#but part of it was always doomed from the start just with how it's production got going

[greenjester]

Sometimes I feel like the loner in evil withins fanbase in thinking that the first game was alright enough on it’s own that it didn’t really need the extra sequel tagged onto it and would have preferred it was the only one.

1 wasn’t a perfect game by any means (yeah you can really tell by how it feels that the director only put his heart in it towards the last half of it it and it shows) but it was still serviceable enough. We didn’t have all answers directly but it’s one of those that did fine enough without having to try and hand it out either. But 2 imo didn’t pick up it’s torch very well to carry on with and I had quite a few issues with how it was written overall.

At this point I think I would be happier to see it kinda left where it’s at rather than have 3 come through, mostly because I don’t have a lot of faith they can really pick back up where they need it to go

[athousandbyeol]

keep up the thamepo [episode 1]

there are some parts in the first episode that itched my brain and made my toes curl and my eyes hot and just—very very visceral reaction from my whole body. honestly, this episode did make my heart skip a beat (see what i did there hehe)

beforehand, i would like to apologise for the lq of the photos. i watch thamepo on netflix, and i can't take screenshots there so... i tried looking for raw videos and found this one online. i hope it's understandable.

1. blue

there's so much blue in po. and all over him. i think it's used to emphasise his sadness. he clearly hasn't moved on from earn, and that's fine. but when he started oversharing that he had just ended his relationship with the panels, i realised that maybe, po didn't have an outlet for his grief.

we could see him trying to swallow it all. when one of the panels stated he didn't work for three years. when he was talking to the sandwich guy. when he had the conversation with baifern. po was struggling to let it go, but he couldn't because it wasn't easy—loving earn all these years wasn't easy to let go. he kept it all.

in fact, he still has photos with earn, the mug. i guess po had a hard time discarding these because it's so unfair. how could earn move on so quickly, but po was still struggling? was their love that easy to forget?

but in this frame, there is less blue. i feel like po has absorbed the blue, and he became the product of it. the sadness. the heartbrokenness. it was all in him now.

when we compare these two frames, we can see there's blue everywhere. i think it could be a sign of the impending doom of their relationship. and it's so interesting that we usually associate danger with red, but in this case, it's blue.

i guess it fits po's quiet and calm nature, or maybe it's his obliviousness—unknowing that the ship he's in has so many holes in it, and he's the only one trying to fix it.

po was wearing blue too during earnchop's soft-launching. i guess it's always in him, with him. but po didn't realise it yet. not until that night.

2. po looking at thame's picture — taking an interest?

this one makes me so... giddy. i think it's so... sensual? //this is my favourite moment from the episode hehehe// i think it's just me hahahaha.

when baifern asked if there was no one in MARS that caught po's eyes, he was looking at their pictures, and when his eyes landed on thame, there was this flicker. it was so pretty.

he was indifferent at first...

but then......

see the very very very subtle shift in his expression? (EST SUPHA THE ACTOR YOU ARE THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY YOU'RE SOME OF MY FAVOURITES AHHHH—)

i can't praise est enough for portraying this spark of interest in his eyes. it's so evident. it's somewhat... intimate? i don't know how to explain it (i'm actually screaming atm) because it feels like a very delicious foreshadowing of their relationship in the future; how po sees thame, how he consumes him, how he admires thame.

i'm going to share this video evidence because pictures don't do this very fragile and intimate moment justice (i need people to go insane with me).

3. thame and po's first meeting — the tension

i think we were all expecting the elevator scene to be their first meeting. honestly, i forgot about it while i was watching the episode because their first (real) meeting was just as intense!

but this tension is somewhat suffocating? i was actually scared for po... the way thame looked at him was so cold.

i think this was intentional to set the foundation, to let many people assume this is how we're supposed to see thame; cold, heartless, distant, quiet, and hot-tempered.

but maybe this is just a facade. the real thame isn't this.

i wonder if this was thame projecting his disappointment in realising that po was potentially a sasaeng? because later on, we knew that thame remembered po from the event, even though it was brief. because thame said po was different—so i wonder if this was thame feeling disappointed because po wasn't how he perceived? //also because i assume many fans applied for a job at oner with the purpose of stalking them... which makes sense to the thame's hostility and anger at their new staff members?//

and it breaks my heart how po looked like he was about to go through another emotional breakdown here. Lord... he has endured so much to get here, and now, one of the members he was supposed to work with already had assumptions about him?

//me this episode: constantly wiping my laptop screen when po was crying... patting his head when he was sad...//

4. their confrontation — a projection; a closure; a realisation

i think many people have talked about the scene when they were talking, and po projecting his truest feelings while talking to thame—who happens to 'leave' his members when he got a better deal for himself. but we know that's not the case. thame isn't like earn.

and i think it's so interesting how this drama shows these two perspectives, especially from the lens of the doer. we always connect more with the 'victims'. maybe—just maybe—some perpetrators aren't all evil.

i think po saw thame as earn's reflection. he considered everyone who left to be selfish and cruel. but again, the narrative was reflected, and we could observe from both perspectives.

after the conversation they shared, after po poured his heart out, and when thame said the ones who left felt the pain—perhaps as much as the ones who were left behind—the moment of realisation was now reflected on po's face. we could really see his 'oh' moment.

and clearly, we know, thame was in pain.

it's interesting to me that thame didn't let his tears fall here. but—

5. a budding relationship — a moment of vulnerability

thame cried here, when he was looking at his members smiling and happy—the way they initially were, before all of them went astray.

thame immediately wiped his tears away when he saw po. he might not want to show this vulnerable side to anyone because he's the leader, after all.

to people who are familiar with the dynamics of a k-pop group, leaders are usually the strongest. they're given responsibilities not only to represent the group but also their well-being and everything in between. therefore, this is no different.

i guess, thame was used to this—hiding his emotions. it's sad just to think of it—how thame didn't have a shoulder to cry on. //but later we got to see the members comforting thame... but at what price?//

AND THEN! WE KNEW THAT THAME REMEMBERED PO!

and i wonder if it's... love at first sight? because when thame said po was different, he was wearing this expression—

what is this? is it longing? yearning? hoping? i think it's all and nothing...

and poor po because he was genuinely confused when thame said that T_T

and yes, this is the beginning. this is where it'll start making sense.

i can't wait for them to be closer! and i'm so intrigued to see how po approaches the other members because from the trailer, po seems like the bridge that connects everyone, and i'm excited about that! //but i'm scared that the bridge will start falling apart once everyone is connected... and po feels like he's being an 'outcast' again, even though thame said he didn't.//

[spacemonkeysalsa]

I read about an evil magistrate in another Faerûn city, a few decades after Astarion had that job in Baldur's Gate and it has me thinking about his pre-vampire days, and my irl time as a Las Vegas law clerk. A lot.

Full disclosure: I feel a little guilty that I wrote so much on this topic rather than on one of my fics.

I wrote very little in July 🫣but it's because I was drawing and reading instead.

I read 13 books, but they were the first 13 Legend of Drizzt books.

And while writing fic, I've avoid details about Astarion's background as a magistrate, for reasons I've talked about a lot before, but I might need to rethink that, because one book in the Drizzt series just gave me SO MUCH context for what the world was like around the time that Astarion would have had this job, and also, what that job was like, and how it was very effected by geography and race. And I have THOUGHTS. Thousands of words of thoughts, apparently, below the cut.

TL;DR - The popular idea that pre-Cazador Astarion is the biggest possible asshole so he "earns" his fate is boring as hell, not actually supported by canon, or the examples of magistrates that we see in FR (who don't even need to be corrupt to satisfy cruel inclinations) and I deeply prefer going in a totally different direction. Below the cut is me working through my headcanon, and why I came to these conclusions.

I tagged this appropriately I think, but to emphasize, topics of relevance include horror movie tropes, torture, the deeply flawed American justice system, and the even more deeply flawed one in Faerûn as described by the Forgotten Realms novels I've read and the mentions/demonstrations in Bladur's Gate 3.

If you feel you need to avoid thinking about all of that, you are valid, and probably more correct than me for doing so.

And as always, it's just my opinion, based on my experiences. All headcanon is equally headcanon.

To start, I'm going to briefly reiterate that:

Astarion's canon backstory is thin on purpose and that all we really know about him is that he was a magistrate with not-red eyes who made an unpopular ruling that was unpopular for an unspecified reason and got jumped by Gur for a (heavily implied to be unreliable narrator influenced) reason.

That artbook is a developmental tool that is actually less likely to ever be considered canon than even a later stage developmental tool like a full manuscript outline precisely because of its position in the process.

But, before I get into what I read in Drizzt, I want to establish that my head space started from thinking about how much sadder it is if Astarion actually did have compassionate ideals and a balanced sense of justice prior to Cazador. The reason I think it's sadder is best illustrated by the choice to either make a doomed horror movie character sympathetic or an asshole. What happens to Astarion is basically a horror show, and some people prefer those fates are reserved exclusively for asshole victims. There's reasons to write this way, and it can be done well, but it's very easy to make it feel cheap and contrived and it's usually a sign of an amateur production, and a quick way to make an accessible film rather than a good one. Another option (which can also be done well or done poorly) is to harm characters who did absolutely nothing wrong.

To be clear, whether or not we like a character doesn't affect whether or not they "deserve" death. Horror movies often deal with totally disproportionate consequences, and the gruesome fate not really being "earned" can be an inherent part of the horror regardless of our sympathy.

But, I'm not sad when the evil teenagers in Toxic Avenger are killed. I am not that sad when Jigsaw's traps prove to be too much for his chosen victims. What happens to Julia's marks in Hellraiser doesn't move me as much as what's going on with Kirsty, even if they didn't deserve it, because they aren't particularly sympathetic.

And the thing about using characters like that is that it's not realistic. And to be clear, I don't think you always have to be realistic to tell a good story, in fact, please don't always cling to realism. But realism in characterization is usually a stronger choice, and should be considered generally. Most people are not as flat and unsympathetic as the asshole victims in slasher flicks. Even people who do bad things are not so one dimensional as to instill no sympathy in irl humans. I think people like to flatten Astarion in their mind, so that they don't have to confront the fact that very bad things happen all the time, and that most people didn't do anything to earn a horrible fate.

In the specific case of what happened to Astarion, even if he was a bad person, it's very difficult to ever make 200 years of torture, the loss of autonomy, exploitation on every level, including physical, sexual and psychological abuse, ever feel proportional. So at this point, some people need something to make it seem more just. Either because they hate the character, and want to feel that hating the character is objectively correct, or their worldview includes an idea of justice that can't accept such disproportionality.

And if you need that for your headcanon, dope. you're allowed whatever headcanon you want.

The "corrupt magistrate" thing isn't canon. It's headcanon. I understand that some people who really seem to know what they are talking about said it was canon, that's because they are wrong. People are wrong sometimes.

I recently became aware that although I thought we were all playing the same game, a bunch of players have never seen what I've seen, because it's all missable content. And, because everyone knows there's a bunch of stuff they haven't seen, it's real easy to just believe any random person on the internet who tells you something is buried deep in the game that you don't know about.

This specific situation with Astarion's canon backstory is that you'll never find much in the game, no matter how much you play, because there's nothing to find. Here's the facts: -There was never anything about Astarion being corrupt in the game, in early access, or in any of the writing that made it to recording. It was an idea that was discussed very early on---like back when we almost had a werewolf companion, (RIP Helia, you would've loved what I put you through) and they went in a totally different direction. Essentially, just imagine what they ultimately ended up doing with Gortash, and know that they were thinking about doing something similar with Astarion, but a long, long time ago.

-In the game, he'll lie and tell you he's a magistrate in Baldur's Gate and that it's tedious.

-Or, if you wait to ask him about himself until after you know he's a vampire, he'll tell you he was a magistrate, punishing troublemakers.

-Backstory complete!

-Art books are great, and beautiful, and it's baffling to me to see fans treat them like canon content, because if anything, they demonstrate various attempts to put together a story that ultimately didn't land for the creators. I love using materials like this when I write, I create character sheets and artbooks for my work all the time, and part of their charm is the features that didn't make it into the final work. Minthara is no longer an elven cleric, Shadowheart isn't covered in tattoos, and Astarion isn't one of corrupt elite of Baldur's Gate, or even elite, or a courtesan. Stop bringing up the artbook, you're embarrassing yourselves.

