#but i cannot figure out where to start in terms of expanding what i already know

[dykexenomorph]

there is literally nothing more painful than DESPERATELY wanting to learn more about a topic but not knowing how to go about gaining the info.......

[generalpierrotdameron]

[...] Reportedly there were plans to spool up season 2 as recently as a month ago before the axe came down this past week. Why this happened is obvious, and it’s not from haters crying “woke.” It’s because The Acolyte is a show that reportedly cost an absolutely ridiculous $180 million to make, and it did not get viewership anywhere close to justify that. But to be fair, essentially no show could, much less one that had to deal with the challenge of not having any classic Star Wars characters to rely on. [...] In terms of visual spectacle, what can you even remember from The Acolyte in that category? I certainly can across the sequel trilogy and movies like Rogue One, but here? That’s not where and why the show worked. If you think about the best moments of the series, what were they? The absolutely wild lightsaber fight between The Stranger and a legion of Jedi that he massacres. Something that took a ton of stunt training but was not some massive VFX sequence. Past that, powerful character moments like OSHA and The Stranger in the cave. The contrast with Sol trying to imprison Mae and the realization that his “good intentions” caused all this in the first place. These are the reasons the show worked, because of the performances and occasionally, the stunt work, not sweeping VFX sequences that cost the most out of anything. [...]Renewing The Acolyte is important. It’s not just that we want to see arcs expanded on and concluded like Qimir’s history and Plagueis’ involvement. But The Acolyte is a representation of Disney attempting to let Star Wars exist well outside the Skywalker era, as that has been mined almost to death at this point. Doing a single show and cancelling it signifies they’ll never try something this ambitious again, which is a letdown for fans. And without ambition, their vision of Star Wars is going to wither. It feels like that’s already started with what appears to be every single Disney Star Wars series ending within the next year or two outside of Ahsoka. All other shows are cancelled, limited series or are ending after one more season, and no more have been announced. The Acolyte was not perfect, but first seasons of shows rarely are. Plenty of shows take time to grow into their skin, and you can even see that happening in real time with the second half of the season. Disney is being incredibly short-sighted here and not even attempting to make this work by figuring out a more appropriate budget after absurd overspending on this and other projects. You cannot please the crowd that hates The Acolyte, as they will hate everything that exists in Disney Star Wars short of Andor, so you just have to press forward with an ambitious vision. And it appears they do not have one.

👉 Renew the Acolyte - Sign the petition!

[0l-unreliable]

Feel free to be as long-winded or short as you want with this; but can you explain Homestuck to me? I've tried many times to get into it, but it confuses me and I just want it in layman's terms please 🙏

So in the most boiled down, simplified, BASIC terms: Homestuck is a coming of age, saving the world story that gets interrupted by the narrative, the creator (Hussie self inserts so much he's basically a main side character that the characters can and do reference), timeline bullshit, and the introduction and subsequent abandonment of new plots/characters. Though it's technically a comic, the text alone could fill probably 3-5 novels. I'd also like to say I ONLY read the original comic and I only read it 2 1/2 times in the past 10 years

Ok that stuff out of the way here's as fatless as I can serve: John and co. (Dave, rose and jade) Decide to play a game called 'sburb', unknowingly triggering both the beginning of their adventure and the end of their world, while they navigate getting into the game (like, physically, since their planet is being pelted by meteors) we're introduced to some weird fuckin grey dudes (the trolls, unplanned and frankly maybe unwanted at the point by me at least) we find out they went through this same 'game-that-ends-the-world' scenario but with 12 different kids instead of four, which made the whole thing more complicated and dramatic (and here we're also introduced to the blood caste system aka the fantasy racism system, there are 11-12 different blood colors with candy red being the rarest and the lowest/worst). They make it into the game and are left to wait while they figure shit out and this is when they start communicating with John and co, since they're technically not in the same timeline as the humans they can jump around and pick any point to talk to them (ex: a troll can click a button and talk to a version of John already in the game then five seconds later click another button and talk to a John that has never even heard of the game). Unfortunately this is when the timeline/doomed reality shenanigans start. I will not be untangling all that, sorry. They figure out that they (the trolls +John and co) have to make a NEW universe out of a special frog and make plans to all meet. Dave and Rose have already managed to get to the same place the trolls are (a random meteor) but John and Jade still must travel to get to them, which will take 3-4 years (this was probably because at this point everyone has been 13 for the past 3 real human years and hussie wanted a time skip). I cannot stress the weight of the next statement enough: some bullshit happens. You meet 12 NEW trolls that are basically the ancestors to the trolls we know and love/hate. To me they don't super have a point, but this is also where we learn that every person who died and every version from a 'doomed timeline' who died is in fact alive as ghost in bubbles of space-time and can interact both with other dead versions of themselves and the alive versions of themselves when they pass through. Like I said. Some bullshit happens. Then..oh and then...we get shot both into the future, the past, and an alternative timeline. This time, it's with the ancestors/guardians of John and co. This is were Dirk and Jake are. (And Roxy and Jane ofc) At this point I believe hussie has majorly checked out. This new group of humans (the 'Alphas', named after their timeline) don't get much in terms of story compared to the others, but what we do see it that while Jake and Jane live in the good ol' current time of 2016, Dirk and Roxy live far far FAR into the future. A future where a tyrannical troll has conquered Earth and flooded it in an attempt to expand her watery empire. They are the last two people alive, made from the genetic remains of their timelines Dave and Rose. Their only hope of survival is the game, luckily they get in, unluckily Hussie has Checked Out. They are in a dead game and must wait to either be attacked by the big bad (of which there are at least three I'm sorry but mentioning their whole deal is....daunting. remember this is all still simple) and/or be pulled to the OG group of trolls and humans. Eventually everyone gathers up, Hussie retcons some shit through John, they fight all bazillion big bads at once and BAM. make a new universe in which all TWENTY of them are gods. The end.

This is as simple as I can make it based on how I understood it/what I remember. It's not called the worlds longest webcomic for nothing. If you made it this far and still think you may want to try again to read but don't want to spend a large chunk of your life reading a textual nightmare, there are videos on YouTube that read it for you that have gotten pretty far, I have left A LOT out.

HS is a super confusing, badly written, reference heavy peice of work. I think ultimately it's about how YOU interpret things and where you stop reading. It seems random, and it is, but Hussie manages to round most things out, there's a lot of characters that explain a lot of things very often. Sometimes you don't know What The Hell is Happening until 5 acts and 3 intermissions later. That's fine.

Thanks for letting me yap. Feel free to ask about more anytime either in dms or through asks.

[toxic-ship-tournament]

ROUND 2 / SIDE A / POLL 2

Esmerelda Poofenplotz x Alice Luoja (@cantdanceflynn) vs Res x Leo (@adanaac)

who makes up your ship?:

Esmeralda Poofenplotz(Canon Phineas and Ferb character(although I draw her differently from canon)) and Alice Luoja(Background character turned Phineas and Ferb oc)

why does your ship deserve to be considered the most toxic?:

THEY BASICALLY STARTED OUT AS TWO DUMBASS TOXIC AF TEENAGERS GOING TO EVIL SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL TOGETHER AND BEING THE TERRORS OF THE SCHOOL(POOFENPLOTZ BC SHES BIG ON BEAUTY AND WOULD BASICALLY DESTROY EVERYONE'S SELF ESTEEM AND ALICE BC. SHES WILLING TO KILL ANYONE WHO RLY FUCKS W HER), AND WHILE THEY ORIGINALLY HAD A RIVALRY IT GOT A LIL TOO HOMOEROTIC VERY QUICKLY AND THEY DON'T RLY KNOW HOW BUT THEY ENDED UP DATING. THEY ENDED UP, SURPRISE SURPRISE, RUINING EACH OTHER EVEN FURTHER THEN THE TWO OF THEM WERE ALREADY TRAUMATIZED!!!! A TYPICAL INTERACTION BETWEEN EM PRETTY MUCH WENT ALONG THE LINES OF POOFENPLOTZ POKING FUN AT SOMETHING ABOUT ALICES BODY OR PERSONALITY SHE KNEW WOULD TICK ALICE OFF("YOU KNOW, I'M NOT SAYING YOU NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT, BUT THROWING UP YOUR LUNCH LATER COULDN'T HURT"), ALICE GETTING PISSED OFF AND PULLING A KNIFE ON HER("YOU KNOW, MAYBE THIS TIME I'LL CHOP OFF YOUR TONGUE, STOP THAT HORRIBLE NOISE YOU CALL A VOICE"), AND THEN SOMETHING WOULD HAPPEN OR ONE OF THEM WOULD FUMBLE OR FLIRT AND THEY'D JUST GO BACK TO NORMAL BANTER AND TERRORIZING PEOPLE. THEY DID CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER, AND WHATEVER THEY WERE EXPERIENCING CERTAINLY FIT SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE STRANGE AND NEBULOUS RANGE OF ROMANTIC LOVE, LIKE THEY DEFINITELY LIKED EACH OTHER, THEY WERE JUST TOXIC AS SHIT AND HAVING THEIR BEHAVIORS EXPANDED UPON OR REINFORCED BY THEIR ENVIRONMENT. EVENTUALLY ALICES OBSESSION W GODHOOD AND HER IDEA OF PERFECTION (ONE THAT HAD ALWAYS BEEN THERE, EVEN IF POOFENPLOTZ MADE IT MORE PHYSICAL) ENDED UP DRIVING THE TWO APART, WITH HOW HORRIBLE ALICES DECLINE WAS, AND POOFENPLOTZ ENDED UP BASICALLY LEAVING AND IGNORING HER AS A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO SNAP HER OUT OF HER DECLINE BUT ONLY PULLED HER FURTHER IN. AS IT STANDS NOW IN THE PRESENT, THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS A COMPLICATED SPIRAL OF "POOFENPLOTZ ACTUALLY HEALED AND REALIZED HOW AWFUL SHE WAS BEING AND WHILE SHE STILL HAD A DEGREE IN EVIL SCIENCE SHE HAD TO USE SO SHE MIGHT AS WELL GET A JOB DOING THAT, SHES ALSO RLY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT EVERYTHING W THE CAST AND HELP THEM, ESPECIALLY MILLIE AND PINKY, WHILE ALSO DEALING W " WHOOPS YOUR EX IS BACK IN TOWN AND SHES NOW BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR MORE DEATHS THEN MOST FULL ON TERRORISM COMBINED, BUT SHE IS ALSO STILL KINDA HOT SO *NONCOMMITTAL HAND GESTURE*, YA KNOW?", MEANWHILE ALICE IS "OH RIGHT. SHE QUALIFIES FOR LOVEMUFFIN TOO. IM ALLOWED TO DENY ON HER ON TERMS OF HER BEING MY EX, RIGHT? BUT ALSO IM STILL GONNA INVITE HER TO OUR MEETINGS AND ALSO OFFER TO LET HER " LEAD" THE CULT IVE MADE THAT CONSISTS BASICALLY JUST OF MY VERY ABUSED OWN SON AND A VERY ABUSED TEENAGER WITH ME BC IF I CAN CHANGE HER MIND I CAN CHANGE ANYONES!"

ship tags/playlists/pinterest boards?:

Esmeralice, https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnP0Xop8gS5VdFNCP4Uetvq2pM5A9NZTe <- BAD PLAYLIST BY MY STANDARDS OF USUALLY A HUNDRED SONGS AT LEAST BUT ITLL DO FOR NOW

****

who makes up your ship?:

Res and Leo

why does your ship deserve to be considered the most toxic?:

