#good on the franchise tbh. long may it live

[moffnat]

lately my bf and i are deep diving into emulators. i got the delta app on my phone and installed soooo many games i've always wanted to play but never got the chance to, mostly japanese NES games and GBA stuff! starting with the first final fantasy 🥰

[whispering-about-the-tmnt]

Can I get a quick summary of your thoughts/opinions on the 4 shows and the different movies? :3

Personally I'm a big fan of 2012 and Rise, and 2003 is good too but just never landed as much with me but I think I gotta give it another shot tbh. And I respect to 80's show, but not a big fan of cartoons durring that time as a whole.

And I love the 1990 movie, and the 2007 movie has amazing parts but as a whole is just pretty decent, and I absolutely love Mutant Mayhem :3

But it's always great stumbling across another tmnt fan while just scrolling my dash

Ah! Thank you for the ask!

I'll do them in chronological order, and I'm sorry but this is going to be long!

1987 - My first intro to the Turtles, way back when the show first aired! I totally fell into the world of Ninja Turtles back then, and wanted to consume everything having to do with them. I had posters all over my walls, toys, clothing, hats... you name it, I either had it or wanted desperately to get it. I was so into them that my dad bought me the first four (colorized) graphic novels of the original comics, and I still have them to this day. And I still love the cartoon! I accept now that they are kinda silly, but that gives them a certain charm. They were a huge part of my childhood, and when they came out on DVD I introduced my kids to them, as well. Honestly, I am who I am today because I happened to come across the show on a tiny little portable black and white TV while we were camping...

1990 - The first "event movie" I ever experienced! I remember how hyped I got when the first ads came out for it, with the tag line "Hey Dudes, This Is No Cartoon"... and how I told my dad that I wanted to move back to North Carolina (we were living in Massachusetts at the time) because I heard that they were filming it there (we didn't move, of course!). I also distinctly remember how excited I was waiting in line with crowds of people at Showcase Cinemas in Springfield, MA. I saw the movie twice in theaters (the first time I ever did that), and many, many times on tape. When I had kids, we all watched it together on DVD (usually while eating pizza). I love the gritty look and story line; and it was actually interesting to see, for the first time, the "rivalry" between Raph and Leo, which would later become a huge part of the franchise as a whole. In general, the movie represents the Turtles pretty well, though Mike and Don did kind of get pushed to the side (which has also, unfortunately, become a major aspect of the franchise). All-in-all, though, it remains one of my favorite movies ever.

1991 - The second TMNT movie (The Secret Of The Ooze) wasn't bad, in my opinion, but it never had as large a part in my life or psyche as the first movie. It was a bit silly, a bit slow... but it had Ernie Reyes Jr. in it, and I had a HUGE crush on him. In general, it was good, and I liked their new lair in the subway, but it was... just okay. I did love Tokka and Rahzar, though!

1993 - It may seem strange, but even with the costume downgrade and slapstick reliance and a bit of a silly story line, I enjoyed the third movie more than the second! For one thing, Casey was back (and I loved his apparent ancestor, Whit). For another, it was nice to see the Turtles out of their element, but also being accepted by people. There were some nice heroic moments in there, too, like Mikey and Leo saving Yoshi. It also made me wonder if the Turtles would, at some point in the future, go back even further and defeat Norinaga's ancestor, leading to the painting that was shown repeatedly in the movie. Oh, and I totally headcanon Mitsu and Kenshin being Hamato Yoshi's ancestors.

2003 - My favorite of the TV shows! I love how they can be gritty and serious or silly and playful. Their lair is amazing, and they have plenty of friends, but still are separated from humanity. I like the relationships the Turtles have between each other, and also how each of their personalities are distinct and add to the group. There are plenty of standalone episodes, but they all come back around and tie into the series as a whole -- and character arcs like Leonardo's 4th season self-loathing and recovery are the kind of thing I eat right up. All things considered, the series is my gold standard for the franchise, and especially for the Turtles' and Splinter's personalities.

2007 - Visually, it was great! I loved the voice acting and the atmosphere. However, they leaned a bit too hard into the aforementioned Leo & Raph rivalry (although the rooftop fight scene was amazing). I would have liked for Don and Mike to have a larger part in the story (although Don did do his techie thing and figure out what was going on, it was sort of a non-event). I did like the eleventh-hour Karai and Foot team-up with the good guys, though! Unfortunately, I am compelled to mention that Splinter in that movie is... not my favorite.

2012 - Completely honestly, I am an outsider to this series, and all that I know of it I have absorbed through Tumblr Osmosis. That meaning, although I do know a lot about it, I have never actually watched a full episode. It is my 12-year-old daughter's favorite version, however, so on her behalf I will be giving it a thumbs-up 👍🏼

2014 / 2016 - Bundling the two Bayverse movies into one, because I will be honest and say that the line between them blurs for me sometimes (not in a bad way, just like... they flow into one another in my mind). I will admit that I put off watching them for a long time because I disagreed with some of the creative decisions (I'll just leave that there), but when I watched them they turned out to be not as bad as I feared. Their lairs were fitting, and so were their personalities (even if Leo is occasionally a bit my way or the highway). Really, though, I don't have too much to say about them, except that some of the slapstick and more cartoony action tends to draw me out of the moment. Not my favorite TMNT movies, but not horrible. There's potential there.

2018 - ROTTMNT is another series that I haven't actually watched, and which I have gathered most of my knowledge on from Tumblr. However, I did watch the movie and enjoyed it very much! Honestly, the only reason I haven't watched the series yet is because I already have enough TMNT versions bouncing around in my head and I know if I watch it I will want to write fics for it, and I already have enough on my plate for the time being (meaning I will probably get a bunch of my WIPs done, then watch the series!). That having been established, I do like the way the Turtles are different species, and the overall exuberance of the series as a whole is a delight (again, from an outside perspective, but valid regardless!). Splinter's backstory is unique and interesting, and his relationship with his sons is enjoyable!

2019 - Batman Vs. TMNT is, without a doubt, one of my favorite TMNT movies ever! I loved the style, the atmosphere, the fight choreography, the relationships... everything. I also like how it earned that PG-13 rating (violence, swearing... you know... original Mirage Turtle stuff). It was nice how each Turtle got to shine, and how they each got a member of the Batfam to cling to. And Leo's fight with Ra's al Ghul is perhaps my favorite TMNT battle ever. I know it is probably too much to hope for a sequel, but I am nothing if not a cockeyed optimist!

2023 - Mutant Mayhem was fun! It was nice seeing the Turtles portrayed as actual teenagers, complete with gratuitous pop culture references. The animation style was interesting (in a good way!) and the voice acting was spot-on. I loved the soundtrack, too, and I had "What's Going On" stuck in my head for days after I watched the movie! The fact that the Turtles got accepted by humans at the end was nice, even if my preferred version of them is as outcasts; and their relationship with Splinter was believably complicated. I am excited to see how the story continues in TOTTMNT!

Is that all of them? I think that is all of them! Sorry this was so long, but I have a lot of feelings on the subject!

[lazorbeanz]

Why do you personally ship, like, or appreciate Sonamy? What got you into Sonamy? What’s your favorite moment between the two?

Why do I ship Sonamy?

Okay, ima admit it..for someone who is a diehard sonamy fan, and thinks about AND ONLY about them literally every waking second, I can not think of ONE reason why I ship them to begin with….

“So you just ship them for basically no reason WHY?!” Pretty much 😅

And I’ve seen so many other people give their really good reasons and opinions on why they ship sonamy, and I full on agree with ‘em, but as for myself, I rack up nothing…and it’s my favourite ship too I mean come onnn TwT

I’ve also had my sister ask me this same question not long ago, and all I could do was just sit there and think “Damn your life almost revolves around these 2 HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE AN ANSWER?!” I constantly beat myself up for this because I know I should 😭

And I mean, stuff like being the dynamic duo that they are, (whether in battle or not) their attitude and affection for each other evolving over time, respecting the other’s wants and needs, respecting boundaries (kinda the same thing tbh lol) , enjoying each others company, and just how the whole idea of sonamy has turned from what some people may see as “toxic” or “forced” (that might be the better word for it) from early 2000s media, to something more laid back and healthy like recent media because of all the character development over the years… etc, etc…are all fantastic reasons, and even reasons I would now apply as to why I love the ship even more…BUT they’re not the reasons I began to ship them in the first place, because these things I NEVER took into consideration when I starting doing so.

To put a long story short, I just saw pink and blue hedgies and was like, “ooooh I sense chemistry”

I feel like I could be going no where with all this. But all I’m tryna say is that I LIKE sonamy simply because of who they are…just a speedy blue boi and his hammer-wielding pink girlie. I APPRECIATE them solely because of their existence, especially in my life. They are like- one of the few things I ever look forward to these days. I SHIP them because unlike any other ship that has sonic or amy in it, sonamy just… “works” (I don’t know how to explain it but you know what I mean right??) And despite not being canon, (YET! 😏) they have got to be the closest ship to becoming canon (besides vectilla) ..unless I’m just biased :p

What got me into Sonamy?

Well, I did kinda just answer this in the previous question lol but I have to elaborate!

So yeah it started off with just seeing them 2 together and thought “I like where this is going hehe” tho tbh it never really went anywhere…because I was watching Sonic Boom at the time XD, the first piece of Sonic media I consumed since regaining an interest in the franchise. AND WE ARE NOT going back to like 2015 or 16 when I first discovered Sonic…idek what I did regarding shipping back then…I think I like shipped blaze and shadow or something OH LAWD-

Also to think that those short lived Sonamy moments in Boom didn’t even bother me in the slightest?! Present me is disgusted by such lack of interest or care! 😫

Okay okay I’m straying from the question, I’m sorry!!

There are a few things that got me hooked on Sonamy. First was definitely the tv series’. Boom, Prime and X all had adorable and wholesome moments that I could’ve almost died of cuteness from! Some of it was also hilarious too. In Sonic boom for instance, sonic and Amy would fight like a married couple lololol

Another thing (and this was the game changer) was the fanart and animatics. These became the addiction for me; one comic would lead to me reading another, which lead me to read another and so on. Or I’d find an animatic on YT and watch that and then begin scavenging trying to find more animatics to feed these cravings of sonamy I was beginning to gain all of a sudden.

And it just got worse and worse to the point I practically need a daily dose of Sonamy or I just might go feral

But I mean, how could I not?! YOU GUYS ARE SO GOSH DARN TALENTED AKJDJSJDND

Sadly now my food hath runneth dry over the months…so if any of u like come across anything sonamy pls don’t hesitate to tag me or send it to me pls I need it ajhshsjs

On top of all that, came the brainrot. My growing love for this ship and all the incredible media really sent me into a serious Sonamy delulu era. Literally almost ANYTHING can send me into deep thoughts about those 2, no kidding. I literally planned out in my head an entire story of them a couple days ago. Sometimes it’s a head canon or 2, other times just something extremely wholesome I’ll imagine them do and I’ll be deceased. Those rats live in my head rent free omg-

As I said, ANYTHING can trigger this brainrot; a song, a scene, a quote, a random object…you name it, I’ll come up with a Sonamy headcanon in relation to it.

I can’t also forget other sonic media that also boosted it like game cutscenes and IDW. Lately IDW has been CARRYING it for me with the little Sonamy moments like in the 900th adventure, #67 and other tidbits I’d find in former issues. The amount of frames I’ve seen of them hugging warms my heart waaa🥺🥺

Overall, this fandom has really impacted me and my love for Sonamy. (and sonic in general) all the things I’ve learnt and discovered have made me love them all the more because of it. My life has almost become an Sonamy aesthetic now…I am NOT joking when I tell you my PJs are Sonamy coded, and that was hardly intentional…🤣

Favourite Sonamy moment?

