#cause I'm never actually the OP when I have a post that takes off

[blujayonthewing]

scrolling a ~gender abolitionist/ radfem leaning~ blog for five minutes trying to figure out why the fuck she followed me

[velvetvexations]

incredible, i just saw a reblog of that "transfem headcanons are always better and sometimes transmasc headcanons actively make the text worse and more hateful" by someone i followed. funny to see discussions arguing against the post before seeing the post itself, otherwise i would have unthinkingly internalized it and felt like shit without knowing why. anyway, i unfollowed that person now. to make it worse, op tore into someone for claiming that chihiro from danganronpa is an exception and better read as transmasc... the irony is insane. yet another example besides miquella that would make the story more boring and maybe worse if transfem.

it's so disgustingly petty lmao

a lot of transfem headcanons are reaches, often "this is literally a man magically trapped in the body of a woman and he hates it and desperately keeps trying to go back to being a man" and it's FINE to headcanon characters however you want but since some people can't conceptualize being a woman as anything other than something they wish would happen to them they take characters like that and hiss if you go near them

i get the sense that there's a very specific, narrow demographic of transfems who used to buy into that reddit guy "being a hot 22-year-old girl must be like having 10 billion dollars" attitude and never really let it go. thus the fixation on "AFAB privilege". isee a similar mix of resentment and attraction from lesbian TERFs, though it comes from a different origin. and it's an attitude that can slide easily into TERFism even for cis men--just look at tatsuya ishida!

If anything the idealization of femininity a small minority of transfems exhibit when they complain endlessly about how good trans people AFAB have it would come more from dysphoria and the grass being greener on the other side. "An AFAB trans person will immediately revert to being an innocent little girl to hurl sexual assault accusations at trans women," however, is really concerning!

Regarding whether "binary privilege" exists, i am once again on my hands and knees begging people to actually look at the statistics. The US Transgender Survey and Cohnting Ourselves (from Aotearoa) are right there. And they both show that all trans people are about as badly off as each other regardless of their specific gender. Yes, there are some ways in which being nonbinary is particularly hard, such as not having a social role to fit into, I'm not denying any of that, but if you're going to call being binary a "privilege" then there needs to be a visible whole-group effect for binary people compared to nonbinary people. And there isn't one when you look at the numbers.

It's not really about non-binary people having it flat worse, more just situational complexities.

The thing about even discussing privilege (binary privilege in this case) is that so many people talk as if to have privilege means to inherently have privilege Over someone else. Like is it an advantage for me to be vaguely binary alligned enough sometimes to have a legal gender marker that is moderately less dysphoria inducing when some people are equally harmed by either? (Tbf I live in a state where x is an option, I simply do not feel safe with that 😵‍💫 (tho that does not help when nothing else other than state id accepts it)) like yeah it's a privilege but it's not privilege Over someone. It does not make me an oppressor or mean I am causing harm, which is a thing many people seem to believe, about various forms of privilege

That's a very good point, anon.

I suppose this isn’t how others I’ve seen think about it but. I’ve always just understood that you can be oppressed for being trans without your gender being affirmed. Like. The bigots understand you’re trans but that doesn’t make them think of you as your gender it makes them think of you as trans. Misgendering is such a huge part of what transphobes do and I’ve never once assumed they were like. Lying about seeing trans people that way. I don’t get acting like transphobes can see our, as you put it, soul gender.

It makes people feel better.

[pedal-writes]

Homesick (1)

Summary: What happens when Sam Witwicky's older sister, you, gets wrapped up with the conflict of the autobots and the decepticons coincidentally by visiting your family? Over time, it seems that you and the autobot's leader find out you two have more in common than you initially thought… But it doesn't really mean anything, right?

A/N: Hi everyone! This is gonna be my first actual long fanfic which I'm pretty nervous about (since I always seem to backtrack on the ones I try to write.)

But I recently watched Transformers 2007 and the brainrot is honestly too intense, I had to do something about it so bayverse OP x reader!! It's funny, I've been a transformers fan since 2017 and I've now just got around to watching the movie. I was kinda putting it off since it's not exactly a fan fav among some transformers fans haha. Oh yeah, there are a few scenes from the movie I won't write like the weird bumblebee piss scene and some of the mildly suggestive dialogue considering the other two main characters (besides the reader) are literally like 16 😭. Micheal bay is a freak!!!

Just a heads up, I guess I'm going for a more wattpad-y vibe for this fic considering some of the tropes that I'm using and the fact I'm going directly off of the tf 2007 movie (cause that's like every bayverse op x reader that's on there lolz). Idk Ig I just have a guilty pleasure for corny fics so yeah!!

If y'all want to read this on ao3 or Wattpad, it's in my pinned post :3 Anyways, bye pookies!!

As the moon's reflected light illuminated the dark room, it was quiet besides the occasional shuffling and jolting that came from your sleeping form. Suddenly your eyes shot open. You groaned as you sat up and felt a layer of cold sweat coating your forehead. You shakily got up from the bed and began a walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water. A small creak came from the cabinet and you grabbed a small glass and filled it with tap water, taking a few gulps. After four long years of college, you decided to move away from your hometown and all the way across the country to the east coast. Los Angeles was never your type of city as, in your opinion, it was mainly set up for movie stars and aspiring musicians, not computer scientists. So moving to a completely different city like Philadelphia to pursue your passion sounded like a fantastic idea. But now that you’re here, you’ve felt nothing but homesick.

You’ve always been a family-orientated person, always spending time with your parents and helping Sam, your little brother, with what he needed for school. Although he could be a serious little shit sometimes, the two of you were like peas in a pod, absolute besties! A small smile grows across your face as you think of the times you picked him up from school and took him to the arcade or when you always managed to find tickets to his favorite bands and saw them during the weekends.

A small sigh leaves your lips and you set down your glass on the counter. You walk back into your bedroom and take a look at the calendar hanging on the wall, the month being March. The thought of visiting your family crossed your mind and you could wait a few more months until summer came around but it’s not like you were working at the moment. After you moved, you were working a job as an information security analyst. The pay was definitely above average and it was going alright until an unsavory incident happened with a coworker and you literally couldn’t work there, so you quit.

Alright, I have enough money in my bank account to buy a plane ticket and to sustain me for a few weeks while I’m there. I should probably call mom in the morning and tell her I’m planning on visiting, her and dad will probably be ecstatic. As for Sam…

You opened a drawer on your nightstand and pulled out a piece of jewelry. It was an opal bead necklace you found at the mall one day. It was sort of an impulsive purchase, considering the price, but you thought it would be a nice gift for your little brother because opal was his birthstone after all. You gently placed the necklace back in the drawer and shut it, making your way back to your calendar and writing a few reminders on some of the upcoming days. 

       . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

After all the planning and flying, you were finally back in California. It really was a pain since there somehow weren't any available flights to Los Angeles from Philadelphia so you had to spend the night in an empty airport in Kansas and fly to L.A. in the morning. A yawn falls from your lips as you drive through the familiar neighborhoods leading up to your family's home. You turn on the radio and the latest hit began to play, “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce you thought. It wasn’t really your type of music but it’s Beyonce.

A few minutes passed and you heard your phone ringing. You turned down the radio and grabbed it from the passenger seat, flipping it open and putting it against your ear. “Hello?”

‘Hi honey.’ It was your mom. ‘How far out are you?’

“Oh hi mom. I’m not that far, just give me a few more minutes. You don’t have to call me when you know I'll be there eventually.” You chuckled, gently pressing the brakes as you stopped at a red light.

‘I know, I’m just excited to see you!’ Her voice buzzed excitedly. ‘I’ll be waiting outside for you, see you in a bit.’

“See you in a bit.”

A few moments later the familiar layout of your house came into view and you couldn't help but feel a bit giddy. You saw your mom, Judy, excitedly waving next to the frontdoor, you smiled to yourself. You pulled your car into the driveway and got out of it, Judy pulling you into a tight hug, swaying you from side to side slightly. "I'm so happy to see you, honey!" 

She said sweetly, pulling away while holding both of your hands. "How’s my little genius been?"

Your smile turned into a small frown. "Oh I've been doing... alright for the most part. I had to quit my job recently because of a bad experience I had with a coworker. I’ll tell you about it later but it really sucks, I liked that job." You grimaced slightly at the memories of the not-very-pleasant experience, Judy patting your back in a comforting manner. "Anyway, say, where's dad?" You abruptly changed the subject.

"Oh, your father had to run some errands, but he'll be back soon. He's been so hellbent on making his grass perfect. I think he's starting to go a bit crazy." She said, doing a swirly motion around the side of her head.

You chuckle as you walk back over to your car to retrieve your bag and suitcase. You and Judy walk into the house, an excited mojo greeting you by jumping up and down in that typical chihuahua fashion. "Aw, hi mojo." You cooed, leaning down and petting him near his ears. "I missed you too." Your eyes drifted down to his coller, seeing the jewelry wrapped around his neck.

“Is this your doing, mom?” You laughed.

Judy simply shrugged. “I think it looks cute on him. Oh yeah, Sam's upstairs doing his whole eBay thing, I'm sure he'll tell you all about it when you talk to him." Judy said, walking towards the kitchen and preheating the oven. "Do you need help with your bags?"

"No I'm alright mom, thanks though." You say, walking towards the staircase with your bags in hand.

"Alright honey, make sure to tell Sam I'm making lunch."

"Will do!" You holler from upstairs.

You head towards the rather empty room that used to be yours and set your things down, looking around at the empty walls where posters used to hang and the still neat bed, feeling a little nostalgic. You exit your room and head right to Sam's, ignoring the do not enter sign and opening the door. You see your brother’s hunched over figure messing around on his computer and shake your head, knocking on the door frame to alert him of your presence. Sam jumped, turning around suddenly. "Jesus! You scared the shit outta me. I didn't know you were here yet."