Leo can’t remember anything that has happened to him before the age of twelve. All anyone knows is that he was in an accident that should have killed him, then he returned with an indestructible body and a void where his personality should be. He cannot comprehend good or evil, does not understand the concept known as ‘choice’, and cannot envision an existence where Res isn’t his Master. He imprinted onto Res the moment he met the other man and pushed himself into Res’ life without considering whether or not Res might want it. His first Master did not pass, he simply changed how he looked, and what he looks like now is Res. Period. He has nothing to offer, nothing to say, no emotions and no heart to give. All he knows are the facts, and the facts tell him that there is no Leo without Res. So he’ll make sure that there’s no Res without Leo. Res has always been very into science, but he isn’t too fond of how there are a bit too many restrictions on the experiments he can perform, and he’s even less fond of how they die whenever he tries some of his more ‘exciting’ stuff. Thankfully he has Leo, his little obedient puppy who will obey his every word and donate his body for research. Of course, he’s never asked him whether he was okay with that, but signing a consent form is so old school. He believes that we should be doers, not dreamers, and he’s always wanted to see what the insides of Leo’s body looked like. And all the resistance it’s putting up just makes it all the more exciting. Leo spells unending excitement, and that’s all the reason Res needs to make sure no one else has him. Res is life, but he is not Leo’s purpose for living, because Leo has not questioned whether or not life has a purpose. He doesn’t need to. Res is Leo’s Master, and Leo’s Master is the very concept of life itself. Without his Master, the earth does not spin, and the sun does not shine. Why would it be anything else? Leo is not a person, he is Res’ dream. The dream of a creature that would do nothing but obey his every word, and the dream of an anomaly that he could endlessly explore without an expiration date. A thing that Res will never get bored of. To Res, Leo is just an adorable lab rat who happens to be the only one in the world who can fulfill his dreams. He does not care for Leo, the person, because Leo is not a person, but he does care about Leo, the humanoid playground that belongs to Res, and Res alone. This is love, because love is when someone makes your heart race, and love is when someone makes you feel like you’re free-falling into obsession. Res loves him, loves him, loves him loves him loves himloveshim. Just as we don’t get emotionally attached to the oxygen that keeps our heart beating, Leo does not get emotionally attached to Res, and he doesn’t need to. This isn’t love, it’s something more than that. Love can change, fade and evolve- it’s fickle, fleeting and easily manipulated. What Leo and Res have is a constant. Res belongs with Leo, and Leo belongs with Res. Don’t argue with the facts. Because you’re wrong, and Leo will make sure you know you’re wrong, no matter who you are. It’s a good thing they’re with each other, and no one else. (Leo is Uno's oc, Res is Canada's oc. Above description written by Uno. Canada's description below) They're basically like those AITA stories where both are the asshole and its a good thing they're together and making each other worse. btw Res is the short pink one and Leo is the tall one.

ship tags/playlists/pinterest boards?:

[starkblazer]

For the WIP game: number 04 and 07 just speak so deeply to me. I wish you all the creative energy and time to finish both of these!!!

thank you so much for the ask and the sweet wishes :))

let's start with 4. Flint actually jumps after Silver when he drowns in 4x01 because this is just a sweet one with a bunch of angst in between. i really wanted to write something where Flint kinda looses his shit and decides that he cannot loose Silver too and how that would change things. here's a bit

They breach the surface of the water gasping for air, desperate to breathe. Flint gets a hold on the ship and lets himself rest. He can see Silver, alive and taking ragged breaths, in front of him and that is enough. His hair is dripping water onto his face and his lips are slightly purple, he's shivering and the exhaustion is set deep in his features but he is alive and Flint can only breathe in relief. The silent respite they had gotten doesn't last long. As soon as Silver gets his breath under control, his face turns in anger towards Flint. "Are you insane? Did you just leave our men without their main military tactician for one man?" Flint wants to lie, but he won't lie to Silver and he can't lie to himself. Still, he stays silent. There's no need to give Silver the satisfaction of being right. Not when he has already revealed this much of himself for going after him.

after this, they loose sight of each other and everything continues as usual but Silver knows Flint cares and will come for him so his headspace is a bit better so things change accordingly.

i love these kinda games cause this has a decent chunk of it written so if i sat down and worked on it, i could reasonably finish it but... oh well

as for 7. Black Sails Pacific Rim AU... that one almost deserves it's own post because this is my biggest project to date. it's a monstrosity of a fic where I took the plot of the first movie and worked it all out to fit Black Sails. This means so many changes, like putting the Shatterdome in Nassau, figuring out timelines for everyone in terms of where were they when the first attack happened and a million other things.

I have shared several bits of this one but you can have another bit

The Command Center has been upgraded since James last saw it. It's not a surprise, given the quick advances in technology over the past few years. This new type of war giving birth to a whole new set of inventions. Everything in the Command Center is new: new screens, new tech and of course, new personnel. "Captain, welcome." A blond woman greets him, "I'm Eleanor Gutherie, I'm in charge of the Restoration Program." Her name doesn't register at all, his mind reeling at the rank. "Captain?" "No one told you?" she asks, confusion showing on her face, "you were promoted after your last ride." It makes sense, the military always liked to give empty decorations after traumatic and life changing events, as if they meant anything. He makes a non committal sound and moves on. His last ride, like it hadn't been the worst deployment of his life, like he hadn't lost a part of his heart in that last ride. {expand} "Well, Captain McGraw, we are very happy to have you here." "Flint." "What?" "It's Flint, Captain Flint if you have to. Change your records and move on, I don't want to hear that name from anyone else." "Very well," she says, a few shades lighter than before. He should try to be less brusque with her, show her that he understands, that he respects what she is trying to do here but he is still off-balance.

and that's Flint's meeting with Eleanor. I have a so many scenes planed but this is a big ass fic and there are so many details to iron out in the beginning of it, mostly to do with timeline stuff so while the start is done done, I've been putting posting because I have yet to figure out a full timeline and I don't want to have to edit the posted fic again and again as I figure it out.

I also don't have the time to focus on it as I'd like to but again the beauty of these games is that I add a tiny bit more every time people ask me about fics cause I have to open the file :)))

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

YOU. [I am holding a sign at you. Uhh, it says, "you", but has a lil sticker of Cyno at the bottom. It's less threatening than an emoji, but it does in a pinch.] Talk about Hope Estheim! What do you love about him? What is his family life like? How does he perceive his destiny?

//Such a SNEAKY question! That scared me!

Gushy time huh? VERY WELL!

Hope Estheim is a character who was capable of single-handledly getting me invested in a game as questionable and flawed as FFXIII was. It was the dark ages of the series (ever since Square and Enix merged, all of the main titles were cursed in some form), and I was already disillusioned by the game as a whole. I played for collector's sake, and was uninvested in the main character. The Prologue being a step-by-step copy-paste of FFVII's beginning didn't help either.

But then came Hope, and he absolutely captured me! For JRPGs, it was incredibly surprising and refreshing to see a real child character who was not a miniature adult, or a prodigy of some form. This kid absolutely starts from rock bottom in nearly every way, and character growth is a thing I am a total sucker for.

To see him fall into the darkest of traumas, to then slowly stumble his way out of a hole of depression and resentment throughout the game was an absolute delight that to me honestly made the whole thing.

It is... perhaps unsurprising then that I absolutely cannot remember a damn thing about the plot after Hope's character arc wraps up, honestly? My heart tuned out once they returned to Cocoon. I remember nothing past the car racing track raid where Hope shows off with Alexander.

But that's what it boils down to: Hope is a realistic child character, which is a shockingly underrepresented category in videogames (JRPGs are especially guilty of this, with their obsession to write very young teenagers as adult-minded superheroes most of the time) and I am proud of his progress.

What is his family life like? How does he perceive his destiny?

These questions honestly need no headcanons! They are both explored in excellent detail in the game and part of what makes him such an interesting lil bean. Hope's story begins with him witnessing his mother's death, and on top of that, his relationship with his father is skewed and resentful. If I have a critique about that, honestly, I feel the father/son arc could've been extended and expanded upon a little bit. But it is also realistic (and honestly rarely seen in fiction) for it to boil down to the kid having a misguided impression of his parent, only to open his eyes to the truth after the two are forced to bond over their shared loss.

I am not stopping at blood ties either. I think Hope's most interesting dynamics are with Lightning and Snow, who both develop as familial figures to him over time (Light's attachment to Hope honestly saved the character in my opinion. I love their bond.).

Also elaborated on is his perception of his 'destiny', this is something that all members of the player's party go through actually, and probably the focal core of FFXIII's plot. To suddenly be branded as a L'Cie, becoming the enemy of one's own home. Like everyone else, Hope struggles with this new reality and has to come to terms with the inescapability of his fate. That is SO MUCH to ask of a kid his age. It is honestly surprising he didn't go mad... though there are moments where he almost did.

I could say more but I strongly encourage you to pick up the game or watch the playthrough as a movie sometimes~ I think it is worth it!

Saru-mun\\

[sovolsv05cube3dprinter]

Exactly When 3D Printers Will Boom

It was agreed that 3D printers would be the doom of invention and that they would eventually be found in every American home. showcasing a brand-new era of do-it-yourself enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who would lead us into the blueprint for future developments. What we actually got was a small group of people creating some interesting products for a far more niche market. A real letdown. These days, it's clear that businesses are using 3D printers to quickly produce models of parts, but it's also clear that not everyone has been completely delighted with these machines. But still. This is the reason that during the next few years, 3D printer sales are almost certain to soar. As was previously said, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia have significantly expanded their R&D departments. Apart from the fact that these companies are always producing ever-more-impressive equipment, it's clear where processing power is headed as they're also looking for ways to make it more refined, with smaller dimensions and improved power efficiency. a significant amount of force contained in a small bundle that is effective all day. Powerful workstations were enormous when I first left for college, so I set aside something for my gaming PC that could almost fit in my backpack. These days, I can get 100 times the power out of a device that is practically the same size! For 3D printers worldwide, this democratization of registration power and versatile figuring will be a boon. As power handling advances, creating and managing computer-aided design programs and planning 3D objects will become increasingly simpler. We'll start to see competent level PCs trickle down to the masses in just one or two more processor generations!

Decentralization: The term "decentralization" is typically used in reference to NFTs and other cryptographic stages, as well as the MetaVerse. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that decentralization will play a big role in the development of 3D printers in the coming years. With open platforms already in place to market and sell your 3D plan manifestations, I believe that 3D printers will grow dramatically in a short amount of time thanks to decentralization and the independent blockchains that liberate a great deal of creativity.

Environmental Change, Environmental Turmoil, Environmental Emergency, or whatever term you want to use, is manageability. It is here, and our task is to put a stop to it. With manageability emerging as a primary motivation for many associations I acknowledge that the world will soon be overtaken by 3D printers due to their ability to employ a wide variety of recycled materials. This is obviously not some sort of silver shot arrangement. We cannot just recycle our way to a more environmentally friendly society, but I do believe that 3D printers will provide an additional solution for the global drive crisis in the long run, protecting both the environment and humankind.

Cost: $199

Auto Leveling

Flexible Build Plate

Metal Direct Drive Extruder

32-Bit Silent Board

Description:

According to Sovol, the main cubic printer with an instant drive is the SV05. The structure level of 300mm is completely high, but the form volume of 220 x 220 mm on x and y is standard. Other incredibly intriguing options available with the Sovol SV05 Cube 3D Printer include a 32-bit motherboard with silent drivers. To make changing the platter easier, it has a CR-Contact self-evening out sensor installed. In addition, a belt tensioner is located on the X-axis. Taking everything into account, the SV05 is equipped with a stylish and versatile platter. Even though 3D printers have advanced significantly, altered many endeavors, and probably accelerated some degree of advancement, I believe that the world will start to truly see 3D printers in 2023 and beyond! For those who are new to 3D printing, 3D Printers Online Store is a great option because it is ready to get started and produces high-quality prints for most small projects.