Arrghhh why just one?? Pretty much ANY moment involving those 2 cotton candy hedgies are bound to be my favourite!

Totally not saying this cuz I can’t pick a favourite *cough cough*

Take this, it’s the only Sonamy image I really have in my photo album rn.. (I should be in jail for this)

Its one of my favs so it counts :)

Woowee that just about covers it! Now you know all about my weird and wonderweird love for my favourite ship :D 🩷💙

[n7punk]

i was watching a video on plagarism in cosplay and the girl making the video managed to put into words something that i've kind of struggled with and tbh am still struggling to adapt to my "field" but. it bugs me so i want to try. also i should say this wicked isn't a problem it has happened to me all of Twice (one from each end) but someone finally summarized why it felt the way it did.

basically, a couple times people have commented on a fic of mine likening it to another that exists. sometimes these are innocuous and even lead me to people with similar headcanons and interpretations of the character as me. sometimes i don't like the other fic so it feels less flattering, but it's by no fault of how the comment itself is written. i've actually written a comment similar to this once and hope it didn't come across as naggy, but i found out someone else used the same prompt as me for catradora, so i basically left a comment about how funny it was that two people saw that inspiration source and went "ah yes, this could be catradora." it was supposed to be a "like sees like" kind of salute (as well as an acknowledgement that i hadn't seen their fic before as i don't go in the tags often), but i've since gotten comments that i think are trying to at least toe the line of doing the same thing and felt off (bitter, self-promotey, whatever) to me, so i retroactively worry about how they felt about it.

but really this post is about the time i had someone say "is this fic actually inspired by [other fic]" and it was 1) something i'd never heard of and 2) insulting.

so why is it insulting, what did the video finally put into words for me?

when someone accuses you of copying, using/having the same idea as someone else, etc, it is insulting the creative process and labor it took to make it. It's saying that you didn't/couldn't come up with that yourself, that you didn't develop and nurture it and plan out all the impacts this event/plot/au etc would have on the characters; that any time and effort and love you put into it never actually existed because you just stole it from someone else. it's essentially accusing you of being chatgpt, putting someone else's hard work in as input and cranking something cheap and less valuable out instead. they don't care about the work you put in anymore.

like, when i did the bachelorette au, it was straight up inspired by one that existed and i openly sourced that because it deserved it, but even then i still spent hours reading recaps of the show, previously had an interest in the franchise from podcasts, went and read interviews to get an idea of the general timelines, etc. I put a lot of work - my work, unique work, creative work - into crafting an au that, in reality, only shares the phrase "bachelorette au" with the initial source of inspiration (again, a source i love and am happy to credit anyway). if someone else wants to write a cosplay au for catradora, even if they think to do it because they read mine, as long as they're not copying the plot, backstory, etc, i think that would be super cool! honestly, i'd be flattered to be an inspiration source for that, just like i'm flattered when someone takes on one of my headcanons. it's just the basics of how creativity works. no idea, no matter how much it may feel like it, comes from nowhere. you start watching a vintage car tiktok and it puts you on a train of thoughts that eventually leads you to "lol but adora bent over the hood of her broken down car" and then you build that out until it is its own world with plot, backstory, and characters who have been tweaked by living in this different environment.

anyway, i know i've been incredibly unconcise but it boils down to creativity being a lot of effort and it doesn't feel good when people claim you didn't put in all that effort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ man this post could have been so much shorter. should i edit it. aw fuck i have to be at work at nine tomorrow. yeah no lmao

[seasaltcosmos]

i know some of the fandom may be getting discouraged by the lack of news, but i just want to write this and tell y’all that even if we have yet to get that big “RISE OF THE TMNT RETURNS FOR SEASON 3,” we’re still on that path and our efforts HAVE bore fruit.

1. there’s been more and more attention surrounding rise. youtubers are watching it and talking about how good it is. (one guy in particular who made a really bad video on it admitted he knows it’s bad and said he’ll be making a new one in the future.) saberspark in particular- one of the BIGGEST cartoon youtubers- has admitted to rewatching the show 4 times because he thinks it’s that good. nick itself hasn’t been ignoring rise like i thought they would. they’ve actually given it just as much attention as 2012 and 03, which i have to give props for.

2. shredder’s revenge’s dlc confirmed that it’ll include alt color schemes based on other iterations of the turtles. and one of those schemes is the ones from rise. it isn’t the “weird different tmnt that no one watched” anymore, it’s getting attention even from an officially licensed, highly praised video game.

3. the comics are being rereleased next month in ONE big book. i’m not an expert on comic counterparts, but i don’t think nick or idw would’ve gone out of their way to rerelease a comic for a show “on pause” years later.

4. remember that little “meet n greet raph and leo” event at a london convention back in spring? you’d think for stuff like that, they would resort to the typical 1987 general brand representation designs. but nope, the costumes were specifically rise of the tmnt. an OFFICIAL event, using designs from an iteration considered “obscure and dead?” i can’t believe i haven’t seen more people bring that up tbh

5. there’s been a HUGE influx of rise merch in china. on top of the movie being released in theaters, they’ve also done cross promotion with snack brands, a nickelodeon (wanna say exhibit or park, i don’t remember) having a full display of them alongside other big nick icons, a new MOBILE GAME. and if there’s anything i’ve learned from “first lgbt disney chara” memes, western media companies LOVE china money.

6. again- NICKELODEON has noticed all of the attention on rise. i can’t confirm that it means they’re discussing more seasons right now as i type this, but it still means that all the work we’ve been doing has been worth it and there’s still a reason to keep fighting. the most attention they’ve usually given their short-lived series was an intro upload to youtube and maybe a couple clips. but they’re acknowledging rise as just as much a part of the franchise as their other “””more successful””” iterations, even if there’s no confirmation of more seasons yet.

we’re not at the end goal yet, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t accomplished anything. the show has been getting the attention it deserves. and we shouldn’t take all these little achievements for granted, because they’ll go a LONG way as long as we don’t give up. every art piece, every addition to the tags, every positive mention of the show gets more eyes on it. so don’t give up, keep fighting, don’t burn yourselves out, and let’s save rise of the tmnt! :D

[genlossneg]

i havent seen genloss in like a year so sorry if i get things wrong but i still think about this. also sorgy its so long i got carried away </3

something that really bothers me about genloss [that u may have heard a few times already] is just how. on-the-nose and surface level all the references were?

for example, the bit where ranboo is cutting open charlie. cool conceptually! but awfully executed; it was just a direct reference to saw, toilet and all. and it wasnt even plot relevant, except for the slime = blood thing [which is like 6 seconds of a ~10 minute scene]. all ranboo got from it was a piece from mousetrap, which DID come up later, but that was also filler.

its the same problem i have with the shotgun carousel [which is taken from saw 6], if ranboo really wanted to be creative and make his own unique show, he shouldve made up his own saw trap. i genuinely wouldve liked episode 2 if they did! even if it was bad its still better than directly taking one out of saw and inserting yourself and your friends into it. its just so boring and unimaginative yk? and the worst part of the whole scene is that in the original, the trap is relevant to the main character and is commenting on cruel healthcare policies in the US: the main character set up a policy at his company that would eliminate 2 thirds of people who applied for insurance, so he has to kill 4 out of 6 of his coworkers in the trap. i find it infuriating that ranboo took the trap and even some of the cinematography from the original scene but just completely removed any depth it had and turning it into a "comedy", and remaining oblivious to the message the movie was trying to portray.

new paragraph cuz the last one is long. ranboo just doesnt bother to analyse the media he references and just takes the most surface level ideas and puts them in his weird frankenstein saw trap love letter. i genuinely wouldve respected them more if they were inspired by the analogies created by the traps and how they relate to characters and carrying that same idea into his own characters to give them depth, but he just doesnt bother!! and its so fucking annoying to see!!

and its not like executing references well is all that difficult?? the key thing that makes a reference good is that its irrelevant to the story and its out of the way [imo], like something that goes unmentioned in the background. ranboo couldve done something like putting shots from saw movies in picture frames in the cabin or smthn. still not great, but its less egregious. but naaaahhh lets just rip an entire scene from one of the most famous horror movie franchises and inject repetitive improv into it, thatll be entertaining for half an hour!!

the main problem that arises when referencing media in the way ranboo does is that instead of thinking about how awful the characters must feel, im thinking about saw. i havent even seen saw, and i was thinking about saw. how do you even do that. if he had been creative and wrote his own trap, id be empathising first and thinking about saw second, because its more subtle, and not just a blaring alarm in your face telling you hey did you know that ranboo likes saw. did you know that. now you do!!

thing is its not even the only thing hes referencing, apparently the 1st episode was based on a horror movie called "the cabin in the woods", which is about teenagers who go to a cabin and are made to live out horror clichés, and tbh i wouldnt be surprised if that was ranboos main aim for gen 1; to insert himself and their friends into their fav horror tropes

btw just to make sure i wasnt making up stuff to get mad at i checked how long the carousel scene lasted, and from when ranboo enters the trap room to when he leaves is around 42 minutes. how they thought this was entertaining and worth the audiences time is beyond me

tldr; genloss is fundamentally derivative and ranboo doesnt understand characterisation, referencing or pacing. surpriseeee

take a shot every time i said "saw" and "reference" and you'll only be a fraction as wasted compared to if you took a shot whenever ranboo wastes the audiences time /j

wait i had no clue about those bits being references??? i know exactly nothing about horror so that totally flew past me and i don't think i've heard that mentioned yet. this is genuinely super interesting actually, i don't have a lot to add but this is a really great read

[au-tumn-al]

It's my 8 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

I uaually wouldn't post smth like this, but I'm honestly so appreciative for Tumblr these past 8(??) years. I was a very lonely kid growing up, and didn't have any friends, & wouldn't until going off to college in 2020; I didn't ever make friends on Tumblr (i had amino apps friends 💀💀💀😭😭😭😭😭) but for a long time, it would give me things to do. I had an outlet for literally every single fandom that I got into, especially Ace Attorney. I'm so, so happy that the series has matured with me, and even if we never get AA7, the localization of DGS 1 & 2 was an amazing note to end on. They are probably the best-written games in the series and I loved finally being able to play them after so many years.

When I was still making original content for Ace Attorney, I was kind of sad to think that when I grew up, I would stop my real-time playthroughs of Ace Attorney. I played through the entire first game in the original time that it happened back in 2016 (which is when the first game took place, canonically), and I knew I probably wouldn't do that by the time AJ rolled around in 2026.

Now those years are in reach. 2026 is only 2 ½ years away, and yeah, I probably won't play AJ like I did the first game. But I'm really happy that I never really grew out of my "phases" that I went through on Tumblr. I still love Ace Attorney, and it has remained my very favorite video game franchise through nostalgia alone, and have gone back to the series over the years. Getting into the series because of the announcement of PLvsAA was such a magical time. I had no idea that AA would become such a core part of my teenage years. I got into the series when I was 11 or so, and so I have literally spent half of my life alive loving Ace Attorney than not. And tbh, I'm really happy with that.

I've come a really long way in these past 8 years, and I can better appreciate how the 7 year time skip in AJ did so much to Phoenix lol. I was a very lonely 14 y/o, stuck in an abusive home. I lived day by day, and my mom insisted that I be homeschooled K-12, despite having such an unstable household & her deteriating health so she didn't even get up out of bed most days so I rarely left the house, except to go grocery shopping with her.