-There's actual explicit dialogue in game in which Astarion says he doesn't remember much from before he was turned. He says the person he was is gone, nothing left but a name on a rock. That's what's intentionally in the game. I think this is brilliant, because I think his character represents loss in a really poignant way, and that if they included anything too detailed about who he was before he got turned, that would undermine this theme, in a way that's especially unnecessary. It's better to keep it purposefully blank. A void of nothing. I'm actually really surprised that they didn't do this for Shadowheart, given that she's a Sharran, but in her story, we actually see a really nice counterexample: she does recall small details about her time in the city. Coming back there triggers memories and if you find all three of them---[spoiler deleted, please message me if you want to know about this, I've been informed I shouldn't just shout this out, because some people like to discover this stuff on their own. But also I'm not a gatekeeper, if you really want to know, I'm happy to tell you]. There's none of that for Astarion, in fact, if you go to the cemetery looking for his grave, which is something I think a lot of us did, you won't find any mention of him anywhere, but you will find one of those Shadowheart memories if she's with you. You only get to see Astarion's grave briefly, if you're romancing him, and even then, he once again takes the opportunity to talk about the person he once was truly is lost to him (and to us) and gone forever, long before we ever had the chance to know him.

It's tragic, and kind of perfect.

And in the meta of all this, it's intentional that we'll never known him. We might think we do, but we literally can't, because it's not in the story.

Which is good because it would ruin the scene a bit if he'd been like "btw I was a real piece of shit lmao." Just like it kind of ruins the affect of the empty backstory to go ahead and add a backstory.

But. We're curious, we speculate, and we expand, that's what fanfiction is for—it exists outside of the canon. I usually write post-canon, canon-consistent content, but there's a possibility I'll need to add a few scenes from Astarion's mortal life in this one fic—maybe not, idk—but in preparation for maybe doing that (or not), I had considered working through what I think his life was life before he was turned, and the events leading up to Cazador capturing him. I wasn't sold on the idea, but I was thinking about it.

And, then I started reading Spine of The World, which features an actual magistrate from DR 1365. This one is um. Corrupt. Or, at least, we would consider him to be corrupt? He's actually doing his job perfectly according to the very messed up justice system in Luskan, where he works. They don't have a concept of burden of proof there, or of innocence at all after you manage to get yourself arrested, and instead essentially just torture people to death publicly and explicitly for entertainment. It's not chill. It's not subtle. They call it Prisoner's Carnival.

This magistrate has Astarion's exact job, in a different city and a few decades later (and those differences matter, we'll get to it) but the important features are the same. So, here's some things to note: being a magistrate is a position of limited power, you have total discretion over the prisoners given to you for punishment (minus a few notable exceptions that come up in Spine of The World), but that's it. It's not like an influential political position of respect or anything. It can't be, because they are beholden to laws they can't change, and cultural traditions that are non-negotiable parts of the community.

This guy is referred to multiple times are a carnival barker. And there's loads of magistrates, they all have different reputations and and ymmv on how sadistic they individually are in Luskan. In a later book, when this particular magistrate is brought up again to another magistrate in Luskan, it's clear that the carnival barker thing isn't entirely universal and that he's considered one of the really bad ones, but regardless, they all acknowledge that what he does is legal and "serves a purpose" and they all direct and orchestrate the torture and slaughter of prisoners, and they all admit that many of them are probably innocent. The magistrates, and more importantly, the people in charge of them, maintain the necessity of the system, and the fear it instils to keep troublemakers in line.

One of the more reasonable and intelligent wizards in the series (a guy called Robillard who I can't help but envision as Gale of Waterdeep, because almost everything he does and says makes him sound like Gale of Waterdeep) shocks Drizzt by defending this system of justice very passionately.

Actually, Drizzt's thoughts in general about the Prisoner's Carnival are S-tier Drizzt musings, I love a man who keeps a journal. Likes cats too. Drizzt is lovely.

Drizzt also notes that this is a popular system in human societies specifically. Other races don't go in for it so much, and tend not to participate unless it's as... um... you know... as the prisoners being tortured. I think it's interesting that he mentions that elves in particular (in his experience) are universally disgusted by it. It's also explicitly stated that Baldur's Gate is different, and a much preferrable place to get tried by a magistrate. That isn't in his journal entry though, that's earlier in the novel. A moment of foreshadowing.

The whole world is brutal, but Baldur's Gate is a bit more modern and open to change than other places. That's probably one reason it keeps getting featured and mentioned even though we've barely spent any time there in Drizzt's series so far. It's a bit more relatable a place to actually live in long term than somewhere like Luskan, where you may have to seek out real estate that's far enough away from the square that you're not constantly hearing the death screams of someone being drawn and quartered in front of a cheering crowd. So that's the basics of it, and getting back to Astarion and the backstory that I would personally novelize for him, we have options:

If I'm going to try to fit this into the context that I now have though, it's important to keep in mind that 1) Baldur's Gate is considered one of the "nicer" places to be tried and 2) culturally, elves don't go in for cruelty, especially not as systemic "justice." None of this has to apply to Astarion, but if I'm writing it, I'm not going to ignore this cultural context. At a minimum, I'm going to say that appointing an elf as a magistrate in a city that's known for being more progressively compassionate about their treatment of prisoners was probably pointed on the part of tptb. Baldur's Gate wanted him to set an example for these bloodthirsty humans about mercy and justice and the balance between them. Racism dictates that you don't go to a human for that. They're carnival barkers. If you want a more compassionate magistrate, appoint an elf. And from there, we get to decide whether or not Astarion met their expectations, or if he defied them. Because maybe he was an asshole. Maybe he was just as bad as his human magistrate counterparts. That's not outside the realm of possibility at all, there's an argument to be made that we write him as a counterweight to the stereotype. Astarion is written to be capable of anything, so you can literally go in any direction with his disposition.

But, considering how Cazador rages that he "made" Astarion, and Astarion doesn't even argue with that sentiment. I think it's more likely (and loads sadder) if this unmaking and making included a complete and total overhaul of Astarion entire sense of justice. I actually think the harsh sentiments that Astarion expresses at the tribunal in Ansur's trials are a really good example of the flickers of Cazador and the person he twisted Astarion into, than they would ever be indicative of who he was before getting turned.

That guy's gone, remember?

And if it's not obvious, I'm going in that direction with my fanfic. I'm going to say he actually thought he could help his community. He studied. He got this civil servant position. It was a bit disillusioning. It's better in Baldur's Gate than in other places, but the system itself is cruel, and he's rewarded for being cruel within it. It doesn't even matter that he originally got the job because they hoped he would be a compassionate elf judge amongst bloodthirsty humans, once he's actually in position, it's all about maintaining the status quo. That's what they actually want from him, in spite of their "progressive" leanings.

If anything, he's getting in trouble, and getting noticed by not quite being status quo. A soft-hearted elf, letting his charges get away with all kinds of mischief. I'd write him this way, because I think it then easily follows that Cazador takes note of him and targets him, precisely because he's too merciful. It's annoying.

And, little bit about me, I'm an attorney, and early on, during and right after law school I worked for a few judges.

If Faerûn is anything like the USA I figure that after a few years he has figured out that being a magistrate only gives him a limited amount of discretion and authority over the specific individuals who are brought before him.

It's really legislation that makes a difference and he is specifically forbidden from that. He rules from the bench, and hopes that if he's consistent and fair, and if nothing disastrous results from his rulings, (and if he doesn't get reversed too often, idk if that's a thing in Faerûn but it's a thing in America) then maybe he could eventually influence those who do legislate, but like, that's not his job. And it's going to take a long time because most of it's quite tedious and people don't pay attention unless it's someone they care about standing before him. Nobody cares about the vast majority of these people. His job is to stare at "troublemakers" who have supposedly broken the law, hear witnesses and confessions and denials and lies and decide what the truth is, and decide what's fair.

And it's emotionally heavy work. A lot of people describe being a magistrate as a political position, and that's not incorrect, but there's a valley of difference between Astarion's very hands on job, and what Gortash/Duke Ravenguard do. You are beholden to powerful politicians (like actual politicians) with a lot more influence who figured all this out long before they made the mistake of having ideals or believing in anything, or taking a job in which they would have to a) actually work with people to probable burnout and b) inevitably make a lot of people very angry regardless of what they did.

But, Astarion is still young, he's still got energy, he's not lost himself yet, he thinks he can handle this responsibility and he's wrong.

One day, someone is brought before him. This person is Gur and has supposedly broken the law. Other Gur are upset about the way Astarion ruled. He was way too harsh, or maybe he wasn't.

Quick sidebar: in court, I have watched people literally receive the death sentence and have zero reaction. Same with life w/o parole and other life ruining sentences. In my experience, what triggers an emotional reaction and anger targeted at a judge isn't the severity of the sentence, it's how the severity of the sentence stacks up against their expectations. The defendants (or their families, with proxy outrage) who get really angry, who try to attack the judge, or the ones who are so disruptive that we have to call it and go wait in the hallway while the baliffs calm things down, all have one thing in common: they legitimately thought they were going to just be sent home. They didn't think they were going to be held at all. For that reason, I actually saw a lot more rage from people who had committed minor offenses, because they didn't think what they had done was that big a deal, showed no remorse, ignored their atty, made no effort to express any respect for the law, or any victims, and then when the judge just decides to go with whatever the statute says, in light if zero mitigating factors, the defendant hears "60 days" for the very first time and assumes that the judge just made that up and hates them.

And like, I know it's fiction, and I'm speaking on a very niche experience that most people can't relate to. It's unlikely the writers had anything (let alone realism) in mind at all when they decided to be as vague as possible in the details about a character who embodies "loss" as a concept. I think they were vague because of the theme of loss. I think they were vague because of the theme of loss. I think they were vague because of the theme of loss. I think they were vague because of the theme of loss. I think they were vague because of the theme of loss.

But this sidebar is just to explain why whenever someone says "well he got beat to death for it so his ruling must've been racist and harsh" my knee jerk response is "not necessarily."

And sidebar within the sidebar: if I was going to fully novelize the story, I would actually go in the direction of having the ruling in question be uncommonly fair. I might hint at some racism though—nobody really talks about it below the surface level obvious stuff that's in the game, and part of that is because information about the Gur as a people isn't super accessible. But there is information, and synthesized: racism against the Gur seems pretty standard, especially for an elf who has had it up to here with human bullshit generally. Especially during that time period. He probably didn't have a good opinion of the Gur in life.

But, I have to assume that his animosity towards the Gur that we see in the game was at least affected by the fact that they beat him to death, and then, he spent two centuries as an undead being that they kill on sight with absolutely no justification needed. Like. I don't think it's wild to suggest that. I'm actually very confused by how much people push back on the idea that this could be responsible for his attitude, in part. And that's as far as I have combed through all this so far. Idk how much of it will end up in fic, but it's my personal headcanon now.

I love horror movies. I have watched so many of them it's embarrassing. My letterboxd is embarrassing. I do love several horror movies that feature asshole victims, but as I look at my very favorites, I'm noticing a pattern. I like to feel hurt. I like it when a movie doesn't shy away from dealing out universal, apathetic and disproportionate punishment to everyone. I can't think of anything quite so sad as seeing a perfectly normal, maybe even morally progressive person with their whole life ahead of them, and choosing to unmake them and twist them into a broken puppet in your own image. Sparing/saving no one and nothing in the process. Just make them lose everything, including their entire sense of who they are.

So, I'm going to hurt my own feelings with my Astarion headcanon.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Of course Natsume cries over the doomed yuri, just like I want to. But what he says to Nyanko-sensei also shows how he's different from Reiko--rather than pretending it doesn't matter who you see beautiful things with, that it's the same whether you're alone or not, he's open about the fact his loved ones being there matters. He directly tells Nyanko-sensei he wants him to be here and see the flowers with him. He voices the thought Reiko never could for Souko, that she buried deep inside.

Reiko's always been positioned as the person Natsume could have become. The path he could have continued down if the Fujiwaras hadn't found him.

What if Natsume had missed out on his relationship with Tanuma because of a misunderstanding? With Taki? With Nishimura and Kitamoto and Sasada? He might have given up just like Reiko did in the early days/ But he was lucky, and that didn't happen. And now he's the kind of person who doesn't assume he's better off alone, who fights for every connection he has.

He was able to change because of the Fujiwaras...but also, a large part of why Natsume turned differently from Reiko is the Book of Friends itself. The Book of Friends is a product of an unfulfilled relationship, of heartbreak. But it was never that to Natsume. It was a way to connect with his grandmother, and a way to pick up where she left off. He meets so many of his friends and loved ones because of her, because of the book, and he maintains those relationships in the way she never could. He wouldn't have met Nyanko sensei if not for Reiko, and he might have never stuck around if not for his initial interest in the Book. And he forms a much deeper relationship.

