#but also i'm not super familiar with where all the cuts in this translation are. what if i missed some very important daroga moments?

[femmeleatherface]

rip me deciding to reread the phantom of the opera and then picking the translation with the WORST cuts from my hoard of poto editions

[shijiujun]

A Summary: The Spirealm | 致命游戏 (Kaleidoscope of Death 死亡万花筒 Live Action) & Why You Should (Eventually) Watch It

Talk about the most short-lived drama release ever, not even totalling two hours if I recall. Creating this summary as I've seen a handful of confused friends, so here it goes!

It's going to be a long review because I sped through all 78 episodes and only properly watched the first two doors, but I got you. You'll get both the brief book rundown and the drama parts!

If you just wanna see the bromance (LOVE) parts please skip to section 4!!!!

1. Overview

Title: The Spirealm (kinda awful I'm sorry it's a mouthful) or 致命游戏 which means fatal game

Adapted From: Danmei (BL) Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

Novel Prints: There are GORGEOUS Thai, Vietnamese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions printed, AND Singapore publisher Rosmei has signed the license for the ENGLISH version, probably going on sale this year (preview is here). You can still access fan translations by Taida on I think wordpress and someone else on Tumblr sorry bad memory (they did half and half each) if you'd like to read it for context. It is one of my FAVE danmeis EVER and I am a die-hard OG book fan, check out my full danmei review here.

Total Episodes: 78 (20 minutes each with the exception of last episode which 10 minutes, with several BTS not that I think we will get to see all of them yet)

Where to Watch (LOL): Erm considering that iQIYI China AND International took the episodes down, there is no legal way to watch this, BUT thanks to some cnetz with super fast and great wifi, we managed to get ripped HD versions without subs. iQIYI is very hard on copyright though, they've taken down several subbed and unsubbed versions already on YouTube, but you should type the titles of show into Twitter and the top tags will tell you where to access the raws and very little subbed episodes, that may also be taken down at any point. I have the Chinese raws but as it's hosted on a cloud, I had to pay to access it.

Main Characters: Lin Qiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the novel) and Ling Jiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the drama)

Produced By: iQIYI so for SURE they won't film it fully BL even if the original is, but I've seen enough bromance cuts

Main Actors: Xia Zhiguang (Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie) + Huang Junjie (Ling Jiushi)

2. Summary

Book (drama follows closely if not removing the supernatural premises): Lin Qiushi, a designer, opens the door to his home one day from inside and sees 12 iron doors outside. Confused, he opens one of them and arrives at a snow covered village in the mid of winter, and meets Ruan Baijie, who's a pretty, unusually tall and whiny/timid woman. They realise that they're in a horrifying door game, and they'll have to find a door and a key to get out, while battling a long-haired, human-eating deity. They, along with a few others, have to survive day after day until they get out, and on the first night, two people have died in gory ways. Ruan Baijie and Lin Qiushi partner each other, and despite seemingly timid and crying all the time, she saves Lin Qiushi a few times mysteriously, and Lin Qiushi finds himself trusting in Ruan Baijie.

They get through the door together and when they leave successfully, Lin Qiushi realizes that the people who died in the door will die in real life by some freak accident too - car accidents, forced suicides, a robbery gone wrong, a lift trapped in the air and going ablaze, and more. That night, Lin Qiushi wakes up to see a super handsome and tall Ruan Nanzhu at his bedside and this man feels familiar to him, but he can't put a finger on it. All he can think of when Ruan Nanzhu says his name is Ruan Baijie (ahem he would later find out who it is of course). Ruan Nanzhu takes him to his mansion in the suburbs where he meets a group of other people just like them, who're forced to go through the doors for survival. Ruan Nanzhu then invites him to join Obsidian, his organization.

Through various doors, Lin Qiushi grows and supports a super intelligent and powerful Ruan Nanzhu, falls in love with him, gets through many many scary doors with him and some of their other team members, makes friends, loses them to the cruelty of the doors as they ponder over what the door means, and what being alive/dying means.

And at the end of it, at the end of of it all, when they're all good and living their life, Lin Qiushi also finds out what Ruan Nanzhu's secret is, and the lengths to which Ruan Nanzhu went to, just to be with him.

Drama: Ling Jiushi is a VR game designer who gets pulled into a game, and he meets Ruan Baijie (in his male form) right off the bat (SO NOT CROSSDRESSING I AM SAD). All the parts are actually the same as the novel, albeit with the game setting and Ling Jiushi and Ruan Nanzhu's identity adjustments to suit the game premise. Most of the other doors and their lines are the same, just that the ending is a bit more confusing than it could be. There's a big bad as well and they actually show the opposing organizations when in the novel, these other organizations aside from Obsidian didn't even actually have a face or goal to them.

3. Characters

^ Them in the book (based on manhua that never got to go live LOL) (RNZ/RBJ left, LQS right)

^ Them in the show (LJS left, RNZ right)

Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie: MY HANDSOME CROSSDRESSING INTELLIGENT ALOOF BUT WHINY (WHEN IT COMES TO LIN QIUSHI) SASSY BOSS!!!! He's super mysterious and super thick-skinned too, and all he wants is Lin Qiushi's attention the moment he meets him. He's intrigued by Lin Qiushi's calm and his brains and the way he handles things, and has a lot of trust for him right from the get-go. This is also shown in the drama itself. As the leader of Obsidian, he cares a lot for his team members and his friends even if he doesn't show it most of the time, and the last thing he wants to do is lose Lin Qiushi, and he would do ANYTHING for Lin Qiushi, ANYTHING!!! Just look at him whining:

Ling Jiushi (Lin Qiushi): In the novel he's super calm, has quite a lot of brains, a little bit of a blur in the beginning but he's super smart as well. Worries a lot for Ruan Nanzhu and is also a loyal friend to some of his only friends, and feels a lot when he loses them. Falls gradually in love with Ruan Nanzhu in the novel, like they just belong together. In this drama, Ling Jiushi holds that same trust for Ruan Nanzhu, but in demeanour he seems a bit more like a klutz and and not as cool as he was in the novel, but I guess it's acceptable. Literally like the only thing he loves more than RNZ (maybe) is his cat Chestnut LOL and RNZ is NOT really happy about that but Chestnut LOVES RNZ

Yixie and Qianli: CUTEST TWINS ;-; WHO TREAT RNZ and LQS as their big brothers LOOK AT THEM BOWING AND RNZ/LJS like parents LMAO

A handful of other characters who will keep turning up and get your hearts ;-;

4. ALL FAVE BROMANCE MOMENTS + TROPES

THEY TOUCH EACH OTHER A LOT LIKE HOLDING HANDS AND TOUCHING FACES, PIGGY BACKING?!?! DID I MENTION FACE TOUCHING

WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP THEY HELP EACH OTHER WHEN HURT OR GET HURT FOR EACH OTHER

AND WHEN THEY WAKE UP IN BED THE OTHER IS AT THEIR BEDSIDE

AND DID I MENTION HE FEEDS HIM IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

AND THAT THEY DATED UNDER THE FIREWORKS LIKE THE NOVEL DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THIS SHIT

AND THE KABEDONS

AND FINALLY RUAN NANZHU RIZZ OMG

5. Settings

They REALLY OUTDID THEMSELVES. THIS JUST FROM DOORS 1-6:

THEY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE NOVEL DESCRIBED!!!!

6. Overall Thoughts

PROS: This was NOT a cheap production, I'm telling you, they followed the cases very well and there're a lot of super recognisable lines, if not ALL of them, even if they changed the cases a little. I think they did it because in the novel originally, the author DOES leave a lot of details hanging like someone dies and you know he had a background and there are some shady things happening but the author NEVER actually goes into detail. So the drama did their best to cover these loopholes, even if it felt a little awkward at times. Money went into settings and attires and every damn thing, this looks EXPENSIVE. And if you've ever imagined each door and the bosses inside in your head, you might have felt chills go down your spine because damn did they really colour the book's settings for me (despite its differences). DID I MENTION that Xia Zhiguang really got the damn memo and he was a passable Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie who knew how to turn on his BL eyes. PLUS they really did some of the character deaths really well - they're technically some of the biggest parts of this story so ;-; (not two main of course)

CONS (maybe): They did away with the supernatural/horror premise and replaced it with a GAME premise, which means that there's a scientific element to it and the try to explain away stuff with the game, including the ending. I don't 100% get the ending, but the feel/vibe is about the same. Might not be for hardcore reader fans tho! They skipped out on a couple of doors, some of which were my faves, but it's fine, it's long enough LOL. They give away/explain some of the clues and surprises super early which means you don't get that added boom at the back as well. Despite that, I have to say they tried to round up the loopholes from the book as much as they could and give it an explanation while tying elements/conspiracies across doors (probably also to save cast fees LOL). And as always it's not a solid ending, it's an open confusing one, and even more confusing than the book itself because THERE IS NO CERTAIN HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH HUBBY for it (there is in the book tho, they live together happily every after). Secondl,y, I'd say HJJ's acting is a bit stiff and OOC compared to the novel, but Xia Zhiguang really made up for it.