"I can't believe you didn't hear me. Come here, give me a hug dude." You said, spreading your arms in an inviting motion. Sam rolled his eyes and walked over and hugged you. You gave him a small pat on the back and pulled away from him, giving him a small grin. "So how are things? How's school?" You asked.

"It's good, pretty good. I've been trying to get this whole eBay thing running. Oh yeah, and dad made a deal with me and soon I’ll have my own car. I just gotta get an A on this history project coming up." Sam replied, turning around and typing a few more things into his laptop before closing it.

“Wow, that’s awfully generous of him. I’m excited for you though.” You chuckled, leaning against his door frame and crossing your arms. "Anything new with that one girl… What was her name?"

"You mean Mikaela?”

“Yeah Mikaela, The girl you’ve liked since forever and is totally not out of your league.” You said sarcastically.

"What??" Sam exclaimed, whipping his head towards you. "She is not out of my league! She is really gorgeous and stunning in every single way, and she would totally give me a chance. I just gotta… ask her.”

"And when will that be, Casanova?" You laughed.

"Soon! Really really soon. When I get this car next week, and I will get that A, then I’ll have a chance! Any girl loves a guy with a nice car." Sam said, a cocky tone in his voice. 

"Oookay, I hear you... oh yeah! Hold on, I got something for you, give me a second..." You walked into your room and rummaged through your purse, pulling out the necklace. You walk back into Sam’s room and excitedly give him the piece of jewelry. “I found it while I was shopping at the local mall a few months ago. Since Opal is your birthstone, I thought you’d like it. And it’s also not a super girly necklace, you’re welcome by the way.”

Sam took the necklace from your hands and admired the carefully strung together beads in the sunlight of his window, the beads glimmering a variety of colors. “Wow this is really neat. Thank you but y’know, I'm not really much of a jewelry guy." Sam said a bit nervously.

"Oh come on, wear it!" You pat him on the back reassuringly. "Girls love guys who are comfortable with their sexuality, it shows maturity. Besides, you'll look like one of those... surfer guys. You know what I mean? When they wear those small necklaces.”

Sam frowned and gestured to himself. "Do I look like a surfer guy?"

"I’m just trying to be supportive!" You said, making your way out of the room. "By the way, mom's making lunch. Make sure not to get too engrossed in your master plan of getting with Mikaela and actually put some meat on those bones." You commented teasingly.

Sam groaned and waved you off dismissively, sitting down at his desk again. You chuckle and walk into your room, crouching down and pulling a few essentials out of your suitcase. Now that you’re back in Cali, you were excited to see a few of your friends that you’ve been friends with since high-school. Funnily enough, you managed to become friends with the “popular girls” solely because you helped a few of them with their math and science work and now they deemed you besties for life.

Which you didn’t mind honestly.

Most of these girls were rich and actually really nice despite what people stereotype “popular girls” to be. The person that comes to mind is your friend Felicity. She’s probably the one you would call your “top tier bestie”, the girl that constantly came over to your house when you were a teenager (annoying your brother immensely), the girl that called you like every single day you were away to college since you two went to different ones. She was super duper excited when you called her, telling her how you were gonna be in town for a few weeks.

Of course she had plans for you two to go to the spa and then go to the beach and blah blah blah. It would be nice to get out of the house every once in a while to catch up since Sam's gonna be in school most of the time. You put your laptop down on your bed and was about to sit down before you heard your mom yell for you from the kitchen.

“Hey sweetie, can you come down and help me?”

“Oh– Coming Mom!” You quickly got up and left your room, heading downstairs. You couldn’t help but look forward to the next few upcoming weeks, knowing it’ll be the most eventful and actually fun thing you’ve done in months. 

[damnfandomproblems]

https://www.tumblr.com/damnfandomproblems/768147269164892160/fandom-problem-6500-im-trans-its-fine-if-i?source=share

Ways to fight for Trans Rights:

❌ Reporting a hate crime. Holding actual transphobic people responsible. Warning others of potentially violent people in their area.

✅ Guilting an ACTUAL trans person from playing a video game by an author who already made bank on the series.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

Since this generated several responses, I'm going to include a compilation below.

Anon:

I hope y'all know not everyone is aware of all... that. Some buy the game cause they like the universe but dont follow all that is happening on social media. Some of them are not british/english speaking prople and just... don't know. You can either try to, politely, make them aware of what is happening, but if they already purchased it, no need to be agressive. I do not condone jkr, i do not play/entertain anything related to her anymore; but i still have my scarf or books or movies. Does that make me a bad person? Lets take a seat back from HP I am able to understand what is problematic in media/art; i enjoy HOTD and GOT, am i a bad person because i like the serie despite how problematic it is? No. If you refuse to talk to people buying anything HP related, then block them. Don't call someone a bad person without knowing them. Your opinion means nothing.

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Anon:

1. You can enjoy a piece of media without agreeing with the author/artist/developer etc. 2. Way to make Trans people seem like a hive mind. "You can't play this game, even if your trans. Virtue signaler." How about let people play the media they decide to play and decide for themselves it's controversial or not. Like, do you expect people to just follow your cause blindly? 3. THERE IS A TRANS CHARACTER IN THE GAME.

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Anon:

I get this may have been submitted prior to the Oct 7th attacks, and the dramatic rise in antisemitic attacks everywhere, so I won't go off like I wanted to. But to just get to my point, as a Jew, we kinda have bigger problems right now. I'm barely concerned with HP fans.

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Anon:

Here we go with the reading comprehension again. At least one person is the comments is going on about "buying" the game when OP never specified buying it. They just said "playing" the game. Huge difference. One monetarily supports the creators and such, the other doesn't.

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Anon:

This is WILD. The op makes a dozen assumptions, none of which may even be true. For starters the "you are not immune to propaganda" thing might be true in a sense, however OP is using it to imply people are all but guaranteed to fall for propaganda in media. And we all know that isn't true. A person who reads Hitler's shitty book (Mein Kampf) is not going to close it being a step closer to a Nazi sympathizer if they have basic information dissemination skills. A person who goes looking on Kiwifarms for information is not going to be radicalized if they have proper information dissemination skills. So OP is really telling on themselves here and saying the quiet part out loud: they have little or no ability to engage with questionable media without fearing they'll get affected by it in a negative way. They can't go plumbing like that. And they're saying others can't either, which just shows bad perspective. Their quote says the person was talking about playing a game. Playing it. The implications that come with "playing" a game are as follows: the person played it. That's it. If OP can't exercise one brain cell to understand that while yes, people have bought the game, playing it could easily mean they got it from a library or downloaded it illegally via torrent, that's on them. "You're a bad person" is beyond comedic given the above. Dare I say even if someone does buy the game, which I'm wholeheartedly against, saying someone is a "bad person" is still insane. Anyways, OP is basing practically their entire complaint on the premise of someone buying a game when that wasn't even what the quote says. Boo. Do not pass go.

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Anon:

Nooo, we're not bringing Scottish independence into your crusade against people who play a video game, leave my family out of this you keyboard warrior weirdo.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Is it just me or has the card illustrations (specifically the groovy) been kinda bad lately? Like don't get me wrong most of the pre groovy are absolute bangers, but the groovies? Not so much. But lately there has been an obvious decrease in quality with anatomy, and even 😐 a whitewashing problem.

Take Lilia's dorm groovy for example— the piece is gorgeous, but whenever I zoom into his face the way they draw his face looks so off.

As for the whitewashing issue, I've noticed that Leona's beastly garb groovy had him very ashy looking (but some may argue that it's just the lighting casted on him)

Right now though the one that's been bothering me the most is the obvious whitwashing on Kalim's tsum groovy. We really can't argue that it's a lighting issue there, cause Jamil's firework card had a similar setting and he didn't look that light.

Personally, I think TWST’s Groovy illustrations have always been hit or miss since the beginning. I have similar issues with the faces in Lilia and Leona’s Dorm Uniform Groovies, and the anatomy seemed slightly off in a few others. I can’t find the original post anymore (I think OP didn’t tag it??), but I clearly recall an artist having spoken about how the pose in Epel’s initial Dorm Uniform art looked weird; they included drawings of how Epel’s spine and limbs looked vs how they should look to illustrate what they meant. Those are just a few examples of then and now though, and we have to keep in mind that if we include ALL available cards then the funky faces and weird posing/proportions only make up a very small percentage of what’s out there.

The more important issue at the moment is the coloring choices that were made for a few recent SSR event Groovies: Beastly Garb Leona and Tsumsted Kalim. They are pictured below with a few other card illustrations I pulled that have similar lighting (or as similar as I could find). You’ll notice (especially for Tsumsted Kalim’s Groovy) that the characters’ skin colors are much lighter than they should be.

Now I’ll be honest here 💦 I actually can’t tell (even when eyedropping the colors to compare; I don't even know if eyedropping is an accurate way to compare colors since the lighting and environment in every illustration is never EXACTLY the same) if Leona’s Beastly Garb Groovy is just the strong sunlight or if it has been whitewashed. I don’t have enough knowledge and/or experience with color theory and in real life to know for certain. However, as the Anon has said, that same argument cannot be made for the Scarabia duo. It’s particularly bad for Tsumsted Kalim because Yasmina Silk Jamil also had fireworks in the background, and his skin color is fine there. Sometimes artists purposefully use an altered color palate to achieve a different feeling in their pieces (for example, pastel colors for a soft, soothing look). I don’t think that was the case for Tsumsted Kalim because everything else in the Groovy art looks pretty true to color for the lighting (but again, I'm not an expert in coloring so I could be wrong). When taken in conjunction with Leona’s Beastly Garb… it could indicate a troubling pattern.