(It's still unclear how lasting Reiko and Nyanko-sensei's relationship was either, and if it was a result of something to do with the book. He certainly doesn't talk about it, and it's clear he doesn't know all that much about her and that he wasn't as close to her as he now is to Natsume, but there is an implication he really cared about her.)

Natsume takes over for Reiko in protecting Shigeru from the yokai that still haunts them, uses her knowledge to do it, but doesn't run away afterwards, even if he's afraid of getting hurt. Then there's Hinoe, Misuzu, the way the Book was a way he connected with Taki.. the book is how things begin for him, not end, it's a way to release someone and let them choose to stay. The Book is dangerous, and it turns Natsume's life into a constant stream of near death encounters, but it's also given him so much, so many bonds he's treasured.

And now he's discovered it would have never existed if it weren't for Souko. He hasn't just been carrying around a fragment of his grandmother, but the girl who almost became her first friend, the girl who loved her. Just like for Reiko, Souko is a part of him now.

Doomed yuri is fine for what it is, but I can't help but hope Souko and Reiko ran into each other, however briefly, before she died. That they were able to at least clear the air and have a sloppy makeout session.

Because isn't that what Natsume has been struggling to find for Reiko? He holds onto hope she was able to change. That she was able to find the joy and love and fulfillment he has.

Another interesting way things could come full circle is if Natsume ran into the present-day Souko. Reiko died young so there's a good chance Souko's still alive. What if she ran into Natsume and he was finally able to tell her that Reiko was waiting for her. In fact, I've literally already started writing that fic. So prepare for that in the future, I guess.

When it inspires you to write a fanfic, you know an episode's good, and this one was excellent. I'm sad we only have one episode left. At least there's the special in the spring.

[auspicioustidings]

Firewatch Part 8

Summary: An unspoken ceasefire takes place and you struggle with sleeping arrangements.

Words: 2k

CW: as always, this fic is reader falling for captors, but nothing specific in this chapter

You just existed around each other the rest of the day more or less quietly. They treated you like a housemate for the most part and you finally felt like you were settling down. It had been the worst 48 hours of your life and there were only so many high emotional outbursts you could go through without needing some quiet from your thoughts.

When you got out of your frigid shower Kyle said Price had went to pick you up some things. Neither him nor the asshole with the mohawk sitting sipping away at his coffee mentioned the sudden cut off of hot water or how you had screeched about it. Price came back with bags full of clothes and toiletries for you. They were your size and you decided you were not going to get into the fight that you wanted to over the fact that the shampoo, conditioner and soap in the bag was what you had used at home. Maybe it was just a coincidence that he had went to the expensive store in the town where everything was handmade by what you were fairly certain was some sort of witch and somehow managed to pick out the specific products you liked.

It felt nice to be in soft new clothes that fit even if there was a small pang of something at stripping out of Price’s clothes. When you saw the wet spots you bristled and scrubbed at them, wringing out the offending item as best you could before folding it and leaving the bundle of his clothes on the bathroom counter.

You called Dosia a traitor at least 4 times before dinner for how she slunk over to get scratches off of Price. You cooed at her just as many for when Soap tried to pet her and she treated him with complete disdain.

“Ye should have got a dug” he grumbled after another failed attempt to endear himself to your cat.

“What? So you could have a litter mate?” you shot back before going back to coo at your cat.

“Woof!”

Kyle made dinner and you asked if he always cooked (“only when we want something edible” “oi! I’m a braw cook I’ll have ye know!”) before scolding yourself for the umpteenth time for being so casual and curious with them, but once again you just let it go. You could start thinking about how to get out of this situation again tomorrow, you really could not put any more brain power into being angry and pushing them today. It seemed to be an unspoken understanding that they felt a little the same way with nobody really pushing at you or getting into your space.

You weren’t about to look a surprise ceasefire horse in the mouth so you ate dinner, even gave Kyle a quiet thank you for cooking and Price an even quieter one for clearing away the table. There was one glaring issue that you were avoiding thinking about, the small matter of where you were going to sleep. Would they let you take the sofa or where you doomed to wind up in someone’s bed? You didn’t know how you’d fare with the threat to this shaky peace if one of these men nestled under blankets with you and held you the way Johnny had been when you had woken up.

You worried that as tired as your brain was from fighting and plotting and a thousand emotions happening at once today that you wouldn’t even stop them. That you’d take the comfort. And it would just make things so much worse when tomorrow came and you had rested and were ready to push at them again.

It had not occurred to you that there was actually a much worse option until Price told you that you could take Simon’s bed and left you in his room. It was simple but it had touches of the enigmatic man. A cute little crocheted skull on the dresser (had he been gifted it? Bought it himself? Made it?), a thriller book on the bedside table well worn (he must be the type of person to break books spines and dog ear them), a few sets of dumbbells in the corner that were disrespectfully heavy and a photo in a simple frame of him with the two Johns, Kyle and a man you didn’t recognise. If another handsome man walked into this cabin you would lose it, so he damn well better have just been a visitor.

The thing that really sent your heartbeat into overdrive though was right there lovingly pinned to a corkboard on the wall. Drawings. They were clearly from children and they showed their crude versions of him in his gear holding hands with them. These were what was taking pride of place in this simple room, these were what mattered to him.

You gently traced your fingers over one, trying to reconcile the drawing with the man in the closet who had left the mark still throbbing dully on your neck. You paused over a detail you had missed. The little skull sticker on the helmet. It made sense then the little crochet skull, but it also gave you such a vivid flashback that you heard a strangled sort of sound leave your mouth.

You had seen that little skull sticker before, on the man who had saved you. You thought it had been Kyle, but it was Simon. Simon was the one who carried you through the fire and laid you gently on the ground outside, whose eyes you had stared into and thought ‘oh, he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen’ when you realised he was there and real and you were alive. It came flooding back with such force that you had to stumble away from the pictures and sit down.

It was only after a breath that you realised you were sitting on his bed and you flexed your fingers a few times, feeling the softness of the duvet. You wondered what blanket he would be using in the tower. It was boiling during the day but freezing at night, would he be cold? Certainly the sofa wasn't going to provide the same support as this mattress. It probably wouldn't even fit all of him, he'd have to curl in.

You couldn't. You could not sleep in this bed while he was in the cold, uncomfortable and barely getting any sleep at all, tossing and turning before getting up and looking out for any sign of trouble before repeating it again. No amount of telling yourself he was a bad person was going to let you do that with those kids drawings staring down at you.

So you stood, straightened out the duvet, wrapped yourself in the throw that had been draped over the dresser and curled up on the floor.

---

Price was on wake up duty. They had discussed sending Gaz since you seemed to trust him the most, but he had argued that in order to get you on side it was him you needed to trust the most. He reluctantly agreed when he thought about it, he was this teams Captain at the end of the day. And you were part of that now, his team.

He also did feel annoyed with himself at how he had dealt with you yesterday. He should have known better than to think it would all be easy and you'd be predictable. At least after a good night's rest he had settled a bit. It was strange how his feelings toward you had changed. They were more intense somehow, maybe a little rougher around the edges and complicated. But he was a problem solver and the way to solve this one was by trying to get on your good side, figuring out who you were when you weren't spitting mad at him.

There was a moment when he opened the door that he felt his heart stop. The bed was empty. And then he heard a soft sigh of discomfort and followed it to see you shivering away on the hard floor. It was then that John Price knew he cared about you. Not the you he had made up in his head, the you that had annoyed the life out of him yesterday and kept fighting him on every little thing. He hated seeing you almost whimper in your sleep from how cold and uncomfortable you were.

Why the hell hadn't you just slept in the bed? Were you trying to rebel by making him feel awful? Or could you just not stand the thought of sleeping in Simon's… oh. It was Simon's bed, you hadn't wanted to take Simon's bed. You felt guilty. Even through all that rage and exhaustion you felt guilty. Ah fuck, had to go and be a good person despite everything didn't you? You'd win the bet if he was a better man.

Soap and Gaz didn't question him when he emerged with you bundled in his arms still sleeping. It wasn't difficult to tell you hadn't slept well and while they did want to get you into a routine they had all the time in the world, one morning letting you sleep in wouldn't ruin everything.

He had considered just putting you into Simon's bed, but somehow that felt cruel. Instead he carried you to his room. Warmer than Simon's, more cluttered with years of knick knacks. It had a set of wingbacks with a table between that held a bottle of whiskey and some cigars. Price's room was where his boys could come for refuge if they needed someone to just listen.

You roused a little when he gently manoeuvred you under the blankets, instantly letting out a little sound of panic and trying to get up.

“Steady on little bird, it's my bed. Not making you sleep in Simon's. That a girl, go back to sleep” he said, as gentle as he could manage.

“I don't…” you murmured, not sure what you wanted to say.

You needed to talk to someone, you needed to get it off your chest, but there was nobody here but your captors. Nobody in this room with you but their Captain whose soft coaxing had made you relax despite yourself. It was pathetic and you knew that, but somewhere in the exhaustion it almost felt like this was a dream. Like what you said here didn't count in the real world.

“He's a good man isn't he? I could tell, from his room.”

Price hated how torn up you sounded, as if the idea of any of them being good men was breaking your heart. And while he wouldn't go as far as to call himself one, he knew with a fierce certainty that his team were the best of men. Would it hurt you to keep discovering that? Would it help you want to stay?

“Simon Riley is a good man” he confirmed, sitting himself on the edge of the bed and sighing as he ran a hand over your hair, soothing. “But he was rough with you for no good reason little bird, even the actions of good men have consequences. It isn't your fault he isn't here.”

Christ he should be trying to guilt you instead of this. He should be manipulating you into begging him to let Simon off of 24 hour watch. Twisting things until you loved them. He thought when they first decided to keep you that it would come easy. He never knew you'd be so hard to hurt.

You only made a soft noise in acknowledgement. You felt bone tired, completely wrung dry. You just couldn't find that fire within you right now that you had planned on stoking when you woke up. It wasn't fair for them to be good, for them to show you kindness. For them to be human.

You thought maybe a bit more sleep would help as you drifted off with John's hand petting your hair. That was what you needed, some proper sleep in a proper bed and then you could find that fight again. You hoped.

[peaterookie]

Trials and Tribulations of Scanning: Lupin III Manga

Hi!

It's been a while since I've made a proper Lupin essay, and this one is going to be a bit different from all the ones I've done too.

Throughout the years in the manga community, I've gotten very accustomed to the process of scanning and archiving this series, it's something that I sincerely do enjoy doing so I wanna just dedicate a post talking about it and also bring attention a huge project of mine.

Disclaimer that this isn't really gonna be a comphrehensive history with a bunch of details about the scanning process done on the series before I entered the fandom, I just wanna talk about certain parts that I think are worth writing and my experiences doing it myself.

Okay this intro's gotten long enough let's get started.

Let's talk about the tokyopop scans of the OG manga and HOW SHIT IT IS.

Oh poor og manga... you were doomed from the start from the moment you were uploaded publically. Because who the hell is going to want to read something that looks like this???

An important step when I scan my pages is cleaning, it is the process where you take the initial scans, which I call raws, and polish them to make it prettier. When you see the scans of the og manga, it is very very clear that the person did not bother to clean any of these at all.

The coloration of the pages (which should not have been there at all if they decided to scan in grayscale) gives it an unpleasant old vibe, and should have been editted to turn into something more black and white.

I honestly do not understand why anyone would just leave a page this bad and assume that people would be fine reading something that looks like this. I am very convinced that the quality detered some people from checking the manga out any further because at its worst, it's unreadable and the details of the art is hard to decipher.

It's very easy too!! I can easily take this place and edit it on my phone to turn it into...

This!

Ain't that much better already. and it only took me a minute to do just that, imagine just how better the rest of the scans would've been if the person gave a bit more effort to clean their pages?

One of the many things i've learned is that when you do something for a community, whatever you put out might stay there forever and become a permanent impact on the people using your product, so it's important to make it look good!!!

What is good about the OG manga + new adventures though is that there exists high quality scans of it, just in japanese. So while there is still no good scans of the english version, people can always find a better alternative elsewhere.

Shin Lupin III though... is a different story.

(insert cool transition here or something)

Here is what I really wanted to talk about.

Shin Lupin III, literally. has. no. good scans. It's all shit. You get trash or garbage and that is it.