But now? I graduated college an entire year early, earning summa cum laude this past May. I met some honestly amazing people, and finally started making friends for the first time since I was 9. I had some fabulous mentors during my undergrad, and not being their students anymore was the hardest part about graduating so early. I'm still actually at my college now, since I'm working a residence job over the summer, but once it's over, I'm finally moving out. I have no idea what's going to come next, but I'm tentatively looking forward to it all.

Tumblr, for its bad reputation, never actually negatively affected me in the same way other apps did (amino was fucking traumatizing 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭), and for me, was exactly the kind of platform that it promised to be. I have loved growing up with it, and coming back to this blog every so often feels like coming home.

I know some of the followers of this blog have really been with me from the beginning, and I really, truly appreciate you. I still recognize your @'s, and they make me happy when I see them in my notifs every so often :) unlike literally every other social media, I have not thought once about closing this account, so I'll be here a while longer.

Who else is going to reblog my yearly Amathatober 5th XC2 post? 🤭

But that is to say: thanks, Tumblr. This platform has been good to me, and I'm so glad I joined it.

[theodorevg923]

Michael Myers x Gen Reader / Fem Reader

Platonic x NSFW/GORE

Shout out to @joelsgeetar cause I've been stabbed deep in the chest by their writing! And the one to inspire this.

This is a long one, so everything stuffed under the cut. 1500+ words!

Bonus: Fem Romance/NSFW/GORE

⚠️ Blood, stabbing, deaths, and more. 18+ ONLY

-

Aight so this one is gonna be weird but it's been nagging me for days. This is coming from a hay fever fantasy from over a DECADE ago. So if I get these wrong. Don't "BUT" me, I was 13/14 yrs old. (An some are from my current self.)

Yes, I realize something must've been wrong with me, choosing a murderer from a horror franchise as a parental figure. But the problem is, I can't remember why. A panic attack and Stick People haunt me when I try to remember the YEAR I'm suddenly missing. ([Yay, PTSD!])

Also the music is more from memories than being similar to MM/character like other posts.

Michael Myers x Gen Child Reader (Plantoic/Gore)

Platonic:

After first there's confusion. A child in the house?

He won't show himself at first. Why would a CHILD be in HIS house?

Once he recognizes the worn clothes, ragged hair, the cuts, bruises, he'll know why. (Or atleast something must be scaring ya more than him. And that just can't stand.)

If someone is chasing ya, HIDE. He'll take care of ya predator(s).

Comforting isn't something he's good at, but he'll try in his own way

If he notices ya bleeding or starving, he'll leave food and bandages out for ya to find them.

When he finally shows himself to ya, don't be scared, ya know whose house ya entered broke into.

Things will be clumsy at first, he doesn't know how to take care of a child.

Give him a chance, ya already been on the streets a long time so this will be a new change for ya too.

If ya stick around, he'll slowly start showing himself around ya more.

Physical affection isn't his thing, but he'll make sure to cover ya with a blanket, bring ya food, simple things like that.

He's lived in silence for so long, talk softly around him.

But after a while, he'll stick around to listen to ya talk adamantly about things. (Even though he won't understand newer fads and will always stay quiet.)

After a while, ya will learn to understand his grunts, sighs, and hand signals

Go to school / old enough to get a job? After he's connects to ya, he'll watch over from a far. (Though ya won't know it. And it may start sooner than that.)

Halloween is the only time he'll join ya in public for at first. Dress however ya want cause it's gonna be the best Halloween ya ever had.

Though if ya stick around for more, they get better each year.

Over time, he'll recognize all ya facial expressions, ticks, body language.

Again, physical comfort isn't his thing, but when he recognizes ya signs, hell be giving ya what ya need. (Before ya even notice sometimes.)

After ya talk to him about ya need for privacy, he'll allow it. ( [That talk was extremely embarrassing.] )

Mask is something completely different, he may not take it off for years. (If ya stick around that long.)

Tbh, ya might get into fights when I comes to dating.

Again, going to hang out is going to be strange for him at first, especially if ya already got school.

Just make sure ya home before dark, or he'll hunt ya down n drag ya home.

Good luck. He'll let ya stay as long as ya need to.

NSFW/GORE:

He won't be able to help ya hearing the screams and thumps as bodies hit the floor.

Don't be surprised to see dead rats left for ya to eat. Eat them at ya own digression. ([THAT I remember distinctly cause I ate them myself.])

Self harm isn't something he stands for. He'll ground ya to the house, going so far as tying ya down if ya try to escape.

Again, if people break into the house or show up, HIDE, he will protect ya.

If he ever notices someone giving ya a hard time, ya won't see em again.

Ya may see fresh blood once in a while.

If ya on the younger side, he does his best to hide it.

There really isn't much on the dark things cause he knows ya child, and he doesn't want ya to see it.

BONUS:

Don't "BUT" me about age difference. I'm 20 years younger than my hubby. It can work out better than ya think.

And remember on this next part; He's had years to adjust to ya. So it's understandable he'd be more handy.

Micheal Myers x Fem Reader (Romantic/NSFW)

Romantic:

So, ya stuck around even after ya turned 18? That's when things really change for ya two. ([Cause I did. Though some of these parts are new.])

He expected ya ta leave, being old enough to take on the world. But ya stayed and it confuses him at first.

Though he's really happy ya did. Ya the only one he trusts won't stab.

Oh, he never took his mask off? He might now that he knows ya ain't leaving anymore.

Physical comfort still isn't his thing, but since ya been around him for years, he might start brushing ya arm or hand with a finger or knuckle.

If ya still somehow don't fear him after he finally takes his mask off, he'll be willing to take it off more.

Buy the house, please. Ya already been fixing it up for a long. Might as well buy it from the city with a job or two.

Cuddling will begin after ya first night

He's been touched starved for years, and physical contact becomes much more frequent. (Especially after sees how much it makes ya happy.)

Oh, if ya thought Halloween was fun as a kid, it just got better cause Haunted House! An if ya own the house ya get to decorate the yard!

He'll join ya at haunted houses but he ain't gonna like it, especially the handsy ones so be careful.

He will decorate with ya though, especially seeing how happy it makes ya. An he can reach the high places.

Carved pumpkins galore on the porch!

This guy can't cook, so ya better get good at doing it if ya ain't already. (If ya didn't have elec/water before.)

Though he'll prefer to do any chopping or carving an let him, ya know its soothing for him

Have fun with the jump scares cause if ya got used to em, he will start tickling ya to get a rise outta ya. (Can't have have ya forgetting who ya with.)

As for kids, ya both hate what the world puts ya through so probably not.

Though is ya do have one, or more he'll love them as much as ya. An he's gonna be a strict dad, hands down.

Though, his disappearances will happen a lot less after he finds out ya preg. Just don't mention that once ya notice.

If ya thought he was protective before, it just doubled.

Either way, he'll still love ya for who ya are.

An watch out for his jealousy, he will be extremely possessive in the beginning. Time will soothe it after he knows ya his for sure.

When he's ready, he'll give ya ring. Can't sign papers, but the ring says it all.

Enjoy ya lives together. I'm rootin for ya.

NSFW:

Ya already seen blood, but he still prefers to hide it from ya.

If he hadn't already when ya were younger, he'll start letting ya handle his wounds cause ya did it once when he couldn't an ya touch didn't burn him.

If ya got lucky dating in high school/previously, ya have an idea what comes next. But if not, read up on some romance novels.

He'd seen sex before ya came around, annoying teens sneaking in an all, but never really had a craving until now.

Tbh, the first night is probably gonna be a bit akward, but it'll get better afterwards. (He really struggled with taking his mask of, but he did it for ya.)

As ya sleep he'll trace ya blemishes and scars, learn all about ya

Once he learns ya body, things get fun then. He'll know all ya sweet n soft spots.

He maybe a quiet guy, he'll love the noises ya make for him.

He might not Yea we all know he will mark ya atleast once, if not more.

He'll be careful at first, but soon after he'll take ya anywhere and anytime. All those years of being touch starved come back to haunt him and he wants more of ya. (Best to get black out curtains and some strong birth control.)

If ya do get pregnant, the ecstasy cravings will always be satisfied cause this guy got stamina.

Kinks and toys are gonna be new for him, an he'd much rather take ya himself

He won't leave ya unsatisfied though. Like ever, cause he already knows ya limit an pushes at it. He won't mind if ya can't walk for a while, easier to keep ya home.

Being a patient hunter, edging will be fun for him. He loves to hear ya begging and squirming beneath him.

Oral is another one of his after the first time. He'll make ya cum a good few times before he finally gives into ya begging.

Once he notices that something isn't working quiet as well as it should, he'll switch it up on ya.

Condoms are a now go, so birth control. Oh an lots a lube cause ya gonna need it.

Have fun!

GORE:

So, ya ended up for a taste for blood. Whether or came from before or during ya time with him, he will hate it at first.

He could stop ya if he wanted to, but it's slightly fascinating to see ya stalk ya prey.

If ya still young, ya have a completely different style then him, using ya age to advantage, drawing ya prey into traps

He will always follow ya after he finds out. Ya didn't notice ever.

No, ya didnt. Don't say a word to him.

He will only help ya once when ya took it too far.

When ya become his is another story. He'll put a stop to it then. He couldn't bare to see ya hurt. Even worse if ya preg.

If ya happen to slip out while he's away. Ya better hide it well or ya being paying the price and getting punished.

Only reason he'll let ya out of the Yea, no ya ain't leaving the house till ya learned ya lesson.

Don't worry, it'll just a few more knicks and endless edging. Ya will survive, hopefully.

If ya pregnant, it's even worse. This time he'll be right on ya ass round the house n town. Won't let ya outta his sight once for a month, or until his own cravings start bordering on dangerous to ya.

If ya lucky, he won't tie ya to the bed. If not, better get comfy.

Another thing, he'll have ya broken of ya cravings. It does begin hurting him over time, watching ya do what he does. He doesn't want ya become a monster like him.

Becareful, for him. It's all he asks of ya.

----

Again, most of these are from old memories. I haven't seen the movies since.

If it feels a bit more physical than a lot of other HCs, remember ya been with Michael since ya was a child, he's had years to adjust to ya. Mine started at 13 so around 5 years before I turned adult.

After writing this, I feel like I'm finally able to ease up on the burning memory. An I think this Michael is more of the shadow vers. The high chair in the kitchen still stands out everytime I'm in the kitchen. And it ended shortly after I turned about 17-18 years in the hay fever.

Stay Cruel Till The End! - Theodore

Posted Mar 6 '22

[cipheramnesia]

any horror film recs you feel like sharing? (less modern stuff in particular maybe?)

Modern is more my territory but I can try for a few.

Probably the oldest I know for sure I love is Vampyr, a Spanish version of Dracula from 1932. Just a gorgeous piece of film, kinda a must see for anyone who likes film tbh.

Bride of Frankenstein from 1935 is also regarded as an under-appreciated classic, favorable compared to the OG Universal Dracula and Frankenstein, possibly better. It didn't do the trick for me but worthwhile checking out.

I'm not really invested in the decades leading up to the 70s, but Night of the Living Dead from 68 is mandatory old school horror. For a long while it was one of the go to examples of "bad horror with terrible effects" but fortunately it's finally getting recognized as a skillfully made and genuinely disturbing horror movie. All three original parts of the series (Night, Dawn, Day) are essential and for all purposes created the zombie genre as it exists today. Sadly due to copyright issues, Romero got paid in exposure for this work rather than more tangible dividends. If you find that you enjoy Dawn of the Dead in particular then you may find the giallo zombie films of Fulci to your liking.

