#but the concept of 'character who looks basically the same either way' is super funny to me lol

[bambiraptorx]

[I.D. A digital drawing of genderbent Draxum from ROTTMNT. She has curly shoulder length hair, part of it up in a small bun. Her hands rest on her hips, and she smiles. She is wearing a light blue tee shirt and 'mom jeans' that reach just below her knees. Faint scars are scattered across her arms and legs, the largest being ones that go around her ankles. Besides having thicker eyebrows and wearing pants, there is virtually no difference from the way that OP usually draws Draxum. The background is green, with pale green rectangles scattered behind Draxum. End I.D.]

Draxum gender bend where nothing changes except wearing pants lmao

Bonus under cut: a version with slight facial hair because I usually draw Draxum's mom with some and i think it's neat lol

[I.D. the same drawing as above, but Draxum has faint facial hair above her mouth and on the sides of her jawline. End I.D.]

[wordsmithic]

It's always so funny to me that people on booktok will romanticize male characters with dark skin but it's always described in "olive skin" "tanned" similar to middle east, yet they refuse to make a book about these countries 😂

"He was tall, with big muscles, his skin the colour of olive with strong jawline" like stoooop its like Acotar all over again.

It's always the same also because i saw your Raphael and it's exactly what many should have done but noooo they always make it about fantasy while "coincidentally" enough they resemble middle east man.

Did you know, anon, that "tall, dark and handsome" started as a code for "Greek", "Italian", "Latino", "Native American" etc? Those male characters were not ethnically "Greek", "Italian", "Latino", "Native American" etc, tho! The reason is, WASP women found the "rugged/dangerous/exotic" man exciting, but at the time those minorities were not seen favorably in Northern nations. Hence, their stories only kept the look minus the ethnicity, plus, the stereotype that those men lacked gentleness and basic courtesy, and they were more daring than their boring WASP husbands.

It's a very tricky situation with Northern Europeans and Americans, because for them, "dark" for a caucasian person either means "a person with a light tan" (because they have a weird fixation on tans sometimes, as they cannot achieve them that easily) or "incredibly dark" (because they cannot fathom other darker shades in between).

Oh, and they always forget that "olive" is a complexion found in almost every country on earth! It's just how much green your skin undertone is! The palest Dutch person can have an olive skin tone! Not every Northerner is super red or deadly pale! And people with olive skin do not necessarily tan! "Olive" is not synonymous with melanin or tanning! It's so weird that they've reduced "olive" to a specific color, or a small range of colors.

It's mind-boggling to me that the concept of a tan causes them such confusion! 😂 Mainly because this confusion can be solved very easily with a simple Google search nowadays! I realize I am also generalizing Northerners for brevity's sake, but please know I am not referring to individuals, only trends in their societies that I observe.

And, now to the elephant in the room. They'd rather change how (for example) the Greek population looks to meet the quota for what they consider "satisfactory diversity" of appearance, rather than use people from an ethnic group where those tones are more easily found! That's so hypocritical! And racist, duh!!

I think they know another reason why they do it. They consider cultures like Greek and Italian to be synonymous with their cultures, hence they can use them as they please and treat our people as placeholders. These cultures do not see them as foreign to them, after centuries of misappropriating them and presenting them like their own heritage. Meanwhile, they suddenly think "Omg I cannot write an Iranian/Iraqi, Egyptian character because that's not my culture!" Bitch, Greek is not your culture either! 😂 Your people will probably call the police when they see a Greek get-together!! 😂 So just accept it's a foreign culture and people, do your research, and you'll be fine!

Side note: Raphael is an original Persian Iranian character of mine. He's on the light-skinned side because he has the look of the Persian groups that came from the Caspian steppe, before the Persian Empire was established. His skin tone may vary depending on the season and the lighting. (He's a shapeshifter, hence the various ages)

Raphael by 1. @wolfssketches and 2. @shellsnroses (where he is with my Greek character, Ismene, who actually has OLIVE skin and looks dead at all times xD) The only "olive" on Raphael is his olive green eyes lol (because he's a dramatic bitch and he wants to be special in more than one ways)

Meanwhile, his bodyguard, Firuz, is a Persianized Elamite with darker skin, as he comes from the far Southern populations of what is now Iran. I think he fits the "He was tall, with big muscles, his skin the colour of olive with strong jawline" booktok fantasy 😂

Firuz by 1. @wolfssketches and 2. chadwickvo (The headwrap is based on depictions of Persian warriors in ancient Macedonian frescoes, I promise it's not because of a vague "Middle Eastern Aesthetic" xD) His eyes are filled with white light because, like Raphael, he is not a Human but he is a shapeshifter. (Almost no one is a Human in my book, including my Greek characters)

Thank you if you made it this far!! 💜

[padfootastic]

hey, so i've seen you lean into the cold arrogant black heir version of sirius lately, and i agree to an extent, because he was pretty intimidating and arrogant and didn't really care much about the public other than his people, but that doesn't really mean that he's this stoic, serious guy either right? he's pretty funny, definitely a troublemaker, and way too charming to stay in trouble for long. but at the same time, people know he's dangerous and should not be messed with because under all the charm, there absolutely was an element of 'fuck with me and i'll kill you'. and i know this sounds super contradictory but that's the whole point about sirius' character. he's a walking talking contradiction. he's so beautifully complex that turning him into this heir version is contradicting his entire character. what do you think? i would love to see you elaborate on this.

also, what do you think his humour is like? i've always thought of it as super sarcastic and dry. he def has a dark sense of humour, and he's so so sharp witted. anyway sorry if my ask was too long, i can talk for hours and hours about sirius.

no!!! anon no ask is too long when it’s about sirius. i can do the same (i have, in fact, done the same) it’s so valid.

i don’t think it’s such a contradiction at all, actually! i personally see sirius as this: a guy with a lot of masks, partially bc it’s been trained into him & partially bc he’s had to be. and i think he defaults to this cold, arrogant one because it’s the one he’s had longest—but around the right people, it fully melts away. the marauders and lily, yes but especially james and harry. that’s why i keep mentioning the outsider pov of it, people getting shocked when they see the difference in his behaviour. it’s why i wrote the patronus fic lolol.

i actually think that he had a lot…issues with the ‘heir’ version of himself (and yes, that’s a fanon concept i’ve absorbed entirely bc i love) because of what it represents and he tries hard to break away from it at all times. he probably went through an entire phase of teenage rebellion where he was doing everything against his family’s teachings bc it felt good. but, i love it when people can’t run away from their nature as much as they want to, so i always end up giving him some traits that basically make him hate himself looking into the mirror lmao

as for his humor, oh for sure!! this one’s definitely canon—he has a dry, sarcastic humor. (funnily, this is where i see a lot of similarities b/w him and harry for some reason) i think it can tend towards self deprecating sometimes. he’s also—hm. u can see his class in his words, and i think that might be true of his humor as well tho idk how to explain that better lol i think he’s the kind of person who’s so good at passive aggressiveness that you’ll never realise he insulted u to ur face (we have a phrase for it here—kaat ke haath mein dedi; i think sirius would be ace at that). and going off that, i do think his humor was also based on…belittling? other people. or rather, at the expense of other people in that way popular kids do sometimes. like him w the rat in swm, i think. casually cruel. a little mean.

[insomniaccipher]

EDIT (24/3): so um, I posted this way way too early. In my sleep deprived state I guess I posted it rather than save it as a draft, since it's clearly not done. I'm not going to private it, people have already seen it so expect this to be updated with the remaining notes. Sorry and thank you for understanding!

(tw for mention of depression and a depressive episode)

After a few days of me being absolutely fucking drained and progressively chipping away at this, and having a surprise d3pr3ssiv3 episode

(seriously though, don't do what I did and work yourself into a depressive episode. I'm okay now, but I should have rested before I crashed.)

And I can finally present the original sketches, notes (internal dialogue included) and with additional notes provided by present me.

Thank you to the few people who showed interest in my little character for being patient with me, I know I wasn't super loyal with the time frame and kept having issues arise but here it is. I apologise for not having a full illustration of them, It's one of those things that I have to be 100 percent satisfied with and right now, it's not there.

Thank you so so much again and I hope you like them, please feel free to critique them or ask questions but try to keep it polite please. Love you all!

Page 1 (left) - Bits and bobs

- Originally I was thinking of giving Arc moving tattoos. This was because I wanted them to have a more clear connection to ink since they would already be around it quite a lot also I imagine it would have been funny for Arc, who is a very calm and collected person, to be in a frustrating situation but can't express it so their tattoos just fucking loose it showing that they are fucking fuming but looks calm as can be.

After I decided on the hat with a veil however I decided to scrap the idea, or at least save it for a different character, as I realized the character would feel too busy and between the two ideas I liked the hat and veil more.

- There was a short-lived idea of them having blackout tattoos but after a bit of research I decided not to ask I wasn't sure if they had any cultural significance, so better safe than sorry.

- Arc, as stated in the notes, is seemingly always calm. That doesn't mean they can't feel frustrated, sad, embarrassed it just means they can keep their composure and level headed. They're like one of those people that if you upset them they'll walk out the room yell and throw shit and walk back in calm as can be.

- Their role has by now developed more than just being an archivist, as now I see them as just a general records keeper. They find and keep old records and text organised, while also writing down new information and such. I'm not changing their name though, cause honestly I've just grown attached to their nickname.

Page 2 (right) - the first note and ideas

- Weirdly enough, the very first idea I had for this character wasn't their story or personality: but their hat and veil. Yup. I just liked the idea of a character with a big halo hat and a veil hiding their face.

- There was another character at one point or they might have been the same, I don't exactly remember and the details between them were similar enough that it's possible that they were just the same character just with minor tweaks. But that character was more connected to the band (again as in the personas/characters they play, not the irl people) while Arc is more of a solo unit.

Mentioning this other character is relevant because, and this is purely based on memory, I think the whole reason they were reworked/scrapped/whatever-the-fuck I did with them was because a hat and veil wouldn't be practical on stage.

- Anyway whenever they do take the veil off, either for more delicate work or they have to be in public, they'll put on a basic mask that covers the majority of their lower face.