"But Peater! What about the Tokyopop scans! They're pretty good right?"

You're absolutely correct! Until you realize that Tokyopop did not fully translate Shin Lupin III, leaving approximately 100 chapters worth of manga in horrible quality 😂😂😂

Those missing parts are the ultimate problem, and the guy that is now in charge of translating the rest of Shin Lupin, Oranges, does not do the scanning justice (the one above.)

I do not know what kind of source he uses, but it is absolute horseshit, and again, he doesn't seem to bother with editting them to make them look better. I'll just provide more examples, to really emphasize how horrible it looks. You can barely see what's going on with some of them.

Someone pointed a flashlight while scanning this

(Editor's Note: So it seems like Oranges did the bare minimum and fixed the scans on the San Francisco arc so he is slightly forgiven)

And what the Japanese scans? Hahaha, it gets worse.

From an simple look at it, you might be tricked into thinking that this is a good scan! has nice lighting, black ink, BUT THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE WRONG.

Look closer. The lineart is melding into each other, the cross hatching is blurred, the kanji is barely readable.

This is the works of an Al upscaling tool.

AND THEY DID THIS, FOR EVERY SINGLE PAGE! THEY LURE YOU INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY LIKE "omg!! san francisco scans!!" AND THIS IS WHEN THEY TRAP YOU INTO A MELTING POT OF AI SHIT TO NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE GOOD SHIN LUPIN SCANS EVER AGAIN AND AM SICK OF IT!$_+$(2!(_(!_(+7(0#+#?@!

And so that's why I'm going to be doing something about it!

My project for this year is to rescan Shin Lupin III in higher quality. No AI upscaling involved, everything will be done by hand. Here are the previous panels again but scanned by me!!

See the differences now!! This is what happens when someone puts effort on their scans!! wowwwww

I've already finished scanning the raws for every single page, and now it is only time to clean them.

When will I finish this? I can't tell you, but I promise that it will be done and released before the year ends. I hope you guys are looking forward to this!!

Darn, I actually didn't get to talk much about my process and how i got into scanning huh? Maybe some other time if people are interested.

But for now, goodbye, and thanks for reading!!

[honeylemonteaasblog]

Soulmates <3

summary: Yoongi and our MC, Hani, meeting for the first time.

pairing: Yoongi x Reader

genre: soulmates, fluff

word count: 3.7 k

warning: fluff, almost sickeningly sweet, boyfriend Namjoon

Yeah, soulmates existed but you never thought you would find your soulmate.

It’s not because you were a complete pessimist, it’s just that most people don’t. Historians talked about a time where everyone meet their soulmate. It was like a rite of passage to meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Then, it was like the world just… moved on. We shifted away from this romanticized idea of love. We prioritized money, productivity, and success. But the problem was that not everyone can agree on how to define success.

As a teenager, school became your whole life. Then, when you finally did graduate, work became your whole life. There was this need to progress in life at the fastest pace possible. And if you didn’t complete everything how everyone else wanted, then you were failing. If you didn’t do well in school, go to a good university, and land a well paying job where you could work for the rest of your life, then you weren’t successful. It didn’t matter what you accomplished. It didn't matter how you felt about any of it.

In this new world that demanded toxic productivity and limited happiness, there was no room for soulmates. Not in the traditional way anyways. Some people still found their soulmates. But the magic of it all wore off. It didn’t seem special anymore. If anything, people who found their soulmates were lucky because of the convenience of it all. You found the one, so you could stop pretending to care about love.

Historians describe soulmates as a magic that can’t be contained. An all consuming feeling that can’t be fully described because it’s too many positive things all at the same time.

Personally, you think that no one can describe soulmates because that’s part of the magic that has worn off. It’s just another causality caught in the cross fire. The very idea of soulmates is slipping away. You wonder how long it will be until everyone forgets there were soulmates to begin with. It’s already started.

“Please… It’ll be fun. I promise” Minji is begging you to go to dinner with her friends. It’s not that you don’t want to go or don’t believe her. You do want to met her friends and boyfriend, Namjoon. It’s just that you don’t really like meeting new people. Well, you don’t really like social gatherings, or people for that matter, in the first place. You prefer a night in with a good book and some music.

But you had been dodging Minji’s attempts for a whole group hang out for over a month now and she was getting desperate. You were starting to feel bad. And it was a Friday night so you didn’t have classes in the morning. Plus she was almost in tears and looking up at you with puppy eyes. Really, you were doomed from the start.

“Just dinner.” You don’t think she was listening anymore, too busy nodding happily as she texted her boyfriend about the slight change of plans. She said that there were already going to be nine people, so adding another person last minute would be completely fine. She always complained that she was in desperate need of more women in their hangouts. It was only Minji and Sieun, Hoseok’s girlfriend.

She always called them “the boys.” Even though her boyfriend was one of them, he was simply lumped in with the rest of them. It always made you laugh how she talked about them as if they were one singular unit. They all seemed to exist together. It made you smile, but also you were a little nervous because you had no idea what to expect. You had no idea who they were. You hadn’t even met Namjoon yet. Nor did you know much about him, despite being friends with Minji for so long. All you did know was that they all go to Seoul’s National University too. But it was a big school, so even that didn’t mean much.

You didn’t even know their names, well, only Namjoon and Hoseok.

Needless to say, you were nervous on your way to dinner. You and Minji were taking the bus over to the restaurant together. You sat quietly, wondering what Minji’s reaction would be if you decided to fake an illness to get out of dinner. She would realize what you were doing, but you wonder if she might let you off the hook if she could tell how hard you were trying. Minji was talking to you a little, but mostly to herself. She was going on and on about how much the boys were going to love you. That they needed someone like you in their friend group.

That is, someone smart. Apparently the boys were a little dumb. Don’t get it wrong, they were smart, they just were also ‘the boys.’ You took her word for it because you didn’t really know what that meant. But you also did understand that boys tended to be a particular kind of dumb smart. So you wouldn’t put it past the seven men to be both smart and dumb at the same time. In fact, they probably were most of the time.

She also gave you a brief introduction of each of them so you didn’t have to stress about trying to figure it all out while you were eating.

The oldest Seokjin had graduated last year with a business degree and worked at a start up while also working as a TA at the university.

Then, Yoongi who also graduated with a business degree with Seokjin last year, but decided to double major. So, he is finishing a music production degree.

Namjoon’s a literature major, focusing on classics. It makes you smile because it makes sense why Namjoon and Minji would get along. You can already tell that you are going to like her boyfriend.

Hoseok’s a senior and Jimin’s a junior, but they are both majoring in dance. Their dream is to a run a studio together. It’s honestly pretty heartwarming.

Then Taehyung, who is studying photography. Apparently he has a couple minors because he could never make up his mind about what to study and now has all of these extra credits and hobbies that he doesn’t know what to do with.

Finally, the maknae, Jungkook who apparently is your stereotypical ‘gym bro.’ That in itself makes you a little nervous. But he is studying graphic design instead of getting a business degree so it gives you hope. Minji says that Jungkook is a literal bunny, whatever that means.

Sieun greets you both at the entrance to the restaurant, having just gotten there herself. You had meet Sieun a few times when she’d eat lunch with you and Minji sometimes. She’s like a little ray of sunshine. Honestly, it’s adorable. You found yourself wanting to squish her checks together all the time.

“I’m so glad you are here.” Sieun, ever the princess, said brightly. “There are too many men, we need more women in the group.” She sighed hopelessly. Minji was quick to voice her agreement which made you burst out laughing. You think that you are really going to like this friendship. And its always great to have girl friends. There is something special about it.

It was a higher end KBBQ restaurant. So even though you could tell it was more expensive you didn’t feel underdressed. It felt homey which helped you relax a little but you were nervous walking to the table. You could see seven men sitting at a table in the back. It was not completely private, but farther in the back offering some privacy for your large group.

You assume that Namjoon was the first to see you because a tall man jumped up from his seat to hurry over and wrap Minji in a hug. Despite his large frame, you could already tell he was a teddy bear. You think you already like him, but had to put on the front of a protective best friend. Once he let go of Minji he turned to greet you, bowing politely.

“Haneul, right?” You nod, returning his bow. It felt pretty formal but you appreciated the gesture. You think Minji found a good man. “Hani is fine.” You say diplomatically while Minji stifles a laugh beside you, amused by your antics. Like she would be any different.

You turn towards the other men, intending to offer each a smile and expecting an awkward introduction back. But after the first awkward smile, you freeze. A man is looking back at you. He has cat-like eyes and dark hair. He looks so pretty. You aren’t sure how else to describe him, just pretty. You think that your brain might be malfunctioning a little because you aren’t able to form any words. Honestly, the man isn’t doing much better. He also is just staring back at you, mouth slightly agape.

Its only after the initial shock that you realize why you both are frozen. You are soulmates. You had never expected to meet your soulmate. You hadn’t planned for this. Judging by his expression, you don’t think he had either. No one does anymore. So, you aren’t completely sure how to react. You don’t know what is expected of soulmates the first time they meet each other.

Everyone else is watching the two of you in confusion, but neither of you even realize because you are both too preoccupied with just staring at each other. You think you could be happy staring into his eyes forever.

“You’re my soulmate.” The man finds his voice before you do. He states it so matter of factly, his voice void of emotions. Part of you understands his tone, you relate to his tone. But the other part of you cringes. Is it bad to wish that his voice held more emotion? Is it bad to wish that he cared?

You nod, suddenly unsure of yourself. God, you want the ground to swallow you whole. Why had you let Minji convince you to meet her friends. You could be at home right now instead of in the restaurant meeting your soulmate.

It’s not that you have something against soulmates or you don’t want a soulmate at all. It’s just that you don’t know what is expected of a soulmate. You didn’t expect to meet your soulmate so you hadn’t considered what you did want. Obviously, you are an overthinker. You like to have everything planned out before you need to make a decision. You don’t like surprises because it makes you feel out of control. This is a surprise and, right now, you definitely feel out of control.

You can feel your eyes begin to fill with tears. You play with your sleeves behind your back to try to stop your hands from shaking but it isn’t working because you can still feel them shake. You blink a few times to make sure you don’t start crying. God, you really don’t want to cry; that would be a mess. How would you even explain why you are crying to your soulmate. That is, if they even wanted to know in the first place. You are vaguely aware of just how much you are overthinking right now, but can’t seem to stop yourself.

Your soulmate’s words broke everyone else out of their spell. The man next to your soulmate pushed the man towards the end of the booth, muttering something about how he has to do something and how you look scared.

You don’t look scared. Right?

Your soulmate stands up and takes a hesitant step towards you. When you don’t move he approaches cautiously. “I’m Yoongi.” “Haneul” Your voice shakes which contrasts Yoongi’s voice which stays steady despite the emotion now on his face. You can see him struggling to say something, but you don’t know how to read his emotions. They are so clearly on his face, but its difficult to decipher. Maybe its the tears clouding your vision. You wonder if Yoongi even knows what he, himself, is feeling.

“Haneul” Yoongi repeats. You don’t think he was actually talking to you so you don’t respond. You don’t even know what you would say to him. You nod. “Hani” You end up saying. “Everyone calls me Hani” You clarify when he doesn’t speak. You open your mouth to say something else. What exactly? You aren’t sure. But Yoongi beats you to it when he repeats your name. Again. He smiles and for the first time. You feel butterflies, the good kind.

“Why don’t you two eat together? We can meet later.” The man who had ushered Yoongi to stand up earlier says with a smile. It’s a nice smile. It makes you feel like he cares about you. Minji really does have good friends. You glance at Minji and she smiles and nods encouragingly. She looks like she might burst with energy. Minji is slightly bouncing up and down like a toddler that ate too much candy. Namjoon is standing next to her. He is looking between Minji and you like he might need to step in and hold Minji back from hugging you.

You look at Yoongi who is looking at you with hopeful eyes. It’s the first emotion you can easily read. You don’t think you would be able to turn him down when he is looking at you like that, even if you didn’t want to eat with him. You nod quickly which makes him smile even wider. His smile is this gummy smile that makes your heart clench. You decide that you love his smile.

You and Yoongi move over to another booth for some privacy. You are just far enough away that the others won’t be able to hear you, but they still have a clear view which makes you shift nervously. You can tell that all of them are watching you and Yoongi carefully. Yoongi seems calm which is good because you are anything but calm. You need some calm. Maybe this whole soulmate thing had some merit to it. Maybe Yoongi will be able to balance you out. The thought makes you a little dizzy. If Yoongi balances you out by giving you some peace to your racing mind, you hope that you can balance him out in some way too.