-------

HOPE THIS HELPS YOU GUYS!!! But I guess if you need subs it's going to be a long LONGGGG ride, considering that iQIYI doesn't seem to be going to be able to put it up anytime soon CRIES.

[wonder-worker]

the two skeletons may reveal the death of the Princes? 👀

I'm not super familiar with this topic, tbh. From what I can understand, it's possible, but it's equally possible that DNA testing may not actually prove or reveal anything regarding the Princes.

Context: In 1674, workmen found two skeletons in a wooden box in the Tower of London, where they had been buried 10 feet under the staircase leading to the chapel of the White Tower. Charles II ordered the bones to be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in 1678, and a Latin inscription written at that time translates to: "Here lie the relics of Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York". 

In 1933, the bones were examined by Lawrence Tanner, William Wright and George Northcroft, who concluded that they belonged to two children around the correct ages for the Princes, and that one skull showed evidence of death by suffocation. No further scientific examination was conducted, although many believe that re-examination with improved techniques and DNA sampling could provide a more accurate analysis. However, to disinter a body from the Abbey, permission has to be granted from the reigning monarch (ew), which has not been granted as of yet.

Many members of the R3 Society hope that the bones will be proved not to be the Princes, because they feel like it will vindicate Richard due to the absence of explicit, tangible evidence of their deaths. Those who believe Richard III was guilty (he was) believe that if the bodies were the Princes, it would prove they were murdered. If examinations reveal that were the Princes, and reveal manner of death was violent, then yes, the latter seems reasonable. But we don’t know what will will show up in the results - if they are ever allowed - and it's entirely possible it won't matter to the current case.

To quote @seethemflying from this post:

“Most scholars agree it will not actually prove anything at all. If the bones are the princes, it just proves that they died in the Tower, not who murdered them. If the bones are not the princes, it just means these bones belong to someone else. The Tower of London is old, and was built on part of Londinium's Roman wall. Pre-medieval and even Roman human remains have been found on the site before, it wouldn't be a surprise if these bones dated to any point before the 17th century […] Whether the bones are or are not the princes can therefore do little to answer the central questions about who killed these little boys.”

For example, there are a few sources - both contemporary and post-contemporary - that suggest water may be involved in the Princes' "disappearance" (murder). We don't know the exact circumstances, but if the Princes were disposed off in such a manner, we cannot expect to ever find their bodies.

Ultimately, regardless of the identity of the two skeletons, the Princes were almost definitely were murdered, and Richard III was almost definitely the one who murdered them. We do not know it "for sure", the same way we do not know "for sure" if Arthur of Brittany, Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI were murdered (and how), but all of them almost definitely were and it’s simply disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It’s equally disingenuous to act as though all the above-mentioned cases were clear-cut examples of murder while the case of the Princes is somehow a more Complex and Confusing one which you have to choose your words more carefully over when it's....really, really not (see: the matter-of-fact way they talk about John and Arthur VS Richard and the Princes). Either you should analyze all these cases with the same level of assertion/uncertainty, or don't analyze them at all.

Also, contrary to the claims of Ricardians, who believe that nobody accused Richard III until the Tudors, there are a range of independent contemporary sources who firmly believed he killed his nephews. It also makes zero sense for Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York and Edward IV's supporters, who were the ones to raise Henry Tudor as an active claimant to challenge Richard III in the first place, to endorse Henry in any way if they thought that Edward V or Richwrd of Shrewsbury might still be alive. The fact that they did can only mean that they knew/believed that the Princes were dead (though I think there was considerable ambiguity on the exact circumstances behind those deaths). It's simply illogical to pretend otherwise.

[the--highlanders]

so I actually enjoyed the war games colourisation way more than I thought I would!!

the colourisation itself was SUPER nice. having looked through existing colour earlier images right before watching I was really happy to see they'd matched them, and there were some really nice shots. the trial sequence in particular worked for me, the purple lighting was great.

that being said there were a few points where the new inserted shots didn't quite fit the vibe of the colourisation itself, most notably with the exterior shots of gallifrey - I loved having them in there but new who has established such a warm palette, whereas the war games portrays the interiors on gallifrey as very cold and sterile. on the one hand I love that contrast and think it suits the time lords, but because the outside shots were so clearly inserted into the 60s colour scheme, maybe the intention wasn't there, so it was missing a bit of unity? idk I don't know colour theory

I haven't seen the war games in ages whoops so I wasn't 100% sure on a couple of bits I thought they'd added? but I'm sure there was a bit of extra footage in there. especially when they were getting away from the romans early on.

cutting the serial down was a bit 50:50 for me. the beginning was really solid, with the only issue basically being cutting straight from the germans capturing them to driving to the british base. but I definitely don't think they should have cut out all of the stuff with the resistance and kept so much of the back-and-forth at the base. they could have balanced that way better, given a better idea of jamie and zoe's characters (because both of them get some really good character work in those resistance sequences!!), and actually introduced the resistance leaders rather than have the doctor, jamie, and zoe be oddly familiar with them with no context. that was probably the biggest misstep of the production for me and I'm not sure how well it would translate for someone who isn't familiar with the war games or two's era at all

on the flip side I really liked some of the cutting between scenes they did. the part where they were introducing the soldiers' programming and interspersing it with the resistance soldier confronting the controller in his zone worked so well. there were definitely a few points where you could see they were trying to speed up the slower type of 60s television, and the acting didn't quite match the pace they were going for, but it paid off in a few moments

introducing more music also worked for me!! between the cuts they made to the resistance scenes and just classic who's relative lack of solid character moments they didn't quite have room to establish specific character themes for jamie and zoe, which I would have loved to see more than anything. but it also didn't jar with the existing music and the vibe of the original serial for me

the new who tidbits were fun as well, and that's coming from someone who's not a big fan of some of the easter eggs they've put in the animations (tho I am a bit of an animation hater in general, and ig I was viewing this as its own thing rather than an attempt to recreate a serial). I'm not a diehard believer that the war chief is the master, but playing the master's theme over his scenes delighted me and added to some of those moments. having the new who doctors as options for two's next face made me laugh so hard. and I really did like seeing bits of new who-style gallifrey

the regeneration sequence was.... cool to see how they did it and where they'd pulled footage from? blatantly-fake jon pertwee at the end made me laugh ngl. again I figured it would be more fun as a thought experiment than taking it as an attempt to alter canon and I stand by that. season 6b believers rise up etc etc

overall I had a great time!! idk maybe it was because I haven't actually seen any of two's episodes in like, a year probably, but I enjoyed it. loved seeing my blorbos in colour. jamie's highlanders costume getting a brief bit of colourisation was a highlight, as was the tiny bit of colourised evil of the daleks victoria. I don't think it's necessarily a great way to actually get someone into the war games or two's era generally, just because the cuts could leave you a bit confused. but at the same time being a fan of two's era can sometimes feel like we get thrown crumbs every so often and little that's more substantial. so having a bit more of a big deal made for us for once was super exciting, and I hope people who'd never seen the era before watched and maybe were a bit won over <3

[brookstolemybrand]

Rambling about Hiyori's name and ch1044

I don't know if this is something that's been already talked to death but I've been going nuts over Hiyori's name for the past 24 hours (ish) and I think I just need to ramble about it, sorry if this is all old news to everyone

I just somehow never looked up her name in Japanese or what it might mean, but then I was re-reading chapter 1044 and the scene where she declares her name to Orochi and I was wondering about the wording in Japanese so I looked up a scan of that page and

That name just hit me like a brick

I didn't know the word 日和 (hiyori) before! Here's the entry in Wiktionary for quick reference:

日和(ひより) • (hiyori)  1. weather (conditions) 2. a clear sky, nice weather 3. a circumstance, situation 4. Short for 日和下駄 (hiyori geta): clogs for use in dry weather

Wakan gives me:

(1) weather; climatic conditions ; (2) fine weather; clear day ; (3) situation; state of affairs ; (4) sea conditions; good day for sailing

Firstly: this is obviously striking because in this same chapter the sky is overcast as Luffy's lying lifeless in the ground, and then it suddenly clears up completely as Nika rises, not a single cloud in the sky:

But what ACTUALLY caught my attention was the characters in her name

This is probably gonna get super long so I'm putting a cut here:

光月 (Kozuki) was already familiar to me because I already obsessed over it and the way it's written "light" + "moon" and all the possible connections that could have

But 日和! It's written with 日 which means "sun" or "day" or "sunshine" and 和 which is a character I was ALSO already obsessed with because of the ways in which it connects to Wano (and Yamato!) and also Japan

In fact, both of these characters in her name have a connection to Japan!