- A lot of stuff I see, so forgive me if it's not actually a popular concept, seems to make the band members some form of inhuman. Which I fucking love, however to be honest the inhuman stuff was always kind of going to be part of them no matter what, even if I hadn't chosen the hat and veil concept (See top bullet point for the moving tattoos concept).

[dyelwi]

(This is about aini and aa: dual destinies, spoiler warning for both!!)

My number one Big Unpopular Opinion in fandoms rn seems to be that I like aini and dd. A lot. Are they good??? Sort of. Maybe not. It depends. But I enjoy both of them so so much. And to me that’s what matters most about a game.

Yes, aini has its issues, I’ve discussed some before. But ultimately it told a decent story and gave me a few characters that I love w my whole heart, while having some cool concepts and interesting twists and funny moments. In some ways I think it is better than the first game. I’m not saying the ppl that don’t like it are wrong, they aren’t, as I said it definitely has problems but for me these problems rarely detracted enough from the overall game for me to look at it and think so badly of it. I like bibi, and while maybe the twist w her wasn’t the best in terms of continuity w mizuki’s story in the first game it didn’t take away from it either, to me. And maybe some ppl care more about that aspect but I go into uchikoshi games expecting twists like this and honestly it makes a lot more sense and fits w the story better than large twists in some other games of his (cough ztd cough).

As for dd, it is much the same for me as aini. It gave me characters I love and the type of twist I had always wanted to see from the ace attorney franchise. It deserves criticism yes, ppl calling it the weakest in the main series aren’t really wrong I’ll admit, but dammit I love Athena and the blackquill siblings too much to be that mad lol. I had always wanted to see an important sort of character be the big bad (yes I know we have gant and a few others but they always had too many red flags from the start, Fulbright was in the whole game before we see that he isn’t who he says and for most of it I wasn’t at all suspicious of him). I also don’t like how it ignored the previous game so much, and as much as I love Athena I don’t think we needed another protagonist quite yet, but I look back at this game so fondly for so many of the great moments, the little ones and larger ones, that yes there are issues but it makes me happy.

And so I feel that both of these games are in the same vein to me. It isn’t that other people who hate these games are wrong about things in them, but more that I think there’s still a lot in them that is of great value and both contribute a ton to my overall enjoyment of both series. If I’m going to be honest, my ideal aitsf game would be a sort of mix of the first two, and my ideal ace attorney game is…… like tgaa basically, but like make it main series. So I just wanted to get my opinion out there I guess, as I feel like all I see for both of these games is negativity and it is justified but ultimately for me??? My enjoyment comes before anything else with a game, and I get that that’s super broad but it really is the best way to express how I feel. Like. A game could be perfect in every way but did it make me happy??? If it didn’t then I don’t care how good it is quality-wise, I’m not going to be a fan.

I hope this all makes sense lol

[goldensunset]

What are your thoughts on each of the Team Star kids?

beloveds. all of them. fave has gotta be eri though she’s both the most intimidating and the most loving. like she’s wearing this cool sparkly outfit that manages to scream ‘wrestler’ and ‘princess’ at the same time. but she’s really just another sad bullied girl like the rest of them who wants to do her best. she stands guard outside her own base and almost just challenged us right away. i appreciate that they made another named character among the team star grunts in that base to add to her character (carmen!) so then we find out that eri reached out a hand in friendship even to the girl who ruined her life with bullying because she knew what it felt like to be alone. also the way all eri’s pokémon are in heal balls! she’s the scariest and toughest of team star and she actually wiped the floor with me but at the same time she has the biggest heart of any of them

uh uh ok so for the others. tbh it’s been a while since i did those quests i don’t remember as much. atticus is a nice and polite man i think he’s cool. great character design but also the splatoon colors and patterns lol… hey as a poison type trainer he gets away with it. i do not remember his role in the group unfortunately but wasn’t it like. didn’t he make the code or something and he was super strict about it? or was that giacomo?

anyway giacomo beloved major props to him for composing all team star’s music because their music absolutely slaps. especially the squad boss battle theme. he’s the real mvp of the squad obviously who needs technology or training or whatever if you have killer music.he just seems like a friendly silly guy tbh he seems very chill. i respect him a lot

ortega is so funny even in postgame after y’all are friends he’s still a little brat. he’s like uhGHHHHHGGFG i can’t believe i lost to YOU!!! how old is this child. i would’ve tweaked his design only slightly to make either his hair or eyes darker, or to make one of them two-tone, cuz the all-pale pink isn’t as interesting to look at. or just fix his bangs slightly. otherwise it’s a fantastic design for a fairy-type trainer. and especially for a guy yeah i think ‘snotty pretentious rich boy’ is the best path they could’ve gone with that. but hey little boy can’t we be friends already

mela was the first one i did so i love her. she’s so sassy and fiery (lol) and i was like :0 when it cut away to a flashback to her past bc i wasn’t expecting it (i love that they did that for all the team star kids) basically it was just the first moment i really realized oh these are just a bunch of sad and rebellious kids who want to be with their friends. even in defeat mela still had to act all aloof but i could tell she cared! and she actually gave me a bit of trouble with her battle too bc i wasn’t expecting that revavroom. that was the first battle i really had to use more than one pokémon for; even my strongest mon who was my water-type starter couldn’t carry me the whole time. it was a rewarding experience

penny… she’s great! i just wish we had gotten to see more of her early on. like i know we were actually talking to her the entire time under the guise of cassiopeia but it’s just not the same as having bonded with the *concept of penny* for an entire game. she could’ve just showed up in person more often during starfall street, or we could’ve had one really solid conversation towards the beginning in between us intervening to bail her out from the team star grunts and her messaging us as cassiopeia for the first time. i think it would’ve done a lot. but hey given how much i love the team star storyline i have to give credit where it’s due to the one who made it all possible- both team star, and their downfall. honestly the one thing i think was really missing was nemona and arven asking her questions about it all during the endgame. i would’ve loved for them to hear the truth about team star but it’s too bad it was just never mentioned outside of that exact storyline. if they had cared at all about it and therefore had a reaction to penny talking about it all it would’ve made those endgame interactions even better. like hey remind us why penny’s here and relevant as one of my allies too other than being smart. just the teeeeeeensiest tiny little things i would’ve added if i were working on this story too. no need to remove or change anything, just add more

[veebs-hates-video-games]

I grabbed Trigger Witch recently when I happened to see it because it was on sale and liked the thumbnail art and joked that it looked like the character was a witch who the only spell she knows is bullet. I turned out to be 100% correct about that, and the game itself turned out to be surprisingly fun.

Basically the premise is what if A Link to the Past was a twin stick shooter set in a world where witches forgot how to use magic after the introduction of firearms and all follow the Church of Ballisticism now? Great concept, I'm immediately on board.

It's a bit lighter on the puzzles than a proper 2D Zelda game most of the time, but the exploration and structure of the game is pretty similar, and there are some decent puzzles here and there and different gimmicks in different dungeons that make them play differently from each other.

Your main way of interacting with most things in the world is shooting them, and luckily they did pretty well with that part of the game. Everything feels pretty tight and responsive, the different weapons feel different to use and are useful in different situations, and there's just enough enemy variety and interactions between different enemy types to keep things interesting.

The characters are all fun enough too, even if they're not super deep, and the same could be said for the story. The big reveal late in the game that explains why the world is the way it is is satisfying enough, and I did not expect the final boss to be who it was, but aside from who it was I was a little underwhelmed by how that boss was handled, and none of the stuff the game did with them was either particularly insightful commentary or particularly funny and was kinda low effort. Aside from that it was fine for the most part though.

Another pleasant surprise that I had zero expectations for going in, and another short-ish game that was pretty good but didn't quite make it to great. I feel like there's some potential there for them to maybe improve on this with future games, but I guess we'll see.

[miloscat]

[Review] Wario World (GCN)

Wario Land staggers into the 3rd dimension.

Treasure are known primarily for two things: shmups and their Mega Drive action platformer titles. The latter parlayed into Michief Makers on the N64, which spotlighted two of their main strengths as seen in the likes of Gunstar Heroes: boss fights, and grabbing and throwing mechanics. Their first 3D game, the odd Hippa Linda on PS2, definitely leaned into these aspects; I haven't played it but it doesn't seem to have reviewed particularly well. Wario World then fits squarely in that legacy, ostensibly a showcase of these same strengths but so awkwardly handled that they become weaknesses.

On the surface it has the hallmarks of a Wario Land game: Wario's a bruiser who can pick up and chuck enemies, tick. He's hunting for secret areas, coins, and treasures, tick. He can use enemies and objects to interact with his environment, tick. There's required backtracking and mechanics seemingly designed just to waste the player's time, double tick! In adapting to 3D, there's more of a beat-em-up focus now which would be fine if the combat was enjoyable.

Wario has a basic punch combo which doesn't get you very far. Most of the time you're expected to stun an enemy, then grab them. From here you can imprecisely throw them, laboriously spin them, or simply piledrive them. Enemies often respawn almost instantly so there's no good reason to do this unless the level design requires you using one of these actions to proceed, or the game outright traps you into a forced fight. Moving Wario around feels zippy and slippery but the fighting itself is slow and your options are so limited that it never really broke through the tedium barrier for me. There's also only a few types of enemies, and most of the time you'll be slogging through the same faces just reskinned for new levels.

Your main objective in a level is to get red crystals to be able to leave. These are only found inside trapdoors leading to either puzzle rooms or Super Monkey Ball-esque platforming challenges. The controls aren't ideal for precision in these tasks, not to mention the very clunky camera. Most of the time you're looking in at levels diorama-style, which works well enough, but rooms like this open it up... it's fine for these contained sections, but I was glad the rest of the game was more rigid. Anyway, when you get to the end you're able (or possibly required) to return to the start if you didn't find enough stuff, Yoshi's Story style, to explore alternate paths or hidden spots. Aside from the trapdoors, you'll be looking for switches to spawn chests, health upgrades (you only get the boost if you find all the pieces within a level!), and the hint-giving Spritelings.