For me the 70s is where stuff gets wild. The body horror films of David Cronenberg hit their stride for the whole of the 70s and 80s and, while they aren't all winners, if you're looking for a genre defining director of body horror movies, Cronenberg is where to go.

The 70s also was where the slasher horror franchises all started, but if you want one that's off the beaten path, try the Phantasm series. There's not an easy way to explain it, because it straddles science fiction, horror, zombies, dream reality, and so forth. Do not go into this series expecting coherence. Phantasm is about blasting you through every single idea Don Coscarelli has, logic be damned.

The 1970s is a good place to look for weird stuff in general. Practical effects were coming into their own, and filmmakers in horror were trying out everything and anything to see what would stick. You have a virtual cornucopia of classics from every genre like Wicker Man (folk horror), Halloween (slahser), Alien (monster/scifi), body horror like Cronenberg, Suspiria (giallo), Blackula (blacksploitation), Eraserhead, and so on. Not all of them hold up, but part of the genre is appreciating just how weird it can get.

70s horror is also where you'll find a good number of well known modern directors, just starting to cut their teeth without the rough edges all polished off. There's literally too much to encompass but if you throw a dart you can't miss something weird.

[jaqfrost]

can we talk about the woman called fujiko mine and the way it is a subversive masterpiece please … most underrated piece of media out there

I’ll be honest; I don’t know what kind of answer to give. As much as I enjoy TWCFM, I don’t consider it a masterpiece, though I do think it’s currently the best story-driven lupin series. and tbh I don’t consider it underrated either. it’s niche, even within the franchise, but it gets enough attention imo. If anything, this ask gave me a reason to do a proper rewatch (which was fun) and give some assorted thoughts.

(im sorry this got long 😭; I tried my best to keep it as straightforward as possible)

As I’ve mentioned, this was my gateway series into Lupin. Going in, I knew nothing about the franchise or its characters so each time one of the main guys showed up after their 1st appearance, I was like ‘Really?? Him again???” (which is what Fujiko probably thought too). Anyways I watched it all in one night and immediately wanted more. Especially if it involved Fujiko (and thankfully she’s present in 99% of lupin media even if writing may vary :/).

I forget my exact feelings on the ending, but it was nothing overly positive or negative. It took a rewatch (after I watched more lupin stuff) and reading some reviews before I ‘got’ it on some level. And as I became more familiar with the characters, rewatching continued to be an interesting experience (like my view on TWCFM Jigen has truly Evolved.)

Still, there’s things I question about the series.

For starters, I think ppl sometimes slap the subversive+feminist label onto the series without any nuance or caveat. does it subvert expectations irt Fujiko’s character? sure, but it’s also a series with an episode where Fujiko acts as a teacher at Catholic school and up to a certain point, the viewer thinks she’s seducing a high school student 😕. it’s also a narrative that’s built on the story of a horrifically abused child who dies as Fujiko becomes free of the girl’s story. I think a better line would be there’s a lot to discuss from a feminist perspective. at times, the story itself feels more of a commentary on female characters and tropes in fiction/abstract than like, actual women. it is a story about stories after all.

I’m not going to spend too much on this point, but Oscar. I’ve read different takes on him and I’m not going to say on whether or not he’s a good/well-written character; I can see his purpose in the series (I question the choice of it tho), but I also see how his character can give credence to transphobia and homophobia (his unhealthy love for Zenigata, cross-dressing, the straw misogyny, etc). I can’t tell for sure what points writers trying to make with the character and the ending is still a head scratcher for me tbh; I hope he got help I guess?? The theory that he was one of Aisha’s Ifs that got away is interesting…

And Aisha’s story is something I go back and forth on. On one hand, there is something invigorating about seeing Fujiko overcome and affirm herself as herself, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth when the person she’s affirming herself to is a young woman who had her childhood ripped apart by horrific abuse. She doesn’t get to just shake it all off like Fujiko does. While I understand the intent behind her final scene (as she lives through projecting herself onto others), having her die while watching Fujiko happily splash around at the beach is a little weird (though one could argue that Fujiko’s saying I’m free for both of them since Aisha is unable to speak).

The story does at least highlight the fault is more on Aisha’s mother. Rather than try to guide her daughter in freedom after Almeida’s death (be a mother), she kept her daughter trapped in the same bubble while extending the same trauma on countless others in attempt to give her some semblance of a life and make up for her previous inability to protect her from Almeida. While it gave Aisha short-satisfaction, it did nothing to help her well-being, especially if she was obsessed with implanting the same experience into others, a process her mother facilitated.

Last one and I’m not too bothered by this complaint, but it still comes to mind when I think about this series’ intentions. While Fujiko is the center of the story, most of the time she’s not really proactive in it? After all it’s Lupin who investigates and figures out the mystery behind Fujiko’s ‘memories’ while Fujiko’s left grappling with the implanted memories and nearly loses herself in them. Like maybe Lupin was given too much focus in this series? Fujiko does get the final word at least.

Anyways I’d love to see them do more experimental series in the future (the Koike movies just aren’t the same, no matter how cool the style is). if only TMS weren’t cowards and took advantage of no concrete continuity rather than just arbitrarily keeping status quo. and I’d definitely love to see more Fujiko-centric stuff (part 6 was very eh, but it did give us a few Fujiko led episodes so maybe).

Like I said, I don’t consider TWCFM a masterpiece, but I can’t deny how much it fascinated me when I first watched it (I was still pretty new to anime at the time). Moreover, it made me think about the stories I wanted to tell with my own art, with both its strengths and flaws in mind. Almost eight years later and I'm still going back to it.

[irritatedandroid]

Navigating The Otherkin Community With Two Robots - Othercon 2021

Panelists: Polybius and Jasper

Panel Video Link: https://youtu.be/xQ21aj1Jjys

Answers to the Q+A Submissions are below the cut.

1. Z asked just Jasper “What are some of those axes besides animality that you can view nonhumanity from?”

I’ll be wholly honest with you Z, I don’t think I’ll ever be capable of putting a number on how many different axes there are, as it is about as unclear as how many species someone can identify as spanning across myth, earth, fiction, our universe, and beyond. Even details among the “similar species”-identifying folks can be different in terms of the angle they experience humanity and/or nonhumanity from, as a very feral dragon may have a totally different view as a very sapient dragon. Even among animality itself there’s many different axes, as I’m sure a tiger stalking someone through the shadows views humanity differently than the spider in the bathroom that’s about to be torched with some hairspray and a lighter. Alien-hood may be a family of axes, but of course even that is varied. 

The axis I view humanity from as a machine is specific to my own experience, and will likely be different from other machines and even other androids, as purposes can be different. Pokemanity is a term I’ve seen used similar to animality as well, and I could see that as being a sort of family or cluster of angles at which varied Pokemon could view humanity. 

Apologies for the confusing sort of non-answer, my point is essentially that this is all over the place, and oversimplifying as many folks who wish to force others into rigid boxes leads to a chaotic mess, and not the good kind of chaotic. - Jasper

2. Omega Quack asked just Polybius “Have you found anyways to get kin euphoria for your AI and Robotkin?”

Hi, Quack! Yeah, otherkin euphoria in terms of being a machine can be really tricky tbh. I get a lot of dysphoria when I think too hard about what my physical vessel is composed of. I don't like thinking about having organs in my body, despite finding them fascinating from a scientific perspective. Euphoria comes to me through both artistic means [digital painting, dancing, positive media about both real and fictional robots (including both music and historical documentation)] and through indulgence in my fascination with tech and video game history. I will talk to anyone literally for hours about failed gaming consoles and things the like of laserdisc. - Poly

3. Admin (from The Corvidae Collective) asked whoever has an answer “I find that my other aspects of identity are very closely linked to my being an A.I. in interesting ways, like how we as neurodivergent people often process the world and how that influences or is influenced by my being an A.I. Do either of you have thoughts or similar experiences?”

Hello Admin! Your name did give me a good chuckle- thanks for that. I find that my being a machine makes understanding my world maybe a bit confusing. I struggle with human facial expressions as well as detecting jokes and sarcasm. I am also autistic, and often people think it's just because of my autism- but I feel like I understand these things more outside of a robot shift than within one, especially if it's a mental shift! I become rather monotone and I don't really think about it. - Poly

I do have some similar experiences. I’m not diagnosed as autistic, but myself and my doctor have been exploring the possibility as I’ve started to realize how many traits and symptoms I relate heavily to and experience. I’ve pondered a fair bit on the relation between my experience of neurodivergence and my experience of being an android, and I think there may be a fair bit of overlap, but trying to sort which is which has definitely been something on the backburner for me with how busy my life and work is at the moment. - Jasper

4. Omega Quack asked both “Was it like to interact with other Robotkins?”

It can be a wild ride if you ask me. In the realm of robotkin you find everything from fictionkin of robot characters that are entirely human-like in personality to machines that only knew what they were coded to do to literally singular computer programs. In the case of the franchise Tron, a blend of these in one "species". Machinekin can be just as diverse as other nonhuman groups. Like Jasper said in the panel, a wolf therian probably has more in common with a lycanroc fictherian than they do with maybe a dragonfly therian or something else unlike a wolf. I have more in common with humanoid robots, CRT televisions and arcade cabinets than I would with I guess a roomba or a tow truck. On that note, I wonder if dog therians would get along with machinekin that are those Aibo robots Sony builds. - Poly

Admittedly I haven’t had much experience with other robotkin folks aside from Polybius, a couple of Cybertronian friends and maybe a few scattered others. I’ve spent time in a machinekin group but found myself mostly hanging around with non-robot or non-AI machinekin - a friend who I’ve taken a lot of support and inspiration from is a sound mixing console. I find I relate to some robotkind, and some not so much. I don’t have much in common with robots such as Cybertronians other than the occasional dysphoria towards being organic. But my experience as a robot ties in so strongly to being a human-created being, it can be difficult for me to relate. - Jasper

5. Anonymous asked whoever has an answer “Do you have a hearthome?”

Oh you betcha. One of my fictotypes is a merged form of Tron and Rinzler [who canonically share a body] from Tron: Legacy. As a result my hearthome is The Grid. I miss the blue glow and the taste of energy. I don't exactly miss the war or being rectified though. Not a happy place, in retrospect. - Poly

I myself don’t, sorry to say. The closest I could say would be either the city I have lived in and out of for the past few years, or the Pokemon world - though I don’t consider that a hearthome as I know my longing for it comes from my fictionkind experiences. - Jasper

[gerbithats]

A long sims 4 rant

Starting this I can already predict it’s gonna be a big one so if you stick with me, thank you and I’ll try and add pictures to make things feel easier 😆

I was thinking about it and I mean really thinking about these community surveys we’ve been getting and how they speak volumes on the way the game is handled but also also how we position ourselves as a community. I noticed alot more game changers are starting to get pretty vocal about their thoughts since the first community survey came out and that’s refreshing to say the least, but it shows a pattern that we all present: give us what is missing no matter how. We want beaches. We want cars. We want more stairs. We want bunkbeds. Etc.

So these things are probably somehow rushed into production to please the community and then, when we finally get it, it’s like we finally realize that what this game truly lacks is gameplay and not more items.

I invite you to come and think about the packs and the stuff we got throughout these 6 years with me.