You send him a shy smile, trying to see what Yoongi could possibly need help balancing out. He blushes. Like he actually blushes.

You knew the myth behind soulmates. It was said that your soulmate was your other half. They were like your missing puzzle piece. That they completed you. Obviously it was a nice thought. Doesn’t everyone want to meet their person? Someone who just completes you and makes all the worries go away. So of course soulmates sound pretty good. But the problem is that soulmates don’t promise anything. Back when soulmates were really popular, people would find their soulmate and fall in love, but still get their heart broken. Love between soulmates isn’t set in stone, you still need to put effort into your relationship.

Relationships are never easy, even with the perfect person, your other half. Your soulmate.

You think it is naive for people to think that soulmates would fix that. But for most, they want an easy love. They want all the perks of being in a relationship without the work. So the magic of soulmates began to fade. Simply people stopped valuing relationships and instead wanted ease, but nothing in life is easy, especially the things worth fighting for. And you can already tell that Yoongi is worth fighting for.

“Here” Yoongi begins to place cooked meat into your bowl of rice. You had been so caught up in your own head that you hadn’t even realized he had been grilling meat. You send him a shy smile that makes his eyes light up. You feel satisfied. You have always cared about people and put so much into making other people happy, but there is something special about making Yoongi happy.

“I never thought I’d meet my soulmate.” He leans back in his chair, giving you his full attention. In the best way possible, it makes you really nervous. There is something so unique about being watched by Yoongi. It is like he is truly seeing you and you aren’t sure you have ever felt so vulnerable with anyone. “I gave up.” You admit in a soft voice that makes Yoongi melt. You see it in the way that his eyes soften.

“People used to plan their lives around soulmates and now people give up their soulmates for whatever life they already have. It's like they are so scared of disappointment that they won't let themselves wish for the mere possibility of something better.” Yoongi’s voice is really nice. You wonder if he would consider recording an audiobook. He has the voice for it. “But… I’ve always dreamed of meeting my soulmate.” Yoongi’s confession makes your eyes snap up to his. A part of you wants to hide, worrying that you won’t be able to meet his expectations. On the other hand, the look of kindness in his eyes makes you think that he may just be a kind man. So, you find yourself wanting to trust him.

“Relationships aren’t easy. Soulmates don't guarantee anything.” You voice shakes a little bit and you hope Yoongi doesn’t realize but based on how closely he is watching your face you bet he does. He nods quickly.

“You jumped to relationship quickly” His eyes look playful as he watches you, so you know that he is teasing you. Briefly, you realize that he is trying to make you feel more comfortable. It’s working. “Oh? No relationship is fine for me too.” You keep your voice light so he knows that your teasing him and not serious. You are also fighting a smile that you know he can see.

Yoongi fights off his own smile as he watches your eyes shine. You look happy and it makes him happy. “Wait.” His voice comes out strained and it makes your heart skip a beat. “Relationship sounds good. Great actually.” He talks quickly as he watched you smile as his words. God, he would do anything to keep that smile on your face.

You breakout into a fit of giggles and it has him stopping. It’s like Yoongi’s whole world stops in that moment. He finally understands what all the historians are talking about. He doesn’t know how he thought that he was happy before because it’s in this moment that he realizes he will never be happy again if you aren’t in his life. He doesn’t know how he could go back to his normal life if he you left him. It is in this exact moment that Yoongi realizes that despite just meeting you, he would do anything for you.

He is already writing a album in his head. He wonders if it would be to bold to title it “Hani.”

“Relationship sounds good to me too.” Your voice is shy and it makes Yoongi want to wrap you in his arms and shield you from everything that could ever hurt you. You are too precious for this world.

The others watch the two of you from their table. They aren’t able to hear anything, but they don’t need to because they can see the big smiles on both of your faces. Neither of you have stopped smiling since you sat down together. “I’ve never seen Yoongi look like that” Jin states. The others simply nod, keeping their eyes on you and Yoongi. They don't want to blink and miss a part of your love story.

“They’re already in love.” Minji hasn’t stopped smiling since she heard the word soulmate. Minji has always loved the idea of soulmates. While she and Namjoon have been in a relationship for years now and she is absolutely in love with him, she has always loved the idea of soulmates. The idea that there is someone else out there that is meant for you. Someone that is your other half. Out of the two best friends, Minji is the romantic.

So now that you and Yoongi are soulmates, Minji is ready to live out her dreams of seeing soulmates fall in love. Many best friends might be jealous, but Minji loves you so much. She also knows Yoongi.

Unlike most people, Yoongi has always held out hope that he would find his soulmate. He has a file on his laptop of songs dedicated to his soulmate and love of his life. He hadn’t even met you yet and he was already in love. Minji knows that Yoongi is going to love you in the best way that he can. He is going to pour everything into your relationship. He would do anything to make you happy. To make you smile. To protect you.

Minji is overwhelmed with happiness. She feels so lucky that she gets to witness you be loved by someone like Yoongi. Minji also knows that while you are scared of love, you give everything you have to your relationships too. You and Yoongi are alike in that way.

You don’t have many friends, a fact that you aren’t ashamed to admit. You don’t have many friends because you value friendship so much more than most people. When you commit to a relationship, platonic or romantic, you give everything to it in order to maintain it. You understand how much work it takes to maintain a relationship, so when you commit you hold yourself to a high bar.

Minji isn’t sure if there is anyone better out their for either of you, you both seem to fit together perfectly. But that is the whole idea of soulmates, right? That you complement each other completely. She wipes a tear from her eye which catches Namjoon’s attention. Ever the attentive boyfriend. He reaches over to grab Minji’s hand, knowing that quiet reassurance goes a long way.

“I’m so happy that I get to witness their love.” Minji’s voice holds so much emotion in it. Namjoon smiles at his emotional girlfriend. He is so in love with her, its almost overwhelming to look at her.

“He is going to love her so much.” Minji smiles back at Namjoon.

“He already does.”

[olderthannetfic]

About the "European" fairytale thing, non-white cultural stories, and "Eurocentrism." To start off, keep in mind that I mean the specific story that's told, NOT the visuals. So if you took the stories themselves, wrote them down as a book with no pictures. LONG SUBMISSION

I honestly feel like it's a bit weird to claim that the Disney movies are "Eurocentric" because none of the stories have anything to do with the actual European version of the fairytales. If they hadn't been specifically drawn to look like that, and you only had a written version by Disney, you could probably argue they're just a bastardisation of any culture where a version of them exists.

If you know the "real" fairytales from Europe, they've got almost nothing to do with what Disney made. You could take any cultural equivalent to a Disney movie and claim it's a "clean washed" and American values version of it, and it "just so happens" they chose a Pseudo European aesthetic, and not even that well. <- That last part is my opinion.

I think Cinderella was used as an example of a story that has an equivalent in Vietnamese culture, the fairytale of Tam and Cam. You could take the Disney version basically the exact way it's written, and put a different coat of paint on it, and it's be just as accurate to any other cultural version: Not accurate at all. There are several versions of the Cinderella story in Europe alone, the German one is different from the French one, and none of them are like the Disney version. In one of the version I've read the gifts and dresses come from a tree from the mother's grave, and at the evil stepsisters cut their feet to fit in the shoe, which the doves tell the prince.

Beauty and the beast is the same. The Disney version isn't the "European" version, it's vaguely based on a fairy tale that also exists across a few countries. If we go European, there's version with a singing tree, a version with a singing bird, there's also a Scandinavian story where a girl is forced to marry a bear, who turns into a human at night. But there are also stories of the same make in Asia and Africa.

It's also one of the reasons I'm both annoyed with both sides bitching about the Disney remakes. On one side, these movies aren't even the "European" fairytales, they've always been a completely American versions of a story that they vaguely took inspiration from the European versions but basically removed 80-90% of the actual European key elements, where the base story also exists in other cultures. With a pseudo historical European aesthetic, which was heavily based on the "current trends" of the years they were made in, example Snow Whites being based on the late 1930's fashion, same with Aladdin, Jasmine being based on the 90's. These aren't "White European" fairytales, they're "Western American" fairytales. If you actually wanted a real European fairy tales, you could just check out European productions or even the books. The other side, who're constantly saying that its a win for diversity or that it "makes the most sense for visibility" or how it's a win for POC fairytales: The remakes still heavily feature some of the pseudo European inspirations, and it's still a shit cash grab. It wouldn't take Disney much extra work if they actually just straight up adapted the story with a different aesthetic since they already don't give a shit about accuracy. You could literally still keep the Western American story they wrote, but could use setting that pseudo African, Asian, LatAm or whatever to tell the story, which are more catered to American born people. (Not like the piss poor 2020 Mulan, at least the 98 seemed passionate and wanting to tell a good story despite being inaccurate. Kinda like all their old movies, inaccurate but at least passionate abt it.) Making shitty poorly redone live action movies isn't a step in the direction for diversity, it's a step in the "Let's throw POC actors to the wolves, and put them in movies doomed to fail." There are thousand options. It also comes across cheap because you're basically boiling down POC, especially American POC entertainment to "rotten leftovers from much more popular white lead fairy tale movies." Great, the first forage for people into big production "POC in fairy tales" are low value Disney trash, with the constant visual reminder that they have to attach themselves to "European" stories. <- Even if it's pseudo European, most people don't know that and will just view it as "European" period.

--

If we want to talk about cultures dominating so much that they warp the entire framework of how we think...

What is a "fairy tale"?

Why does this exist as a category?

--

One of the problems people run into when they try to be more inclusive in this sphere is that while every place has folktales, and many of those do have animal husbands or other common elements that are found in the core "fairy tales" the West knows, they don't have a specific category of tale with the same boundaries.

I honestly think a big part of the reason for rehashing the same tiny core of tales is that it's hard to define what a new entry into the canon would have to look like.

If it's basically a Beauty and the Beast variant, okay, but what if it isn't? And even if it does have some animal husband aspects, what if the actual point of the story in its original context is completely different.

Very quickly, one ends up at that Joseph Campbell place of thinking everything is a Jesus metaphor and all mythologies are basically the same.

[pure-ablution]

Book club announcement and introduction!

I’m very happy to let everyone know that I’m going to be running a little informal monthly book club! I’ve received lots of enthusiasm and some amazing book suggestions, and after a few days of planning things out so that everything can run smoothly and be enjoyable, I’m ready to explain the club format and rules, and announce this month’s book.

The club is completely optional, and you can take part whenever you feel like it. If you have a busy month or don’t like the sound of the book we’re reading, then feel free to take a break! I’ve set up a separate side blog for the running of the club @thelittlewomenbookclub, so that all discussions can take place away from this blog and those who aren’t interested in taking part don’t have their feeds filled up.

I’m going to be a little bit of a dictator (book-tator?) and choose the book for each month, to avoid any unnecessary difficulties in polling etc., but please do feel free to suggest books that you’d like to read at any time, by sending an ask to @thelittlewomenbookclub or sending me a DM to any of my blogs, including this one. We’ll read a range of literary genres, including popular and academic non-fiction, novels, and poetry anthologies, and I’ll try to manage an even distribution between topics and themes. Occasionally, we might read a bestseller or very obscure text, but books will usually be moderately popular and easy to get hold of. Books chosen will always be available to read in English, and I’ve set up a MEGA file to store PDF copies of each book.

I’ll announce new books on the first day of each month, and then post my review and invite discussion on the last day of each month. Submissions are enabled on @thelittlewomenbookclub, so if you have a full review, please do submit it to be posted! If you have questions, comments, or just general thoughts, you can use the ask button. If you haven’t read the book for the month, please don’t participate in the conversation, as I’d like to keep the discussion relevant and productive.

With all of that out of the way, I’m excited to announce that our book for January is...

Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power

Clare Hunter, 2022.

“Investigating the oft-told story of Mary, Queen of Scots from a new and wonderfully original angle, Embroidering Her Truth reveals how the doomed monarch incorporated textiles and fabric into creating an image of martyrdom and relaying hidden messages to her supporters and allies.” — Waterstones summary

For the club’s first book, I wanted something well-researched, but still within the bounds of popular history, and I think that this is such an interesting way of starting off. Clare Hunter isn’t a historian, but rather a textile curator from a non-academic background, and I’m intrigued by the idea of exploring biography through fashion and textiles. She’s won awards for previous works, and Embroidering Her Truth has received high praise. From what I can gather, this is a work of social history and incorporates anecdotes from Hunter’s own life, as well as a dramatised narrative of Mary’s life and the social role of fabrics and textiles in the Renaissance courts. I’m really looking forward to reading it with you!

