#but also. the masses just tend to go for the funny characters! which is to say fearne is a shoe-in and laudna has a very strong chance

[astralleywright]

reminding myself that tumblre cr fandom is not indicative of all of it so thinking about tumblr cr fans going ZOMG GUYS DON'T VOTE ANY BELLS HELLS CHARACTERS TO PUNISH THEM!!!! and then watching these fans shit themselves when fcg and ashton and imogen get voted in

there is no known universe where we get Imogen and Ashton i fear 😭 it's not even abt them being BH or M9, it's just that Jester and Cad are by far Laura and Tal's most popular characters, bc, well. they're the silliest and simplest

[wholesalemagnesiumoxide]

The Simslops Afterword

hello everybody! thank you for reading my book. seeing people talk about it has been very gratifying & encouraging.

i was going to write this up essay style, but doing it as a q&a is more fun and still lets me cover everything i wanted to, so let's begin.

q&a

first off, a question from @aminoasinine which i'll address in parts:

I really enjoyed Simslops, and in particular I think the "dwarf fortress event log" style of writing is a great way to showcase the machine/algorithm aspect of it. What software was used for this? Did it have trouble keeping track of so many characters? I noticed the centipedes and other numbered masses were accurately tracked throughout the text, which is something that I know AI tends to struggle with. I'm also curious to know how much of the chapters' 'plot' was laid out in advance by the prompting, and whether any major events were the result of emergent narrative. In particular, the coffin + Maude's Salvation plot towards the end definitely felt like direct intervention on your part, but was the AI reacting to you inserting those things, or were you editing the text around them after the fact?

the simslops is the product of a custom program written in nodejs. the source code is available at the download page if you want to examine it in detail, but the core of the framework is as follows:

there are actors, items, and rooms with names and numerical flags.

there are actions, each defined by their conditions, effects upon the scene, and chance of being selected.

each chapter is defined by its starting conditions and available actions.

each round or tick (whatever you want to call it), a random available action is applied to the scene.

this is repeated until an action ends the scene or there are no more actions left to perform.

each action narrates itself when applied to a scene. for example, the source code for the "pick up an item" action looks like this:

hopefully this is at least semi-intelligible if you don't know javascript. the first parameter defines what the action acts upon: in this case, an actor and an item. the second is the condition: the item must not already be held, and it must not have the pickupAttempted flag. the third is responsible for how the action affects the scene, and the string it returns is how the action is described in the text. when an actor goes to pick something up, if that something is immovable, this is noted. (otherwise every scene devolves into everybody struggling to pick up a couch.) if it's not immovable, the actor picks it up. the first case is described with "actor tries to pick up item, but it's hardly portable." (a reference to the inform 7 default responses) and the second with "actor picks up item." the fourth parameter says to multiply this action's weight by ten if the item in question has a description and has yet to be examined.

each action is defined similarly. a handful use grammars for more varied output, but the majority just have simple fill-in-the-blank sentences. all together there's nearly 6k lines of nodejs to define the whole book. this project started as a test case for this framework, actually. i was outlining a short story and hating it and had a thought: what if i wrote a program to generate an outline for me? then i could have a skeleton to work from and could get to the fun part, the actual writing. out of whimsy i decided to put some simpsons characters in a room and make them fuck. this is a more exhaustive test case than you'd expect. it handles solo actions (moaning) and pair actions (lustful looks & sex.) sex only happens when both participants are horny, which requires setting flags for each actor. kramer's appearance is an action not tied to anything in the scene, and giving birth is an action that creates new actors. a great deal of my motivation here (and in many other things) was "wouldn't it be funny / fucked up if..." but it also did its job of test case pretty well. once i added items, that necessitated inventories; theft & picking up & putting down all require certain types of checks.

it's funny that you mention emergent narrative, because i really think the simslops really became what it was in the telling. early in the process i became enamored with the image of one of the characters descending through text adventure geography, lost and alone. thus came the turn to pathos. i had read "does marge have friends" some time prior, which inspired maude's inclusion and the role she plays. from there i built things out with twin eyes toward thematics and "funny/fucked up". i do find it interesting to what extent all that was emergent from the implementation. it's a framework that tends towards reducing things to mush. a semantic satiation machine.

anyway, i hope this answers your question --- it's not LLM-based, it uses older, more "traditional" procgen techniques. the plot of each chapter is roughly scaffolded by the actions i attach to it. it's really incredibly authored; it's difficult for this framework to surprise me except by juxtaposition. under this framework it's also pretty trivial to track any number of actors. so, to answer this question from @zedogica:

how much of simslops was embellished from the original generated text? a few moments stood out to me

none of it. you can download the source and get your own personal simslops. the only human embellishment was done during development. in an ideal world, this would live on a server somewhere and everyone could download a unique generation. unfortunately, i don't have the knowhow for that kind of thing. (my understanding is that you need to do a lot when writing server-side code to make sure you don't expose a million security vulnerabilities.) i've contented myself with doing what i can client-side: releasing the source code & setting up the download button to give you one of five pre-generated outputs.

returning to aminoasinine's question:

I also really like the difference in language used during the Deviltongue chapters. It's interesting to see what changes when the tone is explicitly defined as 'horror' or 'scary', and how that seemingly translates to those bizarre compound words like tribulationmalice and torturefrenzy. I think it's my favorite chapter(s) in general because of how it takes a much different tone and hammers it into the same monotonous nothing as the other chapters despite its more 'active' and ostensibly 'less boring' setting than your standard centipede sex house. everything shakes and moans and howls with blood-malice, lymph and spines standing on end, over and over until it doesn't mean anything anymore. everyone and everything is trembling in fear of a grim finality bearing down that never actually comes, because nothing ever ends. It's the same nothing-emotion as all the unbearable passionate lust in the sex scenes, an emotional signifier that signifies absolutely nothing.

thank you! the strange compounds are a product of the aforementioned grammars, as are the shaking and moaning and howling. writing the dungeon & horror chapters made me realize i really like broad, dumb pastiches. there's something very satisfying about taking cliches and mangling them.

Anyway, the choice to have 'pet the dog' in every scene did not go unnoticed, I think the last three lines are my favorite part, and finally, I think every book from now on should open with a horoscope chart made from out of context quotes. Thank you for making this, I will be watching your neocities with great interest :)

thank you for reading it! two fun facts about the horoscopes:

each entry's text is taken from a random item description.

the dates are wrong, each offset by a day. due to my strong personal convictions i wished to stress that this novella in no way endorses the practice of astrology.

an anonymous question:

So Marge crying during the video game sequence show the reduction of feelings into simple fun, even though the human experiencing the games in question might feel other emotions when playing them. But what do the horror sections represent? I got the gist of most parts, but as I don’t engage with horror medium often I feel like the commentary is lost on me. What were you trying to say with the horror sections, in other words?

first: one of the major benefits of the framework i used here is that it's very good at creating unintended juxtapositions. the only prerequisite for weeping is if the actor in question is holding part of a corpse, but depending on the context, it can take on a number of different connotations.

second:

a lot of usamerican horror films (particularly aliens and predator) are sublimations of the anxieties surrounding the vietnam war. both are about big grizzled soldier guys getting picked off by an unseen yet omnipresent foe who can strike from anywhere. hell, one of them is even set in a jungle. slender: the eight pages, being a game about the Scary Getter following you around in a forest, feels of a type with these.

seymour skinner was a us soldier in the vietnam war.

in that vein, another anonymous question:

also I understand almost all of the references in the chicken’s names but how does sylvester stallone figure into colonialism?

one of sylvester stallone's two big roles is the rambo series, where he's a heroic us soldier rescuing prisoners of war in vietnam, repelling the soviets in afghanistan, or performing other jingoistic acts of horrendous violence. the other is rocky where he plays a white boxer (the "italian stallion") who's built up as a contender to the current reigning champion, Black boxer apollo creed. he's of a type with the other americana culture slop included, i think.

another question from aminoasinine:

Damn, I thought of another question right after I sent that long-ass ask. What was the thought process behind making The Bart such a minor part of the story? Is it out of a desire (or the AI's internal rules) not to have a child present in the gore/sex chapters, or is it more about how Bart as a character seems almost /more/ of a product or symbol than any of the other characters? Like, he can't really mingle with the other 'people' in this setting, because he is something beyond, having transcended any semblance of characterhood to become ONLY product? Is this the end state of every simslop, to eventually be reduced to a series of identical stimuli on a conveyor belt of endless content?

i settled on the cast of characters pretty early. homer and marge are obvious. ned is also pretty obvious. maude is the emotional core. "kramer bursts in" is a pretty common meme. and i had steamed hams edits on the brain, so seymour gets to come, too. i scaffolded out my story with a focus on these six and whatever pathos & resonance i could wring out of them.

i don't think i had any plans to include bart until i came up with that pun. "the work of bart in the age of mechanical reproduction." that + the factory itself is a very good illustration of the funny/fucked up philosophy & dichotomy. (i think i also had the bart doll from the trash meteor episode of futurama in mind.)

anyway, to answer your actual question: yeah, i didn't want to put bart in the main story because i didn't want to put a child in the mix, and he didn't fit in the outline i had drawn up. i think the intermissions pretty accurately capture the pathos of bart & milhouse, though. the funko pop scamp and the perpetual punching-bag.

this next question is from @where-your-eyes-dont-go:

I'm curious about the reason for "_ pets the dog" being such a frequent refrain in so many sections. I could read it a few ways— it's an action that's often used to humanize characters, and it occasionally does seem to give the characters more apparent personhood, the action almost automatically being interpreted by the reader as affection showcasing an internal life—but its repetition seems to force the reader to instead view it as just another merely automatic process. It also could be a bit of commentary on the common claim that a "pet the dog" button in video games automatically makes such games better. I'd love to know more about your thought process here.

early in the development process, i added "actor votes blue." as an inane flavor action. rqd suggested they pet the dog, and i thought it was brilliant. "can you pet the dog" is exactly the kind of empty posturing i want to satirize. i thought it would be best if the dog is never simulated otherwise. just as petting the dog is an empty gesture in games, in the simslops the dog only exists "in flavor", not mechanically. there is no dog actor or dog affection flag, it's just implied there's a dog around for each scene. the suggestion of something cozy and wholesome and cute happening without any actual substance. (and bob was there, too.)

(a friend had to dissuade me from adding "actor realizes why they're called Kojima games" as another flavor action.)

this anonymous question befuddled me a bit:

have you read Marge Simpson Anime?

"marge simpson anime... what in the world is marge simpson anime?" and then i looked it up and found a tumblr blog with a bunch of drawings of marge and went "oh yeah! marge simpson anime!" i haven't read it, but i've definitely seen it around, and i'm definitely at least in conversation with it.

(on the subject of things i'm in conversation with, i realized recently that i absolutely should have put too many cooks and the simpsons au where homer is in pain in the further reading section.)

a question from @theoretically-questionable:

I'm curious as to why the choices of both explicit sexual acts and disregard for consistent anatomy within said acts were made for Simslops; was it simply a transgression, influenced by the (surprising) amount of actual simpsons porn, or something else?

this one also befuddled me. my original intent had been to generate oddball descriptions of a consistent set of genitals, but, like. on further reflection, that super isn't borne out by the text. i think my mental image of things changed when i added the "adverbly-verbing" snowclone to the sex grammar. (score one for emergent narrative.) my initial motivation was that i think over-the-top, too-mechanical-to-be-erotic sex is a fun thing to write a generator for, and i find kramer and homer doing obscene things to each other amusing. the end result is a lot more mastaba snoopy in a way i really like.

here's a question from @txttletale:

why the simpsons? as opposed to, for example, family guy

i've had to think for a while on this. my instinctive response is "it was essentially random, an act of whimsy," but that's not a very good answer. surely something drew me to the simpsons, even if it was subconscious. let's try and peel it back a layer. my next theory has to do with pathos. it is very difficult to wring anything remotely poignant out of peter griffin. you put peter griffin in a scary cave and he goes "this reminds me of the time i was in the descent" and we get some inane cutaway gag. i can't imagine lois expressing anything more sincere than a scott the woz video. there's an obvious pathos to meg, the constant butt of the joke; treating her with any degree of seriousness gets you pathos in spades. similarly, that comic where chris griffin and bart simpson go to couples therapy is genuinely affecting. there's something there, but it's a very different something from what the simslops ended up being. (for one, i wouldn't feel comfortable doing all the centipede sex stuff if my principal characters are kids.) there's a similar issue with trying this with south park (which was also something i don't have much familiarity with). while the fandom has bafflingly devoted a great deal of time and energy to the emotional struggles of those little weirdos, i don't really see much potential there.

on the other end, we have futurama, a show with perhaps too much emotional weight to go in the blender in the same way. like, there are the episodes with fry's dog and fry's brother and leela's parents. similarly, bob's burgers and bojack horseman (and i'm sure many other shows) draw their characters too realistically. the simpsons hits a sweet spot. its characters are cartoon-enough, commodified-enough, and emotional-enough. they're in the goldilocks zone along all these axes.

in the simpsons movie, there's a bit where bart and ned go fishing. bart messes up somehow, ned goes to assist, and bart flinches away, expecting to be strangled. what was once a comedy routine, a subversion of the "father-knows-best" sitcom family, is treated with real emotional weight.

how did they ever come back from that? by the end of the film homer had redeemed himself as a person and as a father. it was the emotional climax of the movie or whatever. roll credits. there were a million billion more seasons and despite the increasing age of the voice cast, more simpsons are extruded every day. why bother? the rotten heart was laid bare nearly two decades ago.

finally, a question from @fattyopossum:

have you seen any interpretations of it youd consider like. unexpected, in either a good ro bad way? any takes on it now that its been out that youw erent expecting people to get or new interpretations people brought to it that really resonated with you

a lot of the thematic weight of the simslops feels post-hoc to me, like a new interpretation that wasn't there when i wrote it. again, it really became what it was in the telling; technical decisions lead to thematic weight. all characters who have sex have the same genitalia. i decided this because it made writing the sex grammar easier. however, it's also a huge thematic boon. casting marge and maude as transfem makes maude's abjection and their love for eachother much more impactful. it's really easy for me to get chicken-or-the-egg about it. which came first, the High Artistry or the Funny/Fucked Up?

