#honestly kind of living for this concept lmao

[synthetic-rust]

I took like one look at this train and immediately thought of this

[jongace]

jongdae…………………………

[starsweepers]

      THE ANSWER WAS PROBABLY YES... if she could figured out how to use the ancient, cursed artifacts her father kept locked away. but, of course, cleo knew exactly how to get them out if she wanted... though it WOULD probably get her grounded for the same amount of time that the curse would transpire. so it wasn't entirely worth the risk. still, the threat was not without merit.

             but the mummy princess forced herself to breathe s l o w, trying to calm herself. heart in its jar was thudding wildly before it dared to relax. she gave a wide, yet somewhat forced grin. be nice... she was working on that. "sorry, sorry, it's fine. i just... i have a reputation, and i really don't need someone to get their hands or claws on such an unflattering photo of me. it would ruin my whole image. if you're going to capture something of me - cleo de nile - it better be in full elegance. there's your tip of the day."

Did she mean that literally? Ben didn't know, but this wasn't the time to mess around and find out. This was not how a prince was meant to make a first impression at a new school.

"Sorry, sorry...!" He fumbled with the phone, blue eyes frantically searching the screen until he located and pressed the delete button. "I-I've never had one'a these things before; I-I swear I was just messing around!"

[sadtonight]

Kissing you, kissing you, kissing you, kissing you- (additional entry)

Summary: you kissed him in more ways that he could imagine and more times he could count. But he had his preferences in kissing of course, reaching cloud nine when you did his favourite types~

Characters: Ace, Leona, Jade, Rook, Malleus;

Warnings: none, lots of kissing, a bit spicy, mentions of blood in Jade's part, reader is gender neutral, established romantic relationships;

Side notes: ah, those individuals. It's like love/hate thing depending on what sort of content of them I will encounter. Except for Rook, he's such a freak I'm kinda smitten ha ha... But if I knew any of them in real life, we would throw hands on every second encounter lmao.

Ace

— what Ace really hates is the concept of hesitate. What's there to be unsure of? Just pick something and be done with it. Yeah, that's why after short lived pining and countless lame "are we together or something?" hints the ginger came up you to one day and encouraged you to finally admit that you definitely had a thing for him;

— how you become a couple was rather straightforward and casual, and yet Ace hated how his cheeks were so hot, praying for his heart not to break his ribs from how much it was pounding at that moment. The way you stupidly smiled and how you told him that you indeed liked him very very much almost made him howl from happiness;

— Ace is experienced in dating or at the very least he knows what to do, like hugging, holding hands, cuddling, eating from the same plate, playing with each others hair, going to college together etc etc. Oh right, and kissing of course!

— the ginger was such a tease and he knew that. He would intentionally sway his face from you when you reached out to meet his soft lips, which at that point needed a punch instead of a kiss. It was strange how professional and amateur he was in making out at the same time. Angling your face with one hand, the other resting in your shoulder, but his tongue being all over the place. Ace preferred that kind of kisses, or at least that's what he told you;

— one time you stayed over in Heartslabyul dorm, both of you chilling out in his shared room that was lucky empty that evening. It was a comfortable silence — Ace was a bit groggy from a hard day so he didn't speak much. You laid on the bed beside your boyfriend, watching him play some game on the smartphone, his head currently resting close to your chest;

— all while you combed his hair in a steady, lulling motion. Ace almost succumbed to sleep, until he heard you quietly wishing him good night, and feathery pressing your lips to his face: his eyelids, his forehead, his cheekbones with cheeks, his nose, his jaw and finally his mouth. Why in Twisted Wonderland you were so damn adorable?? After saying it out loud, he opened his eyes and turned his head to the side. Ace was as red as roses he often painted, and despite not saying a single word after, he hoping you would continue. Hey quit staring and... please continue kissing him...