Embroidering Her Truth is 349 pages long. If you read 12 pages each day during January, you’ll have finished the book in time for our discussion.

Read a review from Dundee University Review of the Arts here.

Find the PDF copy here.

[thekingofwinterblog]

The Problem with Trespasser

So there has been said a lot about the flaws of tresspasser as a finale to Inquisition, as it can basically be divided into two sections.

There is the lore, the character stuff with your companions, and the actual titular trespasser section of the story, which is generally liked.

Then there is the Exalted Council part of the Story which is generally greatly disliked for the way it portrays Arl Teagen as an ungrateful arse, who even though he's in the right that the Inquisition really does need to disband, is such a bitch about it that a player might feel the desire to keeping it intact just to spite him, despite all the reasons that is a terrible idea(Such an organization being doomed to become the templars 2.0 being the single biggest). Not to mention the way it makes Thedas's nations look like they have the memory capacity of a goldfish, given how instrumental the inquisition was in stopping the last massive threat and might be so again against the plenty of obvious threats on the horizon(and sure enough, the stop the Dragon breath terrorist attacks that would have happened with or without them being there).

However, looking at the big picture, i don't think the actual writing of Arl teagen was the problem here.

No the problem is that Arl Teagen and the rest of the world's reaction to the Inquistion is very, very clearly taken from an older draft of this story, where the Inquisitor was far less... An unambiguous force for good, lets say.

The concept art for inquistion tells a story that is very, very different than what we get in game, with a lot more emphasis is put on the inquisitor very obviously being a dick, that is not well liked by anyone around them.

There is also the way said inquisitor could be far, far more pragmatic and morally grey or dark, like here, where the Inquisitor could force the Venatori to serve after defeating them.

Way more emphasis is built on the idea that the Inquisitor is creating a cult of personality around you, personally.

Essentially a dark mirror to the Hero of Ferelden and Galahad's journeys to defeat their own crisis'.

The option of letting celine die was always gonna be a part of the game, but rather than a pragmatic, move of standing aside and let it happen, your companions would have very negative reactions to this choice, with you having to force Blackwall in particular to stand back as he curses you.

And of course, it would all cuminate in the logical endpoint for the herald of andraste, the living embodiment of the Andrastian reformation as you took your place on the sunburst throne, and usher in whatever changes you want.

This outcome... makes perfect sense. Frankly speaking, this is a much more narratively fitting ending for the inquistior, that has a clear climax from where they start.

Of course we all know this didn't actually end up happening. The Inquisitor ended up being the most passive of all the PC's by a wide margin(you could shape them into having a personality, but not one with a true backbone like Hawke and the Warden), and all these very morally dubious options was taken out of the game in favor of a much more morally simple story.

The most evil thing you can do in DAI is to choose the templars over the mages... and rather than being portrayed as the clear evil choice as it should have been(and still been a legitimate and pragmatic option for you to take) there is instead attempts at making it more nuanced.

Other than that, you don't have the kind of options that the Warden had, and even hawke did(like selling Fenris into slavery), to be a dick.

With all this in mind, it's blatently obvious why Teagen and the world is so damn afraid of the Inquisition.

Because this part of the story was written from before this change in the direction of the game, and was never updated to fit the final product.

If the original vision of the game had to to pass, Teagen's extreme reactions to the Inquistion would have been far, far more understandable, and in it's own way a way of calling the player out on their bullshit.

However, the final product just makes it appear he's way overreacting, rather than maybe questioning that maybe Teagen is right, maybe it is time to end this inquisition for the good of all.

Its one of the biggest problem with what is otherwise a very good epilogue to Dragon Age Inquisition.

[dchuntress]

cw for unedited ramblings, extremely subjective views, comic spoilers, and triggering topics pertaining to CSA |

this is my personal interpretation/idea really, but i feel that helena bertinelli's grief and anger are more than what meets the eye, and in many ways, misplaced.

it's natural to assume that her "tragic backstory" was how her family died and she was the sole survivor, which i don't deny of course is an EXTREMELY hurtful and traumatic thing to experience at that age, being helpless and leaving with that lack of closure and insurmountable survivor's guilt and the nagging question of "why? why me?"

however, whenever i read her stories, there's an undercurrent of fury, heartbreak, and sorrow in her stories, especially in her internal monologues; a persistent, unshakable anger that seems directed at something larger, something harder to name, something she wants to unleash on predators — those people who exploit on innocent lives in any way. a sort of anger that did not go away even when she avenged her family's massacre by making their killer face the consequences; a sort of loss that is extremely irreversible, a sort of upset that can't ever be healed.

this is hugely influenced by my reading of huntress (1989), as well as huntress: year one — in 1989, we learn that helena is a victim of csa at just six years. in year one, we see this scene where the hitman terrifies a young helena and rips out her cross and takes it away from her, frightening her in the process; as an adult, she takes the cross back — which feels symbolic, like she's reclaiming something she knows she was never meant to lose — and she cuts his tongue out so that he'd never call anybody a little girl again. in year one also, we see that monica is just sixteen, yet she's also getting victimised by nino angelo. when helena fails to protect monica from him by standing up for her, she puts an end to it all by inflicting violence on him, the only language monsters like him can understand.

my point is; i think helena's loss for the majority part is something abstract, something she can't put into words; she didn't have the words for it as a young child, and she is scared to have the words for it as a grown up.

she has always known that her life was never going to go smoothly either way; her life has been molded by this pervasive sort of unfairness and violation.

she wants to be a saint, but her very existence is a reminder of betrayal; in cry for blood, we find out that helena is the product of an extramarital affair, with her biological father being her family's killer on top of all that. did she do the right thing by making him pay, or did she go against what is supposed to be her nature?

this sort of insurmountable, fundamentally irreversible loss has been following her when she was just a young kid, yet to have experienced anything of the world at all; she was damaged before she could know what freedom feel like, she had to know death and murder before she could live, her life was destroyed before it even began. how do you write the eulogy for a dysfunctional family, a stolen childhood, and a fractured sense of self that never even got to develop in the first place?

and she was able to finally place her inherent anger and grief on something tangible; the murder of her family, with the inherent unfairness of why she was not killed that day. the annihilation of her family was not the beginning of it all, but rather, the breaking point; the point of emergence. her anger cannot be extinguished easily because she carries the weight of a broken world she knows from the very start she can't fix, she's doomed to lose against and die to, but she will keep on shouldering that weight every day, fighting everyday to do what she knows is right with every fiber of her beating heart. she survived, she outlived, she took lives; they are her weaknesses and her strengths in equal parts. but most importantly, she is alive, and regardless of what that means or measures or weighs, she has to go on. her story is far from over.

[jupiter--dream]

Heyyyy friend! can you tell me about your favorite Dream headcanons please? :3

OMG OMG OMG OMG HAIIII HAI HAI

GOD GOD GOD YES YES YES!! I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY SILLY HEADCANONS!! (spoiler alert: they're not that silly, I love to watch Dream suffer in a blorbo way) Gonna put this under a read more cause holy damn it's getting long-

Before we start, I think it's kinda obvious at this point, considering I always use they/them for Dream, that I heavily headcanon them to be Non-binary; it makes a lot of sense to me! also to list off the self-indulgent headcanons, definitely AuDHD. Like Ink. Yeah. They're both ND as HELL, and also, since I LOVE it when people think of the sanses as having their creators' nationality + accent + knowing their languages; for me Dream's spanish, which is great cause I am spanish too! and I love Dream :3

(and also bc I think it's cute that both Cross and the twins can speak spanish following that headcanon, like they can gossip in secret teehee :3)

Now, to start, well, well, well, well... I feel like people don't play enough with the fact that Dream and Nightmare are basically just energy; like, Nightmare does use his appearance and properties to kinda scare people but he's also not the same NM under the tree, so it changes, but Dream tho!!

I wrote a oneshot once on AO3 where Dream's like very excited over very mundane technology for us, and Cross is the one to kinda explain to them how that works (and NM too, it was a wholesome platonic fic with Cross bonding with the twins), while Cross also takes note of all the very... magical qualities the twins have, fae-like even. It's kinda well-known that Core and Dream are good friends but for me, part of why they connect well is bc they're both in that strange cusp of "neither monster nor human; knowing a lot about this world but still struggling to connect with it on an organic level", bc of Dream's knowledge on the balance and energies and Core's--- whole thing.

Also, it is canon that Dream has a fear of owls bc they can turn their heads 180º and they have big eyes so Dream finds it spooky that they can always look at you, and I can't confirm if this is "100% canon" but I've been told that Dream's claustrophobic as well. Now, other things that I'd say would be hard triggers for Dream, well, people say apples could trigger them but personally? I think apples must be nostalgic to Dream, both bc Nightmare and also bc they represent their mom; I'd say Dream just gets rather extreme nostalgia around apples, probably not fond of ACTUALLY eating them tho lmao

Personally, I'd like to expand on the claustrophobia thing bc of course it'd remind them of their time as a statue, the small space with no way of connecting with the outside, that'd spook them, but I wanna expand it to them getting extremely anxious whenever they can't move in any way; so like, they heal fast bc of their healing abilities and durability but if they were to, idk, break a bone and need to lay in bed for a couple hours, that'd get them very very anxious. And that comes from both the statue and also a huge huge huge need to be "useful" and "productive". Dream was also abused before NM's corruption but their abuse was more like. Being forced to please the villagers and so and so; like, feeling less like themself and more like a tool to others.

But yeah, also while I said that apples wouldn't be a trigger in the sense of making them panic, fire surely is, since it burned the tree down and is very connected to the day of NM's corruption. Basically, I do think that they panic in a major way whenever there's a lot of fire around or something really smells like burning (so imagine the situation whenever Ink tries to cook something and forgets about it later smh) like, those memories of the Day Of Doom would come back FAST.

Also, going back on that time as a statue thing, I've written posts about this before but like, fanfics often end up describing Dream as having "perfect pearly white bones" and like, probably not!! my guy spent 493 years as a statue! stone chips and erodes! their bones probably have small flaws! nothing major, but they're probably imperfect like that!!

This is getting so long, I'm so sorry 😭, I'll just list off some other miscellaneous headcanons that don't need that much more explanation: Dream, again, has AuDHD, but also AvPD (since that includes a LOT of people-pleasing and self-deprecation); definitely a workaholic if I've ever seen one. Dream's canonically demi-aro and ace + implied to be pan (as in, said to not care about the gender of their partner/s, y'know) and I kinda share that but my self-indulgent side wants them to be ominsexual like me (in practice, they're still mspec, all good all good), I headcanon them super duper heavily to be non-binary, like, their gender isn't just "blank", but it's just nothing remotely CLOSE to "man" or "woman". I headcanon them to use they/them and ae/aer :3

And. Oh dear. Oh wow. That's a huge ramble ashjgbsjdfh!! but I mean, you did ask ME, The Dream Guy, to talk about Dream The Guy, so like, yyyyyyup yup yup. But still, I'M SO SORRY THIS IS SUCH A LONG POST 😭😭😭😭😭😭

My other headcanons end up being so self-indulgent and "ooc"-ish (smh they make sense in the context of them being other au's) that I didn't feel justified putting them in here cause they're not that justified either, some of my headcanons are just so random, like my headcanon that Killer plays the violin. Why? who knows!! not me!! I have no proof!! but!!

[roanofarcc]

PROJECT SUNSHINE CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE → ON THE BENCH

summary: steve harrington x oc | on Ao3

when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown.

word count. 3.5k || masterlist

warnings: cannon typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness. parts of this story were written pre-season 4 release. cannon divergence.

previous chapter ← → next chapter

Outside the Byers home, in the light of the moon that peaked out from behind the broken cloud cover, Steve and Nancy dug through a pile of junk tossed out from the shed and looked for anything that could be used to burn the monster virus out of Will. A tightness pulled at Steve’s chest the longer they stood in uncomfortable silence. He couldn’t handle it and decided to break it. 

“You should go with him. 

Nancy’s head snapped upward. “What?” Her curls fell from her pulled-back hair and makeup was smeared lightly under her bright eyes, looking more undone than she usually did. They all looked frazzled after their night which still felt far from over, but she still looked beautiful. And that thought made his chest hurt even more.