(the real answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter. the text exits anyway and i must shepherd it as it exists, not as i intended it. ego death of the author.)

as for other people's interpretations: i'm quite pleased about the reasoning that anon expressed earlier for why marge was crying while platforming. i was also happy to hear a friend's read that kramer had finally found peace in the meadows, that she's with the girls and relaxing and having snacks. it's not really borne out by the text, but it's such a comforting thought, right? maybe if we imagine kramer happy, she will be.

trivia

the first commit hit my git repo in september 2024, and the simslops released march 2025. all in all it took about six months of on-and-off work.

the name "deviltongue" comes from a character i played in a game of neptune's pride. he ended up getting betrayed and dying badly. so it goes. (on a similar note: as a kid, i thought his name actually was "slideshow bob".)

originally, the sundervalley chapters were going to feature more of the classic cozy small farmer simulator tropes. homer was gonna go fishing and chat up the town's eligible bachelors: crow, tom, and cam. it would've distracted too much from the real core of the chapter, though, so it never got implemented.

my original design for the cover looked like this:

i'm still not sure i made the right decision switching to the final composition. i like the oddness of eyes on the hair in that version, but the lines over the hair in the this version remind me of one of the ways you see dicks censored in hentai, which feels thematically appropriate.

on that subject, this texture:

is a heavily mangled collage of a bunch of ai generated images, each of which was created by using the name of a simpsons' character as both prompt and negative prompt. it shows up in the download buttons and (in heavily desaturated form) on the final version of the cover.

the blurbs were slightly modified grammar output. i was pretty fried the day of release & wasn't able to think of anything, so rqd suggested i use a relevant wikipedia extract and use a grammar for the blurbs. i think it turned out pretty well.

there are six secret characters in the simslops. have you found them?

future work

i think i've taken this framework as far as it will go. the system of numerical flags got bent when i stored the farm workers' country of origin as text. the more linear plotted segments required a set of flags trading off each other, which is fiddly to coordinate. generally, everything is very siloed off. the clearest example of this is in the grammars for generating the various bits of procedural text. they're fun to write, and i'm always delighted by the results, but there's a lot of duplication of effort in my current approach. each chapter that uses procedural text has its own grammar with its own set of words and phrases. this is basically fine in this case, but it's not something i want to deal with for future projects. writing grammars is fun, like building a shipyard in a bottle, but it gets mind-numbing after a while. you can only come up with synonyms for laugh so many times, yknow?

my dream is a single massive grammar all output text runs through. since my grammar system can handle conjugating verbs and adding a/an in front of words, integrating all text output with that system would simplify all sorts of things. then i could have big lists of words to query for relevant adjectives or nouns with specific associations, procedural sentence structures, referents that know what adjectives apply to them...

it's really easy to get feature crept in this sphere. we'll see how much of this i'll be able to implement. i don't think all that is necessary to make the simslops framework useful, really. the only thing it urgently needs is some kind of event emitting & handling system. currently all the little special cases have to be implemented specifically. for example, there's a check in the "drop item" action for if the item in question is fragile. if it is, it breaks. if the item is also smoky, we get the "orange smoke pours out" effect. it'd be a lot cleaner (and make me a lot happier) if i could just say "when a smoky object breaks, emit orange smoke" and similar things.

thank you to everyone who read the simslops, and an extra thank you to everyone who asked me questions. now it's time to go back to work on the next issue. it's going to be a very different beast. i hope you enjoy it.

[approximateknowledge]

the magus situation, or, "ak remembers log horizon exists and it exacerbates the brainrot"

(gonna be a long one)

so to the surprise of absolutely nobody i did in fact watch log horizon at one point in the past, and also tried reading the light novel but never ended up finishing it. my opinion on it is mostly "solid and had good potential, with some unfortunate quirks to how it's written". the anime is better than sao's, but the novel is worse

this isn't what this post is about

it's instead about a certain *spinoff manga*

the fuckign west wind brigade manga in all its janky beauty. it's a story that takes place in parallel with (and overlaps with) the main story while focusing on different parts of the world and a completely different cast of main characters. it tends to be somewhat more light-hearted than the main story (but not by a lot)

it's also technically a harem story, but in the same way UQ holder is, which is to say that soujirou seta has that touta konoe charm that makes me go "yeah i fully get it this guy is impossible to hate"; he's more the guild dog than the guild leader half the time (affectionate)

*anyway*

spoilers for the west wind brigade manga incoming

so the afformentioned soujirou seta (middle character on the manga cover) is in fact the very first person to die after the catastrophe, and in the process he proved that even after the world became real, *respawning was still a thing*

which suddenly made the prospect of pk'ing much less ethically daunting, leading to a massive explosion in guilds of bored disillusioned trapped people with nothing better to do starting to kill and loot en masse, as was already a massive plotpoint in log horizon proper. some are big guilds, some are smaller

and some are technically solo

which brings us, finally, to magus

*fucking magus* (affectionate?)

edgelord in a longcoat with the cringy speeches

but it's not exactly sincere is it? it's all forced, constantly like he's talking as much to himself as to his "audience"

like he really *wants* to believe what he's saying

"it's all a game anyway, i can do whatever i want! definitely! right? RIGHT?"

it is, in fact, a coping mechanism

because to admit it's real would mean it matters. would mean you're not actually hidden away anymore. no walls to hide behind. no mask

because it's all mask

it was the whole time

because it's easier that way

the persona and the longcoat an the fancy explanations for why it's totally correct and real, trust me! definitely not fucking desperate over here, no sirree!

it's the beater again. there's a beater in log horizon but you never meet them in the main story. because for this beater, the game doesn't end because it's over. but because they finally admit to themself it was never a game to begin with. which was of course the only way out, because log horizon doesn't have a win condition

if you can't "win", you need to stop playing

but that's not quite the whole story, is it?

because you know how it is with beaters

there's always a little footnote at the end

this funny little common thread that all examples ive found so far seem to share

yeah there's a massive very explicit gender angle to all of this because it's just part of the package at this point

and that is how magus' redemption arc also has her turning into a girl

it's frankly amazing, the thematic parallels write themselves, it's so delightfully on the nose!

this whole thing is in fact one giant transgender allegory that's barely an allegory at all

the "edgy longcoat-wearer with terrible coping mechanisms" to "cute akward goth girl" pipeline is real

[umbra-borealis]

Dimitri Lousteau is the most 'human' villain in Sly Cooper

Hello and welcome to my TEDtalk, I've been meaning to type out my yapping for a long time but always talked myself out of it because I mean, this is coming from a guy with Dimitri for a pfp and I figured people would just take it as a guy on tumblr simping for a weird lizard but no. The reasons I care for Dimitri the way I do goes pretty deep and I could sit here and talk about it point by point but to save us both some time (and because I am DEAD tired) I made a graph!

I used Luciano, my little sona, to personify myself in this.

I focused mainly on formative things and similarities in personality without inserting headcanons, even if based on traits or even symptoms I recognize. Most of these are rather straight forward but some run a little deeper. The funny pattern here (maybe aside from the drug thing lol) is that there's a high likelihood that you reading this right now can at least relate to just one or two things on those list and while you could argue that you could do the same with other characters, I picked these traits because in my opinion they ride that thin line between just relatable enough to apply to a lot of people, but not too superficial to be on the same an interest or hobby. Anyone can get upset when angry, it's HOW you express that anger that says something about you as a person for instance.

I also want to quickly mention that yes, a LOT of characters in Sly Cooper are very human, but I said 'villain' for a reason. After all I don't think your average college kid can relate to Contessa, Rajan or Panda King because mass brainwashing, destroying villages and being a literal drug lord are bordering on supervillain and that's not what Dimitri is. A supervillain can be relatable to a degree as well, but it makes sense that the Panda King had to have a whole Moment TM (several really) to come to terms with the kind of person he allowed himself to become. When we see Dimitri in Sly 3, he seems to have already done this perhaps because his sins aren't nearly as great. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'll insert a read-more here but I'd like to ask you to keep reading anyway if you can because my biggest pet peeve is that Dimitri is seen as a dumb, sleazy (and old??? which is dumb and I got math to back up that he's not in fact in his 40s during Sly 2 lmao) lizard who's only good as a level 1 boss for beginners to learn the game and all he's remembered for, though fair, is his manner of speech and not what he's REALLY saying. None of you ever picked up on what he was throwing down so I'm going to spell it out for you.

(PS I have ADHD and it's 3 AM so go easy on me this is coming from the HEART baby)

To make it easier on myself and you, I'm going to start sectioning the word soup in my head into four categories based on Dimitri's enterprises and roles and just kinda... waffle on about my thoughts regarding them. I'll start superficial and work my way down to the Deep Shit. Feel free to skip around to whatever interests you since I include some lore too, though changes are you're already aware of said lore.

Lets start with:

Dimiti, the club manager.

Nightclubs, and the people that run them tend to have a bit of a sleazy stereotype attached to them, which I suppose is fair. Though a large chunk is attributed to movies and other media, there were in fact some really large and important movements surrounding nightlife and club culture. Just look up the Club Kids if you want to go down a rabbit hole, in short they were a fairly large group of partiers from the 90s who contributed a LOT to fashion and art movements as well as being generally very fluid when it came to gender. Unfortunately that too would eventually be plagued by drugs and members getting addicted to drugs. Again, I digress.

Dimitri is seen partying in the intro of his chapter in Sly 2,

which is a nice touch because not only is it in-character, it's something that would actually happen. Owners of a popular joints would be popular or just enigmatic figures that would regularly get subjected to patrons schmoozing up to them. Some weren't a fan but there were many that soaked up the attention, bought rounds on the house when business was good, maybe get a little TOO cocky with confidence. It's a bit too simple to look at Dimitri in relation to all this info and say 'no doi he was in it for the money it checks out.' because if you spend enough time in his club or just, in the safe house after placing the bug there's signs of more going on.

We KNOW Dimitri is a criminal and he did his whole art forgery business on the side, or maybe it's the other way round? Either way he seemed fairly confident in his skills with this. His biggest risk being that time he tried to marry someone over a STATUE. (Really dude?) So then why was he so damn paranoid? While you could argue that he was sippin' his own supply I don't think that's what it was. He was so paranoid he played his music super loud in almost all areas of the club JUST to keep his security detail awake through-out night and day, whenever his club wasn't open to the public. To compensate he would promise them they could all 'retire early'. with that fake confidence chuckle that masks a sense of 'haha please don't abandon me'

So, ever heard of Imposter Syndrome? Because his behavior as a club owner SCREAMS it. He wasn't JUST cocky and sleazy, he was simply fitting in with the culture of the time because *everyone* was overly confident, over confidence was something to be admired, something to look at and go 'yeah that guy has it figured out' while in reality most struggled with something, anything. So what is Imposter Syndrome? To keep it short and blunt, the overwhelming feeling that you're not worthy of your accomplishments. We know that Dimitri is a 'failed' artist who turned to forging art to make money, it could just be a sense of guilt telling him something he's not ready to hear so he starts overcompensating and this insecurity bleeds into Sly 3 after Sly puts him in his place. His success with this insanely toxic coping mechanism lands him a new enterprise.

Dimitri, the Spice distributor.

Rather than going chronological, I'm going through the 'layers' that is this lizard. So if his career as a club owner is the tip of the ice berg with some neat little facts and info about the stereotype he conveys, this subject is a tier deeper. Dimitri the Spice distributor is Dimitri the next level criminal, or so he thinks. When you think about it, it's pretty strange that they gave Dimitri some Clockwerk parts at all. He was never mentioned by the other Klaww Gang members and thus seemingly not missed either when he was the first to get busted. In fact, nobody was upset that their DISTRIBTOR was arrested, putting a hold on their primary income... or so we thought until the Contessa was revealed to have a rather large and lucrative side hussle Dimitri probably could never compete with. Dimitri was expendable, sure he had a role and he played it well but he was also a loss they could cope with without much harm done to their wallets or their pride.

I think about it often, Dimitri in his jail cell, maybe hearing from another criminal or even his lawyer after the whole Clock-La thing about the full scope of the plan. He might've gotten a reduced sentence for ratting the other members out because if you think back to his legendary conversation with Sly he really doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. ("What is it with clocks bro!?") All of Dimitri's other crimes aside, he was young and naive, Sly 3 reveals he came from some form of poverty as well so it makes sense that he'd chase easy money. That's all it was though, he wanted the money and the fame, he didn't want to brainwash an entire city, he didn't know about the giant robot owl. He's once again left feeling like a failure, this time one that was easy to fool and all the confidence he had as a criminal would've seeped out of him, starting this weird cycle of him trying something only to be caught breaking the law and ending up where he began.

Like I said all of this would bleed into Sly 3 and it's pretty damn neat that for how little lines he had and how little he was on screen, they managed to convey this well in my opinion. By the time we reach Sly 3, most of us don't remember him as a Spice distribtor at all. Which leads me to...

Dimitri the Artist.