And speaking of characters who make annoying noises, Charles Martinet is out in full force as Wario with oft-repeated quips and what may be the worst pause screen in the world. The joke of him screeching at you is funny for about two seconds, and then it makes this menu unusable as a pause screen for the entirety of the game. Slow clap for that one. The use of voice clips is good for conveying Wario's personality, which otherwise is a bit let down by the oddly lifeless polygon-shifting animations on his 3D model. But to be fair, he does scratch his bum sometimes, which is pretty funny.

Each and every level ends with a boss fight. Well, OK, there's actually only eight levels—even fewer than Wario Land 4—but they're pretty substantial. Substantial enough that replaying them to get more treasures felt like a bridge too far for me. Anyway, add another boss for each of the four worlds and the final fight, and you have 13 boss fights in all. Some of them have good concepts and fun designs but frequently I found them dragging, overstaying their welcome with repeated patterns. The final boss—an uncharismatic jewel with tentacles—is the worst offender, its boring, padded fight a shockingly weak way to close out proceedings.

Although there's only eight levels, each one has its own well-established setting, from forest ruin to creepy circus to sandy pyramid (this one had the best level design for exploring & backtracking). You can also play them in any order, which is interesting if kind of pointless. The worldbuilding is a bit half-arsed though, as all these environments were just magicked up out of Wario's basement by the evil gem. Actually collecting the collectibles could be more rewarding too; treasures unlock Warioware minigames only playable on a connected GBA, Spritelings are the only thing that determine your ending jpg, and coins are used solely for recovering health or continuing after a game over.

I was hoping Wario World would be a hidden gem of Treasure's hoard, but what I got was an unpolished stone. On paper they seem like a good fit for a new Wario adventure in 2003, but perhaps their inexperience with 3D led to this mediocre result. They don't seem to have made another game like it since, either. Wario World is certainly not all bad, but it really should have been a lot better than this.

[whetstonefires]

Okay so having finished The Untamed--

spoilers now but also, I haven't read the book yet so pls don't get into it with me about it if it's super different--

one thing that's really sticking with me is the parallels between Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangshan's deaths.

Specifically, the way Nie Huaisang's choice of final blow resembles what Jin Guangyao did with his father, and how deeply that underlines the way nhs chose to become his enemy in order to defeat him. In a way the plot-level scheming doesn't really achieve that comparison.

Because, see, the thing about Jin Guangshan's death, about Meng Yao bringing in those women to stage a weird noncon death orgy is--that was just theater. For an audience of basically the two of them, since he killed off most of the witnesses afterward.

Jin Guangyao bought and spent a bunch of women's lives to kill his father in a poetically fitting, humiliating way. A way that only worked because the man was already dying!

Meng Yao had good reasons to kill his father. Arguably his being quicker off the mark and more proactive about it would have made things better for everyone. But no. He waited all that time, until he could have just smothered the man with a pillow and gotten away with it, and then launched this elaborate punishment death for him.

For a man whose treatment of sex workers as disposable was one of the main crimes Meng Yao held against him.

The main irony is not at the old man's expense here dude, what are you doing.

All his other crimes were in service of something! Even if it was something fucked-up and/or lame and awful and clearly not worth it, he had a goal he was working toward and in some cases probably really was telling himself he had no choice--I don't think that's an excuse you'd proffer quite that incessantly if you hadn't been using it internally.

But killing Jin Guangshan like that--that was just for his own satisfaction. Using those women up so he could pointlessly enjoy it.

So then when Nie Huaisang chooses to kill Meng Yao by abusing Lan Xichen's trust--equally, he didn't have to do that.

Meng Yao was exposed and injured and outnumbered and alone. Even if they'd all walked away right then he was likely to die, from blood loss or infection or being caught by the cultivation world and strung up like Mussolini.

Of course, after all this trouble Nie Huaisang would want to be sure. That's why he inserted himself into the scene at all, I'm sure; he probably wanted to see it play out but he definitely wanted to make sure the revenge landed. Of course he wasn't going to risk handing his target over to justice and risking him talking his way out after all, or slipping away and moving to Japan. (Side note: I think it's very funny jgy suggested 'I'll move to Japan' as an acceptable alternative to 'I'll die.')

Nie Huaisang isn't a strong fighter, but Jin Guangyao isn't all that powerful either, as these things go, and he's down an arm and demoralized. Nie Huaisang could definitely have insisted on having him tied up, if he thought he needed the extra edge, created a distraction, and choked his enemy to death with his bare hands, if he'd wanted to. He could have sent an assassin into his cell if the man was sentenced to imprisonment.

He had a lot of options, is my point.

But he didn't do those things. Instead, he used Lan Xichen.

He used Lan Xichen exactly the same way Jin Guangyao had, abused his trust and love to manipulate him into being the instrument of killing his own sworn brother. If Lan Xichen wasn't broken already, Nie Huaisang ensured it, and he damn well knew what he was doing.

A friend of mine argues he did it because it would hurt Lan Xichen as well, as vengeance on him for being the instrument of Jin Guangyao's plot to kill Nie Mingjue. Idk if this is like, something that's outright stated in the text or just A Reasonable Interpretation, but it's not better that way--it's less careless, but it just even more emphasizes that he knew.

He knew who he was emulating.

And that's part of the point of interest to me because it's very clear that Huaisang does know who he's imitating, whose game he's choosing to play back at him. What he's choosing to become.

It's not so blatant in their both using Wei Wuxian because, firstly, he's the main character so we expect him to be at the center of things; secondly, everyone wants to use Wei Wuxian; thirdly, Nie Huaisang's schemes are comparatively beneficial to him.

Wei Wuxian himself has a marked tendency to reduce himself to his utility; it's easy to let it go, as a trespass against him, especially when it literally gives him another chance at life.

When you look at how they both reduced Lan Xichen to a piece in the game, though, leveraged his affection and his trust to make him into a murder weapon--then it stands out.

Obviously they're both schemers but that's just an archetype. Spy-versus-spy beat-them-at-their-own-game isn't inherently intimate like this, even when it's vengeance. Even when it's revenge on someone you used to trust.

And Nie Huaisang knows. I don't think Jin Guangyao ever did. I think he lies to himself a lot and in the end that's a significant element in his downfall, but also he just--doesn't perceive himself with any of the detachment he's able to turn on most of the world. I don't think he ever in his life noticed the ways he'd become his father.

But Huaisang sure as fuck knew what he'd decided to become.

Which is why that endscene tying up his plot thread focuses on his not wanting to be Chief Cultivator--he didn't do all this to get Jin Guangyao out of the way and replace him. He doesn't want to become the new metaplot villain, the way jgy replaced jgs who replaced wen ruohan.

So maybe things will be okay.

This relationship between Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao and how nhs' self-awareness of how he's committed to a form of villainy and chooses to restrain himself, which is what promises an end to the abuse cycle on the political stage, ties in really interestingly to some of the other stuff mxtx does with the concept of villainy but this post is already long enough.

[thejustmaiden]

So out of nowhere I was tagged and quoted by a SR shipper for a blog of mine posted in August of last year. Talk about throwback but, hey, gotta appreciate that level of snooping. 😉

Back in the day I actually used to encourage discourse amongst Inuyasha fans- both shippers and antis alike- but I've since realized that it's a lost cause. But for you, @feministmetalgreymon , I'll grant this exception. Just 'cause it's been a while so why the hell not. haha

I want to assure you, however, that nothing you say will ever convince me that Sesshomaru and Rin are meant to be together romantically or that the story intended it so. Nor will you find any validation here. You can ship them for all I care, but please for all that is good and holy while I have your attention try- I mean really try- to understand why it is so many of us Inuyasha fans are so against this pairing in the first place (newsflash: it's not about ship wars), and why we believe a romance between the two of them is completely and utterly out of character.

For those of you interested in reading this, the blog of mine in question that the above shipper mentions in their counter-argument is here for reference. It's titled "Jaken = Rin's Dad?" I'm going to try and keep this short, but I'm also making no such promises. After all, I'm not exactly known for my brevity. haha Now let's get crackin'!

Like you, feministmetalgreymon, did for your recent blog here where you took screenshots of mine to address certain parts, I will be doing the same and dissecting yours accordingly.

[Snippet 1]

I worked with kids for many years as a teacher, and many people in my family have too or still do. Two of them happen to be just over 5 feet which is quite short for the average adult woman living here. I've also worked alongside many a women of short stature, and never did I hear any of them complaining of issues with their students having difficulty differentiating them from their own peers just because they were short as well. I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous. Kids are quite smart and pick up on a lot more than you seem to give them credit for. Height is not the only characteristic they look at to determine who's an adult and who's not, and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. So unless you're a babysitter who's still in their teens and/or who has very childlike features or behavior then I'm afraid what you're getting at is total hogwash. This is just another example of how you shippers offer nothing of real substance to your reasoning, it's only ever cherry-picking or strawmanning from you guys. Stop deflecting from the real issues please, because this certainly isn't one and only winds up being a complete waste of time for all parties involved.

[Snippet 2]

Okay, calm down now. I wasn't insinuating that relationships between parents and children can't change over time in terms of how they get along. Of course that's possible, as all families experience their fair share of estrangement and abuse. What I was speaking about was in reference to the overall dynamic between the two. Because a bad mother or father can still be viewed as a parental figure to their child even if say they're not in said child's life anymore. Since Sesshomaru and Rin share a healthy bond- and just a friendly reminder that in my blog I even said that he doesn't have to necessarily be labeled her father but that a romantic relationship later would still be inappropriate- I didn't deem it necessary to address what you brought up. Plus, it kinda, umm, misses the point?? Please, let's stay on topic. And it's not captured in the screenshot, but stop acting like there isn't a small part of them that idolizes their parents at some point during childhood. Just like you mention later on how it's normal for kids to have innocent crushes on adults that they eventually grow out of? Well, guess what, the same concept applies here. Kids eventually learn that their parents are far from perfect and make mistakes too. Rin is so damn young in the OG series though that we never even get to see her reach that maturity level.