和 means "peace" and "harmony" but it also came to be used to represent Japan and Japanese culture, to replace the derogatory Chinese name for Japan 倭 (read as "wa" or "yamato") which means "dwarf"

(If you've seen bill wurtz' "history of japan", you might remember this fun fact)

(Also yes, the Wa in Wano is almost definitely a reference to this... Probably more to the "harmony" interpretation rather than the original "dwarf" one though lol)

(EDIT: also this panel!)

(So yes, Wano is the country of "harmony". Anyway, END OF EDIT)

和 (harmony) was chosen because it can also be read as "wa" and it has a much more positive meaning. And the name Yamato (nowadays spelled 大和, probably to differentiate it from other possible readings of 和) is a name of an ancient kingdom/province in Japan and also a male name and a surname, but it also gained the meaning of just "Japan" in general

(In One Piece Yamato's name is written in katakana, and so is the name Wano, which obscures the fact that if they were written in kanji, it would almost definitely be the same 和 for both, but it absolutely links them together thematically; it reinforces Yamato's destiny as Wano's guardian spirit)

But guess which character is ALSO associated with Japan? 日, obviously. The Japanese name for Japan is 日本 (Nihon), which literally translates to something like "the origin of the sun"

Which.... in case anyone was still wondering why Oda chose Wano, the country based on Japan, as the place where the Sun God Nika re-emerges.... well here's your answer. Literally the origin point of the sun

Sidenote: I've seen various explanations for the name "Nika" and my favourite is the "smile" or "grin" one which I definitely think is very deliberate, I mean it's not even subtle:

The sound effect here literally reads "nika!" ("grin!")

But the syllables "ni" and "ka" are both also possible ways to read the kanji 日. The "ni" reading is literally used in Nihon, so that's another connection with Nika and Japan and therefore Wano. The "ka" reading is a counter for days, like say 六日 (sixth day) for example

Anyway, this also connects Hiyori to Nika, her name literally starts with the character for "sun" (with the reading "hi" this time)

Not only that, but her full name 光月日和 juxtaposes the moon and the sun (月日) together, which immediately made me think back to that Nika reveal panel again:

And the first character of her surname 光, light, also fits with this image of bright moonlight.

Especially combined with the "clear sky" meaning of the word "hiyori" itself: bright moon, clear sky

(And its stark contrast to the panel of Hiyori crying in anger, like a rain storm in human form)

So yeah, there are so many narrative reasons why these two scenes needed to go together, but I think all this wordplay underlines that fact beautifully

Because Hiyori's name was foreshadowing this exact chapter all along

Foreshadowing the Dawn

The bright (光) setting moon (月) eclipsed by the rising Sun (日)

In the country of Wano (和)

Against a clear sky (日和)

And the fact that Hiyori is the ONLY member of the Kozuki family whose name is written in all kanji makes this feel very intentional

[e-n-t-r-o-p-i-c-f-r-o-g]

i'd love to hear about "edge of seventeen"!!

AH HELLO FRIEND!!

Since I don't have much written down, this will probably come out like word vomit, but I will do my best!

Anytime I listen to the song Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks, I think of the TGCF vampire AU. I wasn't even really sure why, at first, but now I have a better grasp of it.

In a similar vein of most sci-fi works, vampire stories tend to deal with bodily autonomy and the gaining or loss of power. Oftentimes, this creates relationships that are carnal and passionate, either in intriguing or horrifying ways. In my mind, anything that shares these themes translates well to a lot of the internal struggles Xie Lian experiences.

He gains a lot of power in becoming a god, but it is precisely that moment that removes power from him, too. He doesn't cope very well with sitting "above" the rest of humanity. He'll even go out of his way to be seen as less than human, sometimes, because that's more comfortable than hurting others with his divinity.

So, in this Vampire AU, I imagine him as next in line as Crown Prince of the People, well on his way to walking the paths of the gods. I also imagine him being the symbol of humanity's only hope to fight toe-to-toe with their predators--the vampires. The vampire stronghold, of course, being Yong'an. In place of Xie Lian's "ascension" I imagine that becoming the moment he is turned into a vampire, instead. It'd almost cut off his ascension to godhood partway, sealing that path from him forever. I imagine the imagery as a callback to old horror. A lurking, masked figure, an open window with billowing curtains fighting harsh night winds, a beautiful young person sleeping peacefully...you get the gist. Now he must cope with not only being humanity's figurehead, he must do so as someone no longer human. Additionally, he loses even more sense of self the more he lusts for blood. **The Land of the Tender as a vampire would be horrible. Let's just leave it at that.**

Something that's also stuck with me is Xie Lian's age when he ascends. He's only seventeen. A lot of other vampire stories also do this--trap someone as a certain age for all eternity. I also think this could be interesting to play with in regards to vampires not being able to see their own reflections. How do you retain a sense of self like that?

In regards to Hua Cheng, I see him as taking on a "vampire's familiar" kind of role. This is not only super in character but also very convenient. Familiars are devoted to the wellbeing of their vampires to a fault, to the point where weaker ones lose all free will entirely. In some research I've done, when they die, they turn into mist and reappear whole again some time later. That definitely helps with the lack of ghosts in this world.

I think Xie Lian would never willingly take on a familiar, but I think one would be borne out of intense longing, devotion, or trauma. At least, I'd make it do that.

Speaking of trauma...

Fangxin should 100% be made out of silver. Same with the shackles. YEOUCH that would burn!! I think it would also make it painful to feed. Xie Lian takes this in stride, tho. He doesn't want to feed from anyone again after what happened with Wu Ming...

Bai Wuxiang is a vampire. Jun Wu is a god.

Anyway I'm having a hard time making the structure different than "Like Smiles in the Rain" but maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe this is my shtick hahahahah

THANK YOU FOR ASKINGGG 💗💗💗💗

[moonchild-in-blue]

Sleep Token X D&D

An expansion of this post because je suis trés unhinged and I miss playing DnD. I'm not including homebrew content for simplicity sake, guiding myself through this website. Feel free to add or change as you will. I'll leave some links for each class specs in case you wanna read more, or aren't super familiar with it.

At first it would make sense for all of them to be different types of Warlocks or Sorcerers, with Sleep as their common patron. BUT I think that would be an easy cop-out, and I want to make things interesting. This is just my headcanon so yeah, don't mean, don't be weird. Let me know how you'd do it!!

(and if there are any DnD players who happen to come across this post and want to take inspiration on it, you're more than welcome to do so!)

Let's get to it, nerds 🎲2️⃣0️⃣

[cut because this is LONG]

Vessel

Race: Tiefling. A lot of room for inventiveness here, and you can change his appearance as you'd prefer. Maybe that's why he's always cloaked and masked. Maybe he gets even more disfigured every time he connects with Sleep. Class/Sub-Class: Warlock, The Great Old One (mysterious entity whose nature is utterly foreign to the fabric of reality). Obviously Sleep would be his patron. I like to think Vessel had an encounter with Sleep whilst not knowing who or what They were, and eventually became their servant. For the pacts, I had thought of Pact of the Tome, where the Book of Shadows would be his lyrics, but Pact of the Talisman is also great, because of the mask. @a-s-levynn had suggested The Fathomless for his sub-class, which is also AMAZING, especially if you want to lean into the whole tentacle/water horror aesthetic. Alternatively, Sorcerer, Divine Soul is an EXCELENT class for Vessel (actually, now that I'm editing this, I kinda prefer this one lmao). Read this and tell me this isn't exactly what Vessel is: Sometimes the spark of magic that fuels a sorcerer comes from a divine source that glimmers within the soul. Having such a blessed soul is a sign that your innate magic might come from a distant but powerful familial connection to a divine being. Perhaps your ancestor was an angel, transformed into a mortal and sent to fight in a god’s name. Or your birth might align with an ancient prophecy, marking you as a servant of the gods or a chosen vessel of divine magic. Yeah.

ii

Race: Lightfoot Halfling (yes I'm making him a hobbit, what about it?) Fire Genasi is also very apt. Class/Sub-Class: Druid, Circle of Wildfire (these druids bond with a primal spirit that harbors both destructive and creative power, allowing the druids to create controlled flames that burn away one thing but give life to another). This primal spirit, of course, would be Sleep. They are a bit of a mysterious entity. ii was the hardest to come up with. I knew I wanted him to be somehow connected to the land/elements, because I think that would be the best translation for his rhythmic prowess (drums wouldn't make much sense as a Bard). And that photo of him with the painted red fingertips reminds me of fire, so it seemed like a perfect fit. Some other alternatives: Druid, Circle of Dreams or Monk, Way of the Four Elements (monk would be SO good because of his silence, like LoZ Link, and the ability to harness his energy).