There’s been a lot of speculation going around for why this has happened, chief among that speculation being the TWST team has likely hired new staff and/or colorists (and Japan, being Japan, is pretty homogenous; it may be difficult to find artists with an understanding of how to color and shade darker skin tones). Again, these are just guesses circulating in the fandom. Nothing is confirmed, and nor does this excuse what has happened.

This has, very understandably, caused a lot of hurt and upset in the TWST fandom and community. So now the question is…

What can we do about it?

You can communicate your feelings to the TWST team! They have a form to collect thoughts and opinions from the playerbase, which can be accessed here.

PLEASE NOTE:

Be polite and professional. Nothing good comes out of anger, especially if the anger is directed at others; if you are rude and/or curse at the staff, they will be much less likely to hear you out.

Communicate in Japanese. The staff you are sending your complaint to are Japanese, and the game itself is Japanese (Beastly Garb Leona and Tsumsted Kalim are not yet out in the EN server, which is staffed by totally different people).

If you don’t know how to write in Japanese, this Twitter user has created polite templates to communicate our concerns with the whitewashing. (Their whole thread is great; please reference it if you need additional assistance!!) I would not recommend adding extra text, especially if you would be relying on a translation program to do so. Speaking in broken Japanese can be perceived as rude and will only detract from your message.

A similar situation to this occurred during the initial run of Fairy Gala; TWST had used “exotic” in its text, and after receiving an influx of feedback from the players, the devs went in and changed the dialogue to no longer use the term. It’s possible to make the change we want to see a reality if we respectfully make our thoughts known.

[grimalkinmessor]

9 and 14 please?

9: Which antagonist could you never forgive?

Well, I'm actually a notorious villain lover, so this a very difficult question for me to answer lmao. Especially for an anime that usually attempts to forgive every antagonist and show them the error of their ways. There are antagonists I don't particularly like but still see the reasoning and the attempt at redemption of, like Toichiro.

I think the antagonist I like but could never forgive is Mogami. The dude is hella interesting, he's OP, he's a great foil for Mob—but his reasoning for being evil is trash. My dude literally did not have to kill all those people 😐 And then BLAME it on the people who paid him to do it. Like bestie you made the choice to take that route allll by yourself, even if other people made it easier for you to take than others. He doesn't acknowledge his own failures and acts like Mob is the stupid one for wanting to be kind and help people. And to show him how "terrible" other people are, Mogami,,,,warps the world by removing every one that's ever been kind to Mob. Then removing his powers and telling him THAT'S the reason people treat him badly?? Make it make sense. He did that shit for fun or because he's legit insane or both. AND HE'S NOT EVEN SORRY. MY DUDE JUST CAME BACK, SPOUTED SOME MORE BULLSHIT ABOUT HOW MERCY CAN'T BE THE ANSWER AND THEN FUCKED OFF INTO THE ETHER.

So, while Mogami is my scrunkly and I adore him, if I ever catch that bitch in my neighborhood irl he's catching these hands 😌🙏

14: Are there any MP 100 fanfics you HAVE to rec?

*cracks knuckles* BUCKLE UP BOYS I HAVE A TRUCKLOAD >:D

First up, the fic that roped my into this fucking fandom against my will—

Sunflower by Copyspaghetti (Mobreirit, unfinished)

Seeing the world from the lens of a powerless child brought novelty. There was a point to doing things that didn’t boil down to the fate of humanity.

This simple interaction left something alive in his chest that would only grow.

—

In which a hyperactive middle schooler forces his way into Mob’s heart, allowing him to start life anew after giving his youth to extremism. Juggling therapy, a brother, a kid, and the remnants of Claw is a lot.. his past haunts him. And befriends him.

Terryh and Sasha posted a flurry of screenshots of this fic on twitter a while back, and I remembered them when I was looking for a new piece of media to get into, and this fic was the reason I watched MP100 at all—because I wanted to read it with all the context lmao. And it did not disappoint; Sunflower is an Age Swap fic that really digs into the hows and whys of the MP100 world, and while I adore all of Copy's fics, this one is number two on my list of all time favorites. Tiny Arataka and his struggles, Shigeo and Ritsu and their attempts to get better while also wading through their own struggles, the soft fluffiness of their time together contrasted with the world around them, just,,,,,,💋🤌✨ fuckin' SUPERB.

Between Acolytes and Sanctities by Copyspaghetti (Mobrei, unfinished)

The book burnt Arataka's fingers through the leather gloves. As an acolyte of his father's church he got the worst jobs with a front row view of how little it all mattered. Saltville was starving but the Gods did nothing. That's why he stood there now, alone in the woods at the foot of the shadow mountain with a spell book hotter than the bonfire itself. – In which Arataka's village, Saltville, is famined and he asks a forgotten God of the shadow mountains for help. Instead of feeding his village, he lends some of his divine power to the boy to solve his own problems. What could a human become to a God?

My FAVORITE, number ONE Copy fic if you MUST know—because it's about ✨✨ the INTRIGUE ✨✨✨✨🤌🙏✨💕✨ Really super old super powerful Mob tired of everything?? Convinced he's nothing but a plague, only capable of causing devastation?? And little stubborn Arataka demanding that he pay attention to the ants humans again, staring with Arataka, of course. Obviously. The imagery in this one has me by the balls. I'm feral about it, feening for it, I wanna print out this fic's vibes and make it into a snowglobe that I can eat.

but it does no damn good by quiveringpalm (Reimob, finished)

"We can’t have this sort of conversation," Reigen says softly.

Mob is blinking slowly at him, his eyes searching all over his face as if to find a real chink in his proverbial armor, except that Reigen hasn’t ever felt more naked than he does now in the dark on this fucking bed in this fucking hotel in this godforsaken fucking town, he really never should have taken Mob here but it’s too little too late, too late and too little, god, Mob is so little.

His voice is even littler, barely above a whisper. "... Even if I want to?"

The oneshot that one-shots my whole heart ong. I can't even explain how much I love this fic, it just gives me all the warm fuzzies 🥰 Also the tire swing. The tire swing. Read it and you'll know what I mean 🙏

Ironic Process Theory by tragakes (Reirit, unfinished)

Right now Ritsu was virtuous. He was righteous. He was doing what lesser people could not; he was carrying Reigen back to his apartment because Reigen had been beaten within an inch of death, and later he would tell Shigeo that he had saved his boyfriend. Were they boyfriends? They had never referred to each other as such, but Ritsu knew they were fucking, which had to make them boyfriends.

He imagined telling his brother, and he imagined his brother’s expression when he learnt Reigen got hurt, and all of his insides twisted into a hot, tight, knot, and he decided that maybe he wouldn’t tell his brother after all.

That was, in fact, the virtuous and righteous thing to do. One couldn’t go around boasting about their good deeds.

Read this fic RN. 👁️👁️ I love me some ritrei but this? This right here? Takes the cake. Holy shit. It's technically transitive property mobreirit (in that order) but that just makes it better tbh. One of the tags is "Ritsu and his mental gymnastic: extended edition" and that about sums it up. Bitter Anxiety-Ridden Ritsu my beloved 🙏

Piece of Me by allthisandheaventoo (Mob?Rei?, finished)

Mob is a late bloomer. Not enough to be concerning; most kids present at ten or eleven, and Mob is only thirteen. Reigen himself was twelve when it happened, when he had woken up one morning squirming and feverish and horny as all hell before realizing that meant he was an omega. He remembers a kid in his grade who didn’t present until he was sixteen, smelling like pup until halfway through high school. The point being that Mob is completely normal for not having presented yet, and having him around the office has never presented a problem for Reigen before. Until it does.

The A/B/O breastfeeding fic. I think about this fic all the time. It's nested into my brain and it's never leaving. Yes. The ship bit is said to be ambiguous but not TO ME. Fantastic, give me fourteen of 'em rn 🙏

facing three ways by hapful (gen, finished)

The alarm settles as Taka walks out to the fields to join his class lined up. Keiji comes up to him immediately, eyes full of concern. “What happened? You look sick,” he says, and Taka could cry but he doesn’t.

“Hey Keiji,” he says instead, “aren’t you sick of people?”

“Yeah,” Keiji answers, concern still lacing his tone but with a tired, understanding edge.

Taka smiles. It isn’t pleasant. “I have an idea.”

two beaten down kids decide to summon a demon to solve their problems, and everything changes.

AHHHH. AHH. The Age Swap platonic mogarei fic I didn't know I needed until I found it *collapses* BEAUTIFUL.

The Paper Moon by DespiteWhatShouldBeOtherwise (gen, finished)

It wasn't the rain, or the car, or even dying that ruined his day.

The worst was when he woke up, and everything that happened after.

In short, Reigen gets hit by a car and winds up leaving the hospital with a little something extra.

I can't say much about this fic without spoiling it, but please know that the mystery and intrigue kept my eyeballs glued to my phone screen every free moment for three whole days. Thank you.

Where Did You Go? by iamwish (gen, unfinished)

“You know what else is important? Eating. And paying rent. And, hey, we’ve had this conversation, our clients’ lives are important, too. Your life is important. This stopped being a sprint a long time ago, Ritsu. It’s a marathon now. And what do we do during marathons?”

“We pace ourselves,” Ritsu answers rotely.

-

Is this fic:

1. Technically a rewrite of season 1 with Ritsu as the main character

2. An exploration of the consequences that one change, one absence can have

3. The author torturing Ritsu by giving him something he wanted for a price he never would have willingly paid

4. All of the above

Deshi Ritsu AU. DESHI RITSU AU. Well, kind of not really but dESHI RITSU—

Soft and Wet by UnderWickedSky (Ekurei, finished)

Ekubo offers an explanation, “The spirit is in your guts, twisted around your inner organs. This is exactly the type of curse that makes someone perfectly healthy suddenly drop dead from a heart attack or an aneurysm. The kind that gets reported in all the newspapers because it was just so unlikely."