“You should go with Jonathan.” The words were bitter in his mouth, but he knew they needed to come out. Ever since their fight on Halloween, Steve knew their already rocky relationship was too far gone to be sewn back together. It had been splintered since Barb’s death, but for a while, Steve thought if they pretended they were okay, everything would fix itself. But it had become increasingly clear to Steve that nothing in their lives would be normal again, and because of that he and Nancy couldn’t pretend they were the same people they had been last year when they were stealing kisses in the bathroom during the passing period. Their lives had split in two, the before and after. His and Nancy’s relationship was stuck in the before, before monstered turned out to be real and people returned from the dead. 

He still loved Nancy, and maybe a piece of him always would, but Nancy didn’t hold the same feelings toward him. Steve knew that much. They were over, and maybe that had been since before Halloween but neither one of them wanted to admit it. Something was going on between her and Jonathan, and it stung more than he cared to admit.

“No,” Nancy said. “I’m not just going to leave Mike.” 

Steve turned his attention to a small space heater he found in the pile. He toyed with it in his hands, so he didn’t have to look in her eyes as he spoke. “No one’s leaving anyone. I may be a shitty boyfriend, but it turns out I’m a pretty damn good babysitter.”

“Steve…” she muttered as Steve met her gaze and handed her the space heater. A small, sad smile graced his lips. There was an apology written on her face, but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t say it aloud, not yet at least. For the longest time, he believed every part of Nancy Wheeler was perfect, but she wasn’t. 

“It’s okay, Nancy,” Steve said. “It’s okay.” And it would be, eventually. 

There were more important things happening in the world than his love life. Steve wasn’t going to sit there and beg Nancy to take him back and fix something that was a little broken from the start. That wasn’t fair to either one of them. So, he let her go, no matter how much it really fucking sucked. He handed her the heater and watched as she went back inside, leaving him alone to mull over his thoughts. 

Running a hand through his hair, Steve sighed and slummed his shoulders as the door shut behind Nancy. If it weren’t for the impending doom that hung in the air, Steve would have gone home and drunk the rest of the beer in his fridge while he felt sorry for himself. But there was no time for that. There was too much on the line and his heartbreak would have to wait until the world wasn’t teetering on the verge of ending. 

There was something else too that stirred in his chest, something that left him feeling odd. He didn’t feel as awful as he had on Halloween, and maybe it was because that night already felt like the end of them. The blow of actually losing Nancy didn’t make him feel as utterly miserable as he thought it should have. It hurt. Of course it hurt. Some of him did want to crawl into bed and mull about, but not all of him felt that way. His heartache was mixed with something else, something confusing and conflicting. He didn’t want to dwell on it, not when everyone was preparing to save Will and stop the monsters from eating the residence of Hawkins.

Steve wiped his hands off on his jeans and caught sight of a figure that passed the illuminated window of the kitchen. Sunshine stood with just the side of her face showing, but he could tell she spoke with animation. He assumed she was talking to one of her estranged, superpowered siblings. She looked different than she had the entire time she’d been back home; she wore a kind of smile that Steve only vaguely remembered from their brief childhood together. 

Hawkins had a thing for kids coming back from the dead flipping their world on its head. 

After all of the supplies were gathered, Nancy piled into Joyce’s car, and they took off to some cabin Hopper had in the woods. Everyone else crowded on the front porch.

Steve lingered back by the front door with Max as they were the two odd men out, and watched the group of Hawkins's very own smartasses and superheroes engulf each other in hugs and bid their goodbyes. 

Mike and El, who Steve had gathered had a thing for each other, shared hushed and teary-eyed goodbyes. Sunshine and Luke did the same with Leia, only they spoke loud enough that Steve could hear. 

“Be safe, okay?” Sunshine said as she cupped Leia’s cheeks. 

“I will be.” 

Her brother’s face was serious, and full of worry lines that Steve didn’t think any kid should have. “We’re serious. And if anything goes wrong-” 

Leia brushed off his concern. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.” She tapped the middle of her forehead with her index finger and said, “Just keep an open mind or else I may not be able to reach you.” Her words went a wave of confusion through the group. Steve wasn’t sure he had any more confusion left in him for one night, but he listened anyway and tried to ignore the headache that drummed in his temples. 

“What?” Dustin asked, saying what all of them were thinking. 

Luke’s icy blue gaze bounced between the group as he spoke. “We can talk to each other inside our heads.” He said it like that was totally normal; Steve felt like he was dreaming. 

“But we only use it for emergencies because it’s…” Leia paused, her brows furrowing as she seemed to search for the right words. “You really have to focus and it’s a little, um, complicated, I guess.” 

Lucas’s mouth was agape, but he snapped it shut when Max stepped beside him and nudged his shoulder with her own. He shook his head in disbelief as he muttered, “Twin telepathy. You guys have twin telepathy.” 

“Cool,” said Max. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she took in everything, despite how terrifying it all was. Steve had to give her credit, she handled everything with much more grace than he had.

“El?” Sunshine called out to the girl, who broke away from Mike and joined her brother and sisters. 

Steve hadn’t met El the year prior, but from the little that Sunshine had spoken of her, she wasn’t what he expected. He knew she and Sunshine weren’t actually related, but he pictured El to look somewhat like Sunshine. But El had dark makeup on her eyes and gelled back, short hair that curled at the nape of her neck. She was paler than Sunshine, had wider eyes, and a rounder face. The only thing she and Sunshine shared was the stain of blood on their noses and the little black number on their wrists that peaked out from their long sleeve. Still, they acted like sisters, and Steve supposed they had been through enough together that it didn’t matter if they shared blood or not, they were family.

“You stay safe too, okay?” Sunshine said, hugging El tightly. 

El’s voice was muffled in the fabric of Sunshine’s coat, but Steve could make out a quiet, “I will. Promise.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Hopper’s booming voice called out from where he leaned against the front of his truck. “It’s time.” El and Leia joined hands and started toward the truck, leaving the rest of the group to their own devices at the Byers’ home. 

The air was thick with emotion, but Steve had faith that everything would work out, mostly because he didn’t know what’d they do if it didn’t. 

Once the truck had disappeared down the road, everyone shuffled back inside and started cleaning up the disaster they caused inside the home. The living room was a mess of shattered glass and monster slime, the kitchen was strewn with first aid equipment and stuff from their morse code deciphering, and everywhere else was strewn with weapons and moved furniture. 

The kids started to sweep up the glass and pick up the floor while Sunshine and Steve found themselves back in the kitchen. 

“Hey.” Steve felt like he hadn’t talked to her in hours. “Are you okay?” He couldn’t imagine what was going through her head after everything that had just happened. It was like they crammed a year's worth of events into one night. It was overwhelming for him, and he was a mere bystander in most of it. 

Sunshine nodded slowly, unsurely. “I think so. It just a lot, all of…this.” She vaguely gestured around, but Steve understood. A lot seemed like a massive understatement. 

“No kidding,” he chuckled lightly but stopped himself as his eyes trailed down Sunshine’s face and onto the slow drip of blood that continued to fall from Sunshine’s nose, which she tried to hide with a wipe of her coat sleeve. “Your nose is still bleeding?” 

Sunshine sighed and twisted her wrist to expose the series of dark red stains on her coat. “I couldn’t get them to work earlier.” Steve assumed she was talking about her powers. He had watched her try to light her hands when the monsters found them, but nothing had happened. 

He tried to ease her worry. “You’re probably just tired, right? I mean, you took out a lot of those dogs at the junkyard. They’ll come back.” Steve didn’t even know how she was still standing upright. The fight at the junkyard alone left him achy and tired.

“Yeah, I hope so,” she sighed and glanced over her shoulder at where the kids were working quietly in the living room. “But what if something else happens tonight?” 

He hoped to God they didn’t have to do anything else that night or ever again. It seemed like the worst of it was over for their group. “I think we’re just on babysitting duty for the rest of the night. We’ll be fine, Sunshine.” 

Her lips parted, ready to say something, but she was stopped by the shrill voice of Dustin shouting across the house. “Steve! I need your help!” 

Steve sighed and Sunshine retreated to the living room. The curly-haired kid rushed into the kitchen and began tossing things out of the freezer. 

“What are you doing?” Steve asked. 

“We need to get the dead Demo-dog into the freezer,” Dustin replied, pointing his finger at the dead monster that had been dragged into the kitchen, coated in a layer of slime and horrifying looking. 

He didn’t understand the kid’s fascination with the otherworldly creature. “Why?” 

Dustin looked at him strangely. “Because we need to preserve it for the sake of science.” 

Steve thought that was absurd, but he supposed he couldn’t argue with that logic. He helped Dustin empty the freezer with a feeling that Ms. Byers was not going to appreciate having the monster stored in her home. 

“I can’t believe El’s back,” Dustin said, striking up a conversation. “And that she brought back her and Sunshine’s siblings from the Lab. I mean, it’s just like I said, we have our own team of X-Men now! It’s so cool. Did you see what Leia did to the lights?” Dustin spoke with his voice laced with awe. He was right, it was insane. Steve felt like he was tossed into a comic book. 

“And Luke. He’s the one who can see the future,” Dustin continued. “That’s so crazy. Do you think he’s really seen the end of the world?” 

Steve’s gaze drifted into the living room, where Sunshine sat on the couch with Luke and listened intently to whatever the younger kid telling her. That was an awful big thing for one child to carry with him. Steve didn’t really even know what that meant for Luke or any of them, and the more he thought about it, the more his head hurt. 

Dustin seemed rather unphased, though. “Okay. Grab the Demo-dog.” Steve’s face scrunched up at the instruction and crossed his arms over his chest in protest, earning an eye roll from Dustin. “Dude, just wrap it in a blanket and shove it in the freezer. It’s not rocket science.” 

“Fine,” Steve sighed, knowing arguing would get him nowhere. “I just don’t think this is necessary.” He wanted to forget those slimy, sharp-toothed monsters ever existed. 

“It just is, okay? This is a ground-breaking scientific discovery. We can’t just bury it like some common mammal. It’s not a dog, Steve. And what if someone dug it up? I’m doing us and science a favor.” 

Steve grabbed a blanket that Dustin had stolen from Ms. Byers and threw it over the monster with his face pinched in disgust the entire time. “Alright, alright. But you’re explaining this to Ms. Byers.” He picked it up and cringed at the awful squelching noises the dead monster made when Steve touched it. “Can you help me out here?” 

Dustin reopened the empty freezer and held the door while Steve shoved the Demo-dog inside. It barely fit, but after a couple of shoves and the re-adjusting of limbs they slammed the door shut and it stayed. With a breath of relief that at least the thing was out of sight, Steve somewhat affectionately ruffled Dustin’s hair. 

As weird as their night had been, Steve would’ve been lying if he said he didn’t take a liking to the smart-ass group of kids he had accidentally been put in charge of. They were brave kids, annoying but in a way that was kind of endearing. 

Once they finished cleaning up the kitchen of the monster gunk, the two of them wandered back into the living room and rejoined the rest of the group. Max and Lucas carefully swept up the glass on the floor. Luke and Sunshine spoke quietly on the couch. And Mike paced back and forth across the room. 

Lucas glanced up from his position on the floor where he held the dustpan in place for Max. “Mike, would you stop it already?” 

He shook his head. “You weren’t in there, okay? The Lab is swarmed with hundreds of those dogs-” 

“Demo-dogs,” Dustin corrected. 

His friends ignored him. “The chief will take care of her, and so will her sister,” said Lucas. 

Max let out a small scoff and muttered, “Yeah, like they need protection.” 

“Listen, kid,” Steve started, tossing the dishrag he used to wipe down the kitchen table over his shoulder. “A coach calls a play in the game, bottom line, you execute it, right?” Everyone in the room looked at him with blank stares, like not a single one of them understood what he said. 

Mike scowled. “First of all, this isn’t some stupid sports game. Secondly, we’re not even in the game, we’re on the bench.” 

“Right. So, my point is…” Steve trailed off, unsure of where he was going. He shrugged and settled on, “Yeah, we’re on the bench. So, uh, there is nothing we can do.” He thought they’d leave it at that; he was very wrong. 

“That’s not entirely true,” Dustin said.

“What’d you mean?” Sunshine asked, holding a bloodied tissue to her nose. Steve still didn’t understand a whole lot about her powers, but the fact that her nose was still bleeding worried him. 

“These Demo-dogs have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away.” 

Steve also didn’t understand much about kids, but he was pretty sure most of them didn’t have some weird supernatural magnet that found them in the strangest of situations. And he was pretty sure most groups of kids didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength every time they spoke to one another. Even Max and Luke seemed to understand exactly what the three boys were getting at, despite them hardly knowing each other.