Being an artist is a pretty broad term and while we know Dimitri as a painter, I think he applies his artist mindset in way, way more. He's genuinely creative an smart, he thinks out of the box to protect his secrets and to cover his tracks. His identity as an artist is also his most vulnerable and 'real' self. Folks will say art is about self expression and usually mean conveying complex topics with pretty pictures or thought provoking stories, however it can be apparent in smaller ways too and the most obvious thing for Dimitri is his business in forging art. Think about it this way:

Picture you don't speak a LICK of english, you're from a lower in-come family or even straight up poverty but you grew up on tall tales of your grandpa being a total badass who lived freely and seizes every opportunity he could to make money... or take it rather but you get the idea. Your grandpa used his talents as a diver and deep down, you know what your talent is. It's art. So you somehow manage to move across the world to Paris, go to an art school work your ass off to develop your own style, your own identity and when it came to making a name for yourself you were rejected super hard. You're now probably in debt, in a foreign country and all you're known for is being the art community's clown.

One thing that gets overlooked is that Dimitri's paintings aren't actually that bad.

He very clearly knows the basics quite well, he's using color theory to shade and add depth but as he goes from student to independant artist, he breaks away from the basics and develops a style. His color use becomes brighter, he adds little stars just because why not? He likes em! This style is PERFECT for the nightlife club scene he ends up in down the line of course, but in the world of pretentious parisian artist hipsters? Absolutely not. So while he's just being himself, he's shown that that isn't allowed, that wont get him success. It reminds me of artists who say shit like 'I'll just learn to draw furry porn I guess!' thinking it's a guaranteed money printer (heh) and whether they enjoy making that kind of content is irrelevant, which leads to burn out or in case they DO find success, imposter syndrome. The dread that you do not deserve this recognition because it's not something you're actually that passionate about, not something you want to be known for. Say what you will about Dimitri but he never compromised. And while the cutscene shows shoddy painted depictions of classical paintings, I think this was more to illustrate him forging paintings to a younger audience than imply he was a bad painter as just before those crappy version, we see what's probably the REAL version he would've painted and sold.

This is conjecture on my part but I have to believe it because well, art forgery is HARD. You'd have to actually be a freaking genius to do it and sell it for so high, you can just afford what is basically a freaking opera house in PARIS and turn it into a nightclub. Also did I mention Dimitri just, HAS a ~mansion~ in Monaco? Because he does.

I've also always liked that scene for the expression on his face. It's smug, it's so full of petty, passve aggressive anger, a stubborness to admit defeat and instead to just 'prove a point' even if that point is lost to the means being SUPER illegal. That being sad, I don't think any of us feel bad over this man stealing a couple thousand from billionaire pockets. Billionaires that probably have their own little illicit ways to get that cash. Funny... It seems Sly isn't the only one who steals from other criminals.

And you might've stuck around this long and gone 'Umbra, get to the fucking POINT already." to which I have good news.

Dimitri, the Marine Iguana.

My favorite part, feel free to skip ahead to this headline if you want.

So who is this guy anyway? Well, from Sly 3 we see that he has a mother, a sister and his grandparents and that's about it as far as we can tell.

Just look at that smile! He looks like your average, awkward teenager. No struggling on the streets from what we can tell, no bullying by bigger kids, no weird sociopathic tendencies, no childhood trauma or grudges. The events that changed him seem to all have happened after he left for Paris. Sure it aint much to go off of but even if his life was hard, it seemed he was close with his grandfather and got to know him for a decent couple of years. Marine Iguanas are, like the name implies, an aquatic species of reptile. They're well adapted to land but due to low food availability in-land, they migrated to the beaches and started living off of sea algae, learning how to dive in the process. Even in Sly 2 the devs included plenty of references to Dimitri's affinity for water. The windows in the dancefloor area of his club are partially submerged, there are two massive aquariums in his office, he lives on a boat (or hides there anyway) and has several water features but inside and outside his club.

When you take a step back and look at all that, Dimitri is... just a guy who left his home country, his family, to follow a dream only to have that dream shatter and he's left to pick up the pieces all alone, making poor choices in the process. Choices based on anger and a broken heart. And the truth of the matter is that ALL of this, could happen to anyone. Granted in varying different ways as not everyone's life is the same and not everyone will make the same choices but I think many of us had a dream career as a kid only to become a jaded adult who thinks it's unrealistic or only does that thing as a hobby, I think there's many of us that remember the moment our hearts were broken and we realized the cold, unforgiving nature of real, adult life.

We see the effect of ALL of this come to a head in Sly 3, when at first he's not sure if he should still be mad at Sly for putting him in jail while he's currently the only guy he knows that COULD break him back out of jail as well. He still overcompensates, he's still overly confident and he put himself in that cell but still, he honors his word and helps Sly and Bentley find their friend. Then in Holland we see him behind a bar, seemingly as if he's actually got a job as a bartender there. Heck, he DOES have a job! He's the announcer! He may not super like it but he's being humbled by it all the same and when Sly comes for help a second time, the bravado is gone for a moment. He expresses genuine fear, not necessarily for his own safety but for losing a job, for *failing*. Of course the right answer in this scenario is to hype up his confidence again. And because Sly has proven himself to be trustworthy in the past he figures he can trust him with a favor of personal, sentimental value. If anyone would understand how it feels to have your family name dishonored and an heirloom stolen, it's Sly and Dimitri knows that damn well.

I think this is about as real as Dimitri can get, aside from the whole scuba gear thing. I know the gang is disguised but I don't think Dimitri is at all. I think that's just... what he likes to wear, further making me think he's just a regular guy with so much heart ache he lashe out in some pretty vile ways. Tortured artists are known to do some crazy shit after all. And while he continues to be his funny eccentric self we know him to be, he starts to have his first real moments of genuine care and loyalty while a part of the Cooper Gang. He tells Bentley he 'has his own flavor' which is his way of telling him that he's unique an valid the way he is. He dives after Sly's cane in VERY dangerous waters, risking injury or even his life, no questions asked. He sends Bentley postcards and letters to let his friend know he's safe and doing well. But perhaps something that hits me harder than any of that, is how angry and shocked Dimitri looks upon Sly's 'retirement announcement'.

Here he was thinking he made a friend out of Sly, and just like that he was gone. It makes me wonder if he held onto that grudge or not but a part of me likes to imagine that he didn't. I think his time with that gang made him realize that although he might not understand and he might be upset, it's not all about him. If anything he silently continued the rivalry by seeing how many girls he could cram into one post card with him to one up Sly's act of running off with a girl himself or perhaps he took it as a sign to make a career switch as well. Either way, Dimitri ended up changing for the better, he became himself in the end. A sweet, goofball iguana who loves the ocean and loves to paint. Making money became a nice bonus rather than his main focus.

Coming from a similar, rough background, having gone to therapy and trying to find my place in the world, this gives me hope. Hope that if I look hard enough, I can find my niche too and that being myself is the best I can be. If you read all this, thank you. I fgured it was best to just get it ALL out at once. I hope it was a fun read or made you look at Dimitri a little differently.

[eddsboxofdisectiontools]

On topic with my post about Edd mischaracterization, I'm taking a wack at Ed mischaracterization. I won't do Eddy... Only because BPS was the thing that explained it all. Everyone in the fandom already knows Eddy is just a victim of abuse and gaslighting.

I think the most common consensus is that Ed is stupid. That's pretty much what they imply in the show, via other character's comments. Except for Edd... Who wouldn't say that lol.

I don't think he's stupid. Not inherently... I'm not saying he has lots of book smarts, because he doesn't. We all know he doesn't. But I don't think he's genuinely stupid. I think that his mother prevents teachers from showing concern about his inability to learn, because if they found out how to teach him properly, he'd become more aware of her actions and may rebel. Obviously, any oppressive force who is taking control of another person doesn't want them to gain consciousness about what's happening to them. Especially not someone like Ed, who could OBLITERATE her.

I think he could be just as capable as Dee if they found what helps him learn. He is canonly ND (ADHD) but given the high comorbidity rates, he's probably autistic too. Come on, he's pretty fixated on monster media. This probably makes it impossible for him to learn in the ways that the students around him learn. Not only does he lose focus, but if he *can* focus, he tends to lose interest and space out anyways.

Notice how he can easily quote and memorize scenes from his monster comics and movies? That shows he IS capable of holding mass amounts of information. This is what Edd does all the time, except the information he typically holds is related to things like biology and psychology. When we measure IQ, we're measuring the POTENTIAL of a person's intelligence, not the current knowledge. As humans, we're programmed to be in a state of nonstop learning. There really is no such thing as knowing more in the sense we try to use, because intelligence can be more accurately measured by the ability to understand, retain, and utilize the information given, and how much information can be stored and utilized. People who could be comparable to Einstein if given the chance may end up never proving this to people due to growing up in an environment that shames education. The person is capable of learning complex topics, but the way they've been silenced causes it to become a hidden skill. Does that make sense? I hope it does.

I think this is what we see with Ed. He is very intelligent in the fields that he enjoys, such as animal care and monster media. I'm sure he'd know more than Edd does about animal care, and may teach a thing or two to him occasionally through his rambles. Ed lacks any effort towards his care and learning, so the topics he's willing to ingest are super limited. I believe that he can learn lots, and be considered intelligent. Maybe he'll forever remain aversive to topics like math and history... Is it really a bad thing? Yes, they are good things to know... But I think he could excel in his topics of preference in a way that would label him as a master of his field.

Knowing Edd, he's probably helping Ed with his learning issues. Edd shows an interest in psychology, which means he most likely understands the differences in people and how they can take in information. I'm sure he'd use this to see what gets him focused, what makes him learn. He'd possibly ingest stacks and stacks of information if he found what made him tick. It's hard to know exactly HOW he's intelligent, but I do believe he is. His non stop fourth wall breaks seem funny (and they are) but a part of that also implies that Ed has EXCEPTIONAL attention to detail. People who are considered intelligent have this. Perhaps his tendency to get distracted makes this harder to notice since he doesn't pick up what he can't focus on, but trust that he's about as aware of what's going on as Edd is implied to be. The difference between Ed and Edd is that Ed had been sheltered and shunned from learning like normal, and Edd had pretty much been FORCED into learning constantly by his parents, which led to the natural fixation on topics relating to education, as it was what was in his environment. I think Ed could go places if they found what helped him learn.

[horizon-verizon]

It’s hilarious to me that Aemond kicked Alicent out of the council and literally told her to go back to the kitchen right after that tiktok went viral that called Aemond of all people a feminist.

Compare with Jace saying in the same episode, “my ruler is my mother, and I do not wish it otherwise”.

Jace is EVERYTHING Alicent wished Aegon and Aemond was. A better son, a better politician, would’ve been a better husband to Helaena, a young man who has no problem leading the war council with his wife-to-be and defending her against Ser Alfred. I love that HOTD is completely destroying the whole “momma’s boy/mommy’s favorite war criminal” delusion that Aemond’s stans created.

“Aemond’s the most interesting one on this show” and he’s just every reactionary mass shooter using “bullying” in high school as an excuse for their atrocities (when, in reality, they were just nihilistic psychopaths). Nothing about Aemond is unique or disruptive. Misogyny is painfully boring actually, it’s been around for centuries. People just can’t accept interesting morally sound characters when they see one.

I wonder how that person who made that Jace would not be a feminist (as if any of the green boys in the show would?!) is feeling right about now? They'd probably say that Aemond kicking Alicent out is not sexist but he was just mad at her. Sure Fabian 2.0 🙄.

Now, Aemond does provide some funny moments here and there since "he undermined" Aegon with high Valyrian, but for me the stand out is more Aegon on the green side. I did like Aemond asserting against Jason Lannister's demands, that is very book!Aemond. It's like these two green boys are taking turns being their book selves, which is ironic bc people will claim that they are more interesting that their bk counterparts...baby, that's bc they are finally realized as what their bk counterparts would do!

Also, the greens have such stark and seemingly unique characters because the writes simply didn't develop the blacks very well for balance. They are all more or less pretty static, their motivations regressed or having stayed the same since S1.

So we perhaps need to separate "interesting"/"unique" and "solid characterization" from "morally bankrupt". Both tb and tg. TG tends to either explain how the greens are actually morally neutral or good or justified in some actions AND tries to make as if being "good" automatically boring, but TB seems to sometimes forget that we don't need characters to be morally neutral/ambiguous or good for them to be "interesting"--ironic bc Daemon is morally ambiguous leaning bad but is very interesting to many in TB and to locals...pre-Harrenhal arc. People can say Aemond & Aegon are interesting in the show, bc they do present more to think over...while Rhaenyra's writing is repetitive and verging on pathetic and nonsensical, esp when she slaps the Celtigar instead of Alfred Broome and keeps talking about how helpless she feels even after that. Jace, despite his deeds at the Frey's and the Wall, was also stripped of his Manderly and Jeyne Arryn stories. even with Cregan, they aren't friends and there is no Pact of Ice and Fire. We didn't even get Cregan's backstory in appropriate flashbacks that would have lended Rhaenyra/Jace's support base with a certain confidence in devotion and character! Baela somehow doesn't burn the greens she comes into close contact with...It's all just too underwhelming for the sake of "neutraility". And I don't have to say anything for Daemon, that I already talked about.

Example of "good & interesting": Dany is unequivocally a good person & a good ethical actor with good ethical motivations, but she's anything but boring.

@all-about-the-tea-parties brings up other nonvillains with nuanced and "fascinating" arcs down in the comments below!

[ashenberry]

ashen. ashen i hope you know. i really want to know metal gear lore and the story please if youre ever bored and wanna talk about it talk at me about it !!!!!!!!!