“At least I’d be famous,” manages Reigen weakly.

[Ekubo helps Reigen with a pesky curse, and eats well in the process.]

There is no smut in this fic. There is NO smut in this fic. It just FEELS like there is. I can't explain it, it's like a fish hook—yoinks you in and leaves you super confused and super intrigued at the same time. My favorite Ekurei fic.

if i start a commotion by carnation (Ritmob, unfinished)

“Can you take back a confession...?”

“I can,” Ritsu says obstinately. “I do. I take it back, I didn’t mean it. I did mean it but I shouldn’t have said it so I take it back, it didn’t happen. Now you can’t talk about it anymore, because it didn’t happen.”

“I think it did,” Mob says, doubtfully. “I still remember it, so... I think it did happen. I think – maybe you can’t take it back. Sorry.”

ANXIETY-RIDDEN RITSU MY BELOVED 💕✨ And Mob just,,,trying to wrap his little brain around the idea of Ritsu loving him romantically, slowing growing to like the idea and giving Ritsu several heart attacks in the process—and Dimple several migraines—I love him your honor.

or at least i pretend by carnation (Ritmob, finished)

He tells Shigeo about a test he did well in and another he did less well in, and about how it is competitive here, like everyone says it is, like everyone at home had warned him it would be every time they learned he was applying to Matcha University, but it’s competitive in a good way, a friendly way, not a damaging way, because everyone here wants to work hard and do their best and they want everyone around them to do well, too – competitive, but supportive; so it’s good, it’s all good, and it’s all new and different but it’s good. Everything is good. All of Ritsu's stories are pleasant and mild and nice because everything about Ritsu's life is pleasant and mild and nice as well, and all his stories have been told so many times they’re polished smooth by repetition: he offers them up to his brother with well-practised ease.

This fic came into my house and personally beat me up with its bare hands. I'm in love with it. Unrequited Love combined with MEGA "It's Complicated", Ritsu pulling off the heist of the century, and Mob just. Mob. Sigh MOB. carnation always nails the exact flavor of ritmob that I enjoy, but the angst of this one combined with happy(?) ending makes it one of my favs 🥰

Better Him by ConnorRK (explicit gen, finished)

“Reigen, are you kidding me? Can’t you keep it in your pants for one minute! This is serious.” Ritsu, outraged, undoubtedly trying to murder Reigen with his eyes. It makes Sato laugh, delighted, and in front of him, Takashi positively grins.

“Sounds like this ain’t the first time, is it, Reigen? You got a thing for stuff like this? You wanna be held down? We can do that for you.”

Hi hello yes may I have this fic printed onto my eyelids please, thanks—rape aftermath/recovery fics are actually some of my favorites, and this one? Reigen discovering just how far he'd go for his kids?? I can't—just take my wallet at this point you've already ripped my heart outta my chest 😭 LOVELY 💕

Zero by SeaSaltFreckles (Mobrei², unfinished)

Joseph still looks apprehensive. He puts a finger up to the earpiece and listens carefully to whoever is on the other end. Then, he sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back. “Our records say that Reigen Arataka is the one who eventually stopped him. Why?”

Again, Rei’s eyes shift all around, and his expression shifts from realization to sadness in the blink of an eye. “Because that’s how it happened in my world… I also tried to stop him, but I couldn't and– and because of that, Shigeo…” He pauses, swallowing thickly. “Shigeo is the one who wiped out humanity. He's the one who destroyed my universe.”

A story in which Reigen Arataka and his world's Kageyama Shigeo travel across dimensions and bring their fight to the doorstep of Mob and Reigen, but everything is far more complicated than it should be.

YOUR HONOR THE WAY I AM UNHINGED ABOUT THIS FIC 🙏🤌✨😳💕😭❤️‍🔥 GOD. ???-kun is my favorite character forever and always and I'm a slut for characters meeting alternate versions of themselves, so this fic just absolutely fucks its way right up my alley, holy hot damn.

I'll stop there, because otherwise this post will be super long instead of just mildly long, but please be aware that I'm feral about several more fics. Yelling about them forever and ever amen 🙏

[kingmaxstatic]

Starting to post stuff that have just been in my folder as I take a break from doing art. Starting with one of my characters that I recently designed that I'm shocked I didn't post.

Meet Breaker

(Lore and Concept Art under the cut)

Breaker is my answer to the question "What if the Glitch Trio had a knuckles?" now yes I know TECHICALLY Starline IS the knuckles, he's based on the Wechidna glitch. HOWEVER I've always been curious on what it'd be like IF Starline attempted to make a "Knuckles".

I personally love the headcanon that there (or.. were) Surge and Kit prototypes. (I can't find the exact post RN but OP noted how there were two awfully different looking subjects in the tubes).

This lead to a headcanon FOR that headcanon; Starline had different "phases" for this. Before kidnapping and brain washing, he attempted to go for straight cloning. He eventually scrapped this due to too many failures and very few successful outcomes.

Breaker is the successful clones. In fact they're the ONLY successful clone.

and this is purely due to the fact that Starline didn't gather enough DNA samples from Knuckles (still unsure of HOW he got this) to fully make Breaker. INSTEAD he uses some of his own DNA to sort of "fill in the blanks" hence the webbed hands and the lore on their muzzle.

Breaker's cybernetic enhancements are purely based around fire. Hence their gasmask and their thick rubber gloves.

When making a personality for Breaker, Starline found it rather easy considering the hybrid didn't have a personality prior. He purely based Breaker's entire self off of what he had heard about Knuckles and his first hand experiences with the last echidna. Breaker is extremely protective of whatever Starline deemed worthy of protecting. They're stern and quick to destroy. Despite their anger issues they're often quiet and let Surge and Kit do the talking. They're also extremely loyal and don't trust others as easily ("fixes" to two flaws Starline believed Knuckles had)

This doesn't mean they don't hold grudges against the rest of the Glitch trio, in fact they have quite conflicting feelings about them. They don't share Surge and Kit's feelings of wanting to know more. They don't need to know more. Starline told them everything and Starline would NEVER lie to them. "They just don't get it. They don't understand. This cause is FAR more important to us then some "past"" they'd think.

After Starline's death.. nobody really knows where they are. Maybe they're looking for something. Maybe they're looking for someone. Who knows. They sure don't.

ANYWAYS ANGST ASIDE HERE'S SOME FUNNEE CONCEPT ART TEEHEE!!

Originally our darling Heels was going to be based off of the Blue Knuckles glitch but my friend, Joakim, Suggested I go with the gold variant of the wechidna glitch (This actually ended up being the reason Breaker has some of Starline's DNA! Because they're based on the same glitch!)

[tobiasdrake]

Still venting about my mom but didn't want to take over OP's post any more than I already did. So this is just going to be a big ol' oversharing mess.

Seriously, though. My mom insists that she just recognizes my skills and I'd be a good fit for her company. But she has no idea what I do. Just that I'm good at computers.

The only thing she's ever been able to say about my abilities is that I "type fast, but not as fast as me, wink."

I type 119 wpm. This is a woman who needed me to come to her office once because "The window is supposed to be big. Like, the entire screen, big. But it's just this in this little window now. How do I make it big?"

No shame meant for people who aren't super experienced working in data. But I'm going to need some convincing before I believe that her repeated, insistent job offers are really because she understands the value of my work and not at all because I'm her kid.

During one of my refusals to come work for her, she once actually said to me, to my face, "Everybody has a price." No hint of irony or self-awareness at all.

When I started becoming more politically aware, I'd try to have conversations with her about the things I was learning. Because she was my mom, and I loved her.

As I spent more time living in the lower-class and got to know the experiences of being poor and listening to minority voices and exploring what it means to be neurodivergent and LGBT, I would bring what I was learning to the table. Because I was discovering things I never knew were there, and I thought she didn't know either. I thought she was as ignorant as I was discovering myself to be.

She was not. She had the typical conservative rhetoric in-hand to stamp down on everything I tried to share with her. Drugs. Crime. Welfare.

The day I gave up on her, the day I realized who she really was, was after Trump got elected. When she told me to my face that she voted for Trump because of a Hispanic family down the street that has a nicer truck than hers. "It's not fair, because those people don't have to pay taxes." So she wanted Trump to come in and deport them. For having a nice truck.

I don't even know if they're even immigrants. I don't think she knows either. I think it'd be pretty hard to afford an acre of land in rural America and a nicer truck than a rich white woman's if you were working undocumented migrant wages. So I'm like 80% sure she's racist-ing at documented American citizens.

And it's still not okay even if she's not.

That was the day I realized that she isn't just uneducated about these issues. She is a hateful bigot. She thinks civil rights are over because we solved feminism, the only civil rights cause that matters. And she thinks we solved feminism because she, personally, has a cushy job and plenty of wealth and can live on a horse ranch where she never has to see other human beings again.

My mom has always loved the idea of me. She's proud of having a son. Of being a mom. But we've never had any shared interests or activities. She's upset because she tried to get me into horses when I was a kid, and I didn't take to them.

She warned me when I was five that you shouldn't go behind the horse because it can kick your head clean off. And from that moment on, that's all I could think about any time I saw a horse. Dangerous animal can take my head right off. I did not enjoy any attempt she made to put me and horses in the same space.

And she's always kinda held that against me. That I didn't take interest in the activities she enjoyed, so we never had anything to connect over.

But like. I was a child. It was her responsibility to take interest in the things I cared about. Where was she when I was playing Power Rangers with my friends and getting into roller blading and learning that I loved writing and analyzing and dissecting media.

Where is she now when my family is struggling and all she has to say is, "I don't give handouts. But I do have this nepo-job for you if you're interested. Don't worry, it's because of your qualifications, I promise."