[fanficswheniremember]

Tomorrow Night - Teaser

Just a little teaser for an Eddie Munson x reader fic I've been working on. It is a silly little fluffy fic where nothing bad ever happens. Super excited about it, lots planned. 26k words written so far. Below is the first scene.

(Tomorrow Night is the name, not when it's being posted. No release planned yet.)

(Chris is the name I gave the member of Hellfire/Corroded Coffin who seems to have just been credited in the show as Freak #1.)

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

Eddie swept into the cafeteria holding the poster he had spent the previous night designing. He spotted Gareth, Jeff and Chris at their normal table. Long strides took him over to them quickly.

Before they had noticed his arrival, he slammed the poster down in front of them. “Gentlemen, I have a proposition.” None of them jumped at his sudden appearance, too used to the charming chaos he brought with him everywhere he went.

The poster still obscured by his hand on top of it, Eddie gestured around the group with his other hand. “You all know that I was writing over the weekend, and you are going to love it. But…to truly be able to appreciate the artistry…we are going to need something first.”

Finally, he pulled his hand off the poster with a flourish, revealing it to his bandmates.

Decorated with his usual style of illustrations, the headline that drew their eyes was, “FEMALE VOCALIST WANTED” right below their band’s name, “CORRODED COFFIN”. Lower down it gave details of auditions that Thursday in the storeroom they normally used for Hellfire.

“Why do you want to let a chick in the band?” Chris asked, not sounding pleased with the idea.

Eddie sighed at his bandmate’s lack of vision. He put his hand on Chris’ shoulder, looking him in the eye, “Just think of how much it would expand our range!” Letting go of Chris, he turned away slightly as he added, “And…one of the songs I’ve been working on just won’t be the same without a female voice.”

Looking around at his bandmates, his arguments did not seem to have moved any of them on the subject.

“Aw…Come on, guys. Unless one of you guys has a decent falsetto?...No?...Then give it a chance.”

They just continued to grumble.

Biting his lip and spinning on the spot, Eddie ran a hand over his face before turning back to his bandmates. “Fine,” he held his hands up in defeat. “But since I’ve already booked the room and put ten of these up around school,” he held up the poster, “let’s do the auditions and if we don’t find anyone that convinces you, I’ll figure something else out for the songs.”

After grudgingly accepting his terms, they changed the subject.

“Do you have everything prepared for Hellfire on Friday?” Jeff asked, rubbing his hands together. “I’m pumped to see what you’ve got planned for us this year.”

“Same, man,” Gareth agreed. “Any clues for us, Eddie?”

Eddie smirked, finally sitting down at the head of the table before leaning forward on his elbows and tapping his fingers together to give a sense of foreboding. “I am indeed prepared for the first official Hellfire session of the school year, and I have a lot planned for you…However!” He held up a finger, before slowly pointing it at Gareth. “You are aware that I cannot abide spoilers. And I would never share information with only part of the party…without reason.”

“I still don’t understand why you invited those freshmen to join,” Chris complained.

Rolling his eyes, Eddie stood up again, leaning forward, his hands flat on the table supporting him. “Those freshmen are vital to the future of Hellfire. I may have started this club, but I do not intend to let it end with me, with us.” He stood up straight, gesturing wildly as he continued, “As you replaced your predecessors, we replace our party members lost to graduation,” he swayed a little and put on a silly voice for the word ‘graduation’, “with fresh blood, that they may continue our legacy. They will find more little lost sheepies to guide on our sacred path once we are gone.” As he finished, he raised a hand in the air and crossed the other over his stomach before performing an over-the-top bow.

“So, are you actually going to graduate this year?” Jeff asked.

After flopping back into his seat, Eddie held his arms out in a lazy shrug. “We’ll see.”

[paunchsalazar]

I have read a lot of Ouran High School Host Club in the last few days… as a bored queer 23 year old now and it is so good… i kind of wish I read this as a kid although I’m sure it would be a whole different experience.

I don’t know!!! i think that the characters grow so much as it goes on and while it is stupid and silly it only gets more sincere?? I can’t think of a better way to put it

It is still a satire, it embraces tropes, it subverts them? it winks at you and yet it feels more snd more grounded as it goes on! I feel like absolutely everyone starts as a caricature and gains depth… in terms of the way they’re written? but also in-universe - this is haruhi’s first year of high school, this is a group getting to know each other better, of course there’s more to everybody and it can be such a lovely surprise (it’s all a good experience!! Tamaki says this) and people are funny!!

of course it was 2002 but idk as I read on it felt like there were a lot of places where I thought it would go for the lowest joke or disappoint lol, garner an eye roll, but I feel like it improves as it goes on but is never cruel? again, what starts as a one off gag might be given surprising depth? affection? everyone starts as a caricature anyway and gets a little more to them every time. and i feel like the joke is never on queer people… there are canonical queer characters that are loved and interesting!!! and even at its stupidest I am reminded that they are high schoolers?

idk I think a group of 15-17 year olds will learn so much and they already do during this very long school year lol. they are having epiphanies all the time. regarding really obvious shit… these are their first real friends, they just figured out they could be themselves even a little… they’re learning to be honest with others and with themselves, only now have the words for things. they already learn so much and look back thinking they’re stupid. they grow and want to grow and only seem like they’ll continue to. idk like I cannot fathom a world where Tamaki rejects anyone, even if he makes an ass of himself at times. people are stupid!! our worlds keep expanding, at a rapid rate at such an age, so much of this is new…

perhaps all of that is to say that it is (in my opinion) rather friendly to a queer reading… I really think that some of those characters are gay. it’s just so! and they’ll figure that out and I can’t imagine any sort of discovery being met with anything but compassion. they will realize stuff and visualize it with beautiful motifs and their worlds will keep expanding. As it goes on it feels like something of a love letter to making real friends and being yourself and being accepted for it. this story feels so loving!!! it loves friendship so much, it is a found family story at its core and it’s full of a lot of kindness

[bloodgulchblog]

As a recent convert, I think one of the things that gets me about the UNSC, for all that it contains many of our most beloved faces and characters, is absolutely the turbofascist monolithic antagonist of a hundred other works of fiction and yet here, somehow, remains the singular edifice standing between humanity and extinction when it came to the Covenant. It’s literally one of the worst things to happen to mankind except for \this particular incident/ and it’s maddening. Like I’m reading all this shit about Parangosky and Halsey today, and combing the wikis, and I’m just in awe- esp how that would like, ‘justify’ it’s existence in-universe ( even if it actually still wouldn’t have been enough! If the Prophets had waited like a week to kick things off it would have been over. )

Wild.

Welcome to, and my condolences for, Halo!

I think part of what's going on is: Halo borrows really openly from some source material, and two of the most obvious contributors to its DNA are Alien/Aliens and Starship Troopers. Halo: Combat evolved isn't just about shooting alien soldiers, it's also about the horror of encountering a new and scary parastic threat that's even more alien than the known enemy. (Someone with deeper pre-release Halo familiarity than me would have to confirm this, but I'm under the impression that the Flood was not mentioned anywhere before the game came out and it was a big surprise.)

Both of these sources feature pretty grim settings where you are not supposed (....at least in the film version of Starship Troopers, it's been a long time since I engaged with Starship Troopers in any form so I'm running on thinner memory ice here) to view the government/military as good and heroic.

One of the things that really cheered me up about Halo this year was finally reading Contact Harvest (which was released pretty much concurrently with Halo 3) and seeing in very clear terms how well Joseph Staten understood that this setting is incredibly fucked up. It's that way intentionally. Early Halo knows that the UNSC is the cudgel the Unified Earth Government is using to bludgeon the colony worlds into line and that this shit is not okay. We do get heroic UNSC characters all the time, but... I don't think that entirely derails the idea, because heroic and good individuals cannot overturn the badness of a whole power structure. (Also, Nylund absolutely loved brave and noble ship captains who are trying their best to do the right thing when faced with complicated and terrible choices, and really, who doesn't.)

I feel like the point where it starts to break down is as Halo went on to be not just a trilogy of games, but a huge ongoing media property where they (and by they I mean 343/Microsoft, because the rot really starts to set in by that point) had to keep figuring out reasons to make video games about this. And Halo's games have never been particularly good at calling out the fraught sociopolitical Stuff going on in the Halo universe, and thus the UNSC gets off looking way cleaner than it actually is unless you are big enough of a nerd to get into the expanded lore.

So, by trying to just continue what worked before and make UNSC Good Aliens Bad FPSes while the apocalyptic alien xenocide war is over, you end up with the weird situation where it feels like the big drivers of Halo canon don't want to rock the boat on the UNSC. That's how we get shit like the Spartan-IVs being presented as the "unproblematic" Spartan program even if the motives are the same and the ethics are still rancid.

Honestly, that's probably why they went with Cortana going off the chain in Halo 5. It raised the already-ugly issue of how badly AIs are treated in the UNSC, but it handily dodged having to deal with the much more mundane and close-to-reality issue of using military force for control over people.

[discet]

Odd thought but since you like to expand on Amphibia's worldbuilding, if Andrias were to just drop dead one day and the Core was for whatever reason out of the picture, who would most likely be next in line for the throne, assuming of course the answer isn't just no one and the kingdom ends up just dissolving on ethnic lines without its thousand year old centralizing figure?

Oh it absolutely is a fucking mess.

So to start there is no line of succession past Andrias. Things are stable now but I'm highly suspect of the truth of that 'Peacekeeper of 1000 Years' title. If anyone had a legal right to the throne Andrias would have been assassinated Centuries ago. No, a Leviathan must rule the kingdom, and if there isn't one, things get messy quick.

So for the sake of keeping as many X factors out of the way, let's say that Andrias bites it like a year prior to the girls arrival to Amphibia. So here's the map of the general authorities at the time of Andrias' death

So short term fallout. Without Andrias, the capital is basically left in a succession crisis that, in all liklihood, is going to get nasty. There is probably a cabal of old nobles who are all jockeying for authority and a chance for the crown. Without a guiding hand, this gives the Toad Lords the opportunity many have been itching for: to declare independence and strike their own colors. However, since none of them are capable of obtaining the warhammer, they become rivals rather than a united front.

We eventually end up with a map like this

The Core: City State of Newtopia

The bickering nobles sequester themselves in the castle where plots are constantly being spun, political alliances spun and betrayed on the daily. Nothing is getting done, and the army is largely left leaderless. The toad armies does not phase them, they will be double crossing each other until right up until the moment the toads end the discussion for them.

The population grows restless and as the toad armies circle in to claim the jewel of Amphibia, our two favorite newts make their move. With Yunan's support Olivia settles the debate with a military coup. She dissolves the noble class, as most of their lands are now in open revolt. With this unification Yunan is able to lead an effective defense of Newtopia and expel invaders to the outer ring, and securing farmland and access to the outer sea. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, Yunan cannot commit to any expansion.

Once the crisis has ended, Olivia, first of her name, is crowned it's queen. Yunan is crowned Queen Consort. To appease the people, a council is set up of elected officials from each borough of Newtopia, with Olivia at the head of it. Establishing what is effectively a constitutional monarchy.

In the decades following Newtopia remains the jewel of Amphibia, lost technology allowing them an economy that keeps coppers, mercenaries, and talent flowing into the city and keeps them a major player, despite their size.