HEHEHE >:3c i was gonna ask if u wanted like a specific game or in an specific order (game vs timeline) but i decided im just gonna talk at nasuem. for fun.

future ashen voice this ended up being long as shit. a read more. for ur sake

ANYWAYSSSS metal gear is about snake. which snake? fuck you that one but specifically these two

The metal gear games can basically bit split into the Solid Snake Games [MGS1/2/4] and the Big Boss (Naked Snake) Games [MGS3/PW/V]

The timeline for the games go

MGS3 -> ***MGS:Peacewalker -> MGSV* -> MG1/MG2SS** -> MGS1 -> MGS2 -> MGS4 -> MGRR

*(which is 2 games in 1 but not actually? konami wanted a game released in 2014 so they took one of the missions from V and called it ground zero. and then the rest is called the phantom pain. tpp. the peepee)

** these are msx2 games which was a home computer back in the 80s it was basically slightly more powerful then a NES. its very funny its such a. interesting part of the timeline and they never remade them so theyre just 35 year old games that are like the biggest twist is that big boss. is a bitch !

*** Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is here but its not mainline saga. Metal Gear Rising Revengence is also not mainline saga but people have heard of it so it gets a mention. its the one with the brazillian guy sammy.

---

our timeline begins in the humble year 1964. the cold war is cold-ing and we meet our protagonist for the game john metal gear jumping out of a plane and into Russia to get some scientist past the iron curtain and into the states bc he decided he fucking hates developing nukes. Our cast for this game includes [Naked] Snake. The guy who will become, by the time of metal gear 2, the guy running the War Orphan Economy. they call him naked bc zero is mean and also bc they didnt give him shit in way of supplies

Zero. Also known as David Oh but who gives a shiiit. Hes your main point of contact for mission information he will tell you your current objective he'll tell you where to go what to do etc etc.

Para-Medic. She is here to tell you fun facts about the food you pick up, she is the one you call to save the game (in which she will then tell you about the movie ^-^) and she helps you when it comes to tending to wounds but i think that only comes up twice

The Boss. The most important character in the series given the impact she has on others, everyone whos met her talk about her in the highest regard and after this game Snake and Zero (and others) will tear the world apart for her.

Sigint. He's your main contact for weapons and equipment in this game. He and Para medic might end up being the character you talk the least to if you dont go out of your way to but honestly i really like their banter :]

EVA. Shes your intel on the inside for being the only other mother fucker on your side* thats actually here. in the russian jungle. Shes also propped as the love interest but snake and her at best have a one night stand and then. well you can argue they stayed friends. I do. i like that they dont get together it goes with the side thread that like. sometimes meaningful relationships cant be described as romantic or platonic WHATEVER!!!! next guy

Ocelot. fuck ass. bitch. he meows. he gets his ass kicked by snake and watches him hit his famous "i shit my pants" stance and then is just. [textually. stated in game] obsessed with him. for the next 50 years. and makes him everyone elses problem. my beloved mutuals could give u a more sincere read on ocelot i just. hes funny to me check this shit out

he does that for like 2 minutes. and for what. fuck him

Volgin. this guy is terrible he stinks which is great for a villian but hes fucking terrible. he also grabs snakes dick. he nuked a science facility hes trying to start mass produce the shagohod which is basically the precursor to metal gears. the metal gears are the nuke launching metal dinosaur

*theres some double tripple agent bullshit but. shes on your side like 90% theres like some side thing she crosses on you but snake i dont think gave a shit

---

SO SO SOSO SO. game starts out snake jumps out of plane into russia etc etc etc. This is called the Virtuous Mission. His Radio team consist of Zero, The Boss, and Para-medic. And this is the first time hes talked to the boss in like. 5 years? and she is like. the most important person to him shes like basically raised him since he was 15 he is often described as 'her most beloved disciple" anyways snakes like why did you leave >;| and the boss is like snake what is loyalty. who do you answer to? the goverment? the goverment changes who are you loyal to. for no reason. btw u dont need me anymore ive taught you everything now go forth and go save that russian scientist guy. so you go and pick up sokolov and then ocelot shows up and shoots the shit out of everyone and then snake shoots the shit outta ocelot and his boys but he doesnt kill ocelot becauses hes a fuck ass 20 something and snakes like ahh hes a fuck ass 20 something i cant kill him.

so he and the russian scientist walk towards the pickup point and the boss is like hi snake :> and snakes like shouldnt you be in a submarine ? and then the boss is like send the bees. Snake and Sokolov (Scientist guy) get swarmed with bees, sokolov gets yoinked by The Cobra Unit which is just. the boss squad for the game they have silly powers and theyre the boss's group from WW2 and the boss is like hey snake. im defecting to russia and volgins like hiiii we should kill the fuck outta this guy and snake hits his famous i shit my pants pose

and then the boss breaks his arm and throws him off the bridge* and then snake washes up on shore and calls in to zero and paramedic and is like hey chat. all my bones hurt so then the boss and volgin fly off in their helicopter and volgins like thank you The Boss for these davey crockets (which are nuclear warheads u can launch by hand) im gonna use them :> and ocelot (whos there) is like you cant just nuke the shit outta people????? and volgins like i can do whatever the fuck i want the blames gonna be put on the american who just defected and snakes like. hey zero i think something down the road got nuked to shit. the send snake a balloon and thats the end of the virtuous mission

*the boss has been wearing a bandana, and when snake gets thrown off he grabs at it and then from this point on untiiiilll. end of peacewalker he is seen wearing this bandana. idk if its the same one solid snake wears it might be im no bandana doctor

---

One week later, snakes in the hospital healing up from getting his bones broken and zero is like hey. theyre sending you back to russia. to kill the fuck outta the boss bc yknow that building that got nuked? well it was an american nuke on russian soil and if we cant prove that the boss was rouge this cold war is gonna go hot and theyre gonna kill the fuck out of us. So begins Operation Snake Eater, called that because the objective is to take out The Boss, Leader of the cobra unit (though the cobras will also die bc they are loyal to da boss L)

To begin snake has to meet up with his guy on the inside ADAM at the same shack sokolov was rescued from. On his way there he meets up with the boss on her horse and shes like snake. Go Home. horse stomps on his hand she breaks his gun. L. Snake heads to the shack. When snake arrives he is not greeted by ADAM however but by the motorcycle riding EVA who gets him supplies including a disguise for getting to the research facility sokolov is chilling at and a gun and shes like youuu should fucking sleep its like midnight and snakes like >:| fine. and he does. and when he wakes up in the morning theyre surrounded by the ocelot unit that snake has to take out and Ocelot, the main guy, has eva held at gunpoint and is like SNAKE. YOU. LOOK I GOT A REVOLVER LIKE YOU MENTIONED. YOURE GONNA HIT TTHE CLASSIC "i shit my pants pose" SO I CAN DEFEAT YOU FOR REAL and snakes like ok buddy & snake and eva 1-2 combo him, eva does a wheelie off his face, and they head towards the research sokolov is behind held at.

on the way there snake meets alligators and you can grab the alligator cap and some leeches and then you get to a ravine and oh fuck its ocelot again. that gif earlier? this is when he does it Snake and Ocelot have a good ol duel before they are RUDELY. interrupted by a shit ton of bees in which they are both. terrible at dealing with? snake tries to cut them with his knife and ocelot spins his guns at them and to avoid the bees snake jumps into the ravine at the end of which is our first cobra fight with

THE PAIN - each cobra brings an emotion into battle. The unit includes, The Pain, The Fear, The End, The Fury, The Joy, and The Sorrow. you fight each of them in this game. The way the Pain's fight works is that he has a shit ton of bees and you have the power of water. he uses his bees as a shield, fake clones, bullets and you can go. under water to not get stung. you defeat him he explodes yay

and off to the research facilityyyyyy. on the way you see The Boss and Volgin and Sokolov and Ocelot chit chatting and if u have a sniper rifle you can kill The End here but theyre just giving exposition about this girl tatyana and how sad it is that the pain died. off to the research facilittyyyyyyy

sokolov isnt there. some other guy is i think his name is granin? he has nice shoes and he was the guy who design shagohod and hes druunk and hes like shits fucked. heres a key card so u can go to grazny grod which is where theyre keeping sokolov and also shagohod and snakes like thanks. nice shoes. and heads out to encounter the secound cobra fight with...

THE FEAR - this guys a BITCH to do when youre doing a no kill run bc the way to take down foes non lethally is to take out their stamina and he will recharge back to full once hes hit half. his fight is him chilling. invisible in the trees until he gets hungry enough to come on the ground and start eating. i found when going non lethally just handing him a bunch of poison frogs works really well. you defeat him he explodes with a shit ton of arrows cause he used a crossbow and off you gooo.

Eva calls in and goes wdym he gave you that key card theres. mountain there. ill meet you there get you supplies. snake continues on towards their meeting location when he encounters....

THE END - honestly metal gear, aside from sniper wolf in mgs1, has reallly fun sniper fights in this youre basically hunting him down and augh its good. you can also put the game down for an irl 5 days and he will die of old age cause hes old as shit. he also has a parrot that u can eat after the fight but like. bro? dont? anyways you defeat him he explodes and then snake continues on in which he encounters. the ladder

ANYWAYS you make it past the ladder and my least favorite sneaking section of the game and then you meet up with eva and shes got you some food and a way into grozny grad BUT !! she also is trying too yknow. seduce snake shes very upfront about this tbh shes like most of my missions is to fall in love w/ who the mission says anyways snake got any deets about da boss while shes just wearing her underwear and snakes like :| yknow eva. im not feeling the whole vibe your bringing to the conversation but i will talk about the boss cause this whole things got me conflicted why would she do that to me :| and evas like oh were u lovers and snakes like some things cant be explained w/ the lovers friends dichotomy but she was like. stupidly important to me and evas like damn. i need to get going ocelots getitng suspicious of me and she heads back to gronzy grad on her motorcycle and doesnt bring us we need to go. a different way through the sewers where we have our next cobra fight with...

THE FURY - this guy is decked out like an astronaut with a flame thrower and my favorite vocal performance AND THE FIGHT IS ANNOYING AS HELL I DONT LIKE ITTT HES A BITCH whateverr u defeat him he explodes and youre in gronzy grad

Once in grazny grad snakes next objective is to get into the weapons lab. find raikovich and impersonate him and meet of with sokolov. Raikovish isss. raiden mgs2 hes very clearly made to look like him raikovich vaugely sounds like if you took raiden and tried to make it sound more russian, they made him a little bitch to reflect the fact that gamers of 2002 did nootttt like raiden bc he was a little bitch with hips you could make out as oppose to solid square. I like raiden. anyways. you locate raikovich, knock him out drag him to a locker room and steal his close and now youre raikovich so now you can just walk around without anyone instantly smiting you.

you walk into the room where sokolov is being held and there you find him getting interrogated by tatyana (who is EVA. btw. idk how much of a twist this was suppose to be bc on one hand of course but on the other aaaa it was a ps2 game i just went like waow. the third blond blue eyed women in this game bc thats just what metal gear does theres a lot of blond bitches ANYWAYS) tatyana leaves you talk to sokolov hes like we gotta blow of shagohod and snakes like im getting you outta here. this time. for sure. surely nothing bad will happen and volgin walks in and was like raikovich. i was waiting for u in my room what the hell man and snake. cant say anything he doesnt sound raikovich at all so he just stands at attention and then volgin grabs his dick. Volgin's then like hah. an imposter. and then is about to beat the shit outta him and then the boss walks in and beats the shit outta snake and then volgin beats the shit outta him to unconsciousness.

snake wakes up with a bag over his head and his arms tied up above his head for beat-the-shit-outta-him 2: electric boogaloo. Ocelot, The Boss, and tatyana eventually are watching. its an interrogation scene theyre "trying" to get information out of him but we're shown earlier that volgin is very good at the beating the shit outta someone part and very bad at the getting information part. Granin (nice shoes) guy died. very sad. ANYWAYS. volgins like i hate this cia dog dipshit are you here for the philosophers legacy and snakes like ? cause he doesnt know shit about that and volgins like the philosophers legacy. yknow. the big pile of money that The Philosophers, a group that worked behind the scenes to pull the strings on events around the world that eventually broke into the US, Russian, and China branch after the cold war started? and snake looks at him like he just got the shit beat outta him.

Tatyana is like this is fucked up and The Boss is like your ass at this and Ocelot is like tatyana can u stop wearing that perfume (this haas been mentioned everytime their on screen together I just Forgot to mention it) and volgins like ok ignoring tatyana and ocelot. Da Boss. why dont youuuuu prove your loyalty and stab both of this dipshits eyes out and the boss is like 🧍‍♂️ yeah ok hand me that knife and then we get a scene of snake looking at the boss sad puppy style while theres a blade inches from his eyes and tatyana is like this is FUUCKKED and grabs attt. volgin or the boss i forget its been a hot minute. it goes to chaos a little bit but the scene ends with Ocelot shooting out Snakes (his right, looking at him the one on the left) eye and at long last. now people who havent played the games have their shorthand for which one is big boss and which one is solid snake (the eye patch. tho we still gotta wait a minute for him to get one theyre not just gonna. give him one yet they still gotta beat the shit outta him more). eventually volgins like thats IT. we're done for now send him to the cell and tatayana (EVA) whispers to snake when she has a moment hey i got an escape route for u w/ supplies all you need to do is to get outta the cell.