iii

Race: Obviously a Dark Elf. Obsidian-black polished skin, pale blond hair, pale blue eyes, slim figure. Need I say more? Earth Genasi could also be a good option, due to his golden vein-like paint. Class/Sub-Class: Ranger, Fey Wanderer (a ranger who represents both the mortal and the fey realms. As you wander the multiverse, your joyful laughter brightens the hearts of the downtrodden, and your martial prowess strikes terror in your foes, for great is the mirth of the fey and dreadful is their fury.) I quite like this because the options of how you acquire the magic are endless, and can be traced to Sleep or even Vessel (maybe he granted them?). iii is our favourite chaotic boy, but he can be so intimidating at times, this one plays off his duality quite well. Plus you get Otherworldly Glamour similar to iv which makes sense. A cool alternative could be Sorcerer, Wild Magic, as it has a similar base to Vessel and it draws magic out of chaos.

iv

Race: I thought about making him a Genasi or Half-Elf, but honestly I love him as a Human. I just love the idea that this human is sooo charming and talented, that even all these supernatural creatures can't help but be enthralled by him. Changeling or even Eladrin could also work. Class/Sub-Class: Bard, College of Glamour (these bards are so eloquent that a speech or song that one of them performs can cause captors to release the bard unharmed and can lull a furious dragon into complacency). I like that iv appears to be super low-key, but is actually insanely seductive (I see you mask pulling) and talented. So out of all of them, he was my obvious choice for a bard.

The Vesselettes

I think they could either be sort of like a greek chorus or muses but for Sleep, that appeared at key moments to help the party, or actual campaign members. Race: Aetherborn Class/Sub-Class: Clerics, Twilight Domain (The twilit transition from light into darkness often brings calm and even joy, as the day's labors end and the hours of rest begin. The darkness can also bring terrors, but the gods of twilight guard against the horrors of the night). It would be awesome to have them as healers and protectors of the party, who serve Sleep directly (if Sleep is evil, they could also be secret spies? To make sure the party does as Sleep intents). Or maybe they are protecting the party from Sleep (they can never sever their connection to them, but they will do everything they can to make sure the vessels won't go too far).

I'm not sure how they would all get together, but my [abridged] story would place them all as servants of this magical deity, called Sleep. Vessel was the first to encounter Them and lives as an actual, living vessel for them. They believe that Sleep, albeit mysterious, is a benevolent creature, who was wrongfully cast away from Their plane/stripped of their powers or divinity.

As the one closest to Sleep, Vessel can sense that something isn't quite right, but he's already so entangled and manipulated by them, that he doesn't even care.

So they fight all these people and creatures, believing they're doing something Good, but then it turns out that Sleep was evil all along? The people they have conquered and killed were actually good, trying to stop them from giving this awful, terrible being their power.

Sleep basically uses them to defeat their enemies and get back to whatever place or power they no longer have access to. Maybe the vessels turn their back on them? Maybe Vessel doesn't want to and they fight with each other? Or maybe they just keep serving Sleep?

Or, you know, Sleep could also be an actual helpful deity, and they are genuinely doing good by fighting in Their name. But maybe in the end Vessel can't let go of Them and drama ensues and everybody cries.

I don't know, this is just an idea. I spent WAY too much time researching for this, but it was fuuun. I love talking DnD.

[understandableparadox]

Bottom of the barrel isekai: b-rank adventurer with an evil look becomes a daddy to the protagonist and his childhood friend.

Well if i'm reading it, that's a goddamn lie, hello! Pull up a chair, drink my tea, piss on my wife, you have the most control in this world because you are the specialist lil fella that can do not a lick of wrong! It's time for another bottom of the barrel isekai review! Today, you can read the title above, go fuck yourself if you think im going write it out every single god damn time.

Come out boys, girls and some other thing, frogs? Is that what the enbys like these days? Frogs? Anyways let's do the song and dance!

Our titular main character is a dude from japan, they wasted their live away being a disgusting fucking neet and playing video games all the live long day, being a whale in pirates 101 and domeing me from across the map as widow maker on royal!  

Anyways he fucking Dies and gets reincarnated in the game he and his singular friend dearly loved known as bright fantasy, now as we can see in the picture above, perhaps he reincarnated as some sorta giga god, perhaps his party abandoned him because they didnt understand the monumental boon a tax accountant has in another world… perhaps he was summoned by the king to Fuck his wife for him! 

Wait a second… is that a sharp detour…? FU-

Anyways gray is reborn as a Thug Npc, or someone with a dark background, his looks mean, he has a average appearance and some fucking sick shoulder gaurds.  He is a moody lil nobody, which is why it's such an insane hook to see it open with two children begging to be adopted by him in the opening

Now before you get too scared that we are running into uncharted territories since we haven't had anyone betray anyone and the MC has not turned god inside out, we get to dive back into the cool cocoons of familiar fantasy tropes with the adventuring ranking system. I'm not going to bother to explain it, if you got a letter grade in school then you know what it means. Get close to the A and that means you are the Big Boy adventurer who does the Big Boy quests. 

Now i do appreciate the authors restraint and only making him the Second Biggest boy and attempting to make him Not A Twink

We almost have a guy who is on a bulk and not a cut, sigh, one day. 

Anyways we pull back ground tall dark and who cares to learn that these two are matchstick kids. Dead broke kids who are attempting to sell flowers they have picked to the people on the street. They were attacked by nobody you are going to remember and get healed by gray. They then decide to beg him to save their ailing parents because I guess wonka isn't around to give golden tickets to get them out of bed or whatever. 

They tell them their names, one of them has the super special name of the Super Main Character. What a coinkyDink. Gray knows that if he is to be a villain (???) then his job is to avoid it. Luckily he went to the Katarina claes school of villainy and decided that ethical action is actually more important than meta narrative logic. 

Cut to Tiny tims lakeside property and we see the rest of the family living the fucking dream!

I'm so sorry, i have this mental tick where i accidently say “dream” instead of “nightmare”.

Also Stella is a vampire, why? Fuck you thats why. 

They explain that they have been getting by by the skin of their teeth through a combination of the street urchin grind set of selling flowers and getting church donations. Gray beats up some assumed child abductors outside and gives a somewhat creepy smile. 

Next chapter is about Gray stealing an orcs' balls to create a high end potion (viagra) to nobles so he can get enough money to buy something called a “home”? I'm not sure what that is exactly, i'm not sure what the translator was talking about, i've certainly never heard of someone “buying” or owning one for certain.

I don't actually have much to say about this guy, this is the guy who makes the ball potion for gray, I just like him, he has a funny face, I like looking at it. He looks like someone I would trade yugioh cards with while he tells me about his super cool oc and I would listen because he is a fun dude. 

But yeah, the manga is mostly about this guy being a slightly more psychotic late stage kratos, being a dad, trying to raise a bunch of random kids he found, trying to give the main character a taste of normalcy before the plot kicks and and shit goes sideways, oh and sometimes he brutally kills people. 

His main goal is to have a family and that's about that. 

So let's start getting into things. 

The title has no interest in creating an expansive world that is original, everything of it is meat burrowed and stitched into its own narrative to support its own plot line and to explain why this happens and why that is occurring at this point. Now I do not believe that this is inherently a bad thing. In fact it's fine. Not every single manga needs to be the next genre defining piece of media. In fact we need things that are average, we need things that build the genre or else we can never have exceptions to the rule.  The magic system, the team system, the classes, the guilds, the plot, it's all what you would expect from something with final fantasy inspirations. Semi (not really) complicated fighting systems that only make sense to pad out the loving tedium of a game. “Complete this many quests of this level to rank up.” “collect this many monster parts to complete the quest” and so on and so fourth ad infitum until god has to pop out and ask what the fuck is going on. 

The art is great in places. Most of it is very bog standard, you aren't going to get that much out of it if you are expecting groundbreaking designs that really make you scratch your chin in wonder at how they made something like that up. But it's very clearly competent and knows how to give each of its characters that needed cover before you read the book. People that need to look like unlikeable thugs look like unlikeable thugs, children that need to look sweet and innocent look sweet and innocent. The artist is really good at goofy expressions but they are a bit few and far between to really satisfy my desire for evil fucked up faces, oh kekegurui… if i didnt hate your plot so much i would be so much more obsessed with you… 

The tropes I've already gone over. It uses every single trope but more so in the way someone would do if they were playing a new game plus. You don't want to do the rigamarole of the heroes rise so you make them overpowered and whatever so they can get to the stuff that you have deemed important, that being fatherhood simulator and housing market simulator. The world is secondary to the plot the author wants so they grab the tropes they want to ensure they can focus on that part of the story with impunity while hand waving some other things and give ol daddy gray his badass moments to make the editors happy that this is infact enough of a power fantasy. You know, to keep those freaks that actually buy the manga happy. 