The South

Toad authority here falls apart pretty much immediately here. There's no easy way to say this y'all, Grime was a fucking travesty as a leader. He wasn't charismatic and he wasn't well liked even by his own soldiers. He was cruel and a capable fighter which is valuable in an enforcer and not at all in a Warlord. Grime tries to make the same bid in the south as the other toad lords would, but without legitimacy and discontent already wide spread enough that all it took was one spunky human to kick off a revolutionary fervor, Grime and the toads are overthrown. This starts in the Valley and Spreads to the other settlements.

Each corner creates its own little frog principality with a royal family established of the rebel leaders from each territory. While they are full monarchists, I think their power of succession would be a tanistry. Cause I think it fits frogs, and also think its just a fascinating way to decide of succession.

Tanistry, very quickly, is a way of choosing an heir that goes like this. Only members related to the king can succeed them. However, who among the family is the heir is determined by election. Traditionally by the heads of family, though in the spirit of democracy I think all adult citizens would get a vote. Once the heir becomes king they are king for life, and a new heir is elected. Every decade or so another election is held unless the heir dies or dishonors themselves to the point where they are removed.

The principalities are on roughly equal footing with each other and have an alliance pledging to defend one another should the need arise, and it has, a few times. The valley, despite being one of the smaller principalities holds a position of honor among them as the ones who set the example for the rest of them to follow.

Each principalities has an army, but most of the time they act as hunters to subdue the rather wild south.

The North and East: The Toad Lords

The first of the toad lords to rise against the capital. Aldo and Bufo created an alliance with the aim of rushing in and capturing Newtopia. While they gained a great deal of territory, this plan failed. The new nation(?) stood on rocky footing until Aldo, ancient toad that he was, died leaving Bufo as the sole leader of this territory. Though only until he is overthrown

What is born out is effectively a mobile court, with the Warlord of the hour traveling the lands and beating any sign of dissent into submission. While the army is feared, internal politicking between Toad Families prevent the kind of unification to become a serious threat to Newtopia, or even the Frogs. Anytime a warlord tries to set off on conquest, their rivals at home will use the chance to raise arms against them.

The Newtopian city state largely encourages this state of affairs, because a truly united Toad Lands would be absolutely a force to be reckoned with. For now the Toad Lands are in a near constant state of upheaval. It suuuuucks to live there. Either your a peasant who is constantly harassed for tribute by whichever asshole has proclaimed themselves warlord this week. Or your a warrior who is dying for whichever asshole your family has declared for.

The West: The Rising Tide

Beatrix is not her brother, she was able to keep the toad army together despite a major defeat and in the face of Andrias' wrath in canon. She is shrewd and careful along with brash and With no rivals and the largest fleet of any state, she goes about securing the seas for her own realm.

Beatrix starts building up the cities and controls most of the trade in the world. Keeping her army well armed for any plans she has. She maintains power by establishing a more traditional kingdom, building out the tower into a fairly impressive citadel.

Beatrix, instead of focusing on the still settled areas of the world, instead uses her forces to reclaim the wilderness, dotting landscapes long abandoned with new towns.

It's stable and safe, but the toad nobles who maintain the settlements are as cruel as they have been for the last millenia.

The Seafoam Isles:

Honestly don't have a lot to say, the eastern islands were abandoned in the tumult of Toadland politics and largely just established their own government to keep things organized. Might be a democracy? They aren't major players and mostly just doing their own thing, largely isolated.

The Wilderness

Vast stretches of land are lost to the dangerous wildlife of Amphibia in the chaos. towns lay abandoned across the stretch of the continent. The whole South west is lost, the Eastern part of the continent is abandoned so the toad lords can focus their efforts.

[fatliberation]

I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

•  •  •

I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards. 

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body. 

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces. 

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body. 

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum. 

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color. 

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here? 

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric. 

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

[walpurga-nacht-academy]

“Any practitioner of magic that’s received even a modicum of training in the field has, at one point or another, heard of the term ‘grimoire’. Its origins are shrouded in mystery, its purpose unknown and the power that it possesses inestimable. However, their prevalence is also fading. 

As magic studies become more and more accessible to mages of all walks of life, it is considered futile for witches and warlocks to keep personal tomes of spells and hexes anymore. The uniformization of magical practice has brought about an age in which collaboration between our kind is considered not only beneficial, but also ideal. The practice of taking apprentices is no longer an individual choice that each magician makes for themselves, and thus the need for secrecy - the fear of others invading our most personal matters and thus robbing us of our knowledge has become quite absurd.

Nowadays, grimoires have started to gain a reputation as old-fashioned magical tools, relics of the past or tools of forbidden lore. Less than 200 remain still, collected by the Ministry of Magic’s illustrious archivists and kept in many museums across Twisted Wonderland for easy access to those that seek to expand their knowledge. Yet despite their heavy efforts many of these crucial tomes fall prey to the passage of them, deteriorating as their magic fades away. Preventing the loss of these books is quintessential, if not for us, then for future generations. Thus, many countries have launched conservation projects in order to salvage what is left of our inheritance.

It is due to these projects that my own efforts have not been in vain. For years I have searched all over the world to recover and preserve the eight grimoires which had once belonged to the eight great witches of the Bald Mountain, figures shrouded in such mystery that these books are considered the only valid proof of their existence. They are thick volumes, averaging about 1,000 pages each, something quite unusual for that period, and written in codes and foreign languages that have long passed into obscurity. Translating them required intensive work and research, and even so I was able to conquer only sixty percent of the original text. The rest will be lost to history, I am afraid to say, for there are few people able to interpret the original dialects and signs of these spellbooks. 

I hope that in the future there might be somebody more courageous and ingenious than me, who will decipher these tomes in their entirety. There is precious knowledge to be learned from these pages, power that has been lost over time, and power that might help the future. It is thus my request that for every person who reads this book detailing the journey I have taken since I decided fourteen years ago that I must resolve this mystery and prevent it from slipping through the cracks of progress, that you think to dedicate a little bit of time and money to the eminent researchers that still struggle to maintain their memories alive.   

In this regard, I would like to dedicate this book to the many people and organizations that have made possible the publication of this volume. First, there is of course the Magical Research Board, The Ministry of Magic and the Magic University who have kindly and dutifully supported me financially. The research grant that they have awarded me with has helped me carry my investigation through several countries, as well as access resources that would have been otherwise impossible for me to make use of.

I would also like to express my gratitude towards the ruling families of the Afterglow Savannah and the Valley of Thorns, for their generosity in allowing me to study the history of their kingdoms in order to better understand the social and political dimensions to two of the witches’ that are said to hail from these places. 

I would also like to thank all the translators and historians that have taken time out of their busy schedules to help with my manuscripts - pointing out translation errors, mistakes regarding historical dates and events, or even my continuous use of the word “mystery” of which I am guilty even in my opening chapter I must sadly admit! Thus, I would like to mention among many Miss Line, and her lovely daughter Safia, whose generosity saved my life when I was to drown at sea; 

my Lord Duban of the Land of Hot Sands, who enchanted me with tales of viziers and street rats who court princesses; 

Nefu, whose knowledge of the low town in the Savannah rivals none, I am sure of that; 

Lord Himalia of the Land of Pyroxene whose heart is as great as the acres of land he owns; 

old, wise Louisa who welcomed me in her hut before her beloved Cockatrice managed to tear me to shreds; 

my dear friend Daphne, whose courage is greater than even the rage of a Kerberos breed when it sees its owner attacked; 

Thursday, who proved to the world that despite their short stature dwarves should not be taken lightly after all; 

and General Vanrouge, whose skill with the sword is as unmatched as the knowledge he possesses. To all of them, I would like to express my sincerest, heartfelt gratitude for the help they have given me. It is truly unmistakable that good friends are more valuable than a thousand golden statues!

Though they are departed, I wish to thank my parents as well, for having instilled in me such good morals and values. I am eternally grateful to all your guidance and love, and hope that you rest safely above in the sky.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my dearest Alkin, who is first among familiars and friends alike. His companionship and experience has proven to be invaluable to me during my travels, and there are no words to express the warmth with which I regard my beloved brother.”

- Introduction to Of Grimoires and Pledges: A Study of Eight Texts that Shaped Our Understanding of Modern Magic

Grimoire of the Rose 

In the sea I used to be a poet.

You do not believe me. That is alright. I understand. My speech is stilted. My pauses are long. My mind, once sharp and swift as the marlin’s gait, now always searches its corners for words that came easily before. I have forgotten them all now. I glance around with wild eyes. The vastness around us scares me. 

You think, ‘Ah, this woman is not well.’ And perhaps you are right. 

You think, ‘She must have suffered greatly.’ That is not so.  

Please do not pity me. I do not deserve it. 

As all fools I’ve made peace with myself. 

As all wise men I wish to warn others. 

Forgive me. Speaking in your tongue is hard for me. But please bear it. I would like to tell you my story. It is not long or sad. Just short and silly. You will surely laugh as you read it. That is alright. I wish you would laugh. It eases my soul when I hear others laugh. It reminds me of the ocean.

But I wish to tell you my story. Please listen.

It starts with a beautiful princess born in a wealthy kingdom.

No, that princess is not me. I was born on the shore, among the sand and shells, under the great night sky. I have never seen a palace, nor worn a gown. I have heard that they are beautiful. Princesses wear them at balls, with golden slippers and dance away the night. This princess must have worn one too. She must have been very beautiful. And loved. All beautiful women are loved. 

No, I do not know what made her beautiful. I have never seen her. But I like to imagine it must have been so. It helps me rest. 

As I said, my story starts with a princess born in a wealthy kingdom. She was her father’s only child, a sweet, delicate girl with fair hair and golden eyes. 

Yes, I am lying now. For I never laid eyes on her. I say these things because it helps me rest. 

I am repeating myself? Forgive me. Your tongue is difficult for me. I wish to tell you my story. Will you listen? 

My story starts with a beautiful child, born to a widowed king, who paid three gold pieces to the undertaker to build a temple over his wife’s grave, where he went to pray every evening. I do not know why humans built temples. My kind does not. 

I have asked him, but he did not know either.

He loved her too. They all did. She was beautiful. All beautiful women are loved. I was loved too. I was beautiful too. 

My story starts with the birth of a beautiful child, whose father built a temple ashore the land where my mother had borne me. It was the darkest night she had ever seen, and the stars shone bright. My mother cried as I came out, small and pink and weeping. I was so small I fit in her arms with ease. She was frightened I would die of cold. She bundled me up and ran to the sea. 

You think it’s strange. That is alright. Forgive me. I will explain.

My mother ran with me to the sea, for my father was giving chase. She reached the waters before he had a chance to grab her. That is as well. For if he did, he would have pulled my mother’s skin away. 

Yes, my father loved my mother. All men love us. They cannot help it. It is their sin.

He found her upon the beach and took her to his hut and made her his wife. She bore him sons, I don’t know how many for I never asked, and then me. My father’s world came crashing down upon him. My mother wept with joy. When I came she knew Mother Sea would welcome her back. She bore me upon the shore so that Mother would bear witness. 

When mother’s feet touched the water, she had already been gone. I do not know if my father followed. I think he must have not. Mother Sea does not welcome his kind. You cannot breathe when Mother holds you. That is very pitiful. 

Forgive me. Your tongue is difficult. 

There are no men among us. It is only us and Mother. She loves us deeply and we love her. And the men that Mother hates also love us. It is a difficult love. No, I do not know if we love the men too. We must love them. We swim every year to the shore to take our skin off and be like them - the human women that they love. And they love us too. Because we are more beautiful than their women.

Forgive me. 