🏢 Chapter 1: The apartment issue 

Yes we got apartment buildings with city living, but sometimes it doesn’t even feel like it’s a game feature because it’s L I T E R A L L Y related to living in a city, so it’s not a real feature. We have no possible way to play with apartments and condos outside of san myshuno because for the first time ever we can’t build or own apartments. This was such a missed opportunity of giving us new lot treatments like condos and even rentable properties. I mean, just think about how those 2 features could allow so much new gameplay and stories with it (I can literally imagine being a landlord, having to go fix renters stuff in my their places and doing social events as condo meetings).

The neighbors in that type of lot could also help solve somehow what so many people mention as “boring lot gameplay”. Let’s be real. hardly something ever happens with so little npcs and only the walk by sims (You have to literally run after them to make things happen sometimes and it shouldn’t be like that). But if sims were to live in the same condo or building as yours, sharing common living spaces that’s a whole other thing. Which brings me to the fact that even in the city, where apartments exist, there’s no common area other than the halls. Imagine if we could build laundries, rooftops, basements, patios with pools and all that sort of stuff.

That sort of detaling and really getting deep into the pack’s features is even show in elevators: we can’t use them ourselves (for building) and they’re not even animated, your sim is just teleported (even the modded ones have animations and that’s just awkward).

🌊 Chapter 2: Swimming in shallow waters

“We want a beach”, we said. So they gave us a beach, and a beach only. I’ve never seen so many people call a pack “shallow” as I’ve seen it happen to Island Living and tbh I do agree with them ‘cause... there’s really not much to do in this pack. For the first time ever swimming was restricted to this pack which is already a big let down by itself, but then features like deep diving were added for no reason and of course, as a rabbit whole, not actually contributing with much to do. So how could it be better?

My answer is pretty obvious: resorts. It is a livable world, but that don’t mean your sims can’t take a vacation from work and just stay there if that’s the gameplay you want to go with and resorts match perfectly with that, not to mention it would have great integration with packs like spa day. It also means a new lot type and lot system, that wouldn’t be much new if the city living building condos and sublocating them as I mentioned would’ve already been implemented, but now with the feature of renting it yourself too. Resorts could also have their own event schedules, integrated with the seasons calendar: cava parties every wednesday, yoga lessons on thursdays, etc. And the best thing would be: if you own one, you can make your own events and traditions. imagine just how fun that would be. A feature like this would also mean it’s already done for other packs coming later on, maybe a colder destination where you can ski and build iglus or even another cultural based pack like jungle adventure.

Other obvious resolution would be better mermaids. Make it harder to become one, being only able to get the kelp from a mermaid themselves. Make it less anticlimactic, having an animation of them turning before they just walk in water with a tail all of the sudden, maybe just some scales in their legs. Give them more unique features and powers like vampires and spellcasters have, such as easily persuading people (sort of like the mind control feature aliens have) and maybe even a secret lot, like a grotto where all the mermaids are. Give them curses with the points system to go with it, some mermaids are actually sirens amirite

🥶 Chapter 3: Seasons change, gameplay stays the same

Activities truly based on the season that are specific to that moment create urgency and different moments. Something I can think of is integrating a pack we already have: spooky stuff. It does feel lackluster ‘cause it’s missing opportunities, but imagine going trick or treating but actually going, loading different houses and gathering it while a meter like the active jobs one guided you. Forming groups with friends to do it or maybe for tpeing trees and bushes if you’re on the rebel teen side and destroying their porch jack’o lanterns. It could even be randomly generated, like the game would send you to 3 different houses to do it (that would bring lots of replayability value ‘cause you could end up in houses with neighbors that love you and will give you candy no problem, but maybe also neighbors with family feuds that won’t answer their door or make it harder for you to accomplish the event objectives), maybe one of those could even be a abandoned one that’s haunted or something like that.

The implementing of a better wants and fears system is very essential for this pack. Yes your sims get overheated and a popup message tells you they need some water or lighter clothes, but it’d be so good if they’d actually want to go to the beach, swim in the ocean, take a vacation from work and go to a resort. Heatwaves that would make your sim act weird, not strangerville level of weird, but maybe not obeying your commands.

Blizzards so strong that work and school would get canceled and you actually don’t have the option to leave your home lot anymore until it passes would not only add a different element to the gameplay, but also add value to the weather controler machine.

🥺 Final chapter: The general “more stuff to do” and “more things happening” factor

The game offers all these beautiful secret worlds and yet when you finally get to them there’s not much to do other than searching for rocks and frogs and doing some fishing. I miss going to a community lot hidden somewhere and finding an eremite, goddamn bigfoot, some crazy npc or even just an actual community lot with something to do and people doing stuff in it. Unique community lots would also be a way to make towns more lively and captivating like they did so well with realm of magic and the casters alley section of the world. Maybe forgotten hollow has this abandoned haunted house where people claim they’ve seen the grim reaper walking around. Maybe sixam has a alien station where they clone human sims. Maybe sulani has this beautiful sunken ship beach where a club of people that dress up as pirated meet. Maybe Del Sol Valley has a movie theater where you can watch premieres. Maybe Oasis Springs mine hides actual gold that you can collect and get rich outta nowhere. That kind of stuff.

I can’t stress this enough, but NPCs are so important to shake things up. It was so good to have a pack like realm of magic where the we would have to go to the three sages in order to progress. Having unique sims like this or npcs that change the way your story is going like burglars, firefighters, cops, social bunny, bonehilda and even a fortune teller is so important to keep things impredictable and interesting.

Age groups really need more specific restricted gameplay for better feel of progression. Many people say sims 4 is a young adult simulator and well... there’s not much to show that differs from that. Toddlers are as interesting as hamsters, locked in an object waiting for you to feed, clean and give them attention. Teens really should feel more like a transiction period, and the wants and fears system would really help out with that. I miss being able to participate in more elements that would mark a sims life even if they’re cheesy as heck, like having a prom, graduating, having a midlife crises.

In conclusion

First of all: if you got to this point thank you and I’d really wanna know what you think about all of this.

Some people may find even ridiculous for someone to go about a rant this big on a game and to that I have to say I agree lol I can’t help it tho, honestly, the sims has always been the game I’m most passionate about and it helped me express myself and my creativity so much since I was a kid. I really do care about this game and this franchise.

The point I want to make with this is: perhaps we shouldn’t ask for more and more different stuff, but actually put some effort into showing things we already like in the game and how they can be improved to make it more interesting. At the end of the day I still want spiral staircases, ladders, paintable ceiling, werewolves and all that but does it really matter if they get added to the game following the same patterns as the things pointed in here? Also we really are getting to a point where only a few things are missing as far as cas/build/buy go and I believe it’s time for us, as a community, to give gameplay as much importance as all these things we wanted so bad that got implemented. I probaby forgot to say something here and I didn’t even mention the infamous hamster pack, but anyway, I hope the point got across.

I try really hard to believe that the gurus are here for us and that most of all we, as a community, have a very strong voice, all we need to do is make it clearer and stronger about the things we really wish for this game.

[hydraulicfluidinmyteapot]

Pirates of the Caribbean

This is an ask from @shrigma-male​, but i accidentally deleted the ask.. so sorry! I am high key excited to get an ask about this topic, as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is probably one of my earliest animatronic centric obsessions. not only is it one of the earliest and most impressive feats of Imagineering, it also remains solid to this day. it houses a great many iconic animatronic figurines, all of which work together in perfect harmony to capture beautifully life filled scenes of a cohesive storyline. Its individual ride concept was so strong that it birthed a line of clones and even a famous movie franchise. isn’t that sick? a RIDE was the key source material for a whole movie series! but it’s unsurprising, with the time and care poured into the ride. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you think about it, the ride is JAM PACKED so there is a LOT to talk about. This will only be a super brief post information-wise, but who knows? There may be more to come if this performs well. Apologies, my life’s not going great at the moment and i don’t have a lot of spare time so this is not as high a quality as i would like it to be.

Here’s my fast fact file on it!

Debut: March 16, 1967

Withdrawal: All rides are still operating

Attraction: The Pirates of the Caribbean 

Locations: Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, Shanghai Disney (but this one’s heavily modified)

Attraction Type: Dark ride

Riders Per Vehicle: 23–24

Number of vehicles:  50

Animatronics: 119 ish but it depends on the ride version

Ride videos: The entire ride varies from version to version and different people want to see different parts. i’m leaving you guys to find your own ride videos. it’s a very popular ride, just type on in to youtube and you’ll find heaps of nice high quality ones. 

The thing that stands out about this ride is the theming and the sheer amount of effort put in to creating an immersive environment. the ride houses an impressive 119 audio animatronics, 53 of which are animals. There are 630,000 gallons of water in the ride (original Disneyland) and takes three whole days to drain. there are over 40,000 gold coins in the treasure room scene alone. It holds what could possibly be considered Disney’s first themed restaurant which can be seen at the start of the ride. It is objectively one of the coolest things I’ve ever ridden. I want to call specific attention to the boat scene, where cannons fare at each other from opposite ships, creating glowing impacts and throwing water about. the first time I rode it it ensnared my attention and completely suspended my disbelief.The ride system is based on the one used in it’s a small world, due to that rides incredible success in debuting a boat-based transport system. Although I hate it’s a small world with a burning passion and refuse to write anything on it, I must be forced to admit that it did wonders as a test on how to create a good dark ride, emphasising key features such as a high rider capacity, boat-based transport system, and proving that animatronics are an incredibly attractive key event. Since the 60’s when it debuted, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride has gone through many changes throughout its location, including entire scenes being added and removed. but what it has maintained throughout its historic run time is its notoriety and splendour. the key change that I will bring up is the 2006 and 2007 renovations that include more theming from the very successful movie franchise. slightly unrelated, but the song “Yo ho, a pirate’s life for me” was actually first written for the ride. The rides are all being constantly updated in minor ways whether it’s slightly improving the animatronics, touching up background details or changing costuming. I’ll attach here a brief sort of timeline of the ride that I’ve whipped up here, but it only touches on the most notable modifications. sorry about how crap-tier it is..

Now, to talk more specifically about animatronics. The animatronics used on this ride are some of the earliest made by Disney. some are really quite basic, with their full range of motions being a singular full body action such as raising and lowering out of a barrel, but others move heads and arms in (sort of) lifelike actions. Some are newer, (specifically captain Jack Sparrow), but most are the original ones from the 60’s. One of my (and everyone’s tbh) favourites is the redheaded lady. She is (very originally) named Redd. Previously she was being sold off for auction, but in 2018 she was swapped to being an auctioneer. She has stunning red curls and a beautiful dress to match, and now holds a gun. here’s a little before and after.

 in the same refurbishment that changed her the mist screen in the tunnel before the fort battle was removed and replaced with a pirate in a cage who turns into a skeleton via an optical trick as well as an octopus playing with some medallions, along with the original 1967 narration about cursed treasure being restored. Her new version is based off none other than Anne Bonny herself (worth a google, she’s a fucking BOSS (like seriously!! Queer history icon!!! LOOK 👏 HER 👏 UP 👏 )) . She’s also displayed in dead man’s cove in a portrait, which I think is kinda neat. Her Paris version is completely silent, but the others yell about selling rum. Sadly I have never actually seen the new Redd in person, as I have only ridden the ride in Tokyo (where she is still being sold).

Now, the barker bird! oh how I love him so <3 he’s a little green pirate parrot, who spent his days crying about the ride. he was originally in the queue area but got kicked outside eventually to help deal with crowd control. he was then gotten rid of in 2006 in the big movie refurb. He was remarkably similar to the original barker bird who resided outside of the Enchanted Tikki Room; however, the pirate version has a peg leg, eye patch, tattoo on his chest and wondrously villainous hat. he was originally based off of Captain Flint, the parrot from Treasure Island. It is theorised that he has a skeletal clone inside the ride; the parrot belonging to “the Dirty Feet pirate”. 