My mom has always wanted to love me. But only on her terms.

[lucidiferneedssleep]

Okay, so. Since I haven't posted this already, this is the main idea I had for DreamCycle before I start writing it:

Basically, DreamCycle is a DreamTale alternate in which, rather than both Nightmare and Dream being Guardians, they are instead appointed Gods, the sons of the original Gods. Other characters I imagined would be of similar origin in different fashion would be Ink, Error, generally just the OutCodes. I'm gonna dive into Sovereign Rift (SR), which is a variant of DreamCycle in which Nm and Dream are Kings, rather than just normal Gods protecting the sun and moon. In SR, rather than there being different universes which you can jump between, all the AUs are instead a whole bunch of neighboring countries. (Shhh it's not Empireverse. They were also all born out of the original Gods, such as Nim, who will be going under the alias 'Gaia' for this.)

(The main Gods in this case would be the parent of each respective God. YES, the CQ siblings are canon to this idea, so Geno, Fresh and Error all have the same creator-mom. Reaper has a dad. Ink has his adoptive caretakers because his actual mom is very dead, and very much THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE????? like bro. OP much? Yada Yada you know this part)

The twins were created with their mother's magic and instructed to care for the country of Ignicia as their mother tended to separate places at the same time before falling ill to erosion. (The cause of that erosion is a plot point later on, so I'll explain that when I get to it.)

Nightmare and Dream were created with two separate elements, both needed to spark life. The warmth of the sun's rays and the waves of the water. Sun and Moon, created to rule day and night. Nightmare was a drop of the same energy he could control, water, a goopy little puddle, ice cold. Dream was a ball of hot, hot fire. The two were each given an apple at their birthplace, told that the magic-infested fruit would build them a body just akin to their mother's, who was a remnant of the tree of which the fruit had been plucked.

(This basically granted them the ability to freely switch between two forms: One based on the apple, a fire-like figure for Dream, and the usual goop for Nightmare and then their 'passive' states, being the one they usually used to not expend as much energy keeping their magic protection up.)

Dream, being only seconds older than Nightmare, was awarded the title crown prince. Despite his usual childish nature, he proved to be a good leader as they both grew. With their mother growing more and more absent as years passed by, they became forced to take the responsibilities of the kingdoms into their own hands. Nightmare was working hard at being Dream's right-hand-man, but struggling under the apparent distaste the people had for him. Dream was reveling in the glory of his throne, but often was crushed under the sheer weight of the heavy crown he was appointed.

The main plot point is the twist that during a friendly duel turned traitorous battle, there's the first 'incident'. But rather than Nightmare turning on Dream and slaughtering a village as what happens in the original universe, Dream lunges a spear lit afire right through his skull without thinking. Then he feels the most guilt he ever has within his life. It wasn't meant to hit him, it was meant to scare him. But now his brother was dusting hurting because of him, so he immediately took to trying to heal him like he usually did when they fought. Except Nightmare refused. He ran off, his skull becoming slathered in a gooey substance as his vision faded. He wound up back at his own temple, dunking his head in the healing waters of the moon, vowing to never forget the day.

Later the same year, he fled the country, instead gathering the castaways, the forgotten and the unwanted by the strict leaders of Dream's Empire Ignicia, creating his own nation: Oscuro, Kingdom of Darkness. Swallowed by evil. Nightmare would forever be an empty shell, only half of what was of his childhood self, but his Moon remained in a form which obscured his past and hid his hurt parts. This meant war.

Through the rubble of the war marched out many other separate neutral parties, either wishing for peace or for their own benefit through taking no sides of the large war.

Such include, for the Gods:

Geno, Omnipotence and Time

Reaper, Death

Error, Destruction

Ink, Creation

Fresh, Illusion (Parasitism)

Other third parties could include for example Swap (Revolution and revolt, justice) or characters like Cross and Orphic, but that's the main idea

The main leading plot points would be:

- The rebellion against the 'Universal Law' with humans not being able to talk to Gods

- Dream's obsession with power (Savior complex and narcissism that was engraved in him after being told he's this great ruler his entire childhood and needing to meet up with those standards, else he lose his purpose in life. Yeah, self-esteem issues who?)

- Nightmare's desire for revenge ("You're not my brother anymore" is def gonna be said at some point and I will undoubtedly cry.)

- The consequences of the war among the people and other nations (universes)

- Ink's non-emotional state and how it changes with time

- Error learning to discern right from wrong because he's a nervous, angry wreck throughout the thing

- The breakage of the "Universal Law" resulting in the tree being killed and Gaia nearly dying bc of it, instead burying herself underground until it became so much that the wilting tree's instinct turn on her own sons to absorb the magic that is being taken away because of mistreatment of the Gods

-Fresh's subplot of creating a whole cult of people he can feed off of through his parasite

- Geno's prophecy of doom because he's seen wayyy too much, poor boy needs a break

- Nightmare creating his own nation after leaving Dream's in reluctance to his rule and taking in refugees who don't think they're treated right (Nightmare's gang would be his highest ranked generals ofc)

I THINK THAT'S ALL. I spend a reeeeealllyyyy long time on this. But I'm excited about what you guys might think! Me and a close friend are working on starting the actual book so we might release an actual start to the story at some point, if ya'll want it <3333

Thanks for reading!!

Some concept art:

Next post:

[sonicasura]

Transformers Prime: Toonsanity

Yes, I'm going back to the Weretoons with Transformers idea well specifically the Prime version. Rescue Bots will have it's respective post so don't you worry! Let's get started.

Miko lives in Jasper with her Weretoon foster father instead of canon's host family. She is already Jack and Raf's friend but they don't know about her Weretoon nature. A common rule that's not just for the safety of other Weres but people close to them. Every werecreature has a respective hunter and those for Weretoons are extremely dangerous to put it simply.

The two boys would've been left unaware if wasn't for the fateful encounter with the Autobots. (Miko is still a chaos agent and being a Weretoon just amps it up.) It doesn't really take long for everyone to find out either.

Weretoons tend to carry a small bottle of ink on them as it triggers the Toon transformation instantly. An emergency tool to be precise. What better time to use it than on a hostile alien spaceship full of trigger happy robots?

Like any other Toon, Miko has a hammer space with her preferred cartoony weapon being a giant mallet. Jack pretty much felt like he was going insane at this upon seeing his friend flatten a Vehicon into a metal pancake. Raf is taking it a bit better than him. The bots however...

Ratchet: What in the pits is this?!!! *Points at Toon!Miko*

Miko: *eating a carrot she pulled from her hammerspace* What's up, Doc? Never met a Weretoon before? Congrats on being not only the first non-Weretoon aligned doctor but the first 'normal' doctor I done this joke with!

Jack: *notices everyone staring at him* Hey, don't look at me! I didn't know about this until now!

Ratchet obviously grilled Miko for answers as he barely knows how to treat humans! Now he has to worry about an unknown subspecies getting injured or ill. Miko explaining the whole 'Weretoons' thing so nonchalantly didn't help either. (Optimus wrote everything in stride as the unknown reawakens the archivist within.)

Ratchet shuddered knowing others can be infected and rather not find out if Cybertronians are susceptible. (They are Ratty. It's another reason why Miko wears a mouth guard. A simple bite with their actual teeth is all a Weretoon needs to turn someone even if they don't penetrate skin or metal.)

No one purposely tries to test Miko's squash and stretch capabilities whenever she's in toon form. Doesn't stop a cartoony shenanigan from occuring. Or the fact every single bot on the team has fallen for the inherent gag trying to get Miko outta harm's way like in every other cartoon.

Examples:

Bulkhead got whacked in the face by his own lob ball as it preceded to roll off the shelf after Miko.

Optimus somehow slipped on a banana peel and accidentally falls on Bumblebee from trying not to squish the Weretoon.

Ratchet crashes into the ceiling when Jack's knife set is hurtled at Miko with the medic taking said blades to the aft. (Toon law: Anyone struck by a pointy object always launches upwards.)

Miko reveals her beast form during the Scrapheap episode. She gotten pissed when some Scraplets had munch on a metal custom road plate her dad made for her room. Never anger a toon who can turn into a serpentine dragon like mole cause Miko chased the little pests everywhere with a vengeance.

Jack already resigned to the insanity after this little reveal. He's just glad they got a heavy hitter that the Scraplets couldn't munch on. Optimus and Arcee were really confused about this new development but let Miko help warm them up. (She runs hot as a mole dragon plus long enough to coil around someone OP's size.)

Hostage situations with Miko will always go wrong for the kidnapper. She either slips out their grasp like a snake or go beast mode on their ass. Makeshift learns that moles bite especially if they're half dragon.

Knockout and Starscream doesn't have fun with Miko during their respective encounter either(TMI/Rock Bottom.) Her claws can do more than just dig through dirt as she left behind pretty larges gashes on their frames. Starscream and Knockout constantly about still finding sand in their frame.

The ugliest confrontation between Miko with a Decepticon is Predaking. Dragons aren't exactly friendly towards each other as they are territorial as fuck. (Moles are even moreso.) Especially if it involves a claim. Her friends and the Autobots' can be considered Miko's plus considering Predaking is more dragonlike...

She fucking mauls the Predacon with their respective breath attacks leaving freshly made glass everywhere. Ultra Magnus had to hold Miko like an angry extra long ferret so she didn't fly after the retreating Decepticons. Our girl may be strong but not invincible.

Toons can have their own rules turned against them plus Miko can't sustain her toon form for long. She's got an hour to an 1 hr 30 minutes before reverting back. Then there's the threat born from the film 'Who Framed Rodger Rabbit': The Dip.