They love us, and they desire us. They take our skins and bring us to their sheds and take us in their beds. We bear them sons and mend their clothes and curse the land we live on and love them dearly. We cannot help but love them. No, it is not love. It is love. Your tongue is very difficult. 

We love them and we love them. We must, for Mother no longer loves us when we love the men. She does not recognize us anymore. She cannot hold us when she doesn’t know who we are. She is frightened of us then. So we love the men because we cannot love Mother anymore. We miss Mother. But she doesn’t miss us. 

It is very pitiful. 

When we are human we cannot love Mother, so we wait for daughters to be born so she will love us again. No, only daughters. Never sons. Mother does not love our sons. They cannot see or hear Mother. But daughters - us - we can. I heard Mother before I had been born. She sang to me of the sea foam, and the waves and of my mother’s skin and where my father hid it. I told my mother this. She dug the chest buried underneath the juniper tree with her bare hands as I sang to her. She was crying because she heard Mother’s voice in mine.

I do not know what happened to my father. I have never returned to that shore. I have never met my brothers. I do not wish to. Mother does not either. She told me to be careful. She held me to her breast as we watched the angelfish, and told me to never go to the land of men and take off my skin. She told me to keep away. 

But it was a waste. She knew this. We must go to the shore every year. We must take off our skin. 

My mother did so the next year as well. I never saw her again. She must have been found by another man. That is as well. I would soon follow in her footsteps. 

My story starts with the birth of a fair child, beloved by all, and especially by the young poet who wished to marry her. He was a handsome man, but he was poor. This is unfortunate in your land. Forgive me. 

Why did he love the princess? Because she was beautiful. All beautiful women are loved. 

Yes, all beautiful things must be loved.

Why?

Because they are beautiful. That is all.

The poet loved this princess because she was beautiful, but she did not love him because he was poor. It is a pitiful thing. 

Yes, I loved the poet too. Because he was beautiful. No, I did not love him. I loved him. Your tongue is very difficult. 

I wish you could understand. 

He did not understand either. Though he was a poet. It was odd. He told me he could not hear me sing when I spoke, and did not hear me speak when I sang. But Mother hears us. She hears me and my sisters as we sing-speak and speak-sing to her. Only Mother can hear us. 

But still I loved him.

Yes. No, I did not love him. Please understand. 

I sang to him under the night sky and he kissed my lips. I spoke to him about love and he kissed my cheeks. He loved me on the shore until dawn. No, it was love, not love. Forgive me. 

When Mother released the sun from her hold, he kissed my eyelids. He had beautiful lips. I loved them dearly. He was a beautiful man. All beautiful things must be loved. 

He did not take me for his wife. He loved the princess.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.

I am repeating myself. Please understand.    

‘You are taking my skin,’ I told him. ‘You are taking my skin. What will I do without my skin? Mother won’t take me back without my skin.’

‘Forgive me.’

He spoke so sweetly. Do you understand? All beautiful things must be loved.

‘The princess of this land - I love her dearly. I wish to marry her. But I am poor. I am not worthy. I wish to be worthy. The princess - she wishes for a coat more beautiful than the sunrise. I have searched this land - from the mountain to the sea, from the fields to the hills, but I have not found a coat more beautiful than yours.’

‘I cannot give you my skin,’ I told him. ‘You must take me as your wife. I cannot give you my skin for another. I must have my skin to return to Mother.’

‘Forgive me,’ he said. He kissed my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids - and then he was gone. He took my skin to the princess. She loved it dearly. She loved him dearly. They were to be married within the year. She wore my skin as her veil. It was a beautiful veil. It was a beautiful wedding.

All beautiful things must be loved.

I gave chase. Yes, I did. I followed after him - my husband. 

I called to him. But he did not stop.

I wept for him. But his heart did not yield. 

I wept for Mother. But she could not hear me. 

I wept for our Master. He said I was a fool to trust the word of man. He thundered. He roared. He drove me away with arrows made of fire and spiteful words. He did not care. He did not listen.

Please listen. 

I wish to tell you my story.

There was once a child born upon the land where a temple was built with just three gold coins. This child was so beautiful that when she spoke, the birds would listen to hear her song. When she danced, the ground would soften underneath her feet so no harm would come upon her. When she smiled, the sun bowed so it would not deter from her beauty.

He loved her. She scorned him. He was poor. It is a pitiful thing.

I loved him. He loved her. I loved him and loved him. 

Your tongue - forgive me.

She came to me upon the shore. 

All beautiful things must be loved.

My husband - he left me upon the shore. He took my skin and left. He loved the princess. I loved him.

I wanted to return to Mother. But Mother did not love me anymore. She did not hold me. She could not hold me. I wept. Mother’s arms - they seemed to wrap around my throat. I could not breathe.

She came to me upon the shore. My Lady.

My sisters - they tore away their skin. A leg, an arm, a breast, an ear - they had sewn it all together. They gave the coat to me. They said Mother would hold me now.

She did not. She could not.

I loved Mother. I loved and loved and loved and loved and loved and loved and loved Her. 

She could not love me. He did not love me. She did not love him.

They were to be married within the year.

It was a beautiful wedding. 

It was a beautiful veil.

‘My skin,’ I said. ‘My skin, my skin, my skin - You must take me as your wife.’

‘I do not love you.’

‘You must. Mother does not love me anymore. You must.’

His roots went deep. They touched her mother’s grave. They touched my mother’s grave. 

He loved her. She loved him. No, not love. Love. 

Please understand. 

All men love us. It is their sin. We must love them too, when Mother no longer loves us. 

Please understand.

‘My child, my rose,’ she spoke. Her eyes were so sweet. I wept. She kissed my eyelids. She kissed my tears. All beautiful things must be loved.

I loved him. I let him bloom. I gave him light. I gave him water. I fetched it every day from the well and watched him grow. My husband.

It was a beautiful wedding.

‘My child, my rose, my sweetest heart.’

She held me. Mother could not hold me. She held me and kissed me and loved me. 

Your tongue is very difficult.

‘I do not love you,’ my husband lied. ‘I cannot love you. I do not want to love you. Please understand.’

All men love us. It is their sin. 

It was a beautiful veil. 

Forgive me.

I am repeating myself.

Forgive me.

Forgive me.

Forgive me.

They take us from the shore into their huts and into their beds. We bear them children and mend their clothes and curse the land we live on and love them dearly. And wait for daughters to be born.

Every year he gave me blossoms. I crushed them underneath my feet. He fed on my blood. 

I loved him. And I loved her. And I loved Mother. And I loved her.

‘My child,’ she kissed me. ‘My rose,’ she kissed me. ‘My sweetest heart,’ she kissed me.

I sheath myself in wicked thorns and sing of my Lady’s love. 

Please listen. Please understand.   

My mother’s grave. Her mother’s grave.

He took her into his hut and into his bed. He took her into the garden and stripped her of her skin. He hid it underneath the juniper tree where mother heard me sing.

All men must love us. It is their sin.

She was a beautiful child. He was a dutiful king. He paid three gold pieces for the temple. It was made of stone and wood and the bed inside it was warm.

They take us from the shore and into their beds.

I loved him. He died in spring. I burned him. I kissed the ashes.

Mother would not listen. 

Mother could not understand.

It was a beautiful veil.

Forgive me.

Your tongue is very difficult. 

I wish to tell you my story.

Please listen.

Notes

“Translating this introductory part of the grimoire has proven to be by far the easiest part of my endeavour, as there has not been much to translate at all. It seems that unlike her sisters, the Witch of the Rose wrote in the common tongue of that time, which fortunately for me is not very different from our current one. Line tells me this might be because the language of the selkie has no written form. In fact, its complexity is so great, no written form could properly capture its beauty.

It is an interesting notion to me, a student with meagre interest in languages, at the very least before I become employed in this project. There is no proper way to prove this, however, as according to what Line tells me, she can barely remember even the few things she picked up from her grandmother. It is so with every selkie that lives on land for too long - slowly they forget the tongue of Mother Sea (an ancient pagan deity, I believe) and learn the tongue of their husbands. Line herself seems to remember mostly old songs that she teaches to little Safia too so she can remember her ancestors even a little. She tells me they are the last ones. 

Line’s great-great-grandmother was taken from the sea by her husband as well - a practice which was considered normal back in the day - and as she never managed to have any daughters was forced to live the rest of her life on this foreign land. She tells me this story with a sort of melancholic detachment as she brushes her daughter’s long, golden hair. This is standard for their species it seems - all daughters have golden hair and golden eyes which makes them look terrible and inviting to the men that come across them.

Line also tells me that the selkie language has over 34 words to express ‘love’. She says that the witch must have been trying to capture them all as she wrote down her confession, but she can only remember a few of the ones her grandmother taught her. Thus, there is ‘love gleaned from above the sea foam’, ‘love that is realized by the stroke of midnight’, ‘love which blooms only at the wake of dawn’, ‘love which burns one as they feel it’ which is different from ‘love that scorches one as they let go of it’. She does not know the word for the love felt for one’s husband, but she tells me that the love for one’s daughter is translated as ‘love for a budding flower which blooms on the bottom of the ocean’.    

She tells me all this with a mournful look - the expression of a woman who knows that when she passes there will be a little less of her legacy left. The grimoire that I show her has a shell accessory on the cover that when opened produces the most beautiful melody in the world. When I showed Line this she started weeping and once she calmed down she explained that it was the same song that her grandmother used to sing when she was little. I believe it must be an old folk song, though she cannot confirm it for me, since she admits that there are barely any words that she recognizes. Though she can tell with some certainty that it is a song of forgiveness - that the witch is begging her mother to welcome her back to the sea. Little Safia listened to the song as well, but I could tell that beyond the soothing melody nothing stuck out to her at all. It broke Line’s heart.

I stayed there for almost two months learning what I could about the selkie. It did Line good too since she felt that even if she were to die, little Safia and her children would not be robbed of her heritage. I was touched by this sentiment - so much that I swore that once I have finished my business collecting and translating the grimoires I would make sure to amass in one volume the entirety of Line’s teachings during the time they graciously let me stay there.”

-  Of Grimoires and Pledges: A Study of Eight Texts that Shaped Our Understanding of Modern Magic

“It has now been more than ten years since I have made that promise, which I have managed to keep after all. If you were to look in any library right now, dear reader, you might spy tucked away in one of the shelves a little book of no more than 100 pages, more than half filled with illustrations and drawings, while the other half is full of songs and poems and little phrases that Line shared with me as we sat huddled around the fire at night. I’ve been told it is a commercial failure - that nobody but the most dedicated anthropologists give it more than a glance. But it does not matter to me. It took four years for the 100 copies to sell. I have recently ordered 100 more. 

To others these books might be nothing more than curiosities, oddities, a change of reading material - but it is not so. Not in the slightest. These are the words and experiences of a woman whose ancestry has been erased almost entirely and plunged into obscurity. By no means can I simply let her life or history be disregarded in such a manner. Especially now since I am the only one left fighting. 

It was two years after I departed from Line’s house that I received a letter from the young lord who oversaw the village she lived in. I was in the midst of a lesson with Old Woman Louisa when I was informed that due to a tragic accident little Safia lost her life at sea, followed three months later by her mother who died of grief. I was left numb by the news - barely registering it at all and inconsolable for weeks after. I had to leave Louisa’s abode as my mourning made the beasts under her care uneasy, and with no goal in mind simply proceeded forward to the Isle of Lamentation. A fitting spot to vent my grief.