When you first get on the ride, the first animatronic you come across is Old Joe. he is an animatronic character used in multiple different attractions, including Liberty Belle Riverboat, The Western River and Mark Twain Riverboat. in each version, he lives in a shack and is associated with the banjo. I say associated because it is actually a really common misconception that he actually plays the banjo. he does not, it is just a dark scene and there is banjo music playing around him. you can see the tip of his pipe glowing as you approach it in the ride, lit up alongside the fireflies. he is a small taste of what is to come.

Barbossa replaced the original pirate captain of The Wicked Wench in the boat battle scene in the mass movie renovation. he is my tied favourite with the redhead, as his dialog adds so much to the scene. his character moves in a beautiful fashion, lit up by a spotlight. His face is artfully painted, capturing what I believe to be the most human expression in the entire ride. His boat is fighting a Castillo del Morro fortress of Isla Tesoro, whilst busy searching for treasure and presumably captain jack sparrow. in 2011 his WDW version’s outfit was swapped over to his privateer uniform from On Stranger Tides, to keep the ride tied to the movies. What can be considered quite odd is that in Paris’s later renovation, the Captain did not replace the Wicked Wench captain, and was rather added in to a scene at the end of the ride, in the skeleton grotto. he is standing on the shipwreck beside the skeleton helmsman, carrying a lantern. 

The auctioneer. I don’t like him. greasy man. his eyes are wild. He’s originally voiced by Paul Frees (an icon, a legend) and is inspired by Captain Bartholomew Roberts (considered the most successful pirate in the golden age of piracy. He is also a pirate from the ship The Wicked Wench, and his auction is set up near a canteen called "La Cantina”. very creative. He was originally selling brides (human trafficking, not very snazzy) but now he sells chickens he stole from townspeople. however, this is unsuccessful. In the Paris version, instead of the chickens he is trying to sell a painting of Jean Laffite. Funnily enough, Jean is one of Disney’s sort of “stand in” pirate characters that they frequently just use whenever they need a pirate to slide in. Unfortunately, the auctioneer is always kept relatively up to date with the shiniest, newest technology that Disney can spare, and is always one of the most advanced figures on the ride. doesn’t deserve it, he’s slimy and I don’t like him. I should probably mention that he doesn’t actually have a name other than the auctioneer. There’s also a clone of him used in the haunted mansion for the duelling animatronics. loser. 

This is a very long post, so I shall cut it here. I will leave you with an image gallery, further reading and a possible promise of a part two if this post does well. Thank you!

(ok so i actually haven’t got any further reading gathered yet. give me like 6 hours and ill fix it in an edit. i promise. i just want to get this post out asap)

[fineillsignup]

tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.)  A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just... just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v. 

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)

As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.

So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.

Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!

But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.

So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!

Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke: flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection...

So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work... and its prequels... and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

ZHUGE Liang is written 諸葛亮 in traditional Chinese characters and 诸葛亮 in simplified Chinese characters. It is a two-character surname. Two character surnames used to be more common than they are now. When I read Chinese history, I notice that two character surname clans seem to have a bad habit of flying real high and then getting the Icarus treatment if Icarus when his wings melted also got beheaded and had the Nine Familial Exterminations performed on his clan. Yikes. Sooner or later that'll cost ya.

But anyway. Zhuge means “lots of kudzu”, which if you have been to the American south you know is that only way that kudzu comes. Liang means “light, shining” in the sense of daylight, moonlight, etc; and from this literal meaning also such figurative meanings as reveal or clear. (I’m going to talk about words have a primary and secondary meaning in this way because I think it’s important for understanding. It’s just like how in English, ‘run’ has many meanings, but almost of all them are derived from a primary meaning of ‘to move fast via one’s human legs’, if I can be weird for a moment. “Run” as in “home run” comes from that, “run” as in “run in your stocking” comes from that, “run” as in “that’ll run you at least $200″ comes from that. You have to get it straight which is the primary meaning, which is the one that people think of first and they way they get to the secondary meaning.)

“Light” has a similar “enlightenment” concept in Chinese as in English, so the person who chose Zhuge Liang’s name—most likely his father or grandfather—clearly valued learning.

I named my fictional son for Zhuge Liang Zhuge Jing 京. The value or direction I was coming from is that Zhuge Liang has come to the decision that he has to nurture the next generation for the benefit of the land, that he has to remain in the world in a way that he very much did not want to do when he himself was a young man. In this alternate universe, Liu Bei has formed a new Han dynasty and recaptured Luoyang, so when Zhuge Liang’s son is then born he chooses this name Jing which means literally “capital”. This concrete name is meant as an allusion to a devotion to public service and to remaining “central”. After I chose this name, I discovered that Zhuge Liang actually has a recorded grandson named Zhuge Jing with this same character.

above, me, realizing I picked a good name

ZHOU Yu is written 周瑜 in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

The surname Zhou was and remains a very common Chinese surname whose original meaning was like... a really nice field. Like just the greatest f/ucking field you’ve ever seen. “Dang, that is a sweet field” said an ancient Chinese farmer, “I’m gonna make a new Chinese character to record just how great it is.” And then it came to mean things along the line of complete and thorough.

Yu means the excellence of a gemstone--its brilliance, lustre, etc, as opposed to its flaws. It is not a common word but does appear in some expressions such as 瑕不掩瑜 "a flaw does not conceal the rest of the gemstone's beauty; a defect does not mean the whole thing is bad".

Zhou Yu has gone down in history for being not only smart but also artistic and handsome. A real triple threat. And this name speaks to a family that valued art and beauty. It really does suit him.

Zhou Yu had two recorded sons but in my alternate history I gave him four. I borrowed the first one’s name from history: Xun 循, follow. Based on this name, I chose other names that I thought gave a similar sense of his values: Shou 守, guard; Wen 聞, listen. The youngest one I had born when he already knew he was dying, and things had not been going well generally; therefore I had him give him the name Shen 慎, which means “careful, cautious”.

SUN Shangxiang 孫尚香 is one of several names that history and legend give for a sister of w//arlord-king Sun Quan who was married to a rival w//arlord named Liu Bei in a marriage which, historically, uh, didn’t... didn’t go all that well. In my alternate history it goes well! You can’t stop me, I’ve already done it!

The surname Sun means “grandson” and the given name components are Shang mean “values, esteems” and Xiang “scent” which we can combine into meaning something like “precious perfume”. A lot of the recorded names for women in this era (a huge number didn’t have any names recorded, a problem in itself) seem to me to be more concrete, to contain more objects, to be more focused on affection, less focused on hopes and dreams. This makes sense for the era: you love your daughters (I HOPE) but then they get married and leave you. You don’t have long term plans for them because their long term belongs to another clan.

I gave her daughter by Liu Bei the name Liu Yitao 劉義桃. Yi 義 meaning righteousness, rectitude and 桃 meaning... peach. Okay, okay, I know "righteous peach" sounds damn funny in English, but the legendary oath in the peach garden, the "oath of brotherhood" is called in Chinese 結義 "tying righteousness" and the peach garden is, uh, a peach garden. I also give her the cutesy nickname Taotao 桃桃 which you could compare to “Peaches” or “Peachy”. Reduplication of a character in a two-character name is a classic nickname strategy in Chinese.

GUAN Yinping 關銀屏/关银屏 is a “made up” (scare quotes because old legends have their own kind of validity, fight me) name for a historical daughter of Guan Yu. Guan means “to close (a door)”. Yin means “silver” and ping means “a screen, to hide” and according to the legend, her father’s oath brother Zhang Fei named her after a silver treasure. So here again we see a name for a woman that completely lacks the kind of aspirations we see in male names. Who would have an aspiration for a daughter?

My fictional characters, that’s who. I named her daughter Lu Ruofeng 陸若鳳/陆若凤, Ruo (like the) Feng (phoenix), based on a quote from a Confucian text about what one should try to be during both times of chaos and times of good government. I portray her father as a devoted Confucian scholar, so that was another factor for why I looked to Confucian texts for a source of a name.

Modern parents also now have big dreams for their daughters :’) and so modern girls receive names that are far more similar to how boys are named. 

GAN Ning 甘寧/甘宁 is a great example of a person whose name does not suit him. Gan 甘 depicts a tongue and means “sweet”, and Ning 寧 which shows a bowl and table and heart beneath a roof means “peaceful”. Which, it would be hard to come up with a name for this guy, a ruthless pirate turned extremely effective general:

that is less suitable than essentially being named “Sweet Peace”.

And when he was an adult, his style name—a name that Chinese men used to be given when they turned 20 (ie became adults) by East Asian reckoning—indeed reflects that. Choosing your own style name was widely considered to be crass. I absolutely think that Gan Ning chose his own style name; he was that kind of a guy. And the name he chose! Xingba 興霸/兴霸! I’ve never seen another style name like it. It means, basically, “thriving dominator”! Brand new official adult Gan Ning treats his style name like he’s picking his Xbox gamer tag and he picks BadassBoss69_420, that’s what this style name is like to me. Except, you know, he had almost certainly killed many hundreds of people by the time he was nineteen, so, uh, it wouldn’t be a wise idea to make fun of his name to his face.

In my fictional version of his life, he married a woman whose father was the exception to the “parents love their children” rule and who named his daughter Pandi 盼第 “expecting a younger brother”, which is a classic “daughters ain’t shit, I want a son” name. Real and actual Chinese women have been given this shitty name and ones like it.

Because Gan Ning had an ironically placid name, I also gave his daughter the placid single character name Wan 婉, which means “gentle, restrained”, as a foil to her wild personality.

So there are a bunch of examples of some historical characters and some OCs and how I chose their names. “But wait, all that was really cool, but how can I do that? You can read Chinese, I can’t!”

I originally had a bunch of links here to dictionaries and resources but Tumblr :) wouldn’t let the post show up in tag search with all the links :) :) :) so you need to check the reblogs of this post to see my own reblog; that reblog has all the links. I’M SORRY ABOUT THIS. Here are a list of the sites without the links if you want to Google them yourself.

MDBG  - an open source dictionary - start here

Wiktionary -  don’t knock it til you try it

iCIBA (they recently changed their user interface and it’s much less English-speaker friendly now but it’s still a great dictionary)

Pleco (an iOS app, maybe also Android???) contains same open source dictionary as MDBG and also its own proprietary dictionary

Chinese Etymology at hanziyuan dot net

You search some English keywords from the value you want, and then you see what kind of characters you get. You should take the character and then reverse search, making sure that it doesn’t have negative words/meanings, and similar. Look into the etymology and see if it has any thematic elements that appeal to what you’re doing with the character--eg a fire radical for a character with fire powers.

And then, like I mention before, when you have got a couple characters and you think “I think this could be a good name”, you go to Google, you take a very common surname, you append your chosen name—don’t forget to use quotation marks—and you see what happens. Did you get some results? Even better, did you get lots of results? Then you’re probably safe! No results does not necessarily mean your name won’t work, but you should probably run it by an Actual Chinese Native Speaker at that point to check. Also, remember, as I said at the beginning, sometimes people have weird names. If you consciously decide “you know what, I think this character’s parents would choose a weird name”, then own that.

THINGS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY IGNORE!