As for kink stuff, none that I can see. The author only seems to want women to fawn on the main character so they can complete the golden vision of the dead emperor abe of the nuclear family, perhaps hoping to tempt his blessing from beyond the grave… 

This was a little bit of a boreing read. I cant entirely recommend it, but if you want to see some edgy boredline twunk be a dad to a bunch of random kids he adopted then yeah, go for it lmao. 

[runimanio]

2024 Game Clear #4 Mega Man X: Command Mission

This is an interesting one, a tradition turn based Mega Man X RPG that has much to love, but also leaves me wanting in a lot of way. Perhaps because this is the final X series game I needed to play it also left me thinking about the storytelling & characterization of the X series so this will probably be a long one

The story here is that a maverick named Epsilon has formed a army aptly named the Rebellion Army to occupy Giga City and form a reploid supremist state and now the Maverick Hunters must intervene! If your familiar with the X series this will sound extremely in line with the general plotline the action games tended to have & it's clear that the developers really wanted to translate as much stuff and mechanics from those games into a RPG format (there's even a boss rush teleport room at the end!)

That thinking creates a pretty neat battle system but being so loyal to the plot structure of the main series X really does the story of a RPG & the new charters a disservice, you could very easily cut this 20 hour game into a standard X platformer & lose very little of the actual meat.

X and Zero are fully in their deadly serious mode that they've been in in for the late series X games, gone are Zero's days of confidently giving a thumbs up we're full broody edge lord & X is in cop mode at all time which is a shame since this could've been a great way to really explore these two in more depths then normally allowed.

I liked the new characters but they don't really get anything to do here, after their recruitment there character arc is pretty much done & i'm pretty sure Spider aside, the other 3 maybe talked to Zero & Axel maybe once throughout the entire game. I wish I could tell you anything about Marino or Cinnamon other then what written on the tin. Massimo is a brute struggling to live up to his mentor name, Marino is a thief who unexpectedly finds herself embroiled into the conflicted, Cinnamon is a living blacksmith forge i guess? And Spider is a bounty hunter who's later actions makes me question his early actions. They all have a lot of potential they're just unserved.

Let's move on to a lighter note for a bit, This battle system is pretty cool, it uses a turn system similar to the Digimon Story games (it's probably comes from something older but I'm blanking lol) where you can see the upcoming order of who moves first & even have your unit act multiple times before your enemy can under the right circumstances, two buttons can be equipped with special weapons that use Weapon Energy to fire and can be used before taking your action for the turn. Instead of healing items you have sub tanks you can collect and fill that you can pull from for healing.

Action Trigger are essentially limit breaks where you use all your weapon energy & play a little mini game for a big attack, its a little repetitive and i don't love doing a Mario Party style stick rotation for Cinnamon's heal trigger but it's fine & everyone has a hyper mode which is a temporary transformation that massively buffs the character or even in some cases change out their weapons and Action Triggers, X and Zero have secret unlockable Hyper modes that are super OP and fun to use.

It's a really fun and unique system & I do appreciate that I never really felt I need to grind but it can get pretty old when your binging through the game since enemy can feel pretty spongy and the encounter rate sometimes can a little aggressive where I'll get out of a battle and slightly adjust myself to get my barring again only to be thrown back into a battle immediately but sometimes i would go several rooms without any encounters so it probably varies.

And when you get lost the constant battles can be grating & getting lost can be easy as the entire game looks like this

All the stages feel like I'm exploring a bunker with almost entire game being made up of narrow hallways, even Giga City the city in the sky kinda just feels like another a bunker also slight tangent about the game's world it's funny that even in this RPG the X world is devoid onscreen humans, I don't know what Sigma and all the other Mavricks are complaining about, seems like the humans are doing a great job leaving reploids alone!

It probably sounds like I really didn't like the game but I did ultimately enjoy the game but I just see so much untapped potential in this game, these characters & this world, I can imagine a version of this game were Massimo has a longer character arc struggling with feeling like he's failing to honor the mantle, Maybe Marino learning to believe in the cause, More of Cinnamon learning what she wants to do beside just being a actual tool for people to use. My mind races with possibilities with this world & I only got a fraction of what I would've liked.

I truly wish it got a sequel because this is a very solid base to build on & really Mega Man has always been an iterative franchise but in hindsight of all the baggage the next generation would bring, the mega man recession of the late aughts, & Inafune gaining more power within Capcom & apparently hating the idea of a X RPG to begin with Command Mission was probably made at the last possible moment it could've been made.

Anyway here's some random thought to end off on

recontextualizing Axl's A Trans ability into summons is very cool

Everyone in the city getting new dialogue as the story progresses is neat

Cinnamon's design uses the red cross logo so this game is a violation of the Geneva Convention

I'm not really sure why they needed this to take place in 22XX causing it to have no place in the timeline due to the Zero games also taking place then other than maybe wanting to remove themselves from the earth is damaged after X5 continuity idk

This version of Ultimate Armor is crazy, X ain't playing around anymore no way Dr. Light signed off on this lol

After her chapter Marino never vocally speaks again for the rest of the game, she didn't deserve to be done like that.

Absolute Zero is very cool

Shout out to my friend Talion for gifting this to me for Christmas, thanks buddy!

[meandmypagancrew]

Yippee !! (I'm Previous ask btw)

I was wondering what some of your favorite parts/lines are from the UK version? (I just wanna hear more of your thoughts) :D

I was really surprised by Aimie Atkinson. Like, I wasn’t expecting to like her because I’m super familiar with her performance in Six, which is such a different character and a different music style. I was very surprised by how beautiful she sounds on more ballad types. Like, I still believe that the shinigami should be played by Japanese actors, but when I think about favorite parts, Aimie is the immediate standout.

I especially really liked the relationship between Ryuk and Rem. Like take Mortals and Fools. I was expecting the duet between Misa and Rem where Rem is pointing out all the bad things love causes where Misa responds with the good ones - I wasn’t expecting a reprise as Rem’s feelings deepen between her and Ryuk that honestly might be lyrically identical the original, where now she’s singing Misa’s lines about the upsides of love and he’s trying to remind her that they’re shinigami and not made for love. Another example is when Misa first meets Light. Rem says something to the effect of “Misa, don’t get involved with him” and Ryuk says to Rem very sharply “Don’t interfere.” And at the end of the Mortals and Fools reprise when she’s singing the final line “Love makes you break-“ he interrupts her and says “Rem. Don’t break the rules.” And his tone when he said it was… almost scared? Like it really felt like she really was the only sentient thing he actually cared about in any way and after she’s gone, his actions towards Light turn from mild interest to open anger and disdain, which may not be an aspect to any previous telling of the story but I really loved in this one.

Also, the random rap section in I’m Ready is just hilarious and amazing. Like in the West End Live performance she does it a little, but the version in the actual show is longer and has more words and it’s very amusing to me.

I also really liked Sayu having a larger role. Their Sayu was so cute and the fact that, like, Light only hears Misa’s new song because she bursts into his room to make him listen to it is so indicative of my relationship with my brother, I loved it.

I’ve already mourned the loss of the first verse of The Way It Ends but I’m happy to say that otherwise, everything seems to be intact? I was really worried that, like, songs would be cut and I was especially worried about Honor Bound, but happy to announce that it is intact and was performed with the perfect amount of restraint with a touch of fear, like what if I really am wrong about this?

Honestly, I can’t even think of a weak link. Like, perhaps Light, because he wasn’t a likeable character at all, but I’ve recently started rewatching the anime and… Light just isn’t a likeable character. I also didn’t love their L but I think that was just because L is a character that I love the physical appearance of and like.. where’s the messy hair? Also, his mannerisms are hard to capture, I’ll grant that. But like, I see videos from other productions that @deathnote-dramanmusical posts and I see their Light and L’s and am kind of bummed because I wish we had gotten portrayals more like that.

But overall, I think it translated to the stage well, I think the numbers are really good that we’ll see either a tour or an actual sit down production and maybe, in a year or two, a transfer to the US, and I’m ready. I can already see Eva Noblezada as Misa, and the Tony nomination she’d bag for it. Oh, and how fun would it be to have Adam Jacobs as Light and Arielle as Sayu?

[juanabaloo]

Director's commentary on "I Don't Care About the Presents"!!

Thank you so much for the ask! I've been in a bit of writing / posting slump lately so this ask is a great way to remind myself of how good it can be!

This is my top fic if you measure by kudos. I'm happy that people like it! Maybe it's hitting the right "porn with plot" balance. Here's a short description and link for anyone not familiar but curious.

I don’t care about the presents: E-rated long multi-chapter about Christmas in Sunnydale where Buffy brings her girlfriend Faith home to meet her Mom. There’s a lot of feelings and processing and also lots of E-rated fun. (A little in ch. 5 and then a ton in ch. 8 and 10)

I am completely unable to write stories in timeline order. This is part of my all human no slayers no powers AU series "the power of fuffy compels me" where Buffy and Faith meet in grad school and end up together. Each story is fairly stand-alone though. presents is kinda early in their official relationship, they are together but long distance.