I have had the good mind to send the young lord a letter asking him to keep the hut in which they lived in good condition, and returned there two years after my travels ended. It is now a museum, my dear reader, dedicated to Line, Safia and all the women who suffered at the hands of their destiny by being taken from their home to live on these strange lands. The last that will even suffer this destiny, for Line and Safia’s deaths did not mark merely the loss of two great souls and hearts from the world, but also the loss of an entire species. There are no more selkie that roam the ocean, and if there are any on land they must have long forgotten they even were. 

To them I wish to dedicate this small volume that I have compiled, relying on the memory of the most wonderful woman I have ever met in my life, and the innocence of the sweetest little girl that I have had the good fortune of knowing.  

May their souls rest among the stars, free of pain and suffering, curled in Mother Sea’s bosom.”

- Songs of Mother Sea: A Short Guide to the History of Selkie Culture Through Poems and Music

[the-gay-prometheus]

Frankenstein AU Segment - “Willful Disobedience”

Clervalstein yearning goes brrrrrrr

Anyways- uh... so as I said at the beginning of pride month, my goal for June is to write at least one directly Clervalstein related AU segment each week because gay. 

This time around, I was inspired to write about the events that led to how Henry would eventually find Victor and the Creature on the mountain, so in terms of timeline, this takes place before all segments I’ve written except for “Home Again” and “Same Scars, Same Stitches.”

A couple of fun little tidbits about the making of this segment (feel free to skip over them and get right to the segment below the cut, this is just me rambling about some inspiration):

1. The whole bit with Victor drawing and the Creature mimicking him by drawing as well was somewhat inspired by the “Forbidden Friendship” scene from How to Train Your Dragon. I listened to that specific track from the movie score a few times while I was in the process of thinking about this idea!

2. Another bit of musical inspiration actually came from the Chronicles of Narnia, specifically the track “Evacuating London” from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. If you time it just right and you’re somebody who can actively read and listen to music at the same time, it should somewhat line up with the last few paragraphs (excluding Henry’s bit at the end) - starting at where Victor says “I’d give anything-”, then with the little piano part being timed with the paragraph that starts with “It was intricately detailed-”, then the major swell in that half of the song should line up with the paragraph where the Creature begins feeling the need to disobey Victor’s most important rules; then comes the part that begins with a bit of bells and eventually vocalization, and that entire half of the track should align with the Creature carrying out his plan at least most of the way. Of course - all of this depends on your reading speed, but I would definitely recommend listening to the song after reading at least and imagining those parts of the segment along with it if you’re interested in a little peek into my crazy writing process! 😅

Anyways- this is another wholesome segment, so no warnings needed to my knowledge!