So now snake is in gay baby jail. theres a couple ways to get out one is that if you went in 1st person view mode earlier you would have saw a Ghost (whos shown up a couple times, uh mostly when the boss is like Are you there The Sorrow? the ghost is the Sorrow) and the ghost wouldve held up a sign that had a radio frequency if you call it it opens the door. you can leave when the guard uses the bathroom sounds like dinner didnt agree with him. you can also make friends with the guard by giving him food hes like waow :3 my names johnny my dads name was johnny my sons name is johnny and snakes like thats crazy can you open the door and hes like yeah and you scram presumably after putting him to sleep. ANYWAYS you run off to the sewers and eva is like bad news they got dogs you gotta get going and snakes running through this sewer getting chased by dogs n guys until he gets to the end and oh fuck a cliff drop into the river and he looks behind him and FUCK ITS OCELOT AGAIN goddamit hes like SNAKE. LETS DUEL AGAIN and snakes like fuck it T-poses and falls into the river jesus style where because he was barely hanging on takes him too the next boss fight with…

THE SORROW. yeah. the ghost from earlier. snake is in a realm between life and death. The fight takes place in a monochrome version of an earlier section where you are walking through waist through water. the sorrow is like its fucked up to kill people snake. heres everyone you killed and then you have to walk through this river past the ghost of everyone youve killed up until that point. no kill runs still have a couple ocelot unit members bc snake kills them in a cutscene. and once you wade past all of them you see a body floating in the water. The sorrows body. touching it kills you instantly and to progress you need to take a revival pill you have earlier bc u also have a death pill you can use whatveer but it wasnt important.

I will mention it here. This jungle is where the sorrow died years earlier. He and the Boss were put in a situation where one of them had to kill the other and they decided the sorrow will die and the boss will live. which is great for the sorrow honestly he already had ghost powers im. being a cryptid is his calling truly.

Snake wakes up under water and starts swimming upwards for air. he gets ashore and EVA's like heres the meet up spot and he heads over there where he gets his gear back and a nice roasted snake for the time being. They Chill before Eva is like OK!! i got some C3 youre gonna head back and blow the fuck outta the shagohod i need to get back before ocelot gets sus and snakes like o7 ok AND WE HEAD BACK. TO GRANZY GROD. to BLOW UP. THE SHAGOHOD. we set up a bunch of c3 which was c4 but a little lamer but they didnt know that at the time but before the explosives can go off volgins like HIIII and hes got tatyana (EVA) corned because they found out about the spy shit. Remember how ocelot kept getting annoyed by her perfume? he finally placed the smell it was the smell of gasoline from her motorcycle and evas like your a bitch ass motherfucker and volgins like lol. lmao. strikes you with lightning. and the boss is like hey. let me finish her off and volgins like ok :thumbs_up: and turns his attention to snake where the 1v1 in a pit. Ocelots miffed because HEEE wanted to 1v1 snake so he just watches from above. and throws items for snake which pisses off volgin oh yeah next boss fight

Volgin - he has electric powers he can zap the shit outta you so for the most part you cant really use ru guns bc theyre metal you gotta use C! Q! C! close quaters combat a fighting form in universe created by The Boss and Snake. you have. 10? maybe minutes to defeat volgin b4 everything blows up. at some point phase 2 beings where volgin is like OCELOT. KILL HIS ASS> and ocelots like fuck you. does his gay little hand gesture and leaves cause he aint getting blwon the fuck up.

you finish up the volgin fight and get the hell outta dodge where you see Eva outside on her bike and snake is like ? i thought da boss killed you and evas like noooo she wanted me to tell u that we gotta go meet her at the lake where im keeping a plane and snakes like awesome ok. and then the c3 goes off and theyre like yay and then the shagohod starts coming for them and theyre like D: and volgins like IM COMING FOR YOUR ASS and ocelot who hates being left out also gets on his own motorcycle and also starts chasing after eva and snake hijinks ensue ocelot gets knocked off his bike early you blow up a bridge trying to take out the shogod it works for most of it but theres still the front half you 2v1 it in some field you kill the fuck outta volgin god strikes him with lightning. snake and eva are like x_^ YAY ^_^

then all of volgins men keeps chasing them to kill em and theyre like ah fuck. eva's like snake ill drive u shoot the fuck outta them and so u go through this driving section and then you get out nice n good and then eva n snake notice the gas tank got shot and while theyre looking at that they drive into a tree and off a cliff and eva gets like. stabbed all the way through her abdomin with a stick and shes like aug i cant go on and snakes like you have to. i cant fly a plane. i need u and shes like well when u put it like that so u get eva off the stick and then perform surgery with snakes first aid kit which includes. ointment. bandages. a cigar? SHES PATCHED UP. she aint shmooving tho so we have some slower paced stealth before we get to the lake! yay! snakes like i need. to go talk to the boss and evas like ok. ill get the plane started so snake walks over to the flower field the boss is in and then we have our final boss fight with…

THE BOSS - also known as The Joy.

Life's end... Isn't it beautiful? It's almost tragic. When life ends, it gives off a final lingering aroma. Light is but a farewell gift from the darkness to those on their way to die. I've been waiting, Snake, for a long time. Waiting for your birth, your growth, and the finality of today.

Joy recounts to snake parts of her life. How she went to space and saw the world whole. with no division no borders no west vs east capitalism vs communism us vs russia. how she went to fucking dday and gave birth on the field (??!) and how her kid n womb were taken by the powers that be. uh in this case those powers are the Philosophers. She talks about how this. shouldnt be happening. They shouldnt be going face to face. How the winds chance and how someone you fought along one day will be ur enemy the next. iiii have opinionsss but those are stored in the boss ppt uh. ask if you want those send an ask im not going tooo incredibly deep here bc im just writing this all off the top of my head but she thanks snake for letting her talk about her self, calls in a bomber jet, and says snake. we have 10 minutes before everything gets blown to shit. lets have the best fight of our lives.

I have found that this fight is far easier when using a non lethal method and also this is like the only part of the game that lags the flower field has hands. The games theme snake eater plays for the second half of the fight and you can find 3 snakes around named Solid Liquid and Solidus. buuut im stalling. At the end of the fight The boss hands snake her half of the philosophers legacy that she stole from volgin. She tells him that he is a wonderful guy. That their can only be One Boss. and One Snake. the camera pans out and this is when you the player are suppose to pull the trigger. if you wait long enough the game will do it for you but this is where Joy dies.

the while flower field turns red and snake heads towards the plane with a petal he took with him that as they take of get stolen by the wind. as the gain win who shows up but MOTHERFUCKING OCELOT BABYYY HE WANTS THAT 1 ON 1 HE HAS SOME LIKE HOVER CRAFT BULLSHIT THATS SHOWN UP A COUPLE TIME AND HES LIKE FUCK YOU SNAKEE AND THEY HAVE A 1-1 IN THE BACK OF THE PLANE AND THEN OCELOTS LIKE WAIT wwai twaitwait. russian roulette my friend here here. 1 bullet. 2 guns. he starts juggling them u take them and theres like a lot of outcomes here but its either snake gets it and shoots past him and either no bullet or its a blank or ocelot shots him and its no bullet or blank and hes like. "im not an ocelot and ur not a snake what ur name" to which snake responds john metal gear. thanks john metal gear. ocelot jumps out of the plane and we're off. out of russia. thank god.

They arrive back to the states Snake and Eva have a night to themselves :smirk: and then snake wakes up alone with a message from eva thats like hey snake. i took the philosophers legacy. i wouldve killed you too but god. The Boss is really based wow. Her ORIGINAL Mission was just to get the philosophers legacy off of volgin but the dipshit nuked a building so to prevent the cold war from going hot she had to die but she couldnt kill herself cause the states needed to prove their innocence so they made YOU do it and while this tape is playing we see snake getting his medals and honors for operation snake eater and. the president whats his fuck Lindon B Johnson i think is like. youve surpassed even the boss. we give you the title big boss. people go shake snakes hand and he just fucking leaves and goes to an unmarked* grave and just cries bc da boss is dead. *its like a MIA gravestone i think. yknow. the gravestone "here lies a hero" but theres no name.

AND THATS METAL GEAR SOLID 3. Ill be fucking honest i didnt expect this to be as long as it is holy shit. and mgs3 isnt even my favorite game i just honestly sincerely just recounted the events to you off the top of my head bwhadwaiwfjiwf. ill do the other games but later hehe

[duckapus]

Horror Comedy AU where Ash Ketchum is an eldritch abomination spawned from an Unfathomable Void, but is still his usual self.

Basically, Delia was an Interpol Agent back in the day with luck just as strange as Ash's, and on her Last Job she got captured by a doomsday cult that was trying to summon a dark god equal to Arceus Itself and bring about the apocalypse. This doesn't work out, both because Delia's Aura awakens and messes with the ritual (I always prefer to think that Ash's weird ambiguous connection to Sir Aaron comes his mom's side even if in most universes she doesn't have a usable amount of Aura), and because the Void God they're trying to awaken helped Arceus create the world in the first place (and the two of Them kind of have a thing going on) so It wouldn't have helped them destroy it even if the ritual had worked.

Instead they only get a "small" fragment of Void Stuff that mixes with some of Delia's Aura to become a living mass of Darkness covered in writhing tendrils and glowing blue eyes that absorbs all the cultists, knocks out every Pokemon in the room, frees Delia, and shrinks down into the form of a human baby. Delia, being a Ketchum and a major character in a crack fic, promptly decides "my baby now" (to be fair she's not exactly wrong?) and leaves Interpol to reopen her late grandmother's old diner in Palette Town. She was planning to do that anyway even before ending up with a monster baby so it works out I guess.

Meanwhile, Giratina actually noticed the massive spike of Void that was Ash's birth and since the whole issue got resolved so quickly it takes a couple months for her to find where her new half sibling ended up (you read that right. She's the god of symmetry, Light and Dark are included in that, so Arceus and Void God both created her. Also I'm using she/her for Giratina because immortal genderless embodiments of universal concepts can use whatever pronouns they want), and when she does she offers to help him learn how to use his void powers...well, mostly. See, in this version of the Pokemon Universe not all Legendary Pokemon are gods and there are gods who aren't Legendaries, and the ones that are both tend to lean towards one or the other, so Giratina who's more Pokemon-leaning and only half-void functions very differently from Ash who isn't Pokemon at all and almost fully void, so there's some things she just can't help with.

Still, the fact that she's offering to help at all is a big relief for Delia who is doing great so far but would probably be in over her head raising what's essentially a Horror Movie Monster on her own, so Giratina makes semi-regular visits over the years both to help with powers and just to bond with her new little brother (and new mom because there is no way Delia Ketchum doesn't win her over). Also, absolutely no attempt is made to hide Ash's true nature both because I find it funny and because the Pokemon World is already weird enough that Palette Town having a baby demon just living there barely registers as noteworthy.

As far as Ash's childhood goes, it mostly follows the same beats as canon, though there are obviously some weird things that pop up. For one thing, one of his powers is that he can understand any language, including Pokemon. And, because they're sensitive to this sort of thing Pokemon can usually tell that he isn't human even without him using his more obvious powers, and that makes most wild Pokemon more receptive to him than usual.

Except birds. Birds really don't like him for some reason.

Also he turns out to have healing powers, which he finds out during that scene with Serena. Basically, he makes the cloth he ties her injury with out of some of the Void Stuff that makes up his true form, and by the time they get to Professor Oak both the cloth and the injury are gone. There are, however, side-effects, which Serena only finds out about after she moves to Kalos and Ash only finds out about years later when he saves Charmander. (I'll get to that later)

On to the first day of his Journey, things only go slightly more smoothly thanks to Ash and Pikachu being able to communicate properly, and they still get chased by every Spearow on Route 1 because all of them are trying to "Destroy the Void Spawn!" This means they still fall off the waterfall and get fished up by Misty, who gets the Full Horror Experience because after All That Shit Ash is worn out which makes him kind of Melty. And, well, Pikachu is injured, the Spearow are still coming, he can't maintain a coherent enough form to keep going on his own, and this is Season 1 Ash who can be kind of an impulsive jerk sometimes at what would normally be the bike stealing scene, so he kind of...possesses Misty and Books It.

And since this isn't a power he's ever used before and he's using it in a high-stress situation while injured, his control isn't the best, so she catches a glimpse of the Unknowable Truths of the Void, and that combined with her being there for the Biggest Thundershock Ever makes her a little...fanatical about Ash's whole Eldritch God Thing. They're still friends first and foremost and still develop something similar to their usual dynamic but the fanaticism is there, especially at the beginning. At least she's not worried about the bike this time?

Also when Ho-oh shows up he kind of visibly stumbles in midair because he was not expecting the Chosen One to be that! This is why we don't let the local Mew be the only one doing check-ins.

Anyway, Brock and Team Rocket are still their usual selves, apart from Team Rocket deciding to do research into how to fight demons so they'll actually stand a chance at stealing Pikachu so now they've got a Nacli (because salt) and a bit of an Exorcist Schtick going on.

The Charmander Incident goes a bit differently, because they just barely don't make it in time and Ash basically tells the universe NO and brings him back, which is how he finds out that his healing powers have side-effects because this time those effects are immediate. When Charmander's tail flame relights it's somehow black, he has what seems to be a new Ability that makes all his Fire-Type moves also do Ghost-Type damage, and as time goes on his scales darken until he has Shiny Charizard's color scheme. This goes further when he evolves, because he has some clear differences from a normal Charmeleon beyond just his colors, and he seems to now actually be part Ghost.

I also had some ideas for later on, like May being full of Ghosts because she's easy to get into but extremely hard to get out of or control, and Dawn being Akari who ended up as a Hisuian Zoroark and got back to the present the long way, but for now this is what I've got.