This fic is different than most of my others because I incorporated songs into the various E-rated scenes in Ch. 8. More than in other fics, where sometimes there is just a line or two. I tried to write it in such a way that if you don't know the songs (90s R&B) or you don't like song lyrics inserted in your fics - you could still easily read and enjoy the rest of it.

Oh! I also had fun with the section titles in Ch. 8. (It's a very long chapter y'all.) Formatting/posting them was not fun, but I liked the end result. Lower case sections are less explicit, and the numbers indicate drabbles. AND for the capitalized sections, the first sentence indicates who GETS THERE first, or the order of that. Silly but fun for me. There's a note at the top of the chapter that explains it.

And despite the E-rated fun, presents was very much inspired by two non smutty things: (1) that porch scene in canon 3x10 Amends. It's so soft and loving and it gives me all the feels. and (2) another fic I wrote (but haven't posted yet ) Normandale Garden.

The porch scene gets re-worked in presents ch. 2. I kept as much of the canon dialogue the same as I could, but shifting it into my AU - and having it still make sense - was a lot of fun.

As for the other fic Normandale Garden... mild spoiler under the cut!

CW - Joyce death!

I wrote Normandale Garden before presents. BUT they are flipped in the timeline. Normandale is a heavy but hopeful fic about grief, set after presents. It's about how Faith helps Buffy live with her grief about her Mom, for the one year anniversary of her death. (Yes, Joyce still dies. I'm sorry Joyce.)

It's super long right now (too long) and I need to edit it down but - as part of their honoring Joyce for the one year anniversary Faith prepares a little outing. And Faith prints out a bunch of photos of Joyce. Including some of Faith and Joyce from Amends Christmas Eve night. (Like the shot with the snow coming down and Faith holding her hands out.) And from there I realized Faith would want to tell Buffy about an awkward conversation she had with Joyce the night of the photo, while Buffy was gone, and then I realized mildly drunk Joyce would give Faith some insight into Buffy... and then I was like "oh this is a whole separate story!"

So the scene with the photos is taken in Ch. 2 of presents and then the Joyce sharing helpful info while she is mildly drunk is in Ch. 3.

Of course then it got a lot longer and was focused on the Fuffy of it all. And once I realized they would fight (verbally) but then have to make up (AHEM) after I was like oh this will be a ton of fun to write. And it was!

Since I talk a lot and this is the Director's Commentary - I will share that Normandale Garden does not have any dialogue or scenes from canon 5x26 The Body. That episode is so beautiful. (Side rant: OMG where is the Emmy for SMG? and the crew? the sound? the atmosphere? that long steady shot??) I don't want to remix / translate / shift The Body at all.

But if you like grief processing and Faith saying all the loving wonderful things to Buffy, then Normandale Garden is a good fic for you! We will see when I actually get it posted.

Thank you again for the ask! I do plan to start posting again, but no promises on when that will be.

[qsmpbutwithsignlanguage]

@inblueee2, here's your explanation. I apologize that this took longer than expected, I had extenuating circumstances that prevented me from researching this further yesterday, and this was also a greater undertaking than I expected. However, I appreciate that you asked, because your reply got me to look a bit deeper into this situation and get a better understanding of the legality behind this all.

(btw super sorry if I messed anything up here, law is not my specialty and while I researched this to hell and back please take it with a grain of salt)

Please Note: This is based on law in the United States of America. I have neither the fluency, the connections, the money, nor the trust in Google's translation to give a cohesive summary of Mexico's laws regarding this. If you would like that, I'll direct you to mokkacat's post that delves into that a bit more; they are Mexican, and are able to give a better analysis of that then I can.

I’ll summarize it up here, but if you want a more in depth explanation then I’ll direct you below the cut.

The Beneficial Ownership Information act requires business owners, alongside anyone who owns more than 25% of a company, to give the information of the owner to the United States government. However, this information is kept in a private and secure database. It is not public, and Quackity was within his rights to keep his identity concealed regardless of if he is a private business owner. Léa's leak of information could fall under doxing, an illegal act in California, Mexico, and France. Because this is an international situation, it’s not as clear cut as I’d like. California defines doxing by the intent of the doxer (i.e. did Léa want to cause Quackity fear for his safety/physical harm/harassment towards him and his family), however Mexico and France appear to not. If Léa intended to dox Quackity, then her actions were undoubtedly illegal. If not, then it's a bit messier. Quackity will most likely not sue Léa.

Anyway: a cut, for the in depth explanation with sources and everything. Because this is long.

Pre-emptive apologies and forewarnings: I am neither a law student nor a lawyer or legal advisor. If I misunderstand anything or misconstrue the facts and evidence then I apologize, but this is what I have gathered. I have researched this to the best of my abilities in the time allotment that I gave myself, and no falsehood written here is purposeful, however I would not be surprised if there are mistakes made. The general concept remains the same throughout. 

This is the law of the United States of America, and in some places, specifically the law of the state of California. These laws may not apply to the same extent, or at all, if the following are true: if Quackity Studios is registered in Mexico, if Quackity's current primary residence is in Mexico, if Quackity is only a citizen of Mexico and not the United States of America, or if Quackity does not have any sort of green card or worker's visa. I don't know the stipulations of him living in the United States, nor will I vigorously search, as it feels intrusive. I am not familiar in any way, shape, or form with the laws of Mexico. As I don't know where in Mexico it would be registered, I cannot find administrative district/state specific laws. Again, it would feel like a breach of privacy to search for this, so I am leaving it be. Refer to mokkacat’s post for information there, if you would like. 

I'm going to start from the ground up here. Any website owned and operated by the government of the United States of America has the top-level domain of .gov at the end of the URL, where you would otherwise find .com, .edu, or .gov. This can only be used by an official government organization in the United States of America (for example, the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, those types of things). The French equivalent to this looks to be .gouv.fr. The important thing here is that this information is, without a single doubt, verifiably accurate to the current state of the legal system and laws in the United States of America. You cannot fake it. You can fact check this by going to almost any .gov website and clicking at the top, where it says, "An official website of the United States government Here's how you know"

This is relevant information.

Now, the United States of America has a government website called Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This website deals with, as the name suggests, financial crimes, alongside general financial information. It is a subset of the United States Treasury, and is undeniably a reliable source for information about current United States laws. One of the important, recent regulations put into place by the FinCEN involves Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI). Among other things, the BOI requires the owners (alongside anyone with 25+% ownership) of most companies registered in the United States of America to submit information regarding the identity of its primary owner. There is some nuance here, depending on how the company operates, and what exactly its actions entail (for example, accounting firms and government agencies can be exempt from this). Given the nature of Quackity Studios, however, this is most likely the law that applies.

The important thing here is that while the information of the company's owner must be provided to the government, this information is kept private from the public. 

"Beneficial ownership information reported to FinCEN will be stored in a secure, non-public database using rigorous information security methods and controls typically used in the Federal government to protect non-classified yet sensitive information systems at the highest security level." - Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Frequently Asked Questions

"Section 6403 further requires FinCEN to maintain this information in a confidential, secure, and non-public database, and it authorizes FinCEN to disclose the information to certain government agencies for certain purposes specified in the CTA, and to financial institutions to assist in meeting their customer due diligence obligations. In both cases, these disclosures are subject to appropriate protocols to protect confidentiality." - Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirements

Within the United States of America, Quackity has a legal right to conceal his full name and specific identity from the public, regardless of whether or not he is the owner of a company or corporation registered in the nation. There are specific circumstances in which this confidentiality can be broken. Those are noted in the quote above (due diligence obligations and disclosure to certain government agencies). However, to my knowledge, Léa’s leak of Quackity’s personal information would not qualify as one of these moments of allowed breach, nor would that confidentiality have been broken in the correct manner.

It is established that Quackity was within his rights in the United States of America to conceal his identity from the public, but the more important question here is: why would Léa leaking his personal information be illegal? Here, I believe it gets a bit more messy.

It depends on how you view this situation. In this situation, I am using California's laws. Laws about doxing vary from state to state, and likely differ from nation to nation. If you want Mexico-specific laws, then I recommend, again, going to mokkacat's post. They have more information here than me. However, because Quackity lives at least a fair portion of his time every year in the state of California, this will focus on the laws there.

The law itself is straightforward: California Penal Code 653.2, "Every person who, with intent to place another person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of the other person’s immediate family, by means of an electronic communication device, and without consent of the other person, and for the purpose of imminently causing that other person unwanted physical contact, injury, or harassment, by a third party, electronically distributes, publishes, e-mails, hyperlinks, or makes available for downloading, personal identifying information, including, but not limited to, a digital image of another person, or an electronic message of a harassing nature about another person, which would be likely to incite or produce that unlawful action, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail, by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment."