“Right, so if we can get their attention-” Max started her thought, and it was finished by Mike whose eyes widened with an idea that Steve was sure he was going to hate. 

“Then maybe we can draw them away from the Lab and clear a path to the gate.” 

“Yeah, and then we all die!” Steve said. He felt like he was stating the obvious, but of course, the kids didn’t see it that way. 

“That’s one point of view,” Dustin said. 

“No, that’s not a point of view, man, that’s a fact.”

Mike snapped his fingers and said, “I got it!” He rushed out of the room and into the hall, where he crouched down beside a part of Will’s elaborate map that was taped to nearly every surface of the home. “This is where the chief dug his hole. This is our way into the tunnel. So,” he trailed his finger along the map until he landed on a mess of papers taped to the floor in a pile of sorts, scribbled with dark blue and black. “Here, right here. This is like a hub where all of the tunnels feed into. Maybe if we set this on fire-” 

Standing beside Steve, Sunshine rushed out, “Whoa! No. No way.” 

Steve seemed to be the only one that heard her.

“The Mind Flayer would call away his arm,” Lucas said. 

“They’d all come to stop us,” Max added. 

Beside Mike, Luke kneeled on the ground and touched the paper with the palm of his hand, studying it. “Yeah. And then we could circle back to the exit and by the time they realize we’re gone-” 

“Guys!” Steve raised his voice slightly, trying to shut down the conversation before the kids got the grand idea of actually trying to set a tunnel on fire to draw the monsters to them. There was not a chance in hell that they were going anywhere. 

Mike ignored Steve and continued fleshing out a plan. “They’d be at the Gate, and we’d be gone.” 

“Hey! This is not happening!” Steve yelled. 

“But-” Mike tried to argue back, but Steve wasn’t having it.

“No! No buts! Sunshine and I promised that we’d keep you shitheads safe and that is exactly what we’re gonna do. We’re all staying here, on the bench, and we’re waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everyone understand?” 

Instead of responding to him, all of their eyes turned to Sunshine. 

“Please, Sunshine,” Dustin pleaded. 

Much to Steve’s relief, she shook her head. “I know you guys want to help, and I do too, but Steve’s right. It’s too dangerous and we promised we’d keep you guys safe. There’s nothing we can do right now.” 

The kids all sighed and deflated as their plan was shut down. Steve was about to suggest they do something to get their minds off of everything that had happened and that was happening, but he didn’t get a chance to as a pair of headlights pulled into the driveway.

Max and Lucas were the first to run to the broken window to see who it was. It was too soon for anyone to be back yet, which meant it was someone uninvolved in the night’s events.

“It’s my brother,” Max said, ducking down to hide herself from being spotted out the window. “He can’t know I’m here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.” 

All night, the only time Max looked scared was when there was a monster hanging down from the bus roof, inches away from her head. Besides that, she had taken to the insanity a lot better than Steve had last year. Yet, when she talked about her brother, there was a different kind of fear and panic written all over her face. 

Steve shot a quick glance at Sunshine as he said, “Stay here with them. I’ll get him to leave.” He rolled his shoulders and stepped outside into the cold November air that nipped at nose. The headlights of the car shut off and Steve recognized the who it belonged to immediately. Billy Hargrove.

Tag list. @sattlersquarry , @leptitlu , @echoing-oursong

[bonebabbles]

re: the tags on the post you just reblogged; would genuinely Love to hear your take on the themes of homestuck. because so many of its themes are at odds with each other and the reader that it truly does become an ouroboros by the end. and that’s fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time

I really can't phrase it better than "eats itself alive by the end," honestly. Once the Beta Kids scratch their session, you can feel how tired and frustrated the author is. It's like he starts hating his own work and how massively it blew up, when he never planned for it to be a project that lasted so long.

And thus it feels like he starts turning on his work's own themes.

Sburb (the game) was abusive and traumatic, but seemed to be trying to make the kids ""grow"" by some unknown philosophy. Figuring out what Sburb (or its creators) were trying to accomplish was a theme.

Only for the author to get frustrated at the idea of there BEING such a motive, seeming to suddenly pivot to Sburb just being a universe-generating mechanism

The theme about motives, being "pawns" in a greater game and uncovering the mystery, thinking critically about authority figures including the GAME ITSELF is unceremoniously discarded for a "Nothing matters actually" conclusion

Another theme was change and growing up, dealing with your mistakes as you make them. How even in a world with time travel, trying to use metaphysical shennanigans to avoid your fuckups just backfires. Eventually you have to face the music, and you'll be better off for it.

But then the author becomes brutishly cynical. The main casts' worst traits eat them alive on the trip to the new session, we learn the Beta trolls ruined their own playthrough and now painfully slog through their afterlives, the Alpha kids are aimless and trapped in a doomed session.

The theme about growth and facing your own mistakes becomes about stagnation and inevitability.

But honestly I think the most telling change in the author's mindset comes from looking at the Alpha Trolls vs the Beta Trolls.

Like, the way that the Alpha Trolls ALL got a full personality, several interactions with the main cast, and through fan input started evolving into characters that had little traits of the fandom at the time

Homestuck was always a story with a crass tone (and it's kind of incredible how quickly the lingo changed, making early HS look a lot edgier in hindsight than it was at the time) but it felt like there was a lot of love for how these characters had kinda been forged together.

Then you get to the Beta Trolls in a dream bubble, basically all tossed into a high-production walkaround minigame. Several of them just direct, joyless jabs at the audience, less of them relevant.

For me it's really the turning point on the themes, the later acts have always felt super dissonant from the early acts because of that

So in my mind I see it as two big "parts" and examine them together as what I feel was a weak synthesis.

[mariacallous]

Owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing device are begging the company to open source the gadgets to save some the landfill. Spotify hasn't responded to pleas to salvage the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary outlets to enable drivers to listen to and navigate Spotify.

Spotify announced this week that it's bricking all purchased Car Things on December 9 and not offering refunds or trade-in options. On a support page, Spotify says:

We're discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings. We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.

Spotify has no further guidance for device owners beyond asking them to reset the device to factory settings and “safely” get rid of the bricked gadget by “following local electronic waste guidelines.”

The company also said that it doesn’t plan to release a follow-up to the Car Thing.

Early Demise

Car Thing came out to limited subscribers in October 2021 before releasing to the general public in February 2022.

In its Q2 2022 earnings report released in July, Spotify revealed that it stopped making Car Things. In a chat with TechCrunch, it cited “several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues.” A Spotify rep also told the publication that the devices would continue to “perform as intended,” but that was apparently a temporary situation.

Halted production was a warning sign that Car Thing was in peril. However, at that time, Spotify also cut the device’s price from $90 to $50, which could have encouraged people to buy a device that would be useless a few years later.

Car Thing's usefulness was always dubious, though. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen and knob for easy navigation, as well as support for Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and voice control. But it also required users to subscribe to Spotify Premium, which starts at $11 per month. Worse, Car Thing requires a phone using data or Wi-Fi connected via Bluetooth in order to work, making the Thing seem redundant.

In its Q1 2022 report, Spotify said that quitting Car Thing hurt gross margins and that it took a 31 million euro (about $31.4 million at the time) hit on the venture.

Open Source Pleas

Spotify's announcement has sent some Car Thing owners to online forums to share their disappointment with Spotify and beg the company to open source the device instead of dooming it for recycling centers at best. As of this writing, there are more than 50 posts on the Spotify Community forums showing concern about the discontinuation, with many demanding a refund and/or calling for open sourcing. There are similar discussions happening elsewhere online, like on Reddit, where users have used phrases like “entirely unacceptable” to describe the news.

A Spotify Community member going by AaronMickDee, for example, said:

I'd rather not just dispose of the device. I think there is a community that would love the idea of having a device we can customize and use for other uses other than a song playback device. Would Spotify be willing to maybe unlock the system and allow users to write/flash 3rd party firmware to the device?

A Spotify spokesperson declined to answer Ars' questions about why Car Thing isn't being open sourced and concerns around e-waste and wasted money.

Instead, a company rep told Ars, in part: “The goal of our Car Thing exploration in the US was to learn more about how people listen in the car. In July 2022, we announced we’d stop further production and now it’s time to say goodbye to the devices entirely.” I followed up with Spotify's rep to ask again about making the device open source but didn't hear back.

At this point, encouraging customers to waste nearly $100 on a soon-obsolete device hasn't resulted in any groundbreaking innovations or lessons around “how people listen in the car.” In their initial response, Spotify's rep pointed me to a Spotify site that searches Spotify's newsroom for “how to listen to Spotify in the car.” One of the top posts is from 2019 and states that “if your car has an AUX or USB socket, using a cable is probably one of the fastest ways to connect by using your phone.”

As for Spotify, using customer dollars for company-serving learning experiences isn't the best business plan. And for regular users, it's best to avoid investing in an unproven hardware venture from a software company.

As Redditor Wemie1420 put it:

Doesn’t feel great that there is literally no alternative other than trashing it. Feels like we’re being punished for supporting them. Dissuades me from buying anything Spotify puts out in the future. I feel like there would be some way to approach this without being like, ‘yeah we’re done. Just throw it out it’s a waste of money now.’

[siphersaysstuff]

MAY MECH MARATHON

So for May's Patreon-backed @tfwiki toy picture batch, I got a wild hair. After last month's Exdimensions update, I realized that the wiki was missing Legend of the Microns (Armada) Exdimensions Twist (Makeshift), the only XD Emergency Team toy I hadn't done. So I did him up. Hooray!

Then the next day I was staring at the raw photos I took of Retro Hot Rod, which were in my Patreon "working" folder because I didn't have a "Retro" repository folder because I am almost certainly not going to get any others in this line, so I did his pic up... besides, it's the "flagship" toy of the line, it should get unique imagery. God he's gorgeous.

At that point I went " to hell with it" and decided that for each weekday in May, I'd do one toy pic from a random, whatever-I-felt-like selection. No overarching theme, and trying to hit a pretty broad swath of toylines and timeframes. Thus...

Not sure why I picked Universe Magna Stampede next. I actually had to dig him up to take these pics. I think I'd just chanced upon his stock imagery, which was craptastic and also showed the axe split in two, which I'm certain the toy is not supposed to do, and went "no, I'm'a fix this.

And this last week's updates...

I picked up Decoy Smokescreen for cheap at TFCon, and really, the wiki's Decoy coverage has been... lacking. Mostly in that they were sold in so many colors and different ways in Japan that the wiki barely touches on. Smokescreen's page is now the template for how Decoys should be, so I'll get to those in time.

There's not much story here with Animated Lugnut. Most of the wiki's Animated toy imagery is stock, and while stock quality had improved since 2003 (it'd almost have to), it's still not great. Taking pics of the real, final-release toy will almost always be preferable for a number of reasons.

Takara's Mega Super Collection Figure Starscream was part of the big early-2000s burst of G1 merch in Japan. A 5-inch fairly-posable soft-plastic figure with swappable parts, he and a handful of other big-name characters were made, plus several Legends of the Microns headliners.

Power Up VT6 is from the "Real Gear Robots" subline of the 2007 Transformers movie series, one of a large range of 1:1-scale toys that transform from personal electronic devices into robots. He's also one of the few whose altmode is not almost totally outdated. The Cybertron-based stickers on the early Real Gears led to the belief that these were canceled /re-assigned Cybertron toys, but nope! They were made specifically for the movie line, it's just that in order to get them into production, they had to get those decals out fast.

Remember Attacktix? No? Not shocking. Hasbro had an admittedly cool idea for an action tabletop game, started the line with Star Wars, and moved on to Transformers. Yes, officially, you could have Optimus Prime fight Darth Vader. Battle Ravage was one of the booster-pack common pieces (laughably officially "Rare"). You rolled his base forward a set number of "tix" (a clicky-thing in the base counted them off), then could use his spring-loaded waist to swing the mace-ball in the hopes of knocking over your opponent's pieces. There's other rules but that's the jist of it. Each booster-pack piece commonly came with a black base, but there was a roughly 1-in-8 chance of getting a silver-chrome base one, which had no gameplay differences but it was shiny. Sadly, the whole Attacktix line was cancelled after only one series of Transformers pieces were released, with several more based on Generation 1 shown off but doomed to never see release.

Next Saturday, I'll update with the pics done over the course of this coming week!

And remember, if you like these big pic jaunts, you can help make this bigger and better by tossing a tip via Patreon. Just look up "gregstfwikipics" at that site! You can even help pick a monthly theme!