Leona

— generally nonchalant about kissing. If you want to stick to lion's side, clinging to his arm and leaning on his chest he wouldn't mind at all, unless you get in the way. Although same doesn't applies for kissing: if you demand kisses he would poke fun at your "desperation" but if you politely ask for permission to peck him he will, with a scowl or pokerface, give in and let you do the thing, with great reluctance in public though;

— honestly he didn't care, lazily making out when both of you are cuddled somewhere warm was amazing, case closed. But Leona wouldn't say it's his top one choice — however, if asked about his favourite type he would change the topic, unless it's you who was asking, because in that instance he still wouldn't give you a solid answer. The truth is that both of you knew what it was;

�� the prideful male hated, despised, absolutely loathed how you could just come up to his sitting or laying form and...kiss his head. That's right, that's it. First you lightly ruffled his hair with your hand, and when Leona started to grumble, you would crane down and press your lips to the crown of his head or to the space near his ears — the worst places by far;

— it's not supposed to feel so nice, it was unfair how this tiny stupid gesture made him all warmed up inside. Like he was some plain house cat or something. The beastman now has to be on an extra lookout for the annoying hunter: if that creepy guy found out about how vulnerable Leona is to head kisses...it won't end well. Similarly, if Ruggie found out, then the lion can expect constant snickers and mockery from the hyena boy;

— but if you point it out, while actually pressing kisses onto his head, which was resting on your chest, Leona would tell you to shut up already. Provided you feel bold enough to keep teasing him about his soft side, he would bring you down, pinning your hands with one hand while squishing your face with another, loom over you. Care to repeat what you have just said?

— if you want to be "roughed up" so badly you should have just asked, he is more than happy to put you back into place. Oh? Leona won't stand a chance against you? Hah, sounds like a bunch of crap but sure, amuse him will ya? He already won you over, little battles like these are child's play.

Jade

— now if you only knew Jade on the surface level, as a prim and proper, polite and kind person, a true gentleman if you will, then it would "shock" you to know that he really really enjoys all kinds of unexpected kisses from his beloved partner;

— merman couldn't just get enough of them! Ordinary things that ordinary land couples do were very educational and, simply put, nice to experience: it involved so much mouth work and care, like not losing track of time in order to not forget to breath, or not to bite your tongue off in the heat of the moment. If any of the aforementioned situations happened, your boyfriend would actually feel just a drop of guilt instead of pure gloat, rubbing circles on your cheeks in a comforting manner as you heavily pant or swallow saliva mixed with your own blood;

— when it came to unexpected kisses however, Jade would rather not be a "surpriser" but a "victim". He was merely browsing books in the college library when all of the sudden you popped up out of nowhere and unexpectedly smooched his slightly parted lips and skipped off to do your things. Weren't you the most adorable one? Albeit bystanders were not all too pleased...

— said bystanders were mostly Floyd and Azul that did not, in fact, asked to be subjected to your amorous business. Floyd had to drag his twin brother away to finally get to alchemistry classes when your hugging and pecking was taking way too much time. And Azul had to literally make a fake coughing fit just for his vice dorm leader to finally tear his face away from yours and give him proper attention;

— what gets Jade to absolutely lose his mind is lipstick that easily leaves marks. When he sees the beauty product carefully applied to your lips he can't help but playfully, expectantly smile at you. At first he was quite upset upon seeing his face, neck and shirt covered in a colour of your lips, yet it was weirdly fascinating. Merman helped you apply lipstick back, gently gliding the tube along your lower lip while holding your chin up, but insisted on leaving those pretty love marks you left intact;

— the reaction it raised from his dear brother and dorm leader was priceless. Hmm? You want to say that Jade has a lipstick marks on his shirt's collar, neck, jawline, cheeks and everywhere near his mouth? Oya, you are absolutely correct, he must have not noticed it, how careless of him. Your watchfulness is much appreciated. Que to Azul gagging mentally, and Floyd physically.

Rook

— mon amour, there is no type of affection in the whole universe and beyond that Rook Hunt doesn't love or hasn't expressed yet!! The man showers people with all sorts of commentary on whatever attribute has caught his keen eye, so naturally he can't seem to stop showering you with praise on whatever topic he witness you get involved in;

— the huntsman is very physical with his partner too, if you don't mind that is, since he respects and cares for your wishes. Rook always has one on his hands on your body, like resting his hand on your waist or cradling your hand in a loose hold. Bien sûr, he also never left without planting a kiss onto your being!