Vista Criminal Law, a website ran by registered Criminal Defense Attorney, Peter M. Liss, lists examples of doxing (violations of California Penal Code 653.2) as the following:

full name

address

phone number

social security number

email address

workplace details

financial records

family information

other personal information

The important question here is whether or not Léa posted that information with the intent of placing Quackity in reasonable fear for his safety or the safety of his family and imminently causing Quackity unwanted physical contact, injury, or harassment. Hence why I am iffy about this. If Léa intended for that information to lead to the harassment of Quackity or his family; what she did was illegal. If Léa did not intend for the information to lead to the harassment of Quackity or his family, and what she did was a pure mistake on her part, then what she may have not been illegal in the state of California. This conclusion this would be different if you follow the laws of other nations, i.e. France or Mexico, because they have different laws surrounding doxing, but I’m focusing on California. 

Léa caused Quackity reasonable fear for his safety, the safety of his family; unwanted physical contact, injury, or harassment. The most important thing here is intent.

To my knowledge, though I am hesitant on this, as I am not fluent or anywhere close to that in French, France forbids the act of doxing as well. Under LOI n° 2021-1109 du 24 août 2021 confortant le respect des principes de la République (1) Article 36, doxing is forbidden. "« Art. 223-1-1.-Le fait de révéler, de diffuser ou de transmettre, par quelque moyen que ce soit, des informations relatives à la vie privée, familiale ou professionnelle d'une personne permettant de l'identifier ou de la localiser aux fins de l'exposer ou d'exposer les membres de sa famille à un risque direct d'atteinte à la personne ou aux biens que l'auteur ne pouvait ignorer est puni de trois ans d'emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d'amende."

It is difficult to define how laws work between nationalities and nations; this is something that actual lawyers and legal teams can find themselves struggling with. It is also difficult when these laws are defined by intent. The most important point here is that people argue that Léa's leak of information was illegal because Quackity had a right to retain the privacy of his personal information; and it falls under doxing, an illegal act, in both California and France. 

However, the bottom line is intent is the most important thing here, and I genuinely have no clue whether French, American, or Mexican laws would apply when it comes to the dox. If Mexican or French laws apply, then it appears that Léa’s actions were illegal. If Californian laws apply, then intent would have to be defined, and that is difficult. If it was intentional, Léa committed a crime. If it was a pure mistake, then it can be summarized by saying it's complicated.

So there you go. I’m sure that there was at least one mistake in this, so I recommend taking it all with a grain of salt, but that’s my best summary of why people are arguing that Léa’s actions were illegal. I'm not sure how to end this; I've done way too much research on this topic for my own good, but I can't be mad at understanding more than I did when I started looking into this. I really hope this made sense, if you read all the way to the end, lmao. This is, like, 2,000 words.

I don't know how to phrase this any better, but I seriously think that Léa needs to get a lawyer or legal advisor and step away from Twitter for a moment. I get that she feels a moral obligation to provide fans and former fans with a constant flow of all the information that she has available (which is an important thing, and she has been the main source of inside information since this all happened), and I know that she likely cannot pay for a lawyer herself on account of the fact that this whole issue arose because she (alongside others) were not getting paid.

However, regardless of whether or not leaking Quackity's personal information was a purely human mistake rendered lesser on account of the labor laws broken by him and his studio (in her own tweets, as her own argument), it should not have happened. Bottom line is that she rushed to provide the internet with information about the situation, and she made her argument, her voice, and her credibility lesser as a result of that.

Not only did she do what could be argued as a crime in more than one nation (though I am a bit iffy here; I am not a law graduate or student of any sort), but she directly harmed Quackity, and possibly his family, who had no part in this situation.

Her need to get information out as quickly as she can as the inside force led to this massive mistake, and no matter how you want to frame it (because it is still a mistake), it really should not have happened. It harmed both Léa and Quackity (though I would stand to argue one more than the other), and it could have been avoided if there was someone else working behind the scenes, or if Léa had simply checked the screenshot over a few times before posting it.

I'm not certain how to end this post, but I've thought this for a long time. This is a legal situation in which she is one of the primary witnesses. With such a large part of this playing out on Twitter, in a borderline trial of public appeal (not sure how much better I can phrase this, because such a massive part is involving the opinion of fans) she needs to understand how important and influential her words are, and how catastrophic it can be to both her cause and Quackity's if she messes up.

[khaotungthanawat]

I mean... If you're enabling me to talk to you, I'll do it :)

So BE was my first ever K-Drama, so I'm not too sure what fascinates me about it is bc the storytelling is influenced by a culture I don't understand and what is specific to BE.

One of those things is that my ear isn't used to the language, so I'm very sure I'm missing a lot of the subtleties that can't be conveied in translation and it's driving me crazy. I have come to understand through Tumblr posts the name suffix -ah is apparently very important.

Joo Won is my favorite especially in all his sniffling, screaming, crying glory and I was shocked to find out the actor is actually younger than the character. Like he's not what I would call mature in the series, but at the same time I 100% thought the actor could be even older. Dong Sik is so good too, when he smiles and laughs I'm just as lovestruck as Joo Won, but i didn't miss whole passages of dialogue looking at him like I did with Joo Won, I was gasping and telling my Laptop 'he's so pretty, beautiful, oh my god' multiple times.

I usually don't like crime series, it's just never interested me, so I avoid them, but i never had that feeling with BE. Like it wasn't about the crime if that makes sense. I felt like it was about the relationships, how each character would shape the happenings, who valued what and broke their secrets when. The scene where Dong Sik is like 'does it even matter who killed them' replays in my mind on an endless loop. Because it doesn't. It feels utterly irrelevant and that is fantastic!

Also honorable mention to the scene where Joo Won first grabs Dong Sik by his collar. I think my squeak at that was way too loud. He forgot his aversion for touch and reached out aaaaaah I'm still so giddy when I think about it

Okay I think I'm done ... For now. Though I have told my friend she should liveblog to me while she watches so maybe I'll return screaming if she tells me smth I can't comment on to her bc it'd be spoilers.

*kicking my feet and twirling my hair*

unintelligible rambling under the cut. no thoughts, just vibes.

i'd watched a few kdramas before BE, and i've enjoyed them to varying degrees but this one has me in a chokehold. i'm not super familiar with sk culture, and i'm veeerrrrry slooooowly learning the language, so i'm sure i'm missing a lot of the nuances but i think the story is told in such a way that it's kind of universal.

(i've been told that the -ah [or -ya] suffix is reserved for people one considers good friends, but i could have that wrong. i took dong sik calling him 'joo won-ah' to mean that he's important to him, and that he cares about him. growth.)

i adore joo won and all his issues, my poor little meow meow. and he's so SO PRETTY (i recommend watching more stuff with yeo jin goo--he's honestly one of the best actors i've ever seen, and he's only 24.) and dong sik.........he. fuck. i love dong sik so much (maybe too much but so be it). he's funny and flirty and everyone loves him, but he's also solitary and sad and haunted by his demons. i don't know if i kin any characters, but i feel super connected to lee dong sik. he's burdened with so much, and he wears his bright smile and sense of humor like armor. *shakes fist* i love him. and of course, he is really really REALLY hot.

i love crime series; i usually prefer them to series with overtly romantic themes, so BE was right up my street. and yeah, i totally agree--the crime part is important, but it's secondary to the characters, the way they're developed, and relationships that are happening throughout the series. i love when women write and direct characters.

and jwds. JWDS has changed my life, full stop.

that scene you mentioned when joo won grabs his collar is so!!!

the intense hold, the way joo won's eyes quickly flick down dong sik's face, how close they are to each other. *vibrates* hnnngh it's so delicious. had me flailing on the couch the first time i watched it.

and The Scene at han ki hwan's house after the climax of the show (YOU KNOW THE ONE) fucking UNMADE me. stripped me down to my essence. changed the trajectory of my life. ugh. the tears! the tenderness! these men are in love with each other, your honor!

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! i hope your friend screams her thoughts at you as she watches it. it's so fun to get other people's views and takeaways.

i didn't have any points to make or anything intelligent (or intelligible) to say. i just enjoy flailing with other people about this show that's changed my life.

i'm so happy you've watched it and enjoyed it! 💕

[lokiskitten]

Hey! I wanted to make a request to Loki consoling the reader after a bad day or because she was unsure of her body.

(I'm sorry if there is something wrong, I'm Brazilian and I'm using the translator! lol)

Loki Laufeyson | pretty little thing

( Thor 2011 ) Loki x fem!reader

author’s note : hey! I’m pretty sure I can work something out ;) I hope you’ll enjoy it!

plot : you encounter Loki into the great hall after a long day of work, and the boy tries his best to make you feel better about yourself and your body.

warnings : super duper cute baby loki !1!1!1

Fitting into Asgard’s society turned out to be harder than you thought, and that no matter how much efforts you decided to put on display alongside the help of your fellow Asgardian mates. This was a process every single teenager who had grown in Odin’s court had to go through, which was absolutely necessary if you wished to remain part of the king’s close surroundings. But through time, you couldn’t help but start to think that you maybe didn’t belong in this place. Luxury and good manners wasn’t something you were particularly looking forward to, as you had always believed that it was simply too boring for your eccentric self.