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Group E Round 1

[image ID: the first image is of Zinn, a creature made of a mass of dark tendrils and many eyes. the second image is of Victor Spooky, a noir detective wearing a red and purple fedora and purple trench coat, that dissolves into red and purple smoke around him. end ID]

Zinn

(Note: The author mostly uses it/its pronouns to refer to Zinn but have used 'he' and 'they' a couple times.) Zinn is a creature called a Monstrum who is a type of alien from a world made out of light. Due to unknown circumstances their universe was breeched by enemies who devoured their peaceful existence. In turn, the Monstrum were exiled and stripped of their forms. Somehow, Zinn ended up in a Steampunk adjacent world and came to be lovers with a powerful human women called the Shaman Empress. Their relationship, while described as tender, may have been one sided. Zinn loved her dearly, only referring to her as "The Beloved' but it is implied that she used it for her own deeds/gaining knowledge and power. Monstrum drain energy from anything they touch so they are incompatible with the mortal realm. Zinn inhabits the Shaman Empress's bloodline and is passed down through generations to minimize(?) damages. Eventually Zinn gets passed down to the main character who. in simple terms, as not to get sidetracked, is a Girlboss, capital G. She is a descendant of the Shaman Empress, technically making them blood family. Which is kind of hillarious. Imagine this tentacle creature being like "Hello. Yes I am your great-grandfather. Let us kill and consume flesh". They pick up a rag tack bunch of other characters( not limited to a necromancer cat, a psychic kitsune child, a brooding guy with crow wings, gay furry tiger pirates) and they are so found family… image link Zinn, despite not being too well-versed in human culture cares for them all the same. It has so many funny interactions with the cast, particularly the Kitsune girl, Kippa (as it does not understand her cheerful and positive attitude). Examples: -https://64.media.tumblr.com/ab33f45b9506033cdec6a6a2a9d55655/baa027673994792a-2d/s1280x1920/fb57ea6a550181e49d588a60473f050fac30300d.pnj -https://64.media.tumblr.com/41f0c01fa1e8c4e9e7dda5bcb589f24d/38ba370cd51ca323-59/s1280x1920/c96e0a11d0c0ab8b92b14cbebccd276c0e2c3c8a.jpg -https://64.media.tumblr.com/4cc511e4b365359842c0a9825dc416d5/e4f6cb4faa1aa13d-8e/s1280x1920/9f0ca9abdb590fdaca5c7a93e230a79bfe32fd2d.jpg -https://64.media.tumblr.com/c32edb01ada4ebf159bbb70b5a00c36c/3bca30f2ba708ae4-c3/s1280x1920/6f04c20b2fe1e47c0898b513e71772f99581ea13.jpg Zinn also has that tragic sibling swag, accidentally killing its sibling. It has so much trauma, but for a space-alien-god is very withdrawn and weary of the world. Although it tends to act cryptic and not reveal too much. It seems like it used to be elitist but with time has come to appreciate the mortal world although it would never admit it outloud. ANYWAY. VOTE FOR THIS PATHETIC HORROR OF GUY. Monsterfuckers and monsterfriends assemble! (and go read Monstress! There are many queer characters and the lead is sapphic! also cool monsters, cool worldbuilding, and real world cultural references) TLDR: Its an eldritch god who misses its dead wife :( / There is something very wrong with them (affectionate)

Detective Victor Spooky

Spooky's game still only has a demo, so there isn't much for me to say at the moment, but he's still a very interesting character. At some point in his life, he died of unknown causes leading him to become a ghost. Despite that, he still continues his detective work, though in the game he gets a supernatural case. He's acts serious, but without his clothing, his appearance is actually just a typical simple ghost design. He talks like your typical, charismatic, noir protagonist, but the fact that he's a ghost paired with the worldbuilding and concept makes him pretty unique.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Colors of Another Sky: Mending a Nation Follow-up

Some neat comments on that last bit! There were so many good questions I thought I’d put together a lengthy reply here, because it’s all connected and things get complicated.

First, let me give you the framework I’m building all of these plans off of. And that’s Jason Finn, retired historian (ahem encouraged to quit), 58, of Irish, Scots-Irish, and general American mutt extraction, who is an expert in Tokugawa-era Japan and a hobbyist in the Little Ice Age. None of this makes him any kind of expert on Joseon-era Korea.

(Which is just as well, because they’ve had a few centuries of oddly divergent history anyway.)

Jason does have a lot of patchy info on this time in Korea as it intersected with Japan (a major trading partner) and as the whole area was affected by the Little Ice Age (floods, frosts, baking heatwaves, droughts, dragons, locusts, horrible crop failures all over the place).

Outside of that, before he took this little trip, he tried to get down a basic vocabulary of modern Korean, plus all the hangul characters. And because he is from Florida he made sure he learned the word for shark, hoping he’d never have to use it. Oops.

Sure, he brought plenty of books... on an e-reader. Physical books are heavy. The e-reader may or may not be recoverable. Until he knows that he’s got maybe two physical books on Korea besides the dictionary, and they will be of limited use. He also has an (ahem, almost) fourteen-year-old fan of k-dramas.

...I can hear you facepalming from here. Go ahead and laugh. Even Jason thinks it’s kind of funny.

So. A bunch of points, in no particular order.

First, cotton is at this point in time already a major crop and fabric through the entire peninsula. Almost everybody wears cotton; even some yangban, in the summer. Though they tend to wear more ramie and linen.

So my best guess is that anything that made growing and harvesting cotton easier (not just the gin, there’s getting better seed germination, killing pests, keeping the soil fertile - a host of things!) would result in not more effort thrown into cotton, but more into growing silk. Everyone wants silk.

Silk-raising takes a lot of skill and care, to the point it pretty much requires workers get decent food, clothing, and rest. Or your whole crop of silkworms is ruined. Add that to, a large part of the thing about yangban owning nobi was not how much work they could get out of them, but the status of owning that many nobi. They have no need to work people into the ground, if they can make more profit setting nobi to other tasks.

...Speaking of silk, once Jason has a grip on where and when he is (and gets over the panic), he’s going to come up with a plan to rescue a particular town of silk workers in China. Famines are on schedule to wipe them out, and the few that in our timeline survived to flee to other regions couldn’t take their large and heavy looms. An entire style was lost.

While we’re on the subject of weaving.... powered looms and spinning machines were some of the first serious impetus for industrialization, often starting with water power. A steam engine can be put in a wider variety of places to be useful, but it requires fuel. Fuel is in short supply! Most of that available on the Korean Peninsula is wood, or charcoal. I’ll need to do research into nearby regions, but I can assure you Jason would have absolutely no clue where to look for fossil fuels outside of “I know Japan mines them, and that’s a bit far to ship....”

The existence of magic and how it works does allow for the possibility of steam engines. But it’ll take some creativity. And maybe a few booms.

About mass armies taking over versus small elite armies... I hate to break it to whoever didn’t know this, but Northeast Asia has had mass armies going at it since well before 600 A.D. The Imjin War involved lots and lots of gunfire!

Low interest loans to farmers would help. Interest could go up to something like 50% in this time and place, and bankruptcy doesn’t exist. Hence people ending up having to sell themselves to cover debts.

...And this circles back around to part of why I made Jason Irish. He has a personal historical connection to bad agriculture, bad leadership, bad debts, the horrible consequences of the Little Ice Age on food production (the potato blight was one), and people having to flee a system that would not let them pick themselves up and try again. He’s planning to make things better.

And yes, that’s going to include translating various concepts. The ones in the Declaration of Independence are going to be shocking....

As far as a reading list goes, I started from Everyday life in Joseon-Era Korea (ed. Michael D. Shin), worked my way through the Wikipedia bits on nobi, and started searching outward across the internet by way of people blogging on sageuks (historical k-dramas) and open access articles on JSTOR about Joseon, the Imjin War, and nobi. (thetalkingcupboard.com has a lot of good stuff on Joseon history and cultural setting.)

[senorablack]

Have a Little Faith, There's Magic in the Night

Words: 7347 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Characters: Chrissy Cunningham, Robin Buckley Additional Tags: Humor, Fluff, Romantic Comedy, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Bakery, POV Eddie Munson, Chrissy Cunningham & Eddie Munson Friendship, Lovers to enemies to lovers Summary: In which there is a rivalry between baker and barista, a minor top-shelf black cardamom discrepancy, baked goods used as an avenue for anger management, mass non-sexual prostitution for a good cause, and an old kinda kiss that means something new—all at the heart of a festival under the hazy harvest moon.

Eddie’s sure of a couple of truths come Hawkins’ 30th Annual Harvest Festival: there will be blood shed, for one, but by the metal-gods will there be premium baked goods.

An offering meant to appease hundreds of Hawkins’ most hungry is entirely contingent on epic ingredients. Everything must be thoroughly vetted. Sourced locally. Carefully tended to when acquired. It’s a game of time and knowing who’s who when gathering all these little morsels of magic, and Eddie’s a seasoned player. Saturdays down in the square hosts a gaggle of merchants who sell organic goodies and Eddie’s here for a lot of fun sundry, but also a dealbreaker.

Eddie knew that this specific Saturday the who’s who of black cardamom will be near the consignment shop with a little extra of what he’ll be needing. Eddie didn’t know, however, that that slimy sludge-pushing Harrington would be here haggling Eddie’s guy for his black cardamom. 

“This will not be something I take to heart, stew on for days, and blow up later for.” Chrissy is saying at his right. “Repeat it with me.”

It’s not that he refuses to repeat it with her, it’s that he can’t. There’s little roaming around up there in Ed-landia save the image of the Fellowship down in a chamber of Moria right before they fought off those orcs. He hears the war drums from the deep. He anticipates the impending battle. Knows they are coming. And if Eddie had a bow he’d have already been setting up an arrow and aiming for the heart of the nearest snarling idiot. There aren’t any weapons nor orcs to fend off, though, just his severe indignation and Harrington and all his audacity.

“CEASE!” Eddie’s yelling, because that’s how regular people speak, “HALT! Release those fuckin’ pods or so help me!”

Harrington, clad a thin white tee and mom jeans, turns to him before Emmanuel does, looking every part a parent who’s one LEGO block between the toes away from a proper meltdown. He’s got the gall to put his hands on his hips in that condescending way he’s known to do, brows knitted together, eyes lit on fire as if Eddie’s the damn mistress here. 

“Eddie, how’re doin, mijo?” asks Manny with a sunny smile and wide open arms. Eddie tries to cool some in the light of Manny’s all encompassing hug. They are arguably the best in town and he owes it to them to be clear headed (as to achieve maximum enjoyment). Eddie gives as good as he gets with Manny, squeezing the hell out of him like he’d never get another chance to again, before pulling back. Eddie gives him a little pat on the shoulder and lowers his voice.

“Manny, my man. What’s going on here?” 

Manny’s never been a man to mince his words, so he’s vocal about the betrayal, which, does not come to a surprise to, nor devastates Eddie. Except you know, it does. It very much does. 

“This young man says he’s interested in some black cardamom.”

“That can’t be right.” Eddie’s blinking, rubbing at the place where his heart used to be.

“No, I am really here for black cardamom.” Steve interrupts with his stupid ass pink mouth. Eddie decides that he’s not heard him. 

“What are you talking about?” Manny asks.

“I mean, that can’t be right because Steve’s no mere mortal—he’s a demon.” 

“See that you still think you’re funny.”  Steve says through a clenched jaw. Eddie grins at that, but does not look at him. 

“No matter how many times…”Chrissy sighs, long and heavy while inspecting some star anise. “… I tell him otherwise. Hey Steve, it’s good to see you.”

“See that you think that this conversation involves you, Harrington.” Eddie says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking out to the bustle and hustle of the farmers market.

“You’re literally bitching about me—oh, hey Chrissy how are you—in front of me. Anyway, I just need a quarter of a pound. I’d really appreciate it, Mr. Zuniga.”

[empire-of-the-words]

1 and 10

Oh wow this is so late 😅

1. Rant to me about a book you absolutely hate

So it's important to note that (with one exception that proves the rule, but that one's a short story) if a book is really really bad, I don’t tend to hate it. I'll either think it's funny, or just a terrible book I don't care about. But if a bad book had potential...

Anyway, I read this one book called "Of Beast and Beauty" by Chanda Hahn, and I really liked the concept!

It's a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but the Beauty is the (adopted) daughter of a witch. The witch forced the handsome but terrible prince to marry her daughter instead of his fiancé. He heard stories of how the witch mom enchanted a bunch of kings with her beauty, so he refuses to let the MC take off her veil, but she sneaks out disguised as a servant and they start to fall for each other in that way.

Where it starts to go wrong is the reveal that the maid = wife, because the Prince was certain his wife was going to love spell him with her beauty, but when it's revealed his wife is the beauty he was immediately attracted to, he doesn't care! He's just like, oh well, and continues romancing her. Which is such a missed opportunity.

The prince is also a werewolf or something, which the book tries to make a twist, but really isn't because it's B&B. The MC is secretly a princess but her father sucks and her brother's evil I think, but I'd completely lost track of what was going on by then. Also the prince's step-mom is the wife's bio-mom. Which. Gross. Especially because I didn't realize the step part until after the reveal.