[Snippet 3]

LOL! Alright, okay, so the "unbreakable bond" bit you're mentioning was actually me quoting you sessrinners. Did you not catch that? I literally spelled it out. *sigh* The whole point I was making is that shippers like yourself make hypocritical and contradictory statements all.the.goddamn.time. One moment you guys claim that Sesshomaru and Rin were essentially strangers and meant very little to each other, only to say in the same breath a few seconds later that they were destined to be together and their bond is like no other. I agree, their bond is special, but why must that mean they're going to fall in love?

That is the root of the matter here. Too many animes/mangas have romanticized this older adult man & young girl growing up falling in love trope that it's become way too normalized and widely accepted across the world- and yes, in some cultures more than others. Sadly, you lack the awareness to recognize how this all works. You know how we know that? When we see that you shippers are so desensitized to sexualized images of girls in the media that you share posts like this one below which *subtly* imply a future romance although one half of that pairing is still just a child in the pic and then try and pass it off as cute. That's like super fucking problematic and it scares me that you can't see that (or deny you do). 🤢

After all that's said and done, Sesshomaru leaving Rin in the village with Kaede is to me the strongest indicator more than pretty much anything else he's done for Rin that proves he is her adoptive father. It's so funny to me how you somehow see the exact opposite though. 🤔 What I think is happening is that you got yourself on some squeaky clean ass shipper goggles fresh out of your little echo chamber. Because I hate to tell you, but what you're fantasizing is what you want to see and not what's actually there on screen or was written into the story. I'm strictly talking about Inuyasha and the manga of course. [For the TL; DR version skip to the last paragraph.]

Parents looking after their kids is what parents are supposed to do. A good parent will do anything to keep their child safe and ensure they are cared for, so what he did for her by leaving her there was in her best interests clearly. Besides, as a babysitter, you more than most people should understand that parents aren't always able to be there for their kids so sometimes others gotta step in to help. Haven't you heard of the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child?" Which in Rin's case is literally true! 😂 Sometimes kids are even sent off to stay with grandparents and that's who raises them instead. Or maybe they have to temporarily live with an aunt or uncle because their single parent's job requires they work out of town 4-5 days of the week so they're hardly home. But that doesn't mean that the parents care or love their kids any less, and it's foolish to assume that Sesshomaru must have thought very little of Rin simply due to the fact that he made the decision to leave her in the village. Come on, y'all are acting like he abandoned her there!!

It's just given the circumstances Sesshomaru finally came to learn that Rin traveling with him was no longer safe. I also like to think it's because he wished for her to live a more normal life and to learn how to fully trust humans again. Plus, continuing to travel with him as young as she was would have proven dangerous and unwise. Now for you to know all this and still manage to turn his past actions towards her while she was just a child into a romantic gesture is what boggles my mind. Regardless of how you look at it, from my perspective or your own, Sesshomaru is in the wrong. Either he's a father figure who impregnates his daughter at the young age of approximately 14. OR he's this man she used to travel with who maybe isn't a father to her but who nonetheless basically rapes her since kids her age can't consent to sex with an adult. Idk about you but it sounds to me like nobody here wins with either scenario we're given. In other words, you should be just as mad as we are. If only one side didn't choose to forsake their morals they know we both have in common for the sake of a ship. Welp. 🤷‍♀️

I agree, incest is disgusting but that's not the only problem we have with this pairing. A romantic bond forming between Sesshomaru and Rin would also constitute as grooming.

You realize that over the years he visited her in the village that he brought her gifts too and essentially watched her grow up right before his very eyes, right? I mean, I know you do, but I really shouldn't have to explain further why pursuing a romantic/sexual relationship with each other is plain and simple wrong. And before you say it's not because he didn't have any malintent, please understand that considering their history and power dynamic up to then that yes this is still considered grooming even if Rin supposedly "wanted it" or "made the first move." Whether you consider him her father or not, as the adult who took on a role resembling that of a caretaker in her early life- a critical developmental time for a child- Sesshomaru is obligated to turn down any advances by Rin and most definitely should not initiate any himself. As the first close adult figure she's had in her life since her parents died, it's unfathomable to imagine how Sesshomaru could go through with taking advantage of this young girl who was under his care and supervision since they met. To think he could be capable of betraying that trust sickens me to the core.

This. Now THIS is how a parent/guardian or a similar adult caretaker (babysitter, teacher, etc.) talks to a child. And, in turn, this is how some young children talk to adults. You'd be insane and delusional to deny it! We see it in our everyday lives, do we not? From where else do you think our stories draw most of their inspiration? Yes, obviously these fictional universes have aspects of fantasy that don't exist in the real world, but so how then do you suppose we're able to relate to them? The reason for that being is because these stories are written by people for people, so naturally there are going to be real life aspects embedded throughout. Sure, a little escapism doesn't hurt as we don't need to take everything so seriously, but ultimately we all need to recognize that the messages in the stories we tell matter. Most stories possess a combination of both light and dark themes, but when it specifically comes to the latter we gotta be careful with how we tackle this in children's media since kids are far more impressionable.

So if at the center of a story we have two of the main protagonists whose mom is basically their same age and to top it off she knew their dad when she was just a girl and who just so happened to help raise her, wouldn't you say that's beyond fucked up or at the very least so fucking weird? Like why would we think it's even remotely okay for our children to watch this garbage?? Really think about it. Try and be objective for once and think about how it would sound explaining this storyline to an outsider who's never watched IY or HNY. Well, antis have tried this before many times and we always get the same reaction: Ewww!

Like I said earlier, if you wanna ship it then fine, but 1) please stop seeking our approval or trying to change our minds - your ship wish came true didn't it, so why do you need us to validate it? 2) even though it's not canon, respect that we don't support this sequel portraying pedophilia in a positive light. It's harmful af to not only allow but glorify the continuation of sexualized images of young girls everywhere. And I shouldn't have to say this, but just because this trope is popular as you say does not make it right. Lolicon themes in the media have been an issue forever and it needs to stop. Yes, even some people in Japan or "the East" would agree. Shocker!

We're pissed off and rightfully so because Yashahime's TV rating is 14, not to mention it airs at the prime time kids in Japan watch TV after getting home from school. That's Towa and Setsuna's age, true, but if Rin being the mom when she's like only a year older than them (please don't argue w/ me about the math- antis have so far been right every time with it) is straight-up disgusting and not something we should be supporting or endorsing. Rin's a whole ass child!! Please don't start with the "but times were different then so her having kids at 15 is acceptable" argument either, because we've already debunked that and every other single excuse you guys throw at us. Besides, how or why would you expect young viewers to know these historical "facts" anyway, especially if as you suggest fiction doesn't affect reality so what does it matter? Yet here we are, arguing over a fictional show in real life almost a year and a half into the "Sesshomaru fucks?" sequel being announced. My ass, your ass, hell all our asses fiction doesn't affect reality!

Look, I do apologize if the tone of this blog came off as snippy or condescending at times. I do not wish you any ill will, it's just I'm not really sure what you expected to get out of all this besides maybe getting on my nerves perhaps. haha A lot of you shippers have been desperately scrambling to interact with us, lurking in our tags, jumping onto our posts screaming canon and getting so defensive even though you sought us out first. We've been sticking to our tags, so how about you stay in your lane too. By the way since we're on the topic, have you seen Twitter or Reddit?! SR shippers there are the actual worst and many Inuyasha fans (not just antis) have complained of not feeling welcomed to engage in fandom spaces anymore. Shippers swarm them and scare them off simply because fans don't like your ship and refuse to accept it. It's pathetic, really. No one should ever be bullied or harassed just because they don't like something you might. We're all fans of Inuyasha, aren't we? So let's act like it. Yashahime on the other hand, you guys are welcome to that pungent heap of trash. Fans have a right to criticize it too, but if you like it then good for you, so keep on liking it and don't mind us.

I'm almost done, but real quick back to Jaken! Let's not forget about how the official Yashahime website- which came out after my blog, mind you- described Jaken. This translation isn't the best one available but it's the only version a fellow anti friend could track down. They do recall a better one done by a native Japanese speaker who was also an anti, and that member confirmed that Jaken is indeed called Rin's babysitter. So you see, I was right in my interpretation. In the original post I did compare Jaken to a brother, but after talking to others (some comments can be found under said post) I did acknowledge that he's more of a reluctant babysitter who's not related. And if he's not at least a brother to Rin, then he's definitely not her father.

At the end of the day, the creator Rumiko Takahashi has the final word. Which is guess what? Hogosha. 💖 Probably should've just started out with that and saved us all the trouble, huh? Good day/night to you.

Papamaru bids you adieu now. 🤞

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. lo hades def looks like he's into crypto, you know what I mean? especially bc you cant be taxed on it, the richer the better!

2. This isnt even just LO but why do so many of the romance comics have such a desire to sexualize barly legal young women who are of COURSE naive virgins (but also super sexy and horny and know how to flirt out of the blue!) and try and make us root for them to get into relationships with their Christian Grey knock-off bosses?? like Let's Play (spoilers I guess) thought it'd be funny to have the MC be in physical PAIN after having sex, like why are you showing your teen audience this???

3. Nah I feel the same way as other anon. LO is way too confused on whether it's a light hearted YA story or a serious drama for Mature™️ readers. Like the SA and (one) therapy session was more or less handled perfectly fine, but everything from the AOW to the Trial is either incredible goofy or tries way too hard to be "serious" with RS and her team both not putting the writing nor art skill into it to hold any weight. It just comes across as melodramatic and try-hard over genuine and well planned

4. There's so many "quirks" in LO's art that are bad but WHY is it a thing where when a character is just standing there their arms and legs are just glued to the side of their bodies like🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️🧍? that's not how even soliders at attention stand, there's still bones and muscles to account for but they end up with that end product? I just do not get how her and her team have probably 50+ years of art education and practice between them and yet they fail on such basic concepts every time.

5. I for one think that the differences between how characters slapping each other is depicted as either good or bad depending on who’s doing the slapping isn't hypocritical of RS: Hecate slaps Hades because she thinks he’s being predatory towards Persephone, this is a well-intentioned slap. Minthe’s slap on the other hand, is not justifiable because she was in the wrong in the context of that conflict: you don’t get to just stand your boyfriend up and hit him when he’s hurt by it.