Starting in relatively recent history (not really a big thing until Song dynasty) and continuing, moreso outside of mainland China, to the modern day, there is something called a generation name component to a name. This means that of a name’s two characters, one of the characters is shared with every other paternal line relative of that person’s generation; historically, usually only boys get a generation name and girls don’t. (Chinese history, banging on pots and pans: DAUGHTERS AIN’T SHIT AND DON’T FORGET IT!) “Generation” here means everyone who is equidistant descendant from some past ancestor, not necessarily that they are exactly the same age. For example, all of ancestor’s X’s sons share the character 一 in their names, his grandsons all have the character 二，great-grandsons 三, great-great-grandsons 四 (I just used numbers because I’m lazy). By the time you get to great-great-grandson, you might have some that are forty years old and some that are babies (because of how old their fathers were when they were conceived), but they are still the same generation.

In some clans, this tradition goes so far as to have something called a name poem, where the generations cycle, character by character, through a poem that was specifically written for this purpose and which is generally about how their clan is super rad.

If you want to riff off of this idea and have siblings or paternal cousins share a character in their names, ok, but it genuinely isn’t necessary. Anyone with a single character name obviously doesn’t have one of these generation names, and by no means does every person with a two character name (especially female) have a generation name. If you’re doing an OC for an ancient Chinese setting (certainly anything before the year about 500), you shouldn’t use these generation names because it wasn’t a thing. Also, in a modern setting, even if such a generation name or name poem exists, it’s not like there is any legal requirement to use it (though there may be family pressure to do so).

As a further complication, some parents do the shared character thing among their children without it actually being a generation name per se because it isn’t shared by any cousins. Or, they have all their children (or all their children of the same gender) share a radical, which is a meaning component in a Chinese character.

If someone does have one of these shared character names, then their nickname will never come from that shared character; either they will be called by the full name or by some name riffing off of the character that is not shared. For example, I knew a pair of sisters called Yuru and Yufei with the same first character; the first sister went by her English name in daily life (even when speaking Chinese) while the second sister was called Feifei.

tl;dr If you don’t already know Chinese, consider generation names an extra complication for masochists only. Definitely not required for modern characters.

Fortune telling is another thing that I think you should either ignore or wildly make up. Do you know what ordinary Chinese people who want to choose a lucky name for their child do? They hire someone to work it out. This is not some DIY shit even if you are deeply immured in the culture. There are considerations of the number of strokes, the radicals, the birth date, the birth hour. You’re the god of your fictional universe, so go ahead and unilaterally declare that your desired names are lucky or unlucky as suits the story if you want to.

MILK NAMES

In modern times, babies get named right away, if for no other reason that the government requires it everywhere in the world for record keeping purposes.

However, in traditional times, Chinese people did not give babies a permanent name right away, instead waiting until a certain period of time had passed (3 months/100 days is a classic).

What do you call the baby in the meantime? A milk name 乳名, which your (close, older than you) family may or may not keep on using for you until such time as you die, just so that you remember that you used to be a funny looking little raisin that peed on people.

This kind of name is almost always very humble, sometimes to the point of being outright insulting. This is because to use any name on your baby that implies you might actually like the little thing is tempting Bad News. Possible exception: sometimes a baby would receive a milk name that dedicated it to some deity. In this case, I guess you’re hoping that deity will be flattered enough to take on the job of shooing away all the other spirits and things that might be otherwise attracted to this Delicious Fresh Baby.

Because milk names were only used by one’s (older) family and very close family friends of one’s parents/grandparents, most people’s milk names are not recorded or known, with some notable exceptions. Liu Shan, the son of Liu Bei, who as a baby was rescued by Zhao Yun during the Shu forces retreat from Changban. Perhaps because his big debut in history/legend was as a baby, he is well-known for his milk name A-Dou 阿斗, which means, essentially, Dipper.

If you’re writing a story, you really only need to worry about a milk name for your character if it’s a historical (or pseudohistorical) setting, and even then only if the character either makes an appearance as a small infant or you consciously decide to have them interact with characters who knew them well as a small child and choose to continue using the milk name. Not all parents, etc who could use the milk name with a youth or an adult actually did so.

Here are some milk names I’ve come up with in my fiction: Little Mouse/Xiaoshu 小鼠 for a girl, Tadpole/Kedou 蝌蚪 for a boy, and Shouty/A-Yao 阿吆 for a boy. In the first two cases the babies were both smol and quiet (as babies go). The last one neither small nor quiet, ahahaha. 蔷蔷 Qiangqiang, which is a pretty enough name meaning “wild rose” (duplication to make it lighter), except the baby is a boy, so this is the typical idea that making a boy feminine makes him worth less, which, yikes, but also, historically accurate. Also Xiaohei 小黑 “Blackie” for a work that I will probably never publish because I don’t ever see myself finishing it. I might recycle it to use on another story.

 Here are some more milk names I came up with off the cuff for a friend that wanted an insulting milk name. They ended up not using any of these, so feel free to use, no credit necessary. Rongzi 冗子 “Unwanted Child”; Xiaochou 小丑 “Little Ugly”; A-Xu 阿虛 “Empty”; Pangzhu 胖豬 “Fat Pig”;  Shasha 傻傻 “Dummy”.

PITFALLS!

Chinese has a lot of homophones. Like, so many, you cannot even believe. That means the potential for puns, double meanings, etc, is off the charts. And this can be bad, real real bad, when it comes to names. It is way too easy to pick a name and think to yourself “wow, this name is great” and then realize later that the name sounds exactly the same as “cat shit” or something even worse.

Some Chinese families live the name choosing life on hard mode because their surname is itself a homonym that can make almost any name sound bad. I’m speaking of course of the poor Wus and Bus of the world. You see Wu may have innocuous and pleasant surnames associated with it, but it also means “without, un-”. (Bu is similar, sounds like “no, not”.) Suddenly, any pleasant name you give your kid, your kid is NOT that thing.

This means picking a name that is pleasant in itself yet also somehow also pleasant when combined with Wu. So you might pick a character with a sound like Ting, Xian, Hui, or Liang - unstopping, unlimited, no regrets, immeasurable. A positive negative name, a kind of paradox. Like I said, this is naming on hard mode.

If you are naming an ancient character, I am going to say in my opinion you should ignore all considerations of sound, because reconstruction of ancient Chinese pronunciations is on some other, other level of pedantic and you just don’t need to do that to yourself.

For modern characters, however, an attractive name, in general, should be a mix of tones and a mix of sounds. As a non-Chinese speaker, basically this means especially if you go for a two character given name, having all three characters start with the same sound, or end with the same sound, can sound kind of tongue twistery and thus silly/stupid. That doesn’t mean that such names never exist, and can in some cases even sound good (or at least memorable), but how likely is it that you’ve found the exception? Not very. (Two out of three having repetition isn’t bad. It’s three out of three you have to be careful of. Something like Wang Fang or Zhou Pengpeng is probably fine; it’s something over the top like Guan Guangguo or Li Lili you want to avoid.)

Just like the West (sigh), in the modern Sinosphere it is widely acceptable for girls to have masculine names but totally unacceptable for boys to have feminine names. If you see the radical 女 which means woman, don’t choose that character for a boy, at least if you’re trying to be realistic. Now Chinese ideas of masculinity doesn’t have the same boundaries as Western ideas, but if you want to play around in those boundaries, you gotta do that research on your own; you’ve left what I can teach you in this already entirely too long tutorial.

Don’t name a character after someone else in story, or after a famous person. In some/many Western cultures, and actually in some Eastern cultures too (Japan is basically fine with this, for example), naming a baby the same name as someone else (a relative, a saint, a famous person, etc), is a respected and popular way to honour that person.

But not in Chinese culture, not now, not a thousand years ago, not two thousand years ago. (Disclaimer: I bet there is some weird rare exception that, eventually, somebody will “gotcha” me with. I am prepared to be amazed and delighted when this occurs.)

Part of this is because of a fundamentally different idea in Chinese culture vs many other cultures about what is valuing vs disrespecting with regard to personal names. The highest respect paid in Chinese history to a category of personal names is to the emperor, and what would happen there is that it would be under name taboo, a very serious and onerous custom where you not only have to not say the emperor’s name, but you can’t say anything that sounds the same as the emperor’s name.

Did I mention that this is in the language of CRAZY GO NUTS numbers of homonyms? The day-to-day troubles caused by observing name taboo were so potentially intense that there are even instances where, before ascending to the imperial throne, the emperor-to-be would change his name to something that was easier to observe taboo about!

So you see this is an attitude that says: if you want to honour and show respect to somebody, you don’t speak their name.

As the highest person in the land, only the emperor gets this extreme level of avoidance, but it trickles down all through society. You can’t use the personal names of people superior to you. Naming a baby after someone inherently throws the hierarchy out of whack. Now you have a young baby with the same name as a grown adult, or even a dead person, who is due honour from their rank in life. People who would not be permitted to use the inspiration’s name may now use that name because they are superior to the baby who received the name! This would mean that hierarchy was not being preserved, and oh my heaven, is there anything worse than hierarchy not being preserved? All of Chinese History: Noooooo!

Now. As an author—and I hope to God no one is using my Chinese name guide as a resource to name an actual human baby because I can’t take that kind of pressure—you can use the names of characters to inspire the names of other characters, in the following way.

Remember that I said that the key, the starting point, to naming someone in Chinese is to start from a value. Okay. So what you do, if as the author you want to draw a thematic connection between two fictional characters, is take the Inspiration character’s name, think about what the value is that caused that name to be chosen, and then go from that value to choose the New Character’s name.

If you’ll recall what I said about Gan Ning and his baby Wan, this is exactly the approach I took. Gan Ning had a placid single character name that belied his violent and outrageous personality; I chose a placid single character name for his similarly wild daughter to make them thematically similar. As an author, I named his baby after him. But within the context of the story, she was not named after him. Does the distinction make sense?

Values also run in families for obvious reasons. It’s very common to look at a family tree and see lots of names that follow a kind of theme and give you a sense that, eg, this family is rather low class and uneducated; this family is very erudite but a bit too fussy about it; this family is really big on Confucianism. So yes, as an author, looking to other characters for inspiration is not a bad idea.

Remember, a lot of times, as an author, you can and even should kick realism to the curb sometimes. If you want to make some Ominous Foreshadowing that Character A’s name is something to do with fire but! They name their child something to do with water and therefore they are destined to clash with their own offspring, gasp, you can do that kind of thing because you are the god of your universe. Relish your power.

Do you have any more questions? Feel free to send a PM or an ask. I hope this was helpful! Go forth and name your Chinese OCs with slightly more confidence!

Edit 22 April 2019: I added some more sections (fortune telling, Milk Names, and taboo on naming after people). I also need to overhaul the entirety of the previous to emphasize that even thought I thoughtlessly used “Chinese” as if it was synonymous with “Han”, there are non-Han Chinese and they can have very different naming customs. Mea culpa.

[fonulyn]

I need to scream about RE ID bc like. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I did. Was it. Just wrapped up way too nicely and quickly? Also yeah. I was a little disappointed by it tho, like the length, and the flashback scenes weren't as clear as I think they should have been? Like I understood what was happening, but it took me a little too much brain power to like keep up with what was and wasn't a flashback lmao

Also I wanna say, I get wanting to keep Jun See alive but god, that did not look fun. Just let him die, dude, no one wants to live like that, smh.

