clock face, you can summon yokai!!

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回す方向で シャドウかライトかを 選べるぞ。 With the turning direction you can chose between Shadow and Light

左なら シャドウサイド If you go left, it's Shadowside

アークを左に 回すと出現だ！！ It will appear if you turn the Arc to the left!!

右なら ライトサイド If you go right, it's Lightside

シャドウSとは 召喚音がちがう。 The summoning sound is different from the Shadowside.

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ともだち妖怪を 呼び出せ！！ アニメの中でも同じような動き (?) 妖怪たちを召喚するぞ！！ Call your yokai friends!! Summon yokai with the same movements as in the anime!! (1)

アニメの新シリーズがついにスタート。 今までにないバトルが展開！？ The new series of the anime will finally start. Will unprecedented battles develop!?

映画の続きが 毎週観られる！ You can watch the continuation of the movie every week!

ナツメとウィスパーのコンビが大活躍！？ The combination of Natsume and Whisper is a huge success!? ()

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You can tell there is some text next to this screencap of Kēsuke, but it’s so blurry I can’t make it out at all.

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Notes:

Because this text is partially obscured, I had to guess a bit on some kana, so my translation might be off.

“Combination” here refers to a combination in the sense of like, them acting as a team.

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In addition to all of these, this issue of Corocoro also had something on the Yokai Watch manga (the one by Noriyuki Konishi)

Note that I don’t know much about the Yokai Watch manga, but from what I understand this one by Noriyuki Konishi is currently serialized in Corocoro, which means each Cororoco issue has a new chapter of this manga (and later those get collected into actual Volumes).

It seems that this manga has now either started it’s Shadowside storyline, or at least teased it, but not many snapshots were taken of it. This does make sense though, as generally people tend to refrain from leaking complete chapters like that.

But yeah, so I don’t know much about the context about these, but there is some details I’d like to go over.

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First is this shot:

(image source)

It’s cut off a bit, but based on the context, I believe the text here says:

新”妖怪ウォッチ伝説”、 始まる！！ A new "Yokai Watch Legend" Begins!!

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I can’t help but note how this is the first time I’ve personally seen a picture that clearly shows adult Kēta/Nate without his face being obscured, alongside his wife, who, in the manga at least, is confirmed to be Fumika/Katie

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And more importantly (?) we see that Kēsuke himself might be getting a Watch

It’s a bit hard to see, but it looks at least similar to the Eruda, featuring a slot to insert Arcs into. But to me personally, it doesn’t looks identical to the Eruda, but who knows.

Note that the events of the manga will probably not be exactly identical to other media either.

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And lastly, there’s this page:

(image source)

The text on it says:

さよなら… ジバニャン！？ Goodbye... Jibanyan!?

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Edit: More snapshots of these manga pages have since been posted, giving a better understanding of the future of the manga, which I translated here.

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And that’s it for things from this month’s issue of Corocoro that I am able to translate. I hope you’ve found it interesting/useful?