It can burn a Weretoon in their human form but becomes truly lethal if they are a toon. Dip is their wolfsbane and is the main tool in a Cartoon Hunter's arsenal. Two things Miko wasn't happy to explain to the bots when movie night came around.(Bumblebee apologized btw.)

It's gonna take awhile for the Decepticons to find out. Sadly a certain mechanical based organization knows about Weretoons...and most are hunters. Or that one particular spider bot might add Miko to her list of targets too.

For Miko's father, he'll remain mostly anonymous. This is because I want to keep the main ides separate from any extra doses of insanity should it peak my interest. Like making her foster father Dynamite Anton from Antonball/Antonblast.

What better way to do the 'Meet the Father' bit than this fucker throwing hands with a bunch of moles, called BALLBUSTERS, because their boss Satan stole his booze. (The literal plot for Antonblast.) It would obviously have the fandom wide headcanon of Anton being a demon and his demon form being usually portrayed like this. (Can't resist the sheer irony when you consider the fact Optimus is basically robot jesus in most iterations of the series.)

Things are gonna be chaotic with Ratchet wanting a drink either way it goes.

[he11fireclubtm]

for some advice on the whole trans masc eddie thing , i think if it’s something you plan to do all - you should make it a permanent part of his canon or don’t do it all. it just feels kind of odd in a way to decide to make it only a verse or a “sometimes” thing. i don’t know how to explain it in a way that makes sense but idk. i just really feel like it’s something that should be apart of his character if you want it to be but if you’re afraid to fully commit to it then i think you shouldn’t have it be a thing at all. being trans isn’t just a “sometimes” thing irl - does it make sense what i’m saying at all? i’m not trying to hate or make you feel weird or anything i’m just being honestly. also giving people the option to have him pre or post op also kinda gives odd vibes, & treating post op like he’s “basically not even trans” (i know that’s not how you worded it just that’s how it feels) feels very weird. like idk i don’t think you’re intending any of this but it feels very odd & kinda off vibes & idk transphobic kinda? esp since you’re considering the people who might be uncomfortable with him being trans which like - i’m sorry but if they are & you decide to do this, then they should just unfollow. like … idk if any of this is making sense but this is all just coming across a way i don’t think you’re intending to but i just think you should make him transmasc if you want & have it be a permanent part of your canon, across all verses & not just be one verse or only sometimes. & don’t give people the pre or post op option, so they can feel like he’s “normal”. decide how you want him to be & they can take what they get. & don’t let the transphobic/uncomfortable people have a space on your blog, if they really have a problem w it they can leave. this isn’t me trying to tell you how to run your blog or trying to come off as a hater i’m just trying to show you how things might be coming across & trying to offer some advice to fix that - anyways i wish you a good day & hope you figure this all out

[[Sorry it took me a minute to actually respond to this cuz I started crying lol. I'm a big baby. I never meant to come across that way, especially as someone in transition myself. I would never want to come across as transphobic in any way, shape or form. This whole discussion was to see what the reactions would be if I made that a main part of Eddie's storyline. and the pre op/post op was for storyline purposes or things of that nature, not for him to come across as "normal". Since when has Eddie ever been "normal"? This was a discussion for my comfort while at the same time trying to be understanding to those that I write with. And yes, as I had said multiple times in that post before I deleted it...I was also scared which was why I had it in it's own separate verse originally. I can't help that I have anxiety and with all due respect this is still my blog so if I have a full storyline for my muse like this or I have it as a side verse then it should be my decision. Though again I apologize if my wording came across wrong. If you need to unfollow then please do so, I'm not here to hate on anyone. I am not here to cause drama. I am here to write my muse as I see fit and express myself as I see fit. I find it kind of insulting to have it explained to me as "being trans isn't a sometimes thing" like I don't know that???? I spend every day of my life currently in a body that makes me dysphoric. That is not a SOMETIMES THING. THAT IS A I WAKE UP IN THIS BODY EVERY DAY KIND OF THING SO I KNOW HOW THAT PART FEELS. I hope you have a good day as well. I am going to go try to stop crying now and pick up the pieces of my day. Thank you. I'll take what was said into consideration if I decide to ever bring this subject up again. ]]

[velvetvexations]

I'm putting these asks in as text because my inbox is so packed rn lol. Love you Velvet Nation!

i swear to god cisfeminist spaces are the worst. a lesbian was asking why straight people have such bad sex (for the woman in the relationship, regarding the orgasm gap) and everyone jumped onto how testosterone is the reason for it (as in testosterone makes you want to orgasm in 3 minutes with no regard for extending sex outside of wanting to orgasm), even a trans woman saying the sex is so much better with oestrogen in her system. and me and a few other transmascs pointed out to this trans woman that it was probably because she was running on the wrong hormones, and any of us transmascs that dared to say we have extremely fulfilling sex that is infinitely better than the sex we had before we started T was absolutely shat on and berated for “speaking over women” even though we were just sharing our experiences, it’s just that those opinions went against the bioessentialism held deeply by the community

Yo, that's fucked? What the hell? Do people seriously earnestly not get how they come off here?

aside from OOP ignoring all of the black transmascs and other transmascs of colour in the discussion around transandrophobia (including a trans man of colour coining the term), i wonder if they believe we’re making up black transmascs because the transradfems i’ve seen so far have been overwhelmingly white. maybe because radfeminism is inherently racist or something… and their bible is written by a middle-class white woman with no perspective on transmisogynoir and this reflects upon a lot of the discussions of transmisogyny to this day…

Radical feminism is inherently Karenesque. They cross the street when they see the PoC transmascs they spend every waking hour slagging off approach on the sidewalk.

I just really want to chill and watch anime together with you some time, your taste is based as fuck

It sure is!

most bizarre thing i have seen today: a transradfem who clearly believes 100% closeted and non-passing transmascs have privilege over cis women but dancing around actually saying it because they know deep down it might get them backlash from the less radical transradfems

I don't even think it would.

I am still very "read another fucking author" at all the transfeminists who only ever quote Julia Serrano, but finding out she *also* hates the terms TMA/TME made my fucking week. Like, the transradfems' hero doesn't even agree with them!

A lot of them didn't even read Whipping Girl.

Can confirm male/female socialization is not actually a consistent thing because I was literally too autistic to internalize any gender roles, at least in relation to myself. Just. Never learned! Like water off a ducks back

High five!

Really if you take a character who presents as one gender and transition them some trans person is going to be mad about it cause they saw themselves in the original conception of the character. It's inevitable.

Yeah, that is the unfortunate truth of the matter.

That second paragraph is literally what terfs say about trans women. Turning that on trans men doesn't make you any more feminist it just makes you transphobic. (This is directed at the op of that post not you velvet)

Radical feminism is so fucking easy to recognize no matter how repackaged it is.

Racist feminism anon here: see this is the reason I feel like shit for having any critiques of feminism whatsoever. Like hashtag Not All Women obviously but literally these specific women aren't listening to marginalized men. We're not talking about whatever cis white able-bodied Elon Musk fan they think stands in for "men" in this situation. They put "valid concerns" in scare asterisks as though the very idea we have any is laughable. And no actually racism is not a "secondary manifestation" of misogyny and while transphobia stems from misogyny it shouldn't be treated as secondary for any trans person. How the fuck are we supposed to point out that white woman separatism leaves behind men who actually do suffer under patriarchy when it gets telephoned into "you stupid fucking bitch shut up I'll fucking kill you"

The point is making it so you can't.

BTW, I didn't get to edit it into the post before they blocked me, but they were reblogging Actual Nazi shit, like, the OP of the post was progressive but our dumbass here didn't notice that "if there was no hope their propaganda would be unnecessary" is (a) a popular Nazi thing and (b) added to the post by a literal Nazi.

It never does, they're fully removed from this plane of existence.

Note: At this point I kinna forgot I wasn't screenshotting these

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I can't believe someone who's BFFs with a tankie is a hypocrite.

You're the second person to apologize for using that format and it always makes me think of the clown-names drama every time.

[artfightdramaconfessions]

https://www.tumblr.com/artfightdramaconfessions/741696338527420416/are-yall-really-encouraging-tracing-tracing-is?source=share

Does op not know most professional artists trace and photobash and that a lot of traditional artists project a photo on their canvas to trace orrr. Also wtf does heavy referencing even mean😭 i swear people who talk like this always end up having the ugliest artstyles seen by man cause they avoid any chance to learn (again, you're gonna get mad at REFERENCING?) or take shortcuts. I'm not in the "tracing helps you learn' crowd i actually think it's counter-productive but my paintings take hours i will never not take the opportunity to shave off 10 minutes. Of course there's referencing and referencing, using your traced drawing as your line art is probably going to have an ugly result - but someone still wasted their time making art for your ungrateful ass and reporting and flagging is just a huge dick move to me. Flagging gift art is a dick move in general (again, when it's not offensive or inappropriate). Literally just ignore it

related post

[malhare-archive]

well anyway i'll just try and retype what i HAD sent off-anon that you didn't get because i clearly Am shadowbanned, there's no such thing as harmless ai, like sorry, there's just not. it's all stupid dumbfuck breaking bad alaskan crab fishing posts now, but when the internet becomes essentially unusable by next year, if that, the people with mindsets like yours are going to be very sorry. the technology is advancing faster than anyone had initially thought it would and it's just gonna continue to get worse. that post looks just like the cast doesn't it? bet ai is gonna be real fun and harmless when the Really bad people take advantage of it. this is a US election year. use your brain. there's no such thing as harmless ai. the funny stupid shit you keep feeding it is going to make it so much easier to use for the really nefarious shit that's bascially a guarantee at this point. and btw no it wasn't just "one ai post" you have an entire "ai generated" tag so. shrugs

At first I was just going to ignore this, but actually and genuinely I want you to ask yourself: Was this productive? Did this cause any real change? I don't use AI apps and never have, I have reblogged two (2) AI generated images. I'm not even the OP.