As always, all likes, reblogs, and comments of any kind are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated!

~~~

Sunlight warmed the cold stone of the mountain ridge upon which Victor sat. His sleeves were rolled up on his arms, as the heat from the summer sun was felt much more intensely up on the mountain top despite the cool alpine breeze. Heavy clouds capped the peaks beyond though the sky was primarily a clear blue, and mist drifted through the valleys below. Though the view was magnificent, the sketchbook that sat on Victor’s knee contained no trace of the mountains. His eyes darted from the open page to the horizon, but it wasn’t the horizon he was searching for. As he stared over the peaks beyond, it wasn’t the view itself he focussed on, and instead an image that was clear in his mind. With a slight smile at the thought, he turned his gaze back down to the page and continued his sketching. It wasn’t long before the smile faded as the sound of quiet, careful footfalls upon the stone broke the calm silence, and he became aware of a presence directly beside him. He instinctively scooted himself about a half inch away as the other figure slowly sat at his side, his brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate harder on his sketching. “What are you doing?” came the inquisitive voice of his creation, and he felt the looming figure lean over in an attempt to view what he was drawing. With a further frown, Victor covered over his sketch with his other hand and turned away.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he grumbled in reply. The creature tried to get a better look, but Victor’s hand covered over too much of it for him to be able to see. He sat there for a moment longer, his mind wandering and his gaze flitting about from view to view as he tried to decide what it was he should do. Now that the cabin was finally completed, he found himself with a lack of activities to keep him busy, and though his creator was certainly better company now than he had been when he first arrived to the mountain, he still wasn’t much of a conversationalist and was often preoccupied with his own thoughts or projects. Out of ideas, he hummed something softly to himself, some tune he had once heard Victor singing one day many weeks ago. Victor lifted his eyes at the sound and glanced over at him, but the moment the creature returned his gaze, he rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning back to his sketching. Quieting himself at his creator’s reaction, the creature sighed and stood, walking back toward the cabin. Victor almost felt bad - almost - but he kept drawing, now absentmindedly humming the same tune. After a few minutes, he became distracted by the sound of footsteps once again, but this time the creature sat a ways away from him. He went quiet, trying to ignore his creation and keep his focus, but he heard the scratching of another pen on paper, then a pause, then more scratching, and he felt himself being watched. With an exasperated sigh, Victor dropped his pen beside him and looked over to the creature. “What on earth are you doing?” The creature looked up at him, his expression blank.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he answered matter-of-factly. Victor stared at him a moment, then frowned.

“Back talking me? That’s new.” The creature blinked, but didn’t answer, instead turning back down to the piece of paper that lay on his knee and continuing to draw something on it. Now thoroughly curious, Victor stood, walking over to him and standing behind him to look over his shoulder. The creature made no efforts to hide his drawing, and Victor could clearly see the rough beginnings of a person sitting in the exact same pose he had been sitting in. “Are you… drawing me drawing Henry?”

“Ah, so you were drawing someone named Henry.” Victor blushed furiously.

“Oh you sly bastard,” he muttered. The creature glanced up at him. “How clever of you, to get an answer out of me like that.”

“That was not my intention, but I cannot say I am disappointed by the result,” the creature responded simply. Victor sighed, sitting down beside him before flopping dramatically onto his back. Now trying to think based on memory, the creature gazed off into the distance before looking down at his paper and continuing to draw. “May I ask who this Henry person is?” he asked as he drew. “I hear you speak the name often. He must be of great importance to you.” Victor wanted to be angry. He wanted to tell his creation to mind his own business and stop prying into his personal life, and yet… he couldn’t be angry - not while Henry was the topic of the conversation, anyway.

“Henry is… was my…” He paused, carefully thinking about how to choose his words, “closest friend.” There was a length of silence as he felt an ache in his chest from the thought of Henry, and the creature took a moment away from his drawing before returning to it.

“Tell me about him,” he suggested as he sketched. Victor sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, holding his sketch of Henry over his heart as he stared into the sky.

“Where to even begin with him,” Victor uttered quietly.

“Describe him to me.” Victor lifted his sketch up and stared at it, before holding it out to the creature. The creature glanced up, and looked at it with a curious expression. Victor gave him a curt nod, signaling that he was welcome to inspect it closer, so he gently took it from Victor’s hand and inspected it closely.

“He’s tall, but not too tall - just tall enough that I have to look up in order to look into his eyes. And he’s always well dressed - I don’t think there’s ever been a day when he wasn’t looking his best, though I suppose I might be a bit biased on that.” For a moment he wondered just how much further he should go with his description. How could he describe someone like Henry without giving his true feelings away? He hesitated, then sighed with a smile. His creation already knew one of his secrets, and, after all, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere or seeing anyone else, so what harm was there in completely venting his thoughts? “He has the most thoughtful hazel eyes, toffee brown around the edges and streaked with emerald green that deepens toward the pupils, the kind of eyes you could get lost in if you stared for too long.” The creature’s pen went still and he looked up toward the horizon, trying to imagine what Victor was describing. “And his hair is long - not quite so long as yours, but ends just past his shoulders - and lays in tangled waves always kept tied back, though a few strands never fail to set themselves free. When the sun hits it just right, I could swear it was made of fire,” Victor breathed as he pictured it in his mind. “It’s the kind of brilliant auburn that takes your breath away, that seems to gleam with its own radiant light. Sometimes I swear he’s more angel than man, and perhaps if angels do exist, he may well be one of them.” The creature smiled, but the smile soon faded as his mind drifted to Paradise Lost and further to his past. He blinked the thought away, then turned his eyes back down to his art, setting Victor’s drawing of Henry down at his side. “He’s covered with what must be thousands of freckles, mostly concentrated on his cheeks but they expand over his face and at the very least his arms, chest, and back. I would liken them to… dark stars against a bright sky,” Victor explained. He raised an arm up and began tracing lines in the air as he continued. “I used to try to find constellations among them, and sometimes I thought I nearly could. Orion, Andromeda, Lepus, Lynx, Pegasus, Phoenix, Vulpecula,” he muttered each constellation as he imagined himself tracing the lines between freckles on Henry’s skin, his chocolate brown eyes seeming to light up with wonder as he grew to be lost in his own imagination.

“He barely sounds real,” the creature interjected nonchalantly, hardly looking up from his drawing as he began to focus closer on it. Victor grinned and chuckled softly.

“I tell myself that every day,” he murmured with a hint of sarcasm. “Surely no man could ever be so perfect, and yet there he is-” He paused, reaching higher toward the sky and extending his fingers to feel the breeze between them, “as real as you and I.” His hand dropped back down to his chest as he heaved a sigh. “There’s no man on earth as generous or as compassionate as my-” He stopped himself, blushing hard as he realized what it was he was about to say. “As Henry, I mean. Just… just Henry.” The scratching of the creature’s pen stopped again, and Victor glanced over at him to see him staring ahead in clear contemplation of the implications of his words before returning to his art. “You know,” Victor began, returning his eyes to the sky. “I can just about guarantee that if it were Henry who made you instead of me, you would have turned out ok.” The weight of his words hadn’t set in before he said them, but now that they were out, they sat heavy on his chest like lead. It took him a moment, but he sucked in a ragged breath and exhaled unsteadily. “If it were him instead of me, William would still be alive.” At those words, the creature froze, as rather than a weight to him they felt like a dagger slowly piercing between his ribs and etching each letter directly onto his beating heart. “And to think… Even if it wasn’t him who made you, if it were him who found you here, perhaps your night terrors would have all but ceased by now. And maybe, by his grace, you would be at peace.” They sat in contemplative silence, both somehow altogether calmed and unnerved in each other's presence. “I’d give just about anything for him to be here,” Victor mentioned, breaking the silence and lifting himself up onto his hands. “And I know all it would take is one letter. He’d drop everything to come here. But that’s… that’s just it. That’s the problem.” He sighed, fully sitting upright. The creature glanced over at him. “I can’t let him just… ruin the rest of his life for me. I don’t know how I could live with myself knowing that I held him back because of my own mistakes.” His eyes dropped to his other side. “And yet… I barely know how I can live with myself without him here.” It was at that moment that he felt something being laid gently on his lap, and when he looked down, he saw the drawing the creature had been working on.

It was intricately detailed, each line placed carefully onto the page with such precision. Though it was only simple line art, Victor could clearly see the image of himself sketching from earlier on the page, but standing in front of him was another figure - Henry. He was exactly as Victor described him, tall and well dressed, with long hair tied back and a few strands that drifted over his face. Though there was no color, his eyes seemed just as gentle and full of wonder as Victor remembered them to be as he stared off to some distant land. His face was covered in tiny dots, freckles, each so meticulously pricked on that Victor could clearly trace some of the constellations he described between them. Tears welled in his eyes as he placed his fingers gently on the drawn image, running them gently down the drawing’s cheek, wishing instead of cool paper that it was the soft, warm touch of Henry’s face. “Did I do him justice?” the creature inquired quietly, trying to read his teary expression. Victor sniffled and smiled.

“You… you’re quite the artist,” he managed to answer. Gingerly, he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, slowly rising to his feet. “I’ll… I’ll be back later. I need to take a walk and… clear my head,” Victor mentioned, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Will you be ok on your own?” The creature didn’t answer for a moment, his yellow eyes staring into the distance as he thought deeply, but soon he snapped his attention back to the present.

“Yes, of course. Take your time, Victor.” Victor sighed and nodded.

“I’ll try not to be too late to return.” His creation watched as he wandered off and eventually disappeared into the trees, before returning to his thoughts. It was strange - in all the months that he had been there, the creature had never once considered disobeying Victor, especially out of the fear that he might abandon him again. Suddenly, however, he felt the strong need to disobey each and every one of Victor’s most important rules. He hated to see his creator so struck with longing, but even more so, he considered the positive ramifications of what his carefully formulated plan might bring. Sure, Victor might be initially upset, but with how much he desperately wanted this Henry person to be there with him, surely it would be well worth it in the end.

The first part of his plan was simple. He would need to break Victor’s trust, and search through his personal belongings. He made his way back to the cabin and slipped into Victor’s room to find a mess of folded papers lying on the bed stand - each paper being a letter he had received from a Henry Clerval. Though all he was searching for was an address, the creature couldn’t help himself and decided to read through some of the letters. As he did, he became even more certain about his decision. Not only was this man exactly as Victor had described, but the connection between them was clearly something so strong that it should have been unbreakable. To his luck as well, the creature managed to find amongst the scattered papers a letter Victor had intended to send as a reply to Henry but never had the chance to send, dated from a time before his creation.

The second part of his plan would be the most time consuming, but also the most critical, and this unsent letter would prove to be the perfect resource. Retrieving his pen and a small stack of paper Victor had stashed away, he began crafting a letter of his own. With as much precision as he could muster, he forged Victor’s handwriting and did his best to copy his style and choice of language. A few hours were spent on this, most of that time spent on crafting one single sentence until he was sure it was perfect before finally continuing on with the rest of the letter. After he completed it, he spent a few more minutes checking it once, then once more to ensure it was in fact as accurate as he could make it, before then spending a little more time practicing forging Victor’s signature and finally signing the note in his creator’s name.

Finally came the most dangerous part. With only his own memory of his travels from Ingolstadt to guide him, he would need to find and deliver the letter to someone who would be able to ensure that it reached Henry safely. Of all Victor’s rules, perhaps his greatest was that the creature was to never descend the mountain, and above all, was never to enter civilization or interact with any other human beings. Each of these would need to be broken in order for his plan to succeed. For a moment, he hesitated. Would Victor become so cross with him over this that he would abandon him once again? Where would he go if he did? What would he do? Who could he turn to? Still, it cut him sharp to think that he might be squandering this small chance to bring his creator some joy after all his sorrow if he were to abandon his plan now. His mind was made - no matter what the outcome would be, he was going to ensure this letter was delivered, and hope that Henry would arrive some day soon just as Victor said he would.

He would need to be swift in order to ensure that Victor would never know he had even left, so he quickly yet cautiously put each letter back in its rightful scattered place as though they had never been touched, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. With a deep, shaky breath, he could feel a new sensation pulsing through him - a rush of adrenaline that raised his heart rate and widened his yellow eyes. Letter clutched tightly in hand, exited the cabin and broke into a sprint. Down the mountain he ran with superhuman speed, leaping over logs and boulders as though they were mere hurdles. Though he should have balked at sheer cliff faces, instead he lept from them and skid down their sides, ignoring the sharp pain of the rock scraping at the soles of his feet and the palm of his empty hand. Letting his intuition guide him, he continued his swift journey to Geneva. Though the place held painful, dreadful memories for him, the surge of adrenaline that coursed through him overrode the thoughts, and he raced toward the location of the address. Slowing to a walk, his chest heaved and ached from exertion, but he slowed his breathing as he came upon a fence that outlined one of many pastures that outskirted a large house on a hill beyond. In one pasture, he could just barely see a figure on horseback, cantering through a field with his wavy, tied hair flickering ember orange in the sunlight behind him. 

“Can I help you, sir?” came a sudden voice from beside him. He jumped at the sound, instinctively hiding his face in the hood of his cloak.

“I- ...yes. Yes, I believe you can,” he stammered in reply. The stranger, a servant from the Clerval household, gave him a curious look as he held out the letter. “This is a letter for a man named Henry Clerval. I am of the impression that this is his residence?” The servant smiled as he took the letter.

“Ordinarily I would have sent you in the direction of Ingolstadt in Germany, but as luck would have it, master Henry returned home just yesterday.” He inspected the folded letter curiously. “May I ask your name?” The creature froze, gripping his cloak tighter around himself.

“I am but a simple deliverer of this message, kind sir. My name need not be of any concern. As for the letter, I am under the impression that he will understand who it is from once he has received it.” The servant nodded.

“I understand. Thank you - I will see that it’s delivered to him promptly.” With that, the man turned and started off toward where the man on horseback was riding, glancing back at the creature in confusion for a moment before continuing with a brisk pace to the one he would be delivering the letter to. The creature waited a moment longer to watch for the rider’s reaction, smiled, knowing he had made the right decision, and began his sprint back toward home.

“Master Henry? Sir?” the servant called in the pasture, letter held carefully in his hand. Henry’s hazel eyes lifted as he turned his head and gently pulled back on the reins of his mount. The mare he rode slowed to a trot, then to a walk as Henry carefully turned her in the direction of the servant.

“Yes, Marc? What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, sir,” Marc replied. As Henry slowed his steed to a stop at his side, he looked down curiously at the other man, who held the letter out to him. “This arrived for you just now from an unknown deliverer. He said you would know who it was from when you read it.” Now thoroughly intrigued, Henry took the letter and opened it. His eyes widened as he beheld the handwriting, and slowly his other hand lifted to his mouth as his jaw dropped while he read. “Is there something wrong, sir?” Tears welled in Henry’s eyes, dripping down onto his freckled cheeks as he looked up from the letter, his expression of shock turning to a tearfully happy smile.

“No, Marc, everything is much better than I had anticipated.” Marc gave him a confused glance. “Will you help me ready a supply pack and ride with me? I will need to be leaving at once.”

“Of course, sir,” Marc replied with a curt nod. “May I ask where it is we are headed?”

“The base of Mount Montanvert.” Henry turned his mount, his eyes resting on the distant mountains. “Be prepared to bring the horses back here for me once we arrive there. I might not be returning for quite some time.”

[isoraqathedh]

Using notation to understand the world

This post was originally an article in my Gemini capsule. You can read it in its gemtext form here. Note that since Tumblr does not like Gemini links this actually goes to the HTTPS mirror.

Notation is the idea that an arbitrary object can be represented by some other abstract object. A specific type of notation, which is the one most people would understand in the conventional sense of the word “notation”, is when the object doing the representing is written. Commonly seen examples of notation include those that represent maths, music, electrical circuits and even lists of key-presses. In this article I discuss how notation has shaped my understanding of things, and also propose a notation-oriented way of understanding something.

How to understand something

There was an xkcd comic that goes something like this:

My hobby:

Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I'm not actually an expert in their field.

In the end, the protagonist of the comic managed to find a field of study where he successfully made inroads into a community by producing words in the right order to pass for genuine knowledge.