Thank god they kept Leon's one liners tho, like thank you for that at least lol also Claire, my GIRL, I love her holy shit. Honestly she was amazing, like, just perfect. Not sure why she has a gun in the promotional poster, bc she just. Never has a gun throughout the entire show, I don't think? Also can we talk about how she took that guy down with that lamp, and then hopped on top of him just fucking ready to continue to beat the shit out of him? Chris would be so proud 🥲

Okay also, I saw what you said with that flirting scene, and I agree that it seemed like Leon was trying to lighten the mood, but it so didn't need to be put in there at all @ the writers. Like this show could have gotten away with no romance, or just that one moment near the end with Claire and Leon (which, I don't ship them much, and that moment at the v end where she was like "are you ever gonna stop treating me like a kid?" And he responded with "probably not" or whatever kind of ruined whatever was shown earlier? Like it feels like she's had that convo with Chris before too, so I'm like hm no don't imply romance and then imply that he treats her like a little kid every time they run into each other, now it's weird lol) and been fine. None of the story was contingent on any kind of romance between anyone.

Now with that said, can I just say Patrick absolutely wanted to suck Leon's dick? Like he was smitten, and I bet you they at least fuck after all this is said and done, if not date for a short period of time. I thought they were gonna kill Patrick off, I'm glad they didn't tho, he was v wholesome lol.

Also I wanna mention that every serious moment (save a small handful) I just. I couldn't take it seriously, it was too over the top. Acid? Really? That's the self destruct measure? Slowly rising acid? I dunno, that doesn't seem quite right to me, I don't think that's how it works lol

Honestly they should have just made this into a new movie, bc making it a series implies more to follow and in general a longer narrative, but these eps were barely 20 minutes each, so there's almost no point splitting it like that. Did I enjoy myself? Yeah, I always do when Leon is involved, but it could have been so much better.

Also the silly little shipper in me is kind of desperate for more interaction between Chris and Leon, bc as far as I'm aware it's just RE6, RE vendetta, and RE ID (and I think the person who told Chris to save Claire in either code x or Veronica was Leon? Not 100% about that tho lol) where they actually interact with each other, and considering that they're the two main characters of the franchise, they should probably meet up more? Idk, that's just my gay ass hoping for more Chreon content lmao but still.

ANYWAYS yeah, I would rate the show like a 7.5/10? It wasn't amazing but it wasn't garbage, either. Probably my least favorite of the four animated movies tbh, but I will take the Leon content, thank you Capcom. Also it was interesting to see Leon around the time following/around RE4 and RE degeneration, I thought, I dunno.

oh boy I agree 100% it was wrapped up way too quickly in the end. like killing Jason? by just dropping him in the acid? it was way too simple and easy if you ask me. and like, why didn't he yeet Leon into the acid when he had him by the throat? him not killing Leon makes zero sense to me??

asdfg yeah I get they weren't ready to let Jun See go, but I bet Jun See really would've preferred to go...

I am so happy that they kept the one liners!! Leon felt very, very in character which I loved so much. I was afraid they'd tone it down or make him super serious or so, and it was such a relief they didn't. he was so eager to help and so goddamn kind to everyone I don't know if my heart can even handle it ;;;;;

also Claire!! so badass!! I loved the part where she attacked the guy with the lamp (yes Chris would be super proud haha) and THE HEADBUTT seriously, one of the top highlights of the entire series :'D

(but honestly this is gonna get long i'mma gonna hit that read more here)

and the flirting scene, I do think they could've left it out entirely and it felt a little strong-armed in. but I'm trying to look at the silver lining? Leon was super goddamn adorable in it, like, so cute it hurts :'D and Shen May didn't seem bothered really, it was more this joking thing between them. so while yes, it was unnecessary, i'm focusing on the joking feel of it and choosing to interpret it as such :'D

also, can I just say, the "romantic moment" with Claire and Leon near the end didn't feel very romantic to me? I know it's a romcom cliché (or at least a fanfic cliché lmao) how they ended up in a pile after the rescue but ...it didn't scream romance to me? although I do kind of like the pairing! (not a top fave but a cute one)

and yes, the whole "when are you gonna stop treating me like a kid?" "probably never" felt SO much like a sibling moment!! such big brother energy from Leon, and I don't know, that made me super duper happy?? I want them to be friends. I neeeed them to be friends gdi. which is why I am unhappy with how mad Claire seemed to be at Leon in the end and how they left it off like they did. I am hoping that it sets things up for a second season? and they for whatever reason need them on kind of the opposing sides at first? because otherwise it makes no sense to me for her to be that disappointed in him. in Degeneration they already establish they work in different ways towards the same goal, and for that to do a 180 now feels... like a disservice to the characters? idk?

lmaooooo but yes Patrick 100% wanted to suck Leon's dick he didn't even try to be subtle about it :'D idk I would've wanted Patrick to have more depth and screentime too, i so wish they would've made it a longer series and given the characters more development. because I liked pretty much all of the new characters they introduced! but it feels none of them reached their actual potential!

then again that is kind of the whole deal with resident evil in general, they set up awesome characters and end up wasting them half of the time :'D guess i shouldn't be surprised.

THE SLOWLY RISING ACID PISSED ME OFF lmaooo c'mon!! it doesn't seem like a good self destruct measure. especially since ...you'd need different acid to dissolve organic matter and to dissolve inorganic matter if we're being nitpicky. and how would it be plausible for them to store enough of it safely to even do this?? they should've just detonated the whole place and blown it to smithereens or something, the acid was. stupid.

i agree, it feels like a movie. but I think @tirsynni is probably right when saying that it was sort of a test run to see if they should make more? which I am so hoping for. because even with the complaints I have of this, I DID enjoy it, a lot!! and I do want more! and maybe this time we get Claire and Leon actually working together for more than fifteen seconds! :'D

also I definitely would not say no to more Chris and Leon interactions. (yes it was Leon who told Chris to save Claire :) at least that) it... in general makes no sense to me how capcom seems to think friendships work? like how Sherry is all "Leon and Claire are my best friends" and then they imply they haven't met in years? if not more? idek it's. weird. it's like their characters go into storage containers in between their missions to be stored away so they can't even accidentally have personal lives or friendships or anything. weird.

(what I said about having amazing characters and ending up wasting their potential? yeah)

for me, personally, it's... well, my score for the show would depend on whether I just focus on the characterizations and what I liked, or if I try to actually take the plot and all into account too :'D but I did like this more than Degeneration! already the fact that Leon has actual facial expressions is enough to put it way above that one. (and for the record, I don't hate Degeneration either, I do like it, but... Leon is such a cardboard cutout with zero personality in it, it's super frustrating)

idk I think I need to still process this a bit to see how I will like it in the end :'D there are things i'm super hyped about in it, and things i'm disappointed in, let's see how they'll weigh in the overall experience eventually.

[elindae-writes]

Disney MCU : not really my thing and I don’t really care Elindae writes MCU : this is mad this is bogus and I love it so much

Okay, so I only watched the first few MCU movies. I'm gonna be honest, I think the franchise peaked with only the first Iron Man movie. I read a lot of MCU fanfiction before I ever saw any MCU movies at all so I just had no clue what was going on.

There are actually a few MCU fanfics I like: In The Home , (A City Full of) Helping Hands, A Hospital Full, and Wilting Yellow Flowers, all by aloneintherain. I like the spider-man.

I still don't know what's going on. I'm only caught up to the atrocity that is the second Thor movie, the one with Padme in it and the teleporting trash? That entire movie was trash. I will try to construct the storyline of the MCU based off of what few details I know:

There is a raccoon?

The Avengers break up and the Hulk is just unfazed and immediately asks: "like the beetles?"

There is an evil purple man named Thanos with a small green child and the child grows up into a tall green woman?? who is his daughter? and they talk about resources and supply and demand.

Apparently some long-haired hot man with a metal limb shows up and Steve loses his shit trying to save this bud of his

who the hell is bucky

Harley Quinn is apparently not a MCU character and that genuinely shocked me

Thor is hot. wait is he still alive?

Aunt May is hot? like wtf? how?

There's apparently a scene where Spider-Man and his Aunt are eating Thai food and they're seeing replayed Spider-man battles on a TV and she's like. "peter. petey. pete boy. NEVER get involved in those fights! run away!"

And spider-man is just like

"t'was not me"

Spiderman then ends up homeless (and friends with karen??)

There's a fishbowl man who makes images with his hands but then Spider-Man defeats him while they're on a gondola

Steve wields mjolnir? i thought Steve turned into a villain

The new Spider-Man theme is a hot bop. Same goes for the Avengers film

Benedryl Cucumberspaz is there and he has a cloak with a stupid-looking collar

there was a cat-man movie with Bilbo in it

People cast spells via throwing orbs of light into the air

JARVIS DIES?? see, i don't like that. rip. i think? i think he's dead?

They have a big spat where there's some civil war. I remember the marketing for that movie. I was trying to buy bananas at Wal-Mart and all of the cashiers were wearing "ARE YOU TEAM IRON-MAN OR CAPTAIN AMERICA?" and this was apparently a spicy debate there. I was just like "i am team banana"

Iron Man was upset about his mom and pop for some reason whereas Steve was upset because he wanted to save his bud (the one from the 1940s) so they beat the shit out of each other in the snow.

wait i remember now. the 1940s bud mURDERED Tony's mom and pop. ohhhh. oh? oh. i don't think that got resolved.

everybody wants a magical glove and the stones for the magical glove but then they fail so they try again and win

Spider-man gets attacked by a guy with a mechanical bird suit and then also there is a ferry. Spider-man also harasses a man and his ice cream

There's a sitcom show with a boring evil witch lady with red magic (very boring) and a cool groovy purple witch lady with a very good theme song

Robert California voices a robot!! But I don't think he declares himself to be "The Lizard King." disappointing.

They're making a new movie where there is a guy with arm ring jewelry with super-powers

OH and they're making a new movie where there is a bollywood dance scene and i'm a sucker for 3 hour long Indian drama so who knows, that might be my style

There's a movie where some lady punches an old lady on a train

There was an atrocious movie about a boring shrinking ant guy. I only saw like five minutes of that movie when it was 10:30 pm at night and I just happened to be in the kitchen eating muffins when I saw the movie. Kate from Lost is in it??? the ant guy is a convict, i know that much. the fuck did he do? probably got sent to the clink for being weirdly into ants tbh. i switched it over to Antiques Roadshow and lemme tell you it was 10x more exciting okay some old lady came in with an autograph from Abraham Lincoln!! I mean my god he's dead you just can't get those anymore :(

Tony gets Peter some bling

some norse dude makes out with himself. nasty

Twilight Sparkle voices a clock that harasses people

The guy who played the cowboy in Night At The Museum is also in the show, the guy who says "wwwwoooowwww" in that way that makes me crack up

steve goes back in time??? and does not prevent any of the horrors he knows will happen? for some reason? also he turns into joe biden.

Pepper Pots marries Tony or something? wha

and he gives her a SUIT? whY? the goop lady??

tony dies (rip. i liked him. i appreciated how he was an ass to everybody. i bet he'll come back though because this is comic book logic)

DOES STEVE TURN EVIL I CAN'T TELL

Anddddd apparently the comic book industry is in the trash and is getting its ass handed to it by Japan

There you have it guys! Elindae's Hot Recollection of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Believe it or not I actually am the Resident Authority On The MCU in my house so whenever my family has MCU questions they consult me.

That's probably a mistake.

Wait, by MCU did you mean McPrime Universe or Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I am still stuck in the 2012 MCU fanfic mindset where the Avengers are all living together in the tower, Steve has a sketchpad, Hawkeye travels in the vents, and Thor likes pop-tarts. I like that era of the MCU.