As the group was making its way back to the chambers, you jumped on the opportunity in order to discreetly gain the balconies where you knew you’d be able to find a nice moment of rest. The cold air collided with your skin, making your hair fly back at a rather soothing pace. Your elbows reached out for the balcony’s barrier, body leaning against the fence as your eyelids shut close in an attempt to seek for peace. The silence remained extremely enjoyable until a familiar voice smoothly resonated through your ear. Your eyelids opened again, head tilting to the side as your orbs landed onto the familiar silhouette which was Loki’s, one of odin’s sons.

“Seeking for an escape?” He questioned, his body slowly nearing you as if he was afraid that he would accidentally scare you off. His green eyes pierced right into yours, head tilting lightly as he waited for an answer. A smile appeared on your lips, head nodding as you allowed your body to twist towards him. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.” You responded before focusing your eyesight onto the beautiful Asgardian horizon again. Just like you, Loki leant against the barrier as his green orbs scanned the landscapes. Though, the usually talkative young man couldn’t help but start conversing again.

“I can sense that something is bothering you.” He notified, head tilting towards your silhouette which he couldn’t cease to admire. A sigh escaped your lips, surprised that a man such as Loki would care about the way you felt. You knew about his reputation, though you had never seemed to figure out why people would make such a big deal out of who he was. To you, he seemed nice and soothing. “It’s nothing really. Just girly bothers.” You explained, which actually made him chuckle. Loki couldn’t help but think that it was ridiculous for you to get upset over such things if it was the case.

“What? It’s true.” You added face to how he wasn’t taking your secretive problems seriously. His brows raised innocently, head shaking from left to right in a denying manner. “I never said it wasn’t.” Loki responded calmly, gentle smile forming onto his lips. “Now, tell me more about it.” The raven haired man added, looking forward to know more about what was bothering you.

Hearing this question, your chest tightened. It had been a while since anyone worried about your mental health, and you obviously didn’t expect Loki to be the one who would do it first. Looking back towards the beautiful horizon on which the sun was setting, you finally managed to empty your chest from your worries. “It’s going to sound stupid, but.. I don’t feel like I’m fitting here. Everyone is so beautiful, so successful, and I can’t help but think that I’m never going to manage to be as a wonderful as them all.” You explained, stomach tightening as you apprehended Loki’s answer.

The young man felt shocked to hear that you both shared the same sorrow, which consisted in fear of failure and sadness face to the fact that you didn’t necessarily fit in. His head nodded, waiting for you to be done talking so that he could add his personal comment to the discussion. “Well.. I’ve seen you in action. I think you look wonderful. Better than most of those people out there.” He responded respectfully, green orbs scanning your face which he had always admired. A chuckle escaped your lips. “Oh come on, you don’t have to say that.” You replied, face turning towards his in order to make eye contact.

Again, Loki’s eyebrows frowned, the man not being able to understand why you doubted him so much. But after second thoughts, he suddenly remembered about the fact that he was classified as the god of mischief. “I’m only speaking the truth. For once.” Loki affirmed, insisting on creating a form of complicity between the two of you. Your smile faded away, soul strangely acknowledging his little move. “Unfortunately it’s going to take more than that.” You ended up responding, looking away and causing Loki’s heart to fill with sorrow and disappointment.

“Let me guess.. you also feel insecure about the way you look?” Loki stated confidently, though remained far from making fun of you for it. Your eyes widened, your entire being wondering how the demigod had managed to guess about your insecurities. “How would you-“ you began, soon being cut off by Loki’s chuckle. “It’s a classic. Teenage girls and their body, you know? Boys feel it too.” He explained wisely, leaning against the fence with the help of one of his elbows as the rest of his body counted onto this support.

Your eyes rolled to the sky, head shaking gently as you tried your best to keep your attitude face to his annoying confidence. Seeing how you had decided to remain silent, Loki jumped on this occasion to talk a little bit further. “I believe your body looks ravishing. I mean, it’s not like I ever got to see it, but if the occasion showed, I’d be more than grateful to give in..” he purred seductively, earning nothing but a stern look coming from you which clearly stood as a negative answer face to his hidden proposition. Awkwardly, the god of mischief nodded his head before turning back towards the horizon. “Alright, got it.” He spoke lowly whilst rubbing his palms together.

I tried! I’m honestly best at smut no cap LMAO. But it’s nice to write about different stuff once in a while. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or a request! Love y’all💜

[chrisevansluv]

Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:

The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist

The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.

By Adam Sachs,

Photographs by Norman Jean Roy

May 2012 Issue

"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.

"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"

We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.

On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.

"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.

Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"

But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.

"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"

Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.

To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.

Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:

Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'

Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.

Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.

Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:

Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?

Chris: Nothing wrong with that.

Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?

Chris: Looooong time.

Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?

Chris: No names, Ma!

Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.

Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.

Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.

We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.

East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.

"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."

Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.

Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.

From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.

It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.

What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"

By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."

Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.

"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"

Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.

Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"

One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."

What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."

There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."

Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."

"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."

"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.

"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."

My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"

At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"

I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"

Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."

East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.

"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."

I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."

Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."

The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"

And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."

We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."

Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."

I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."

He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"

Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?

"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"

Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:

The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist

The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.

By Adam Sachs,

Photographs by Norman Jean Roy

May 2012 Issue

"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.

"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"

We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.

On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.

"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.

Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"

But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.

"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"

Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.

To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.

Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:

Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'

Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.

Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.

Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:

Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?

Chris: Nothing wrong with that.

Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?

Chris: Looooong time.

Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?

Chris: No names, Ma!

Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.

Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.

Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.

We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.

East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.

"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."

Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.

Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.

From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.

It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.

What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"

By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."

Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.

"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"

Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.

Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"

One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."

What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."

There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."

Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."

"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."

"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.

"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."

My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"

At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"

I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"

Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."

East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.

"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."

I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."

Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."

The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"

And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."

We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."

Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."

I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."

He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"

Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?

"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"

If someone doesn't want to check the link, the anon sent the full interview!

[theoutcastrogue]

First of all, well done OP! Green's Dictionary of Slang dates lift as in "to steal" (in general) to 1535, but as in "to shoplift" (in particular) to 1781. And shop-lift appears in 1661. So you found a much earlier example!

Second, this passage is amazing. It's from a letter by William Fleetwood, Recorder (senior judge) of London, where he describes how he's been Fighting Crime, such as stealing horses, cutting purses, and distributing "lewd, seditious, and traitorous books" [i.e. Catholic] – mostly by sentencing people to death. He also provides a list of "harbouring houses for masterless men [rogues], and for such as live by theft and other such shifts" [tricks]. And then he adds:

I have QUESTIONS about these little poems. It looks like they're half in Latin, right? Si = "if", si non = "if not", tunc = "then". Spy is "spot, catch sight of", and earlier "watch stealthily". Sport is "take pleasure, enjoy or amuse oneself". So as far as I can tell, the first poem basically says:

"If they see you, play around. If they don't see you, then steal."

and the second says:

"Whether they see you or not, foist, nip, lift, shave and spare not."

I'm confused about the tense etc of spie and sporte here. Are they supposed to be English/Latin hybrids, like the infamous fuccant? I can't think how they can be grammatically correct either way, though I suppose that's not to be expected in scribbles found inside dens of rogues. In any case, that's the only translation that makes sense to me. Is it right or am I off?

"A school for thieves in London", by V.Dedoncker, l'illustration Européenne 52, 1871

And third, this letter is super interesting, because it also has a very early example (the earliest AFAIK) of a very familiar trope: a school for pickpockets, and a training device consisting of purses with little bells on them, that aspiring pickpockets are supposed to pick without making any noise.

"There was a schoolhouse set up to learn young boys to cut purses. There were hung up two devices, the one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung about with hawk's bells, and over the top did hang a little sacring bell; and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public foyster, and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse, without the noise of any of the bells, he was adjudged a judicial nypper. Note, that a foyster is a pick-pocket, and a nypper is termed a pickpurse, or a cutpurse."

We'll see that later in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, a bunch of illustrations, and modern contexts too.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1939

See also: Picking Pockets in Elizabethan London, from Elizabethan rogues and vagabonds by Frank Aydelotte, 1913.

in case anyone's interested, the first attestation of "shoplift" in print is as far back as 1585 in a description of terms for different kinds of nicking stuff

Note that ffoyste is to cutt a pockett, nyppe is to cutt a purse, lyft is to robbe a shoppe.

anie waie if thou seest some one shoppelyfting, nay, i'faith thou didst not so