You obviously need a better and more productive outlet, or less free time even. Might I suggest doing some activism or community work in the real world? Volunteers are always needed at food pantries, but personally I like the Humane Society.

[notthestarwar]

for the WIP game, can you tell me more about ‘Fox gets a job- quin/ Fox’ 👀👀

thank you for asking!

OK so i know i've talked about this on here before but i love this au so i'm gonna repeat myself a bit probably.

so its set post war, no order 66. The idea is that the war opened everyones eyes to cloning, in a very bad way. loads of half bit criminals are like. free labour? people we can raise to do whatever we want? why don't we give it a try. theres a background of a lot of shitty gangs going about trying out cloning in a way that would horrify the kaminoans really. this is not good science, this is comic book-esque backstreet cloning in order to take advantage of people.

they are largely not successful. the problem isnt that there are loads of gang owned clones around. the problem is that they keep trying even tho they dont know shit about cloning and so vulnerable ppl are getting kidnapped off the streets for gennetic material and in a baby farm type way to grow clones in. its bad.

enter fox. he's drifting after the war. he doesnt really know what too do with his life. he is looking for a job and he says he wants a job but everytime he gets an interview he's overly honest and tells them things like 'yeah i killed my last boss' (palpatine) and 'my greatest flaw? i'm too competent. it makes my bosses feel inferior' and so understandably nobody will give him a job

he doesnt actually need a job. quin is paying all his bills cause theyre in a weird not relationship and wont admit they care about eachother. fox is deadly embarrased about whatever quin funding him and spending all his days off in fox's apartment might signify and so it is a MASSIVE SECRET that must be kept from fox's brothers.

so fox at this point in his life, stumbles on to one of these cloning ops and ends up helping someone. and it becomes kind of addictive. he wont admit it but helping these people, who are being hurt by cloning, settles something in him. maybe it settles the thing in him that he wont admit is so hurt by the cards he and his brothers have been dealt, by what was done to them.

so fox sets up as a private investigator. but because he's a weirdo who runs from intimacy he kind of. doesnt tell anyone (he cant. this is important to him) but of course, his brothers find out anyway and they also find out that he's running the worst business ever because he's not taking money from his clients. because he doesnt feel right doing it.

now where this is building to (and this is the part that i kinda got stuck on) is he stumbles on to a BIG criminall gang cloning conspiracy. one where they are actually succeeding in cloning people. he ends up investigating this one with Boba! which pretty much happens cause at the start before he knows how big this is, he walks in to this lab, and who has also broken in to the lab and is investigating the same conspiracy? BOBA. and its just like. fox and boba stood on either side of this illegal lab like. spiderman meme pointing. looking out of the window of a car as they drive past each other. that vibe.

and the rest of the story is boba and fox on this unwilling team up. neither of them wanting to admit to feelings but having to kind of both admit. yeah. bad things happened to us and i dont like the idea of anyone else being out there with similar stuff happening to them. they also unwillingly get close. then theres the side plot of fox having to admit his feelings when it comes too quin and admit that theyre kinda living like theyre in a committed relationship without the words. and then the other thing thats going on in the background is cody and obi wan, who are living together, in a happy relationship apart from the fact that they never have an empty house becuase one of them is aways inviting some wayward sibling or other to stay with them. cody and obi wan respectively have no shortage of family so its just constant and both of them act like theyre annoyed each time the others do it, but really, its why they love each other and theyre both so big brother coded and yeah.

so i know i've alread shared some bits of this here and here (and possibly theres a third one floating around here as welll? cant find it)

so here are some other snippets from other parts of the au:

and from a bit later on, a quin/fox bit

later on, fox being uncharactaristially honest (it's easier when the person doesnt matter to him)

and finally, fox's thoughts on the cloning problem

and i've shared loads sorry so i'll stop now, but yeah. this is an idea i am very excited about and i am very frustrated that i havent been able to form a conspiracy that fits right for him and boba to investigate

[fostersffff]

The Big Gundam Watch, Part 13: Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (+ The Mayfly of Space)

At the end of my previous post on Gundam F91, I talked about how I had never really heard anything meaningful about 0083: Stardust Memory. Which is weird, because it takes place in a pretty under-explored time period (within animated canon anyway), which should make it perfect for exploring the changes that happen in the Universal Century between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta. But what actually happens in the story is never what people talk about, on the rare occasion it's even referenced: it's almost exclusively that Cima Garahau is one of The Character Designs of All Time and that it's an OVA from the golden age of that format, which means it has top notch designs (see the previous point about Cima Garahau) and animation.

Of course, that's not necessarily indicative of a bad story. Hell, a lot of the time plot is the least talked about thing when it comes to media, outside of "it's good!" or "it's bad!". Plus, considering that this was an interquel, it was a possibility that it would be difficult to even discuss plot elements outside of the context of how they relate to 0079 or Zeta. At the very least, my hope was- and I quote- "even if it’s bad, it should at the very least be interesting."

Consider the finger of the monkey's paw curled.

THE STUFF I LIKED

Despite that intro, 0083 did have a bunch of good stuff. The most compelling part of the story was everything having to do directly with the Delaz Fleet. Specifically, the way that Delaz and Gato were genuine believers in the stated cause of Zeon. Like, they're explicitly established as Gihren Zabi Loyalists, deciding to drop out of the fighting at A Boa Qu once they learn he was assassinated by Kycilia, but to these people, "Gihren Loyalist" just means "True Believers in Spacenoid Independence". And that makes sense: we as viewers know Gihren was just a power-hungry despot, but that wouldn't really be known for a fact even in the upper echelons of Zeon leadership. And up to the bitter end, both Delaz and Gato believe that the mission and its purpose is greater than their own lives.

On the flipside, and equally as good, I love that Cima Garahau is exactly what I thought she would be: An Unrepentant Scheming Bitch. Not only is that fun to watch on its own, she has such a unique panache with the fan and the trenchcoat cloak and the zebra print captain's lounge chair, she really contrasts nicely with the (for lack of a better word) "purity" of Delaz and Gato's mission.

The burst of endorphins I got from seeing Axis Zeon hemming and hawing over how much support to give the Delaz Fleet while a sulky teenage Haman Karn goes "this sucks, I hate this" cannot be overstated. I love seeing Haman Karn.

If you asked me my opinion of the Alpha Azieru from Char's Counterattack, my response would be "it's alright", but I was genuinely stunned when I saw the Neue Ziel in the second OP. Less because "oh boy it's my favorite mobile armor" and more "HUH? HUH? HUH?!" Like, what the fuck is this thing doing existing literally a decade before Char's Counterattack? It made for a very convincing final boss in that way.

Similarly, when they did the "big reveal" of Unit 03, I was extremely underwhelmed because it was A Gundam, Again. But then they cut to what it looks like fully armored up and I popped off because I fucking LOVE Gundams Inside Giant Armors, and this this was literally tucked into a fucking Metal Gear. It's also the first time the flower naming scheme feels appropriate, because it was designed to defend the La Vie en Rose (the Gundam is the "Stamen", the armor is the "Orchis", and the combined form is the "Dendrobium").

I can't include every single instance of incredible animation here, because the fact of the matter is that every single action setpiece in this OVA series is top-of-the-line. I'm just gonna highlight this one, where a Dom swooces up to a GM, grabs the barrel of his gun and fires its own bazooka into the GM's cockpit point-blank.

Besides the incredibly high quality of animation due to the fact that this was a 90's OVA, we were also blessed with a bounty of Beautiful Wamen. The random mechanics on the Albion, the random engineers at Anaheim, Lt. Burning's wife, the engineer at the La Vie en Rose- throw a fucking dart and you will hit a Beautiful Wamen.

There's also some stuff that just looks good in general, even without animation. When Gato is en route to the Naval Review and flying through the remnants of the battle of A Boa Qu, it cuts to a shot of the inside of a Zaku where a Zeon soldier's corpse has just been sitting stagnant for the last three years, not even getting the chance to rot away because there's no atmosphere for the bacteria to survive in. It'll just be there forever as space debris.

When the first episode had Keith trying to hit on Nina, only for Maura to cut in and him to react like "oh no, this beautiful woman is tall and slightly muscular...", I was ready to decry him as The Worst. But to my pleasant surprise, he gets his shit together and goes "wait, no, this beautiful woman is tall and slightly muscular!" and capitalizes. Truly, the MVP of 0083.

Sad as I was to see her go, I am glad Cima got, like, the most metal death possible. (There was a video here, but I couldn't include more than one in this post, and the other one later felt more important to include/didn't work as well as an isolated post, so check it out!)

THE STUFF I LIKED LESS

So before I get into my actual biggest problem with this story, the plot issue has to come first: why was the true objective of Operation Stardust to hit North America and not Jaburo? Up until the confrontation inside the colony, the sequence of events was that Cima conspired with Jamitov Hymen (who was subordinate to some other guy and not an admiral himself?) and Bask Ohm to co-opt Operation Stardust. But then it turns out that Delaz's original intent for Stardust was for Gato to make one final secret change to alter the colony's course to hit North America. I get that Jaburo couldn't be destroyed, because it had to be destroyed in Zeta, but they literally already had an out! Even if the Solar System succeeded in destroying the colony, the destruction of the Naval Review and a barely averted colony drop would have been plenty of pretext to form the Titans. The only explanation I could find online- with no sourcing- is that the intent was to disrupt the Federation's food supply, which... I guess? But this was a tremendously elaborate operation with a numerous points of failure for the ultimate goal of supply line disruption.