6. it's just funny WT itself has a posting rule that your comic "cant show topics like incest or grooming" as if thats not the majority of the romance genre itself. yall ever read eggnoid? cmon now.

7. punderworld made a myth rec list and go figure some lo fans were in the comments saying "LO was all [they] needed" and its like how would you even know this episode happened unless you were subbed to punderworld, therefore proving they keep up with other myth comics? also the creator got upset at the lo fans being mad she didnt also rec LO as if its not the most advertised series on that whole site and she was promoting smaller creators. LO fans are so entitled even to other creators it's crazy.

8. I think the issue with the “let people like things” argument (and the fans do this so much) is that I’m All for that, I and every other critic isnt saying you can’t like, hell there’s parts of it I do like and wish there was more of! But if you go “just let people enjoy things!!” when it comes to legitimate criticism (ie misogyny, racism, classism, mishandling of trauma and assault to push a romance along, etc) you don’t care about others opinions, you just want them to like YOUR thing.

9. we already know rachel is a weeb but it's most obvious when it's a kissing scene because she does NOT draw lips but all of a sudden they get huge and glossy when theyre about to smooch but nothing else about the face adjusts with it and it's like what the hell is that 😭

10. i honestly dont blame lo fans for buying books of it even if the quality of it degrades rapidly after vol 1, once it ends (maybe in five years at this rate) webtoons will right away put it on daily pass which is notoriously a bad venue for rereads/new readers who missed when it was originally published and given how rachel has no sense of less is more, itll cost hundreds of dollars just to read the current 190+ episodes, much the many more shell milk out of it. might as well avoid that now 😵‍💫

[mariacallous]

I've never been a fan of Trinity, not even in season 9, and I hated her Satan character for Snatch Game because it was such a lazy choice. The challenge of the entire concept of Snatch Game is to be quick and funny while impersonating someone--there is no established characterization of Satan! Anyone can make up any personality for Satan and no one can say "nope, that's not how Satan acts" lol. The same applies too Yvie Oddly's Boogeyman too tbh. They weren't as painful to watch as other Snatch Games (Asia O'Hara's Beyonce...The Vixen's Blue Ivy...Utica's Bob Ross...almost the entirety of s14's choices...) but still // @sprinkledsalt

okay but let's get into this! I'm about to go on a tangential rant about Snatch Game because it is probably my all-time favorite of the challenges and components of Drag Race.

Snatch Game is one of Thee Iconique challenges on Drag Race, a fucking institution of the show, and the one that everyone looks forward to and everyone fears. It separates the queens from the princesses and the all-stars from the call-for-your-cars.

It's about EMBODYING AND COMMITTING to the character WITHOUT focusing on JUST the look! So many goddamn competitors on the show focus on nailing the look and they completely miss the personality and attempting the voice and sound of the impression they're doing.

And you motherfucking need to KNOW about the person you're impersonating! You need to be able to integrate references into your comments (and ideally your answers) and you need to know how your impression would potentially respond and react.

AND IT NEEDS TO BE FUNNY. YOUR IMPRESSION NEEDS TO BE FUNNY, AND NOT JUST IN A "OH THIS IS BAD AND I'M LAUGHING AT HOW BAD IT IS" WAY.

I think one of the biggest things that hurts the queens is that they choose someone famous but who isn't a big personality or super distinctive and which can't be funny - it's why doing Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, etc. are not the way to go, because you can do the looks, but personality-wise they just aren't really big enough or distinctive enough as an impression, if that makes sense. There's a reason why Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Joan Crawford (although really more Faye Dunaway doing Joan Crawford, which is what most Joan Crawford impressions are at this point let us be real) etc. are impression staples (both drag and otherwise) - it's because they're BIG personalities and distinctive and can be funny (without making them the total butt of the joke!)

And don't fucking do a youtuber or instagram influencer either.

I also have an issue with trying to humorize or do impressions (both drag and otherwise) certain celebrities or notable people because there are some circumstances which just shouldn't be exaggerated or attempted to make comedic (how the fuck are you going to do both Ike *and* Tina Turner?! or Gypsy Rose Blanchard?!) Doing someone like Jeffree Starr or Caitlyn Jenner (another reason I'm not a Trinity fan!) is really kinda just poor taste and boring, at the very least.

Which leads me into the Satan and Leslie Jordan impressions that Trinity did. They were ABSOLUTELY lazy choices for the exact reasons you specified for Satan and also because it's basically just more Trinity! Sassy snarky horny Southern gay! How Inventive and new for Trinity to perform that way and make those creative choices! What a show of talent and uniqueness and charisma!

With Yvie's Boogieman, at least it was genuinely creative and interesting, but I also agree with you otherwise (also her Rico Nasty was just kinda eh for me tbh).

[carriagelamp]

Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

[0poole]

I LOVE No Straight Roads

Honestly it’s hard to keep me away from a game with great visuals and even greater character design. I knew from the INSTANT I saw these characters that I was going to love it. I just finished it because it’s (unfortunately) pretty short, and even though I cheesed the final boss through it’s very lenient death mechanics (Instant respawn at the cost of a good rank) I actually appreciated that it wasn’t a pure cake walk. I’ve yet to rematch all of the bosses, but since I had genuine trouble with the later ones I’ll hold off on that.

But who cares about gameplay, am I right? I sure as hell don’t. I would’ve bought the game no matter what the hell it was. I wanted the characters (and the music, although I realized that second) and that was it. 

First of all, I love any world that is super fantastical but cheesy in its concept, ala a city powered by music, and battles between artists using music. Ideas like this only spawn from a mind that wants to create a fun atmosphere, if nothing else, and it was sure as hell fun. I genuinely love when someone goes so far into a crazy idea and doesn’t waste your time explaining it with real world logic. Wanna know how a city can be powered by music? Shut up and look at the cute virtual mermaid. Lord knows I did. Every once in a while, it does you good to just let the player/reader/viewer just revel in the idea without having to go out of your way to make things seem realistic. It’s not about “turning your brain off” or whatever, it’s picking your battles.

Also, I can seriously love a world with great background characters to it. Any game with the right situation to insert the random nobodies you find onto the streets into the art in the credits really played into the greatness of the world’s less important characters, and that’s always a good thing. It’s technically world building. But, since I always love to pick favorites, I’d have to say my favorite background character is easily Mia, the NSR infodesk assistant. It’s funny, because you can literally search “nsr characters” into Google and she’s the third image result. I love how jumpy she is when you first interact with her, since NSR probably spread the word about B2J suggesting they’re rock thugs who’d beat up anyone, so for all she knows she could die right then and there with a guitar lodged in her skull. She’s probably just some intern trying to pay for college. She don’t want trouble.

Also, I just realized that 90% of the characters in this game have the same body structure that I always love, that being having arms/legs that sort of fan out in width into relatively large hands/feet. It’s a kind of limb structure I fall into so much because it just really hits me right for some reason. I really can’t explain why.

Anyways, I gotta talk about the big boys individually:

Mayday and Zuke are an amazing duo. I’m always a sucker for a cute and crazy girl, but honestly Zuke hit so many of the right notes too. I will say it’s weird to pair the martian Zuke with the humanly-skinned Mayday, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because he looks so cool on his own. I love his weird blocky blue dreadlocks, and his weirdly shaped shirt which bares his chest in the weirdest way... And, oh my god, Mayday’s weird Spongebob background flower eyes? It’s little tidbits like that that really make me jealous. How could I have ever thought of that? It looks so perfect, and I don’t know why. And her little booty jig she does in her idle animation? Adorable. I played as her as much as was reasonable not only because I’m a filthy button masher with little strategy but also because she’s so damn cute. I can also appreciate how she has a tough-as-nails persona while still keeping a semi-girly attitude, like with her falling for 1010 and Sayu. Characters are so much better when they’re a perfect blend of characteristics, instead of being all one-note, like how Zuke is the quiet one but gets heated against DK West, and all. 

Honestly the voice acting for every character is great, but I love when Mayday’s VA’s accent shows through. It’s a perfect twang to accent (consider this the only acknowledgement of a pun in this post) her snarkiness. 

DJ Subatomic Supernova was going to be an easy favorite since he’s all space-themed. Also, I don’t know why I always end up liking the egotistic characters. Not in the sense that I like their egotistic-ness, but in the sense that I like everything else about them and they just so happen to also be egotistic. The same applied with Empoleon (maybe like my 2nd favorite Pokemon) and Rarity from MLP, probably among others. Either way, I’ll never not love space themes. Not to mention he’s got a funky disco theme, and I’m slowly starting to realize that I am in extreme love with techno-funk styles of music. The instant I heard his music he cemented his place into my playlists. 

As for design, I still have no idea what the fuck he is. Clearly AI is at human levels in this world, but if he’s a robot why does he still have hairy legs? But, if he’s a human, is that weird orb his head? Is it just some sort of puppet which he controls from inside his giant jacket? I know I dissed explaining things realistically but I actually want to know with this guy. Even the wiki doesn’t say. Either way, he’s clearly the logical extreme of “being at the center of your own universe.” Even his jacket depicts a solar system, with his hood being the sun. Didn’t see that until I tried to draw him. I really wish this guy wasn’t so tied to his DJ stand so I could reasonably draw him without it. I don’t want to draw his hairy ass legs. It is a great touch for his design though (although I prefer his beta look with pants and long boots, another design trait I tend to gravitate to) since DJs could reasonably not wear pants, since they’re always behind a table.

Sayu is my favorite. It’s so plainly obvious. It’s weird to say that sometimes, because some characters like Sayu are so clearly engineered to be as adorable as possible, to the point where they’re basically a parody of whatever they’re supposed to be emulating, but then they do that so well that they are still likable for what they’re trying to parody. Also, even though I’ve never looked into any vocaloid superstars myself, the fact that they exist and are loved in real life is absolutely perfect to be used as a character design in a world like this. It’s so weird conceptually, but we all know it’s normal and realistic. But yeah, she’s a giga-cutie whom I’ve already drawn and I’ve listened to her theme on loop on many different occasions. Favorite character, favorite track, favorite weapon of choice (What did I say about Empoleon?), which, and I wouldn’t have noticed this myself, looks like the USB symbol you see above USB ports on computers. How crazy perfect is that?