This made me think about how someone would go about successfully fake knowledge of something. Eventually, I came up with this two-step process:

Understand the language, and how to recognise something as a correct statement.

Understand how to combine statements together to form a correct third statement.

I brought this up with someone, and he noted that by the time you have done both of these things, you aren’t faking knowledge of something, you now understand it.

In my opinion that isn’t strictly true, but it does come a lot closer than other processes. A studied reader might recognise this as reminiscent of a Chinese room, where someone can fake knowledge by reading in written text (i.e. a question) and responding according to a translation book.

While it may look like a Chinese room at first, a critical difference is that in a Chinese room, the translation book is something external to the operator, whereas the situation I came up with requires you to memorise it. While a rote memorisation would result in something almost entirely identical, a common occurrence with human minds is that it like to take shortcuts, and it is there where the situation becomes markedly different, as the shortcuts are now a form of understanding where you can now produce correct statements without memorising any translation book.

Additionally, a second form of understanding is to be able to generalise from the words you are given. A translation book can give you some rules, but when a human reads it the experience is that he will try to generalise from the existing rules and make up new ones in the vein of the ones he was given. This is expressed in a number of ways – notably some of them are quite distasteful – but the key here is that there is a point where a human would try to expand the rules that he was given and apply it to something unrelated just to see if it works. (Though, in some cases, “just to see if it works” is replaced with “and assume it works”, leading to all kinds of consequences that are beyond the scope of this article.)

Let’s now move away from dry theoretical explanations and show how this applied to me by way of example.

Making your own – the C. C. F. D. N.

The problem statement

When I was 17 I was very bad at Chinese. I am still fairly bad at Chinese, which we’ll get to later.

The main problem with writing Chinese is that sinograms – what the language is written in – are taught badly to me. I could not really understand any of the logic behind writing these unusual things, and what real information was given to me was not well-organised. What that means effectively is that I was stuck writing in a language where I have to reason about strokes from first principles, and just like trying to write a program in assembly language, it means that I missed out in understanding other parts of the language, particularly the things that are in the curriculum, which means that I failed many tests.

Then one day a friend of mine started learning Japanese, and then he had to deal with sinograms as well. But since I’m familiar with them already, I decided to help a little bit. This amounted to looking up the character in Wiktionary and then reporting on its pronunciation and its graphic etymology, both of which are helpful in understanding why a character is written and pronounced (some of the time) the way it is. However, looking up many of these characters realise that a lot of the information is repetitive and redundant. So I then built a little notation to condense it down into something that cuts away all of that.

The notation itself

The result is the Chinese Character Form Description Notation. The exact form of the notation is not needed to make my point, but we’ll discuss it as an aside here anyway. The notation describes the graphic etymology of the character by breaking it apart into its components. For instance, the character “to think” 思 is derived by combining a meaning-carrying component of “heart” 心 with a sound-carrying component of 囟, which was later simplified into the unrelated character 田. Putting that together, the notation would write the above sentence as:

思 = <心|囟→田>

Which summarises all of what I just wrote in an appealing string of symbols. Additionally, this separates it from an existing notation in Unicode called the ideographic description sequence, which instead describes how a character can be broken down in its current form.

Consider now another character, “small, narrow, fine”, which is 細. If I now provide its C. C. F. D. N., you would easily be able to figure out what its graphic etymology is, even without me spelling it out, if I mentioned that the meaning-carrying component 糸 means “fibre, rope, string”:

細 = <糸|囟→田>

But look now that 細 and 思 don’t look too alike, as their corresponding IDS would make explicit. I had not expected that the two are related quite like this – their pronunciations are also quite a bit different – and now that I have made that connection I realised that I had something in my hands that is valuable.

Ultimately, the notation I have invented for myself made everything click together in my head, and it cleared up almost everything that had been blocking me from being able to move away from focusing on what I write and instead focusing on what the writing means on a more abstract level. It wasn’t enough to eventually make me pass my exams, but I feared the language a lot less than I had before I built the notation.

(In a sense, while it was helpful it would never have come on time; reflecting on what I did in my secondary school years it was fairly clear to me that this was a thing that would have troubled me for as long as it did no matter how I did it, and I would have rejected this notation if it was handed onto me the same way that all those other explanations have.)

How the notation changed the way I think

The key to the notation’s success is, in my opinion, the following:

First, it is general. It can break apart a large number of characters and describe their etymologies in a succinct manner. There are very few sinograms where it cannot handle it at all, and in those cases it is typically because the character has an unknown graphic etymology and therefore can’t be described, though undoubtedly there is going to be a couple that would slip behind the cracks. I can’t take full credit for this one, as it is based on an existing method of classifying sinograms.

I will however say that the way I designed (?) this notation allows me to grasp the recursive nature of this classification and furthermore allow me to gain a foothold in scripts that use things that resemble sinograms but are not, such as Sawndip.

Second, it is manipulable. What you can change and in what ways are easily read out by looking at the notation. Whether or not it describes an actual character is another question, but you can basically always produce a valid formula for generating a character and hint at its meaning and pronunciation using the notation. This will prove invaluable if I were to build a script that has similar properties to Chinese characters, this is exactly how I would start approaching it.

Third, it is not clever. The key to a proper notation is that it represents the thing that it does straightforwardly, in such a way that allows one to verify that it is in fact representing what it claims to. This allows me to hook onto it and adapt myself into seeing the notation at the same time I am presented with the character.

Finally, it is flexible. Notice that in the above examples the sinograms are described in terms of other sinograms. There’s no particular reason why those sinograms are chosen. In fact, you can replace those characters with their descriptions, allowing a full drill-down of the character and describing how every little bit came to be in a simple manner. This property allows you to hide away details when such detail is not needed but still permit an exhaustive description if it is.

Reading an existing notation

In real life sometimes an existing notation is already available, and if it is it would probably be better than any notation that you would be able to make when studying it, as it is referencing the entire body of knowledge that it is built on rather than just what a student might learn as he builds it for himself. With that in mind, if one were to understand something by its notation it is prudent to understand an existing notation first before trying to make one’s own.

To this end, I would say that it is helpful to learn something by referencing its notation. Specifically, the question to ask is “how do you write this down, and why do you choose to write it this way?” This question can be asked in multiple contexts and expect multiple answers. What “this” in the question is differs depending on the exact thing you are studying, and the “why” could be surface-level “why this symbol over another” or a deeper “why arrange the symbols in this way”.

Once you learn the notation, the next step is, as hinted at earlier in this article, to learn how to combine two true statements written in that notation into a third one also written in that notation. In a sense, this task is much harder than the other two; if we apply it to, say, English, the first is “reading and spelling” and the second is the entirety of English grammar and literature. The key to this is not to complete the task, but instead to basically learn the subject “the normal way” but using the notation as a centrepiece to unify everything you learnt into it, so that you have a way to relate everything to everything else.

Consider how this can be applied to chords and music theory: you learn what notes correspond to which chords and how to write down changes to those chords, and then you can combine the chords together as simple letters on a page to form music. This is an iterative process: you learn what chords go together nicely based on existing theory, mirror it in the notation, and then generalise it in the notation before turning it back into notes and seeing if it appeals. Doing this correctly, you will both increase your understanding of music theory and also have a nice way of generating music.

Another example where the idea of learning by notation has been successfully applied (but not by me) is site-swap notation in juggling, where someone wrote down sequences of digits to describe how balls are thrown in. The inventor eventually discovered a new way of juggling (called “5551” in the notation) just by looking at the notation.

Shortcomings

It is only fair to discuss situations where notation-oriented learning is not the approach to take when learning something.

Sometimes there is no existing notation, whether because the experts have decided that writing bits of ink on a page is not sufficient for the field, or no one has thought of it, or even that all the existing ones have failed to gained currency because it doesn’t perform or there are too many competing ones. In most of these cases you can get around it by attempting to make your own. You can make this work if you know yourself well, and perhaps even present it to the community as as a way to understand the field itself.

Some people don’t take kindly to writing things down, especially in the more artistic field of study where notation might be perceived as constraining to a creative mind, and even knowledge of the existence of some notation is considered harmful because you’re always supposed to learn things “the hard way”, i.e. without any aid whatsoever, much less written ones. Whether one chooses to heed those warnings or proceed anyway is up to individual preference, but in a notation-averse community – for any reason – perhaps it would not be the best idea to show that community your new home-grown notation.

Summary

One of the ways that I have learnt something is to create a notation system for it. This involves figuring out how to write existing facts in that notation, and then how to create new things by altering the notation and seeing what the results in back in the original object that the notation depicts. I found this to be a greatly useful way to understand topics in general and a central point from which to handle unknown fields of knowledge from, while also acknowledging that there are some fields and probably some would-be learners that may not be suited to this way of learning.

[kob131]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Buv3TA7dvdE

You know, for someone who supposedly watched Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid-

How is it I caught onto that Ilulu isn’t a fucking loli just at first appearance? Me, where the closest I’ve come is playing Dragonmaids.

So the first section is just the speaker setting up how she wanted to like the anime but apparently she got less and less enthusastic as the show expanded beyond Kobayashi and Tohru.

... Red flag. In my personal experience, this tends to taint a person’s view of a work and causes them to seek out problems with the work in question even when it goes beyond what a normal person or even what they themselves would do in other circumstances. So right away- I’m pretty damn skeptical.

We further go into the video and the person states that are an artist and they know what they are talking about. ... Okay, first off- You’re talking about coding as if it isn’t your internal projections (we’ll get to THAT later) so no, you don’t. Second, I don’t know if the artist thing is suppose to be connected to the ‘know what you are talking’ part but considering by the same logic a writer would know an abusive relationship in media...and Twilight exists- That’s bullshit. And third- why should anyone trust someone they likely never have watched before?

Next we get into ‘Coding in Media’. Here we have the person giving a definiton from the wikipedia article. I’ll copy paste the highlighted stuff:

“- a reader may initially interpret a set of signifiers as a literal representation, but clues may indicate a transformation into a metaphorical or allegorical interpretation diachronically “

“- i.e. acknowledging that there is sometimes an ideological quality to the coding system, determining levels of social acceptability, reflecting current attitudes and beliefs. “

However, I would like to point something out- This is from the ‘Discussion’ tab. Not the general part which she shows but doesn’t focus on. Here’s the definition she gives:

“Coding is a term used in media to refer to when the author wants to convey an aspect of a character to the audience but does not want to or isn’t allowed to explictedly state what that is.”

Here’s the article’s definition with an added definition of semiotics.

“ In semiotics *{the study of sign processes (semiosis), which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign's interpreter} , a code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning.”

Here we start to see things crumble. Semiotics and by extension coding is inherently indirect. Meaning that there isn’t a defined or solid meaning. And what does that mean?

You can basically insert whatever the fuck you want into the ‘code’. Hell, you can even insert meaning into a code that DOES NOT EXIST.

The speaker does it herself in the coming examples.

Scar from Lion King is apparently ‘queer coded’ because he’s ‘effiminate and willowy’.

Jafar too since he wears ‘eyeliner’.

Ursula was ‘literally’ based off of a drag queen.

... Order-

Scar’s ‘effeminity’ is shown with him making a hand gesture...that is a sign of SARCASM. And his ‘willowiness’?

This is a normal feline body.

Jafar’s ‘eyeliner’? Common practice in Arab culture with men. (it’s called Kohl).

Ursula being based off a Drag Queen? Yeah...

“ Calling Divine (real name Harris Glenn Milstead) "the great actor from Baltimore", Musker revealed that one of The Little Mermaid's writers, Howard Ashman, knew Divine and had Rob Menkoff - one of the film's principal animators - to do "some drawings that were based on Divine".

"Even though it’s sort of disguised, it’s based on the character [of Divine]," he said."It just fit the character," agreed Clements. "She was outrageous, theatrical..." “

She’s based off a drag queen...because they happen to have the same personality. And thing is here, even if they are ‘queer coded’- Ressiannce Disney villains are made to be LIKEABLE and ENJOYABLE villains. Contrast this with say...Looney Toon caricatures. They’re meant to be mocked and disliked.

But going back to the Ursula thing- The speaker never actually proves how Ursula was based off a drag queen. She just says it with a picture. And considering that looking into it reveals the basis is a COMPLIMENT. This is relevant because either the person didn’t know this and shows they are just jumping to conclusions (considering what she is talking about- that’s NOT good) or she did know...and continued anyway. Says a lot when ‘shit research’ is the GOOD option.

But let’s strike at the heart. Why would these minor things (even drag queens are not inherently LGBT) be ‘queer coded’ on her eyes when the use of LGBT characteristics as negative are usually MUCH more blatant? Well it kind of has to do with how ‘coding’ works. See, how do you code something as complex as being LGBT? Well, we have a word for it already. A very well known word.

‘Stereotyping’

No really. The hand gesture Scar used is a stereotypical gay man gesture, gay men are stereotyped as being thinner, wearing makeup with men is stereotypically gay, drag queens are stereotyped as LGBT. The speaker is using stereotypes of LGBT people to determine of a character is ‘coded.’

Issue- Stereotyping assigns universal things to specific groups simply due to connotations, ignoring reality in the process. In reality, Scar’s gesture is one of sarcasm, condescension and sadism with his lithe figure being a connecting thread to the Hyenas, his mooks. In reality, Jafar is just an Arab man. In reality, drag queens are not inherently LGBT NOR is Ursula displaying any other traits associated with being LGBT.

If you wanna hear what I hear- replace every instance of ‘coding’ with ‘stereotyping.’

Also I find it hilarious that she goes on about how ‘not all coding is bad!’ when showing Steven Universe characters later on...as she ignores context with the Disney villains (and I suspect with Ilulu).

So she goes onto specifically ‘child coding’, using things like ‘small, naive ect.’ She also acknowledges that shorter women exist, using La Brava from MHA as an example, talking about how her figure is proportionally more like an adult than a child and how she fits into MHA’s style despite her face looking like a child’s apparently

Moving beyond the Kanna stuff (don’t care)- she talks about how Ilulu’s face looks like a child’s and how her height is proportional to Kana...similarly to how she mentioned La Brava. And talks her body? Non existent.

Why? Well, let me show you a full body picture of Ilulu without her loose shirt.

Here’s a picture of Kanna.

Notice something? 

Ilulu has a thinner waist, a more pronounced buttocks and wider hips.

All things that indicate a more mature body than Kanna.

‘But KOB! We can’t actually tell what Kanna’s body type is like!’

Okay, here’s the chapter 100 cover-

Kanna’s body is clearly different from Ilulu. In fact, Ilulu more resembles Tohru, an ADULT. 

And if you REALLY think Ilulu’s body type is out of the ordinary for dragon bodies in this manga-

No, no she really isn’t.

The speaker tries to say they ‘de-babified’ her in the anime with this image from the manga-

But you can tell from the way she’s drawn this isn’t normal and is likely a comedic moment.

And going back to coding- Ilulu has a job, something children CANNOT HAVE.

‘But she admitted that her face in the anime was more defined than Kanna’s, her eyes are still lower though!’

Yeah, here’s the thing-

Ilulu’s not an adult either. She’s a teenager. Of course she’s not the same as adults but she’s also not the same as a fucking CHILD.

‘B-but she admitted La Brava is also short but she’s still unquestionably an adult!”

And yet she ignores how Ilulu is, by the same metrics, not a child. She says Ilulu talks like a child. ... But doesn’t explain HOW with the season 2 trailer. In fact, her La Brava example can actually be seen as childish due to her high tone. Yes I can here the...inflections that are similar to Kanna but numerous anime have used it with non-prepubescent characters to denote immaturity.

And as the final nail in the coffin- Back in the coding section, she mentioned that authors do this because it might not be socially acceptable. Issue is, the manga has the adult Lucoa trying to seduce a child (which she never mentions or even alludes to which is surprising) so clearly, the author doesn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea so even the justification is bullshit.

All in all, this comes across as projecting her own interpretation of things onto the original work. Which DEEPLY pisses me off.