Ok, let's get into it now: you may have noticed that I didn't talk about the protagonists of this story, Kou Uraki and Nina Purpleton, at all in the first section. That's on purpose, because these two suck, and it's not just a matter of them being unlikable- although a lot of the time they are- it's that the way in which they suck is inconsistent because of bad writing. Let's start with the relationship between them, and why this is quite possibly the worst romantic plot in Gundam as a franchise.

We'll go from a specific example: in Episode 7, Kou and Nina, who at this point each know they are romantically interested in one another, have a falling out because Kou can't screw up the courage to actually ask Nina on a date. At the end of the episode, Kou is engaging a Zeon mobile armor and getting his shit wrecked. Nina, who was planning on giving up everything and returning to Earth to live with her parents after she was reassigned from Kou's ship, goes out to the surface to try to beg the Zeon pilot to stop fighting, because she has some unexplained history with him. She's caught in the crossfire, and it seems like she may have been killed. This incenses Kou to rally, and he defeats the Zeon mobile armor before going to check on Nina. It turns out she's alive, but the thought of nearly losing her gives him the courage he needs to say something that can only be read as a love confession. They embrace as the instrumental version of the sensual R&B ending song plays, and the camera zooms out, showing them standing atop Unit 01, on bent knee. Romance.

It's been tumultuous to this point, but that's it, we're locked in, Kou and Nina are together. Fast forward to the start of the next episode: Kou is returning from a successful training mission. Nina spots him in the dock, and...

A cool secret handshake? Ok... that's weird, but maybe you want to keep it professional-ish at work. So they chat about how cool and great the Gundam is and tease each other a little bit, which then leads to Kou saying this:

What the fuck?! You can't double back to "aha we're like brother and sister" after something so explicitly romantic! The rest of the episode then plays out with Kou right back to where he was in the last epiosde, where he just can't with girls, and has a hilarious scene where he drops a bunch of self-help books he took from the library to try to understand women better.

So it stays at this level for the remainder of the series, and that would be bad enough: that despite the fact that Kou and Nina are significantly older than Amuro and Lalah or Kamille and Fa (or Four, or any other girl who smiled in Kamille's direction), the most romantic thing we see between them is hugging in moments of extreme duress, and otherwise it's secret handshakes and awkward stumbling.

But wait, there's more: to try to inject some drama into this tepid subplot, they reveal that Nina used to be shacked up with Gato! And the reason she doesn't want them to fight isn't just because she loves cares about Kou, it's because she also still loves cares about Gato! Which culminates in Nina holding Kou at gunpoint in the final episode so she can try to keep Gato alive.

All of this Fucking Awful Romance is symptomatic of that fact that neither Kou nor Nina are particularly well defined. As described above, Kou fluctuates between a Fresh Faced Baby Boy and a Hot Blooded Mech Pilot, but neither really suit him. Like, the first few episodes imply that he's just a tech nerd who got in over his head- not unlike the protagonists who came before him- but he's a commissioned officer of the Federation Armed Forces. Maybe the idea is that he only joined up so he could satisfy being a tech nerd by getting to play with mobile suits, and that would be fine if he ever developed from that starting point.

Like, there's an alternate version of this story where all of the plot beats they set up actually pay off and stick. If his encounter with Gato really altered the trajectory of his life in a meaningful way, realizing he doesn't have a grand purpose the way that Gato claims to, and he spends the series trying to find one. If his butting heads with a shithead like Monsha, who is a living example of the excess of the Federation Gato was talking about, led him to realize that just being a Federation officer doesn't have any meaning in and of itself. If his encounter with Kelley, whose purpose isn't as grandiose as Gato's but still inspiring by virtue of how passionate he is about it, makes him realize that it's not about doing something big, it's about doing something he cares about. Then the end of the series delivers the same devastating blows: that the Federation brass knew all along about Operation Stardust and were going to let it happen as a false flag, and he realizes that Gato was right all along and the Federation really cares for nothing but consolidating its own power, and comes to a decision about what to do with his life from that point on. Instead, what's actually presented is that after a certain point all he cares about is fighting Gato because he's a Hot Blooded Mech Pilot, but also just a Fresh Faced Baby Boy when not fighting Gato.

Nina has largely the same problem, where she just feels kinda aimless. The shorthand version is that she's like Metal Gear Solid's Otacon, but somehow even more naive. If you're unfamiliar, Hal "Otacon" Emmerich is an otaku who got helped build the titular Metal Gear because it was just like his Japanese Animes, and was horrified to learn that it's true intent of it was to serve as a mobile nuclear weapons platform. Nina, on the other hand, not only knew Unit 02 was going to be used to launch nuclear weapons, but literally supervised the loading of the nuclear warhead, and was stunned at the idea of the nuclear warhead being used for war, and not just data gathering.

Beyond that, Nina's most consistent trait, unfortunately, is that she's selfish, in a frankly bizarre way. That's what makes her decision to tend to Gato in the finale so aggravating; it's not that she cucks Kou (because frankly that's kinda funny to me), it's that all she cares about is making sure Gato and Kou live. There's no consideration for the fact that the colony they're standing in is going to crash into the Earth when the very first scene with her in the series is Captain Sinapus/Synapse explaining that they're not flying over the ocean, they're flying over the crater made by the Operation British colony drop. That doesn't matter though, because she hooked up with Gato a few years ago, so she really wants him to survive even though he's committed two Super War Crimes in as many months.

I could go on, but this is already way longer than normal, and I think I got my point across. Just in case: Kou and Nina suck and the story is dragged down by the virtue of them being Point of View characters.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

Those auto sentries in Episode 9 feel like they should've shown up way more often in everything. An autonomous weapon system that requires maintenance but can track targets as accurately as it does feels way more useful than the minefields and other traps we see in other UC stories.

I like how the Anaheim Electronics Uniform for women has the little seifuku cape, despite the fact that it's clearly a blazer: business in the front, schoolgirl in the back. Although Nina's second outfit also has the seifuku cape so I think someone on the design team was just enamored with integrating it into the clothes characters were wearing.

This has a pretty mid dub: generally speaking I think most actors are doing a good job and are well cast, but this is one of those times where the direction specifically stands out as bad. The prime example is in Episode 5, where Nina turned up the heat in the shower, and Maura starts doing the jig you do when the shower is too hot, but her English VA reads it like "Ow. Ow. Hot. Hot. Ow. Ohh, that's too hot, Nina.", instead of short little yips someone would actually make in that scenario, which is actually what her Japanese VA does. Compare and contrast for yourself:

On the subject of this scene: upon hearing Maura, I went "hey, that sounds an awful lot like Kaori Makimura from City Hunter... but they couldn't have possibly done the absolute most perfect casting for this character, could they?" and sure enough, it was Kazue Ikura, and my heart soared.

Also speaking of Japanese Voice Actresses, Cima's VA Mari Mashiba may have the funniest credits page in history:

I would be remiss not to point out that 0083 apparently plagiarized a bunch of music, but the one I actually noticed was a song from Ennio Morricone's score for The Thing, which was later used by Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight.

I will never not get a kick out of Japanese media going "but how do we make sure the audience understands this character was an American?"

I understand the realities of disposing of human waste in space, but it's so fucking funny that in this scene where Maura is trying to get Kou to snap Nina out of of her Love Triangle Induced Stupor is taking place while there's a big box labeled URINE COLLECTION prominently in frame.

THE MAYFLY OF SPACE

So, there are two shorts titled "The Mayfly of Space" included with the 0083 blu-ray. Both of these are partial adaptations of an audio drama about Cima Garahau, but the first one is literally 3 minutes long and is tells you absolutely nothing about anything, except that Cima has been having nightmares about... something.

The Mayfly of Space 2, in contrast, actually provides more insight to the character, but nothing especially revelatory. Cima felt that her superiors telling her to surrender herself to the Federation at the end of the One Year War was a betrayal, which is what led to her conspiring with the soon-to-be Titans. It also shows why Gato was skeptical about Delaz working with Cima, because he had to fend her off from murdering the superior who gave that order to her and her unit.

At least, that's what I gathered from watching it. If the wiki is to be believed, there's actually a way more compelling story than what was conveyed here. In fact, it's one that would have actually tied in perfectly to the main story, as a very specific and direct contrast to what Delaz and Gato's understanding of the ideology of Zeon is. Literally the only insight we actually get to what's described on that wiki page is this single line from Episode 12:

But, I can't really complain about getting more Cima, especially when "more Cima" in this case includes "Cima sad and drunk with her titties out".

IN CONCLUSION

I have to wonder if War in the Pocket wasn't as well received at the time as it is today, because I feel like that should have opened the floodgates to "the Gundam franchise is capable of supporting stories that don't have the same framework as the original TV series", especially OVAs that would by nature be aimed at an older audience. Like, I think if the focus on Kou and Nina- and the Albion's crew in general- was significantly reduced so that Stardust Memory was more of an ensemble story, it would have been improved dramatically. And you can still have all the slick action that actually appeared in the story as it exists with that setup, it just would mean that all the stuff in between would have a better chance of being compelling instead of just... bad.

I was actually originally planning on watching the compilation version of this series, The Afterglow of Zeon, because my initial hunch was that trimming the fat would make this story a lot better. I think that's still possibly the case, but I don't really think they can fix the core issue of the Federation cast being uninteresting. I might still check that out someday, and if I do, I'll certainly post about it, but for now, I'm pretty done with 0083.

Next up: the last of the original set of stories set in the Universal Century, Mobile Suit Victory Gundam. I think this was the blu-ray set I held out on picking up for the longest time, on account of not being sure if I'd ever bother with the future UC stuff and the fact that opinions on Victory tend to be even more volatile than ZZ. But over the course of this, I've become a tremendous fan of Yoshiyuki Tomino and his weird-ass brain, and I could've sworn that I read that someone on the production team for The Witch from Mercury said their favorite Gundam was Victory, which is all the recommendation anyone should need (if true).