Even apart from my unbridled love for cute monster robot(?) girls, her boss fight is probably the 2nd greatest of them all, at least conceptually. She’s just a hologram, so you can’t touch her, but you CAN disconnect the artists which control her in order to defeat her. It’s the kind of concept for a boss fight that could only work for this type of character. I’m a sucker for the cute girl that provides her voice, but I love how the animator (video editor? the yellow one) actually attacks you with a mouse and lowers the brightness of the setting once he appears. Also, the mocap guy being the deeply-voiced type but still providing the adorable movements of her body. It’s such a great combo of characters, and their little extra art in the credits makes me like them even more. I just wish we could interact with them individually.

DK West was probably one of the most interesting characters visually, especially since I knew of every other NSR member long before the game came out, but I only just heard of him closer to the release. I wasn’t sure where he was placed, but I definitely assumed his gig was the weird shadow demon we saw in the trailers. When I finally saw him in game, I was shocked to hear him speak an entirely different language most of the time, which was really cool. Also, finding out he was tied to Zuke and wasn’t strictly an NSR artist really made him more interesting. You know, if his fucking shadow clone magic didn’t make him crazy cool enough. Even though I suck at his game and am not especially fond of his raps, the visual of him rapping with this giant monster behind him and dozens of weird shadow wingmen by his side hyping him up was probably one of the coolest in the entire game. The dark way they were hyping him up too gave such a bizarre atmosphere, especially since it parallels his seemingly chill and smiley demeanor. 

I definitely hope they’ll introduce new bosses as DLC in the future, and make them sort of in the same vein as DK West, where they aren’t the biggest artists ever, but they want to pick a fight with B2J. I’d kill for any extra content this game can provide.

Yinu is obviously special since she was the subject of the demo they put out for the game. Even though I knew all her bells and whistles, she and her mom still beat me a few times in the full game. Considering she’s semi-tied to story-ish spoilers I kinda want to go more into her in a separate section. It is worth considering playing the game first since it’s not hard (with the easy going deaths) and it’s short length.

1010 seriously grew on me as I learned more about them and interacted with them. I got their shtick when I first looked at them, but after seeing that animation of them touring the city on Youtube I was kinda falling for them. Then, I learned that they’re apparently repurposed navy war robots? I mean, maybe not them specifically, but it seems to heavily point in that direction, with the warship cars and “attention!”s and all. It took me a bit to get into their music too, but once I actually fought them and put their actions to the music I fell in love with it. I swear, Neon J’s weird dancing can has some of the smoothest moves in all of gaming. I don’t know whether they mocapped out those movements or got one of the greatest animators ever, but it looks so impossibly clean his part of the song gets me like 30x more hype than it would normally. 

Also, their little art piece of them looking at fan mail in the credits is probably one of the most adorable things ever. Even if they’re just Neon J’s puppets, that piece of art really makes it seem like they love every one of their fans. I’m not gonna lie, I might swoon a bit too if they picked me out and gave me some special attention.

Oh yeah, and the fact that Mayday was super sad in her showstopper against them was adorable and hilarious at the same time. The little tweaks they made to the showstopper for each fight were great.

Eve just has to be Lady Gaga, right? Like, an even crazier Lady Gaga. DJSS is Daft Punk (or any artist with a helmet persona, you know what I’m talking about), Sayu is Hatsune Miku, DK West is Kanye West, Yinu is a generic child protege, 1010 is a KPop boyband (just pick one) and Eve is Lady Gaga. That’s just how things are. But, again, this is the kind of boss fight that only this type of character could provide. It’s not just surreal imagery, it’s ARTISTIC surreal imagery. The fight is so mesmerizing in every way, especially by how it starts off so slow and calm and progresses to insanity, as well as the increased emotional investment in the fight making you feel so much more into it than just “That’s the boy band. Let’s fight.” Not only does it get you more invested, but it makes her artistic persona go deeper than just “she looks weird.” She is genuinely conflicted about her relationship with Zuke, and naturally that leads her to literally split him and Mayday apart. That mechanic specifically was the coolest, although I do wish they made it more obvious when you needed to switch over to a different side. I was getting pulverized by her fight too, since there were so many things to pay attention to. Her fight was definitely the best one. 

Tatiana and Spoilers:

Let’s be real with ourselves, the twist was so obvious. I do also think, though, that obvious twists aren’t bad if they’re just good reveals. At some point, a person just has experienced so many stories that “only pretty good” twists are easy to spot. It doesn’t mean that the twists are bad, it just means you yourself experienced.

I feel like her transition from rock to EDM was pretty understandable, even as a non-musician. She was so caught up in what she assumed was popular that it basically consumed her. It’s easy as an artist to want to forgo what you truly want to make in favor of what makes you popular, and clearly since her transition to EDM made her the CEO of the biggest company in the city (world?) that probably made her think she truly needed to change her outlook. Then, when she saw B2J try to bring it back, she sort of coined them as being as misguided as she was and knocked them down a peg. Plus, they were kinda being jerks about it.

It’s kinda like the Trolls sequel, where everyone pegs rock music fanatics as being too stuck up in their own heads to appreciate other types of music, which honestly seems more like the case than the alternative. When I first heard of the story of the game, I was seriously hoping they did put an asterisk on B2J’s ambitions because they were a bit sketchy from the start. 

That’s kinda where I want to talk about Yinu, because she was the true turning point in what they were doing. She’s literally 9 and yet she’s getting dragged into all this BS. When she said “I hate you all” at the end of her fight, and played a somber tune on her broken piano after the fight destroyed it, you kinda got a kick in the face to realize you’re kinda being an asshole to some of them. Sure, they fight back, but they wouldn’t fight in the first place if they didn’t have to. They are just people who play music under a joint name that B2J just so happened to get in hot water with. 

Then, of course, there’s Kliff, who also reeked of surprise villain, and who’s basically the embodiment of the bad side of B2J, where he just wanted to destroy for his own sake and not for the actual greater good. Once B2J realized their mistake, they backed off, but Kliff was so hard pressed to do what he planned on in the first place he wouldn’t stop. I kinda wish he got a bigger fight to his own since he’s clearly a big enough tech genius to divert a whole satellite into one specific building. Maybe the Elliecopter chase bit was his thing, but I do kind of wish he was there to fight against them too.

Even though Tatiana did kind of reform a bit quick, It’s still not too crazy to assume she could see that B2J was just misguided and the fact that they worked to revert their wrongdoings for her sake would make a pretty strong impressions. They clearly can hold their own, so it’s not like she wouldn’t want them to join NSR too. 

Oh yeah, and her boss fight was clock/time themed. If there’s a theme under space that I love, it’s clocks/time. 

And If I am to be respected by the internet, I must provide a negative opinion to balance out my positive one. I will say that the character model physics (like Mayday’s braids, DK West’s vest thing, Neon J’s fluffy neck thing, etc) got kinda funky at times. Especially DK West’s vest, which was completely messed up for every scene he was in... Also, even though the voices are mostly great, some lines felt a bit off. Just a bit. That good enough? Good.

But yeah anyway that’s another favorite game to add to the pile. Eventually I’m gonna have to compile a true list of my all-time favorite games/movies because I do kind of want to have a solid idea of what my all-time favorites are.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

The RotBTD+ Gang Plays DnD! (Feat. my ships, sorry not sorry XD)

So highkey I’ve actually been wanting to do a “The Gang Plays DnD” type post for AGES now, but then I saw @hobie-brown and @ohlooksheswriting-wips do DnD AU posts for RotBTD, and then I was like “Ah shit, I really should finish mine, eh?” So thank you to both of you for inspiring me to get off my ass and actually write the post!!!

Hiccup DMs. He comes up with this super complex plot revolving around dragons (because of course) where the party has to dismantle this society ruled by evil knights who want to genocide all of the dragons. Imagine his chagrin when the party wants to do nothing but fuck around in towns and aggravate NPCs 90% of the time.

They usually end up playing at Jack’s apartment, mainly because Hiccup’s dad doesn’t really want a bunch of loud nerds yelling about 20-sided dice in his household while he’s trying to work, if he can at all help it. Jack’s sister regularly barges into their living room and roasts the fuck out of Jack and his friends for being such damn nerds and eats all of their DnD snacks they’ve set out. If they’re in the middle of a combat session, she always gleefully proclaims that they’re all going to die. While Jack is annoyed by this, the rest of the party finds it deeply hilarious.

Jack Overland plays the absolute mayhem warlock Jack Frost, who got his powers through making a deal with the archfey Prince of Frost and has absolutely no qualms about being an evil god’s mortal Sower of Chaos. He spends the vast majority of the campaign doing such useful things as creating ice slicks under annoying NPCs and freezing people’s drinks. He also plays a Tiefling because absolutely no one can talk this boy out of playing the creepy demon race.

Rapunzel plays a woodland nymph druid who is also the party healer (because of course she is). Her name is probably Sunlily or something else suitably hippie-esque. Whenever there’s downtime (or whenever the rest of the party is also dicking around, and she can get away with it), Rapunzel likes to go into the nearest forest and pick the best berries and nuts for the rest of the party. She also loves baking fruit pies and cooking the best nymph food for her companions when given the chance. Definitely the party Cinnamon Roll (every party has one!). She often will turn into cute animals to distract the guards while the party infiltrates a building.

Merida’s character is the party archer and general ranged weapon master, as well as a raging lesbian. Hiccup learns very quickly that any male NPC who tries to flirt with her will very quickly get impaled with an arrow. She can’t ever decide if she wants to be a ranger or a rogue, so she multiclasses in both for flare. She also plays a Tiefling, and continually insists that her character is both scarier and sexier than Jack’s. In combat, she either Leeroy Jenkins her way in with a sword and just starts slashing every which way, or just shoots 90% of the enemies with arrows before the fight even starts. There’s really no in between. She can get away with this because she’s highkey one of the party tanks, and consistently deals a shitton of damage.