10. Tell me about your top (any number you want) favorite books?

Okay, no real order here because otherwise I'll be here all day (also not counting comics)

Thursday Murder Club

Just Stab Me Now

This one retelling of The Wild Swans fairy tale that I thought was called "The Wild Swans" but I can't find it*

Hunger Games

Chronicles of Narnia

Murder on the Orient Express

Percy Jackson

Harry Potter, though it's been forever since I've read them

Currently reading The Screwtape Letters, and I think that's gonna make the list

If I'm in the right mood, The Joy Luck Club

Bonus, favorite books when I was younger that I'd still totally read again:

Gail Carson Levine's Princess Tales

Wendy Mass's Birthday series

*if anyone knows it, the kingdom's coat of arms had three swans on it (and there's a scene where the princess draws it and the prince thinks she's drawing a scene from a story someone read), there was a twist that the step-mom was the prince's long lost mom, and the main character defeats the witch by shouting her name when the sun rises after the seven (I think) years of silence

Thanks for the ask! ❤️

Ask game

[asseater3k]

Master Chief Madness day 1

(may not actually include master chief)

these are going to be different than MGM for formatting reasons and cause I'm more familiar with halo from a game play and unfortunately a lore stand point specifically reach. while I've spent time with most of these games I've only ever beaten or played to campaign of two of them they were mostly games I'd play at a friend's place. Reach is our starting point though so lets break it down by mission

1: Noble Actual/winter contingency

reach occupies an interesting spot as both a prequel and a finale of sorts being the final game by the original developer bungie as such an opening mission presents some challenges. The key of this mission is it's pacing while it starts quiet and grounded going to inspect a relay outpost that's been damaged, that damage believed to be cause by human rebels, but the game knows you wont be surprised by covenant and doesn't really try to make it a twist instead using tension brought on by the player knowing that funny aliens will show up and builds quietly to a fun set piece where you encounter your first enemies after a quiet trek. This then gently escalates into larger battles and tougher opposition. Pacing and escalation are some of reach's key strengths narratively and they are on display at a small scale here in the first mission. Another strength is its efficient character work reach is not a long campaign and you don't spend an equal amount of time with all the members of noble team, your super solider squad of eventual besties, but the game uses the time you do spend with them to communicate their character to you very well. These are especially deep or complex characters but they are endearing and most importantly feel complete. The way the start of as not to fond of noble 6 but warm up to you as the game goes on. They rely a lot on traditional solider show arch types and sort of play with them a bit Kat the techy member of noble team and its second in command but instead being a dweeb ass she has this very headstrong confidence to her that I really enjoy, Jorge is heavy weapons guy and the only spartan II on your team ( spartans are halos super solider fellows, spartan II’s are probably what you’re thinking about when you picture halo man theyre more hand crafted than mass produced using cool unethical methods to boot they’re also fucking huge, guys like master chief are spartan II’s the noble team is mostly spartan III’s which are less super soldiers and more ex soldiers they aren’t like 8 feet tall and not as busted and are usually sourced from adult soldiers instead of kidnapping children and replacing them with colones that die in three ish years) hes also a big old softy not necessarily unusual for the archetype but interesting in universe as most spartan II’s as a result of being super duper brainwashed are not very dialed in emotionally so Jorge’s sentimentality stands out, Carter the squads leader is mostly just soldier man but has a fun gentleness to him, Jun is the sniper but is interesting in that he doesn’t seem to take much seriously not in a goofy way but an irreverent way, Emile is just a walking Xbox live live avatar hes the least deep as his whole deal is just the 2011 gamer ideal of cool guy.

2: Oni sword base

the second mission consists of defending an office of naval intelligence (ONI) base from a covenant assault this is a very fun and varied mission starting with you and Kat fighting through a tight firefight on the facility’s doorstep before moving on to a fun vehicle section outisde. Halos vehicle controls are strange on pc the slower Turing speed on console gives the camera based Turning a smooth and natural feel that isn’t necessarily present on PC it could be my mouse sensitivity or the fact that I’m coming of playing forza but it tends to feel goofy. After activating defenses and a communication station you and Kat head back to the main facility which is under siege from a covenant corvette you have to make your way to the roof through the inside of the base while dealing with covenant forces when you reach the top you have to blow up a bunch of banshees with rockets and the corvette gets orbitally struck . This mission is quite possibly halo at its mechanical best a well paced run through different systems and environments like all great halo moments it allows for a beautiful flow in the gameplay an open fire fight melts into a great vehicle section and point defense segments which then loops back into the same firefight area that itself transistion into some classic corridor shooting action finished of with a nice action set piece at the end at the end of the mission Jorge congratulates her and then you meet with ONI scientist Dr. Katherine Halsey who’s is pretty important. See ONI and Halsey are actually responsible for the the Spartan program Halsey being the director and master mind with ONI the overseer and providing resources such as the cloned replacement kids for the recently kidnapped super soldiers to be. Halsey is also, an asshole, shitting on noble team through out the meeting with a brief pause to say hello to Jorge who as a sparten II she has more of a connection with although she gives out about his customizations to his armor pretty quickly after though. Halsey mentions that one of the dead scientist from the first mission had found a “latchkey” discovery something that could turn the tide of the human covenant war. This mission is also notable for being the final time in the game you end the mission on a full feel good W.

3. Nightfall

Not much to say about this mission a standard sniper based nighttime trek with jun hes fun but other than that the mission is kind of uninteresting to me and is probably my least favorite mission in the game its not bad or anything its just kind of walking in a straight line towards combat encounters the set up is that you’re running a recon op for Kat to figure out the strength of the covenant forces which your more or less do finding a whole bunch of the lil fockers and plant a bomb on a little radar jammer. It’s mostly a set up for the next mission which is very and we’ll talk about tomorrow

See Ya! Thanks for reading

[donnerpartyofone]

But seriously folks! I get why people would build their whole personal culture around comfort-seeking in this cold dark world of ours, but...well, I guess you have as much a right to do it as I have to make fun of it.

I complain about fandom culture a lot, and it's from this perspective: My tumblr experience starting in 2010 was highly curatable, I think just because of the manageable volume of people on here. Sometimes I see these posts reminiscing about the Superwholock era of 2012, which apparently represents the whole idea of tumblr for a lot of people, and I just had no idea it was even going on until many years later! Now the density of fan activity is such that I'm never more than a degree or two away from it no matter who I follow or block, so it feels like it's in my yard and I get crotchety about it. We all know the search function sucks in general, but it also seems like every time I try to look anything up, no matter how general or specific I am, I just get yards of fan fiction and art, often relating to stuff I've never even heard of before. And the thing that's eerie about it is that to my untrained eye, it all looks and sounds like it was made by more or less the same person. Which makes sense if you assume that all the creators are consuming the same limited range of media and their creations are mostly designed to both imitate whatever that is and gain acceptance and popularity among their peers who are all hooked on the same stuff. This appearance of being so weirdly homogeneous and bent on conformity totally freaks me out. I accept that statistically there could be really unique, provocative fan production out there, I've just never seen it. From my personal position of just seeing it only because there is so much of it that I can't avoid it anymore--and I assume that the stuff I'm seeing is popular because it's being boosted enough to break through my own curatorial behavior--it's all disturbingly oriented on similarity and mass acceptance, and frankly, it's just not that good! Is my very important opinion.

But there's another Real Reason I don't like this stuff, which is that reminds me of my own misspent youth and what I think that did to me. I was a major league '90s X-Men cultist. It was like the only thing I thought about, for years. The early '90s was this moment in comics where the art was very static, pin-up oriented, and kind of sleazy. The writing tended toward dreary, erotic soap opera fare--and to be frank I kind of miss the lack of smirking irony and knowing in-jokes of those days, which wouldn't last much longer. I was a precocious artist and writer as a little kid, but I just didn't have anything in my mind other than imitating Jim Lee and Chris Claremont. To this day I could probably draw every single stock Jim Lee pose (which were once catalogued in a big grid in Wizard Magazine, that was kind of funny and smart even though I'm sure it wasn't meant to be critical) without looking anything up. My art professor parents were pretty unhappy with this; my dad would try to coach me to think up characters that were less like fascist uber-beings--you know, what about a really ugly girl who can control men, what about a big fat guy who is super strong, etc--while my mother would denounce something I was drawing or copying as "BORDERLINE PORNOGRAPHY!!!" and storm out of the room without a discussion. I was totally undeterred; I had absorbed that fake belief that attractiveness was directly correlated with health and fitness, you know, that anyone who takes care of themselves like a superhero would have to do will just naturally start looking like Pam Anderson and David Hasselhoff. I continued to obsessively, exclusively draw skanky-looking characters in painted-on outfits that were either X-Men or so nearly ripped off that it wasn't worth calling them mine.

One day when I was a teenager, I began to realize I couldn't draw anything else. The only mental reference points I had were these commercial products, and I couldn't draw cars or buildings or regular people in regular clothes. (One of the main guys I had imprinted on, the notorious Rob Liefeld, became famous for not drawing backgrounds at all once he was successful enough to refuse, so that's what I was working with) I tried to make myself learn, and it was excruciating. This was nonsense because technically I was very proficient, so there was no reason I shouldn't have been able to improve other than that I was so brainwashed by my childhood favorite thing that I couldn't find the inspiration for anything else.

On the literary side of things, I was also pretty hobbled because I had attached all my lonely, alienated, self-loathing childhood emotions to these narratives about inhumanly perfect people being amazing in between mopey makeout sessions with each other. I mean I just had no connection to really smart or interesting stories, and no taste at all, for a really, really long time. Basically all of my media consumption AND creation had only served my escapist fantasies about a world of beautiful people with unstoppable power. It wasn't great.

Around the early '00s a new breed of independent comic started to emerge, and I was all about it. The art and writing was smart, funny, and most of all really, REALLY cool, and this material took over my life for a little while. But then I started to notice something I found troubling; a large amount of that output was still oriented on the kind of sexiness and fashionability only accessible to the young and beautiful. I had met some of these artists and they weren't all vanity cases, in fact a lot of them were proper geeks, but it seemed like a substantial amount of their work was all about this idea of the hot, impossibly chic teenager. I thought that if I had to draw sexy 19 year olds all the time, no matter what kinds of rebellious style experiments I was up to, it would start to have a really negative effect on me, especially as I exited my 20s. In fact, just reading comics like that all the time--that on their most basic level expressed the longing for something that adults can't have and a lot of kids never had at all--was already having a negative effect on me, and eventually I gave them up.

And if right now you're thinking about the "old man pussy" fandom phenomenon as some kind of alternative to the fixation on the youthful hardbody, it really isn't. You still have these goggles on that evaluate everything you see for potential boyfriend material, you're still boiling everything down to sexual aids and ignoring, like...everything else that art and literature can do for you. I mean you can do that, you have a right. I just also have the right, as previously stated, to think that you're depriving yourself of a richer experience and insulting the multidimensional work that you supposedly love so much.

So anyway, more about ME. Chris Claremont's writing also kind of fucked up my life, overgrown teenager that he is, but it wasn't in quite such a toxic way. It's true that for a long time I was only keying on material that was trashy, soapy, horny, and pretentious, and this definitely affected my writing. Everything I've ever turned out has been overwrought, sappy, and full of juvenile angst, to greater and lesser degrees. It seems like I'm beyond the point of like healing from that inclination. But fortunately I cared about writing, and got cool opportunities to improve, and started reading MORE AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF STUFF. I'm still a melodramatist at heart, but I managed to move on from Chris Claremont to e.g. Douglas Sirk, who could write these delirious tearjerkers that were simultaneously earnest AND full of social critique and ironic reflection on America's destructive cultural ideals. Like that's the hope, that you can take the junk food you're addicted to and make it an ingredient in something bigger, as opposed to making it the only thing you ever have for dinner. That makes you a better creator, and a better consumer. It should make you a better fan too; I'm sure your favorite writer isn't totally thrilled when they craft this whole story out of something they were profoundly motivated to express, and you just suck the characters out of it and mash them into various sexual situations that have nothing to do with anything. I mean everyone likes to count money, but everyone also likes to feel listened-to and like all the work they do to express something personal is actually worth while.

So yeah, I complain about fandom culture from the perspective of someone who was once deeply under that kind of influence. I imagine myself being a little younger, having the internet as a 24/7 reality, and feeling compelled to tailor all of my art and writing to how many Likes and Reblogs it's going to get, and that idea really scares me. Manifestly lots of other people enjoy that lifestyle, but I'm so glad it didn't happen to me. I can sort of feel what it would have been like, based on my real experiences, and I'm so happy none of that defines my adult life--even as a serious nerd with lots of geeky obsessions that bring me constant pleasure and inspiration. I get to indulge those things without ever worrying about impressing other people in my community with my similarity to them. I get to enjoy the excitement of embracing outgrowths of what I love that are strange and new, without constantly repeating myself or wearing the stuff of my childhood into the ground. And not to toot my own horn but maybe, just maybe if there were more nerds like I became, and fewer dogmatic fandom cultists, then the tumblr search function would work a little better, and it would be a better world for all of us.

The End.

Comfort movie this comfort character that, what are you doing to make yourself profoundly uncomfortable, what are you watching that's so disgusting you can't take your eyes off it, what scares you so much it makes you intensely aware of what you take for granted, if you don't have stuff like this in your regimen then you are operating on a serious nutritional deficit and also your opinions on media are worthless.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

So, I don’t think people realize how absolutely, insanely MASSIVE 6’5/6’6 is in real life, because height-comparison-charts ain’t cutting it. 

I’m a 5’10 woman—fairly tall. My dad is 6’2, Marty’s height—and that’s considerable even next to me, especially considering the muscular build which adds to the visual mass. 

Next, my husband is 6’4–he looks huge, and is easily a head taller than me even in decent heels. But his brother is 6’6, and the man is a goddamn GIANT. He TOWERS over me, and makes my husband look SHORT, and looks totally massive and ridiculously humongous next to his wife—who is an average 5’6. It’s INSANE how he totally looks like a mountain next to her, and he’s not even especially bulky or broad shouldered by any means. In fact, he’s kinda skinny. 