Anna plays a human bard, basically having read over the class options and going “Wait, in this one I get to make stylish medieval music??? And wear dramatic and garish outfits and a dumb hat??? And cast wacky illusion spells??? And do silly little magic tricks??? And INSPIRE EVERYONE??? Hell yeah, I’m in!!!” She mostly uses magic attacks in combat (definitely favors Tasha’s Hideous Laughter), but occasionally when she’s out of spell slots she’ll just take to slamming enemies in the face with her lute. She also has WAY too much fun with Vicious Mockery, let’s be real.

Elsa, upon hearing Jack’s character concept, rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her damn brain, and vows to play his concept, but serious–solely out of spite. She rolls up a super OP elf Chaos Sorcerer, filled with lots of brooding angst about how uncontrollable her winter powers can get if she isn’t careful. She combines it a bit with Storm Sorcerer so she can create literal blizzards, and Hiccup ends up allowing it just because he thinks it’s cool. Although Elsa’s character is undoubtedly aggravated by the rest of the party’s antics, she starts becoming grudgingly protective of these idiots and can deal some pretty crazy damage when her companions are threatened. She also contains one of the party’s only brain cells.

Eugene of course plays dashing rogue master thief Flynn Rider. Although his high deception and lockpicking skills certainly come in handy, he’s the most chaotic neutral fucker you’ve ever met and will take any excuse to rob NPCs blind or cheat them out of every cent they have in a tavern card game. It’s nigh impossible to get him to cooperate with the rest of the party much of the time, and often Elsa’s character has to either bribe him with some of her family’s gold or threaten to freeze him to stop him backstabbing one or more party members. Eugene’s character forces Hiccup to add in many more heist plotlines than he originally intended. This delights Eugene immensely, and sometimes he goes a bit crazy planning elaborate heists.

Moana plays a sorcerer water genasi. She can control any body of water, but she has a special affinity for controlling saltwater (i.e. the ocean lol). She also requests an animal handling bonus, but only with marine animals, solely because she thought it would be funny. She’s also an ex-pirate who robbed a lot of wealthy merchant ships and freed their slaves back in the day, which Merida thinks is incredibly badass. Moana tends to get bored and unengaged when there are no bodies of water to play around with, so Hiccup ends up having to add a lot more lakes, rivers, and oceans to the campaign than he originally planned on. Moana also takes a sailing skill, and thus the party often ends up traveling by boat. Typically Eugene and Rapunzel will infiltrate and hijack it, and Moana will sail it. Moana probably contains the party’s only other brain cell.

Astrid plays a gigantic berserker orc barbarian who is never without his trusty axe. Astrid is hands down the party’s top tank, and unquestionably deals the most damage every combat session. Much like Merida’s character, Astrid’s character is absolutely a shameless power fantasy. Hiccup pretty easily picks up on this, but is too polite to say anything about it. Jack also picks up on this, but is hardly as courteous as their DM, and teases Astrid mercilessly. Astrid is not amused.

Rapunzel requests that her weapon of choice be a frying pan, her justification being that her character found a discarded one at the edge of a human village outside her woods and mistaked it for a highly-dangerous human weapon. Hiccup is like “…you know what? Fuck it” and rolls up stats for a goddamn frying pan. Jack has nigh-endless admiration for Rapunzel for choosing such a goddamn memey, absurd, yet oddly effective weapon and it definitely makes the poor boy even more smitten with her than he already is.

Eugene and Merida have a bet going on who can sleep with more sexy barmaids. Merida is currently winning, much to Eugene’s chagrin. She’s not even inherently better at seducing NPCs, she and Eugene have the same charisma stat–she just consistently rolls better than Eugene. Eugene is incredibly salty about this.

Anna and Elsa want to be sisters in-game as well, but neither want to change their race–so Anna decides her character was adopted. Hiccup and the rest of the party go along with it, mainly because there’s something deeply hilarious about a regular human bard being adopted and raised by a family of high-powered elf ice mages.

Astrid is absolutely the sort of player who tends to get bored and restless outside of fights, and tends to fidget and twiddle her thumbs waiting for the next combat session. Jack picks up on this, and purposely does more roleplay for longer just to piss her off. He’s also just a very dramatic fucker and highkey loves roleplay.

When she’s not causing mayhem around the town or sleeping with hot women, Merida tries to entertain Astrid between combat sessions by offering to spar with her. Unfortunately, this does not usually end well for poor Merida, as even the most hardcore and badass of tieflings is prone to getting dumpstered by an 8-foot-tall barbarian orc with an axe. Astrid is, nonetheless, grateful to have someone to fight.

Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana will humor Hiccup and attempt to actually play the main plot. Meanwhile, Jack, Merida, and Eugene are a DM’s worst nightmare. They constantly derail the damn campaign to fuck around, cause mayhem, and do inane shenanigans in every. Damn. Town. They go to. Anna is kind of a wildcard–she’ll typically go with whatever group looks like they’re going to be doing something more interesting. Astrid will go along with whichever group is more likely to get into a fight–which, often as not, is Jack and his posse of terrible Chaotic Neutrals (who have definitely pissed off a number of NPCs into attacking them).

As the campaign goes on, Elsa and Eugene become the beleaguered Party Mom and Dad. Both are quite aggravated by this–especially poor Eugene, who just wanted to play a morally-gray charming rogue who stole everything and got away with it and then accidentally ended up caring about these idiots he got stuck with.

Anna initially joins the campaign because she has a planet-size crush on Hiccup, and inevitably is the one who dragged Elsa into it too. Being the hopeless romantic that she is, Anna writes a love interest into her backstory. Hiccup eventually has the party run into said love interest, and Anna is overjoyed. He starts flirting with her as the love interest, and it’s easily the best 30 minutes of Anna’s life.

Moana and Elsa also give Hiccup pretty detailed backstories, and he works in little subplots for them. Moana gets to bring water back to a dying part of the jungle in the middle of a draught, while Elsa gets to go on a whole sidequest to explore her family history and how they came to be sorcerers.

Jack, Merida, and Eugene also give Hiccup fairly elaborate backstories, but Jack’s and Merida’s are like 99% memes and Dumb Shit. Hiccup tries to give all of them backstory-related plot hooks, but inevitably any hooks he provides are either stabbed, robbed, or frozen. Honestly any plot hook offered to these 3 will be all but spat in the face of and tossed off a cliff.

The one relevant part of Eugene’s backstory is that he and Rapunzel decide they used to be partners in crime before the campaign started. Rapunzel would infiltrate and scout out places he wanted to rob as small, unobtrusive animals (her preferred Wild Shape is a chameleon) and later distract the guards as a bunny or kitten while he went in and took every gold coin in sight. In return, Flynn Rider would bribe builders to not develop into Sunlily’s forest. Rapunzel and Eugene partly came up with this For Funsies, but also it was Rapunzel’s sneaky way of tricking Eugene into having prior connections in the party so he’d be less likely to betray them. It works pretty well–although the entire party is protective of Cinnamon Roll Sunlily, Flynn is certainly especially protective of her.

Astrid does the absolute bare minimum as far as backstories go. She is literally just here to smash stuff, slice people, and beat some fuckers up.

Rapunzel has a backstory, but she’s typically so invested in the main plot and the other party members that Hiccup rarely needs to bring it in to keep her engaged. She’s highkey the party emotional rock, and probably the only one keeping them all together.

On that note, Rapunzel’s character is the ONLY one who can get Jack’s character to take the plot even REMOTELY seriously. Like he’ll be dicking around in the nearest tavern challenging the nearest orc to a drinking game, and Rapunzel will come in and ask him to help them on a Main Plot Quest. And he’ll be like “come onnnnn I’m having funnn” and she’ll be like “Jack pleeeeeease?” and you just. Can’t resist Sunlily’s puppy dog eyes. At all. Also, whenever Sunlily is genuinely threatened, any silliness immediately goes out the window and Jack Frost is OUT FOR BLOOD.

For better or for worse, Rapunzel is not immune to being looped into Jack’s shenanigans. Occasionally if either Merida or Eugene have a particularly hare-brained scheme she’ll go along with it, but by and large Jack is the most successful in convincing her to temporarily abandon the plot and cause mild mischief with him. They once wasted half a session creating an elaborate “ice theme park” for some squirrels in the forest.

Hiccup tries to get Merida to play the main plot by eventually having there be no more sexy female NPCs to seduce in the towns they go to. Unfortunately, this backfires–Merida just hooks up with Moana’s character instead. When asked to roll for how good the lay is, Merida gets a nat 20–and thus her character and Moana’s character end up hooking up regularly throughout the rest of the campaign.

Hiccup introduces a few Wise Old Mentor-type NPCs to guide the party throughout the campaign. While Rapunzel, Elsa, Moana, and Anna actually try to listen to them and take their advice, Merida, Jack, and Eugene absolutely refuse to take them seriously and mercilessly play pranks on them.

At one point, Hiccup gives the party the option to attempt to tame a group of wild dragons and use them as mounts. They all have to make animal handling checks. Anna, Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana pass. The rest of the party fails, with Jack and Eugene crit-failing. Hilarity ensues.

Hiccup ends up bringing back Anna’s backstory love interest as an NPC regular. Anna thinks he’s just being a good friend and a good DM and trying to incorporate her backstory as much as he can, but really, he just wants an excuse to regularly flirt with her. He hardly has the balls to out-of-game.

Merida comes out as gay toward the end of the campaign. Everyone in the group is extremely supportive, of course, but everyone is also like “Merida…with the amount of barmaids you’ve banged…and the amount of times you and Moana’s character hooked up…this isn’t exactly surprising.”

Hiccup actually finds a way to use Jack and Elsa’s same-concept-opposite-execution characters to the plot’s advantage. He decides one of the main villains will have a prophecy saying he’ll be taken down by a powerful ice mage. The party manages to fool this guy into thinking this ice mage is Jack, and sends Jack to fight him. As soon as the villain sees Jack, he’s like “WHAT??? THIS clown???” (word has absolutely spread throughout the land of Jack not using his ice powers for anything besides mildly annoying trolling). Naturally, the bad guy lets his guard down after thinking he’s going to fight this literal joke, and then Elsa crashes in from the side and absolutely dumpsters him.