My point is, camera angles are HUGE in Cobra Kai, and TIG looks NOWHERE near as large and long and even intimidating as he would in real life—and the man is broader in the chest and shoulder than my brother in law and my husband. He would be damn scary as Terry. 

As for Macchio—the camera angles help him, but he would be so very small next to TIG in real life it would be almost funny if he weren’t so gosh darn adorable. It doesn’t help that he’s naturally small-boned and compact. As Daniel, he looks petite even in CK with a full-grown adult (yet still slender) body-type—but in his KK/Outsiders/Cuba/younger days, the top of his head would have hardly come up somewhere around Terry’s lower chest area. That’s an absolutely mental height (and body and mass) disparity. Their sheer difference in hand size, for example, would be crazy. (That certainly helps TIG’s excellent piano playing too—that sheer reach! Exactly what’s really helpful for a pianist.)

Anyway, in the world of shipping—a dangerously hot difference. Oh, the delicious possibilities…but Terry would have to be extra careful with cute lil’ Danny boy. I mean damn, that’s a whole lotta body after all, and Daniel’s so…delicately built. Oh my. Talk about dominating in every sense of the word. 

(But poor Terry would probably have a constant crick in his neck from trying to kiss him. And Daniel’s toes would be screaming at him.) Lmao.

Then again, Daniel would have this issue easily even with Kreese too. Or with most, if not all, of his male ships. The ultimate pocket-sized boyfriend. 

Lucky bastards, all of them! 

The only karate boyfriend that Daniel is on more or less equal standing with is Chozen, and that's after the mid to late 20's growth spurt.

Just going crazy over the absolutely insane size difference under the cut.

Okay, but one of the things I really liked about s5 was they allowed Terry to be legitimately scary. The first time I watched the sauna scene I was genuinely concerned for Daniel's well being. Terry is A LOT. He is a big character in every meaning of the word.

Terry literally throws Daniel's entire self clear across the room with one hand on his face. The absolute mad lads did that.

Look at how wide that man is spreading his legs just to fit in the shot, and he's still a head taller than everyone.

Okay so I have to admit that seeing it at this angle, I stared at this until I have gone insane. Because I have realized this is the closest we will ever get to a visual of that gigantic snake man in between those Bambi legs.

Terry/Tig is hunched over and bent at the waist and Daniel's foot still can't reach his shoulder. All those fics that are like "and then Terry propped his legs over his shoulders" (which I am also guilty of) we're underestimating the amount of work Daniel's ham strings would be putting in. My lord. I hope he stretches regularly.

He's gonna need climbing gear to climb that mountain.

I tend to use the picture on the left as a reference when I'm writing these two because it's one of the few times in canon they share a long shot like this. The top of Daniel's head only comes up to Terry's shoulders on a good day, and that's after his strange mid 20's growth spurt. (Plus the lifts I suspect they put in Ralph's shoes to make him as tall as Billy.)

During the filming of the first movie (when he was 21-22) he was 5'6 though, so that's literally an entire foot of a difference at maximum.

Of course his height is usually reported as anywhere between 6'4 and 6'6 but like. . . Is the two inches gonna change that much?

Terry is VERY big and Daniel is very little.

Then, there's the fact that a lot of fic is post tkk3 fic where he is 18-20 so we're actually looking at a Ralph that looks like this.

So Daniel would be even more pocket sized.

Like. It's almost comical. People who would see them together would be like "I'm low-key worried about the little one's physical well being."

Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I forgot the point I was going to make, if I even had one.

And Tig was playing a character 10-15 years older than him so we would be looking at Terry in his mid 30's - early 40's.

But, yeah. Terry would have to be very careful because Daniel's tough but, given the strenuous physical activity they get up to (😏) that's as you said, a whole lot of body, and Daniel's not that big.

RIP Terry's back. RIP Daniel's everything. That boy is gonna get bruised like a peach.

[mrpenguinpants]

Genshin: University AU [V1]

I love modern au. Or any “everything is fine, no one died, it’s just a fever dream” au. Half of me is thinking, damn maybe I should answer this serious- LOL HAHA no. That’s not happening. Time to crack my knuckles and let my brainworms take over again.

Once again, this is 90% crack 10% content. I want to switch up my characters from the last brainworm post but I included Kaeya and Diluc.

---

Today’s appreciation post goes to twistedwishes. Hey! I’ve been seeing you pop up a lot lately and thanks for the support 💕💕 I hope things are going better for you and you’re doing alright^^ I feel kinda bad for making appreciation posts on crack fics but hopefully this is somewhat funny haha. 

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Genshin: Holding Hands [V1]

Genshin: When you’re cold [V1]

Genshin: Roommate [V1]

Genshin: Royalty AU [V1]

[Masterlist]

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[taglist]  <- if you want to be added, please read this first.

  @mikeysbike @hanniejji@unionwitch @musekala @twistedsunnshiii @stanzastic @akaasea @xoneaboveallx @adoring-ghost @asheseiler @childelover @dilucsz @dai-tsukki-desu @thicmitten @youaskedfurret @diaxfeliz @wintergreen-aix @dandelily @thegayrubberducky @lovelykittycatmeow @yuunoagivesmelife  @dokidokisama @simpygrimoire @minakohasmanyhusbandos @strwbrry-lia @tigerpriestess @yuu-yuukurotsuki​

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Diluc

Absolute pretty boy who has braincells, but only if Kaeya is not there. In his mind, Kaeya’s presence makes his room loose 40% of their common sense. He can’t prove it just yet but he’s working on it. He majors in accounting but also has a minor in marketing, logistics’ management, fia- he majors everything business related. He’s going to become the next Elon Musk through smarts or by getting the competition drunk. There can be no contest if he’s the only candidate. He’s actually a hard working guy that overworks and stresses way too much. You have daily “Diluc recharge” evenings where he just hangs onto you while you go through your day.

“Don’t fucking talk to me until I’ve had my coffee,” except there is no coffee - he drinks grape juice out of juice boxes and his only energy boost is when he meets up with you - and that’s his constant mood. So he usually only hangs around you and Jean, since she has childhood friend status and is actually an angel. By default, Lisa is added and Diluc doesn’t mind her but if he see’s Kaeya, it’s full on war paint mode. If he's not busy with work or studies, he's usually with you either in your dorm or his apartment.

He has a fanclub and he seriously hates it and tries to do everything in his power to get Ningguang to take it down. Shouldn’t this be against his rights? But she refuses for whatever reason and makes a whole speech about free will. No matter what he does, someone manages to take a picture and it get’s printed in the university’s newspaper. The only bonding time he has with Kaeya is every Monday, where they collect and burn all the universities newspapers before anyone can get their hands on it. You always bring marshmallows to make smores during their arson activities.

“When I graduate I’m going to burn this school down to the ground. That’s not a threat it’s a promise.”

Ningguang

Is secretly the leader of the Diluc fanclub - not that she likes Diluc, she’s in a questionable platonic poly marriage with you and Beidou - but it was the easiest way to gain funds for the student council. Which she is the president of, so rip Diluc the fanclub stays. Ruthless business woman I tell you. But she can run in heels so her danger factor rises by at least 20%.

Majors in social sciences and law but more specifically the political science & government. She saw the Imperial State Crown that the Queen of England wears and says yes, that’s mine now. If she’s not with Beidou and you planning on “how to infiltrate the state government just for lols”, then she’s with Keqing, Ganyu, and Zhongli discussing student council things. Should they or should they not tell the student body that they can see everyone’s search results? Sit back and relax as the school goes into chaos. 

She’s probably the scariest person on campus No, she is the scariest person on campus. She’s the scariest person on campus. But secretly she’s popping 20 aspirins just to make it through a night. She has the digestive system of steel. She still holds the title of "seriously do not try and beat her in a drinking game it's never going to happen" and that's her proudest achievement in life but sadly she can’t put it on her resume. Kaeya is still trying to beat her out of spite but so far it hasn't been working. You’re seriously concerned for her when she get’s challenged but Beidou gives you a way-to-hard slap on the back and cheers her on. If Ninngguang somehow get’s alcohol poisonings she’ll somehow find away to make a profit out of it.

"I'll let him die, I'll get the insurance money."

Kaeya

One day he chugged too much mouth wash, passed out, and somehow woke up in university majoring in law. His idea is that if he is apart of the law, he can therefore stand above it. To be fair, his only goal in life is to say “I am the manager” and he can go live the rest of his life in bliss or as a hermit. He’s secret best friends with you but wouldn't be caught dead beside you. He will stab a bitch if you ever get hurt but will still trip you on the way home. Seriously, you have no idea why people find him attractive. Your guess is it’s the eye patch or the clap of his ass cheeks that keeps alerting everyone.  

He’s apart of the newspaper club and if anyone asks: No, he has no idea who keeps taking all the newspapers and burns them in the back of the campus. Originally, he joined because he was nosy and needed to join some type of club for his resume. He sometimes feels bad for his junior assistant Amber because he keeps tricking her and says that Diluc is secretly a demon that is trying to steal all the jobs and is apart of the lizard government hell bent on eradicating the human race. He even brought out a whiteboard for this joke, he’s dedicated to his job ok? 

The type of guy to try and be humble and say his work is “okay” but will choke a bitch if anyone agrees. He tends to leave everything last minute and says that it’s his drug since actual drugs could land you one year in prison and a maximum penalty of $2,000. You have to awkwardly hold in your concerned mother head shake when you see him speed running his assignment literally right when the professor is walking around to check if students finished. 

“I was taught how to lead not to read.”

Mona

Broke wallet #2. Zhongli is broke wallet #1 but Childe simps for him so is he really a broke wallet at this point? In this essay, I Mona Megistus, will explain why I have the rights to the title “Broke Wallet #1″...

Believes that astrology should be an actual career path but refuses to take astronomy as her major. I can read the stars not a textbook that tells me how to calculate the mass of the sun divided by the fucks I give. Instead she went into Philosophy and cries to Albedo, who is an actual prodigy genius- sir lend some braincells to everyone else please?, that her professor keep turning her paper down because “star reading” is not an academic source.

Fischl wants her to join the occult club because, surprisingly, Mona is very good at telling people’s fates through her crayon sketch ouija board. She thinks first year Fischl is cute but is put off by the cosplay roleplay that she has going on. She would join except that stupid hat wearing gremlin in her lit class would make fun of her if he found out.

You gave her half your lunch one day and bought her a doughnut "because she seemed upset" and "out of the goodness of your heart" whatever the hell that means. She thinks you pensioned it but once that thought comes she takes a bite. Poison from a doughnut is not the worst way to go out, classes are hard enough. She’s waiting for the lord to strike her down anyways. 

“Its not about passing, its about doing better than everyone else.”

Venti

Slept through most of highschool and people question how he got into university. He’s a music major (wow how fucking original is that), and if anyone asks him to serenade someone or just do anything, he’ll do it for the right price. Or if you buy him alcohol because he still keeps getting ID checked. He’s banking on Kaeya actually becoming a lawyer or being on good terms with Diluc so he can finally stop being arrested for looking like a toddler.

Takes one step into classes and quickly nopes out and goes back to bed. Professors have no idea how he hasn't dropped out or failed. He just has some god given talent. He does whine at you to pretty pretty please with a cherry on top tutor him because you're such an angel and would never leave your poor but awesome best friend hanging right? He needs to get this essay down but how he is suppose to explain how the number 10 is symbolic and connects to the universe or the meaning of life. Do you think he can just say it’s apart of his culture and make up some random myth to pretend it looks like he knows what he’s doing? 

He’s honestly going with the flow and put his brain on the back burner all of highschool and only now realizes wait, I actually have to use my brain?

He’s been banned from most club chats since Venti has the no chill card. Someone says “lol I look ugly today.” and he’ll respond "yup, you look like a cow." and he get’s banned. Zhongli keeps a speed run timer on his phone just to document these occasions.

"Sad spelled backwards is das and das how it be sometimes."

Childe

An actual dumbass that somehow does well. He eats sandwiches with the crust off, this heathen. Surprisingly he’s studying to become a physical therapist but most of his experience has come from breaking his own bones. You’re scared how he's going to be if he actually becomes a therapist. If he'll make bets with his patients or try to one up whatever crazy injury they get into. Everything is a challenge to him that sometimes the best way to deal with Childe is to knock him out. 

This man really knows the way to a Zhongli’s woman's heart. Through micro transactions. Mona saw him accidently drop $20 and just shrugged and walked off. She has never been both spiritually and physically offended in her life. She did take the $20 though. As much as you hate leeching on Chile when he’s basically a walking wallet that probably uses bills as tissue paper, you can’t help but give him puppy eyes while planning on how to get into his will. If he even plans on having one, he might honestly write “whoever wins in a gladiator style duel in my funeral’s tournament, they will get my fortune.”. 

Any sport the university offers Childe is probably in it. Which is how he met Zhongli, challenged him to a fight, proceeded to have his ass handed to him, got a backhanded compliment, and screamed to you he was in love and how he found his soulmate. He's secretly very sappy and has cried and watched every Disney and Pixar movie at least 28 times.

"IM NOT TOO SPICY! I’M A TINY BIT ABOVE MILD IF ANYTHING!”

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God if it isn’t Scaramouche, it’s Childe that ruins the aesthetic. This is why I hate you. Why do you people enable me like this, it isn’t even good. This is pretty much a @ yourself moment and I vibe hard with Venti. This entire post was just to make a joke about the clap of Kaeya’s ass cheeks alerting the guards.

This week might slow down since I have classes and assignments. My reply’s are gonna be late too, sorry;; (oh and thank you to everyone that was so supportive and nice when I mentioned it. All of you. Beautiful 💕💕 )