Jack tries to defeat the final boss by just annoying him so much that he leaves. Unfortunately, he just annoys him so much that he attacks Rapunzel’s character. Jack’s just like “oh HELL no” and attacks with absolutely nothing held back. Turns out he’s pretty terrifying when he’s not using his magic for Dumb Antics.

During the final boss of the campaign, the Big Bad tries to one-shot Moana’s character, and Merida’s character super theatrically jumps in front of her to take the blow instead. Rapunzel just barely manages to heal Merida’s character, but it’s a really close call. During all this, Merida is like “ah shit...maybe I’m NOT just in this to get fantasy-laid.” After the fight’s over, her and Moana’s characters have a big dramatic love confession and share a Big Damn Kiss in front of everyone. It’s pretty epic.

After the final session of the campaign, Merida drags Moana outside Jack’s apartment and sputters and trips over her words for a solid minute before she finally gets out that through all this nonsense...well...maybe it’s not just in the game that she thinks Moana is hot. Moana just gets this HUGE grin on her face and says “c’mere, Leeroy Jenkins” and just pulls Merida in and kisses her. Cue the rest of the party barging in on them. Merida and Moana freeze, and there’s a moment of terrified silence...and then the entire party starts cheering them on like “took you long enough!”

The entire rest of the party could detect the sexual tension. Literally all of them.

But Eugene is like “HA, THIS MEANS IF WE DO A SEQUEL CAMPAIGN I’M WINNING THAT BET! BECAUSE YOU’RE GONNA BE DATING MO’S CHAR AND THUS NOT ABLE TO SLEEP WITH ANY MORE BARMAIDS!”

By the epilogue session, Jack and Rapunzel are dating. Merida and Moana are also dating. Hiccup and Anna STILL haven’t figured out why they’re so prone to spending half the session flirting when Anna’s love interest shows up, and Hiccup STILL hasn’t figured out why he likes to have Anna’s love interest show up so often. Bless their souls. Maybe they’ll figure it out next campaign...?

Damn I actually really like this...maybe if people like it I’ll do some incorrect quotes or a drabble or something??? Or maybe some HCs from next campaign???

[ninjago-bingo]

final month recap

wow, everyone.  we’re here.  we’ve made it.  we’re reached the end of our bingo time, and i’m absolutely floored by the sheer creative output that i’ve seen over these last four months.  everyone, take a moment to give yourself a pat on the back!!!  no matter if you made 1 piece or 10, there’s now a work of art out there in the world that wasn’t there before.  and truly, that’s super heccing rad no matter how you look at it.

so let’s celebrate!  for this recap, we have a total of 20 new pieces, bringing the total amount of ninbingo pieces up to 50.  in the span of four months, this little event has created 50 individual works (five of them in the last day!)  holy cow ya’ll.

i’m putting out this recap now, but don’t worry, it’s not the end yet!  any submissions made to the end of the 30th still count and this post will be updated accordingly :D

fic:

all the things i’ve never done by @sa-you-na-ra. tumblr || prompts: competition and teasing

It’s always a funny thing when the ninja realize new things about each other. Even though living with each other meant they had to see each other all day, there were still small habits or actions that amused the others.

(mod comments: all these little interactions made me smile so much :D looking forward to the rest!)

error 404: answer not found by @m-aster-of-spinjitzu. tumblr || prompt: memories

Akita and Zane talk after the battle in ‘Awakenings’. The conversation… doesn’t go as either of them expect.

(mod comments: the nuances in this fic are fantastic!  also Akita is always a win :D)

Five times kai was a good brother by @/master-of-fluff. tumblr || ao3 || prompts: nightmare and brother

I'm writing kai centric stuff again.

(mod comments: kai IS the big bro of the team!!! i support him all the way!!)

How Garmadon became a chauffeur by @master-of-fluff. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: driving

"um...Kai? Don't you think we should go Slower?" Garmadon asked nervously trying not to panick as they raced down the road at what had to be over the speed limit.

(mod comments: who let Kai drive?  no but honestly this is canon alskdfj)

little things by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: hugs and crying.

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things." -Kurt Vonnegut

Lloyd’s tired of being left behind. How is he meant to be the green ninja when he always has to work harder, train better, and wait longer to go on missions with his team? He wants nothing more than to be their equal.

At least, that’s what he thought he wanted.

(mod comments: a post-ep-18 resolution scene?  SIGN ME UP!)

Neither Snow Nor Rain by @fangirltakesall. tumblr || ffn.net || prompt: post-fight

After their return from the Never Realm and all its troubles, Zane is quiet and Nya is incredibly worried. A call to action to a peculiar sort of battle might be enough to change both of those things.

(mod comments: the concept of these two on their own mission together is just so good! excited to see how their dynamic plays out!!)

Never Put Off Until Tomorrow by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: video games and chores

…what can be done today, yada, yada, yada, we all know the saying. So do the ninja- when Master Wu is drilling it into their heads every minute of every day, it’s kind of hard to forget.

Naturally, it only takes them a week (and the biggest new video game in Ninjago) to do so.

(mod comments: this is so in character that it’s frustrating lol.  also Pixal ftw!!)

oh take me back to the start by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: comfort and 3 am

The past should be left in the past. Or, at least, that’s what Jay keeps telling himself. Nadakhan is gone. It’s not logical to still be afraid. But he is, and now everything that he left behind suddenly feels like it’s never going to be the same again.

Cole isn’t so convinced.

(mod comments: Cole is truly the man we all deserve in our lives.)

On Our Own by @redefine-your-identity. tumblr || prompt: home

It’s been a few weeks since Kai and Nya’s parents disappeared without a trace. Needless to say, they’re struggling.

(mod comments: OU C H no poor babies 😭 the relationship dynamic here is great!)

orange and gold by @/m-aster-of-spinjitzu. tumblr || prompt: cooking

...I just need more Cole and Vania content, they seem like they'd be great friends.

Basically it's just 'Cole goes to visit her there, they almost burn down the kitchen, and make way too many puns', lol.

(mod comments: I also always need more Vania content!! the puns in this were breadful!)

permafrost by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: loss of control and promise

It’s not like this is the first time this has happened. It’s not like none of his teammates have ever suffered this kind of guilt and pain. It’s not like Zane himself hasn’t walked through hell before and come out the other side (mostly) in once piece.

Except, this time, it is. It shouldn’t be different, but it is.

(mod comments: super sweet moment between two ninja who deserve more interaction like seriously!!)

Precautionary Tale by @/fangirltakesall. tumblr || ffn.net || prompt: protective

Fighting is different now, and Zane doesn't know why. Yes, he is titanium now, but why should that change anything? It seems to be changing everything, although is all really as it seems?

(mod comments: a great start to a zane-centric fic!  interested to see where it goes next :D)

Star-Ninja! by @rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: siblings and competition 

What happens when the loveable gremlin the ninja adopted off of the streets introduces them to Starfarer comics?

Chaos ensues, of course.

stuck with you (through bright and blue) by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompt: protective

Kai only wants two things: to protect Lloyd, and to give him the best birthday ever. Unfortunately, Lloyd seems hell-bent on making that as difficult as possible. Kai’s always prided himself on achieving the impossible, but dealing with human emotions is much more complicated than beating up Garmadon’s generals or shooting enemies with fire, as he quickly learns. Movie!verse

(mod comments: happy birthday lloyd!! look at him getting the love he deserves uwu)

Take a walk in the rain. by @/master-of-fluff. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: rain

Cole had always loved the rain, the way it smelled, the way it felt on his skin, and especially the mud! Whenever it rained his Mother would put on his rain coat and boots And they'd both go out and splash around in the puddles and make mud cakes and do all sorts of things.

(mod comments: this fic made me smile a lot :D loved the way it was arranged!) 

the hues of an empty sky by @/m-aster-of-spinjitzu. tumblr || prompt: crying

Missing memories, or having two of them for one moment - not quite the same, but if there’s one thing Jay’s leant over the last few weeks, it’s that literally nothing makes sense anymore.

Or, some Skybound aftermath, Zane actually expressing emotions about his memory switch being turned off for all those years, and what was supposed to be a ‘they tell everyone about the erased timeline’ fic, but it turned into a 'two characters who barely interact on screen talk at like one am in the morning, and don’t actually tell the other what exactly they’re alluding to the whole time’ fic that I wrote at like one am-

(mod comments: Skybound resolution? SIGN ME THE HECK UP YES)

The Make-Cole-Realize-How-Much-We-Love-Him Competition by @21st-century-ninja. tumblr || ao3 || prompts: bets and competition

Jay and Kai share a horrified look.  “He really doesn’t get it,” Jay says.

Kai shakes his head.  “We need to show him somehow.”

“Show me what?” Cole asks, exasperated again.  

“How much we love you!” Kai exclaims.  “Somehow, it’s not getting through your thick skull that we want to sit next to you because you’re you, so I’m gonna have to just prove it to you.”

(mod comments: a silly little movie fic!)

twitter was a mistake by @/21st-century-ninja. tumblr || ao3 || prompts: teasing and birthday

Kai 🔥 @flaminhotninja ☑

so who was gonna tell me that Jay used to be a game show host huh

🌺✨ the Gift of Jay ✨🌺 @zaptrap ☑

Replying to @flaminhotninja

NO WHO SHOWED YOU

(mod comments: twitter was a mistake)

two halves of a broken whole by @/rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: scars and post-fight

The Sons of Garmadon have been defeated. Garmadon is in prison. The city has been saved.

In the aftermath of the battle, Nya is more than ready to take a much-needed break. But the life of a ninja is messy. Recovery is never that simple. Although the wounds may have healed, the scars still remain.

Zane’s scars seem to match up, though. And maybe together, they can begin to heal.

(mod comments: aggressive care is my jam, and this is it!)

wait by @rosiehunterwolf. tumblr || ao3 || ffn.net || prompts: home and memories

Lloyd’s not so great at being patient. It’s not his fault though- maybe he would be better at it if waiting didn’t always end up being so disappointing- if people actually kept their promises. But this time’s going to be different, he knows it. His father will come back for him. And Lloyd’s going to wait.

As long as it takes.

(mod comments: baby.  baby boy.  baby.  protecc him plz.)