— ah, pressing his lips to the back of your hand when you visit Pomefiore, pecking the side of your face when you don't face him directly while you sat together, lurching to your mouth to taste the last bite of the dessert from the your tongue — the delicious looking sweet treat he has been watching you idly eating in the courtyard on the bench for the past fifteen minutes;

— it's easy to kiss Rook once or twice, yet impossible to make out with his mouth running French miles each time you pull away just a little to take a breather or to shift. Additionally, your boyfriend was unreasonably busy, leaving you very little time to get things truly going;

— do not fret through, the huntsman tries his very best to clear his schedule enough to spare you the right amount of time, so you both wouldn't rush things before they escalate to something more... something he admitted to be enjoying way to far;

— Rook is the most desperate when you initiate long, slow, steady and oh so sweet make out session. Sitting or laying down as close possible, limbs wrapped around each other's bodies. It was incredibly warm, like you went ablaze, no matter how much clothes were discarded;

— the pace at which your lips unhurriedly shifted was driving Rook insane, his constantly sharp hunter senses dulling ever so slightly, the only thing on his air deprived mind being to kiss you again, again, again and again for as long as humanly possible. French words and phrases would seep out of this throat, worshiping your sheer existence. L'amour dangereux, he kept chanting, yet kissing you once more, for longer than before.

Malleus

— the fae could have never imagined how charming the kissing process actually was: not long after you two begun kissing on the regular basis he finally realised the appeal. Truly, you will never know until you try it for yourself;

— Malleus acknowledged your affection that was present in the every lightest peck to his skin, soon enough his own infatuation translating into pressing his lips to the part of your face he could easily reach. He adored how surprised you were at the start, your little heart freezing for just a moment when his mouth connected with your forehead. The astonishment quickly wore down after a couple of months unfortunately, but nonetheless the kissing part never got tiresome or boring;

— you had to explain each and every kiss you made since your boyfriend hardly could see the difference. The results and intentions are all the same isn't that right? Turns out formal hand kissing could be romantic too. Malleus found it incredibly amusing, to the point of smirking like a child, when you took his large hand and gracefully yet casually drew your face forward to meet his pale knuckles. It felt so gratifying to receive such treatment considering he was a future king of Briar Valley — something which you regarded without fear or apprehension;

— in turn, dragon fae wished to return the favour. Not a single type of kiss could be satisfactory to the degree that in his opinion would make you as delighted as him. Malleus had tried to apply already existing knowledge of kissing onto you, only to teleport away, with no explanation, to ponder on what else to test when he didn't get the reaction he expected to prompt;

— you never minded the weird antics your boyfriend sometimes drabbled in. He was yours after all, and you loved him either way. You cuddled up to his chest, adjusting in his lap while Malleus was reading an old book. Taking note of your movements, the male brushed the side of your face with his fingers painted in black nail polish;

— you used this opportunity to catch his hand and snuggle into it, pressing light quick pecks all over the slightly cold skin. Malleus could crash gemstones with his bare hands, lift the heaviest objects and ignite or freeze his limbs in a split second, but you adoringly squeezed them with your weaker ones, just having your lips resting on his wrist. Such a precious, mortal, beloved being you were, weren't you?

[genericpuff]

I’m gonna have to disagree with you that Kaos is any better than LO. It’s all the same bull crap.

Kaos just seems like live-action LO, both having a boring storyline with bad or fetishized characterizations of the Greek Gods and figures, and both looking artistically beautiful and some cool concepts, but badly executed. The only difference is that Kaos has more LGBTQIA+ themes than LO, has a tiny bit more Greek references, and gets much darker. That’s pretty much it.

As a Greek who studies our myths and stories extensively, I’m tired of the west trying to take and rearrange our stories and retell them ‘with a modern, western lense’. It’s exhausting and infuriating.

It’s time the west gets over its fascination with us and move on.

Fair opinion! Honestly, the initial post I made about it was after only watching the first couple episodes. Now that I've finished it, I can definitely see actual glaring issues with it, both in their characterizations as well as in how they kind of lose the intrigue after a few episodes of the setting and elements of them being gods. Which are all issues that LO have as well.

Though I will say, LO has those issues far more than Kaos does, but what really separates LO from Kaos, in my opinion - the creators of Kaos aren't pretending that Kaos is more than it is. To me, Kaos isn't in any way a singular Greek myth retelling, more so a fun "Greek epic" style story featuring the gods in a modern setting, the way LO could have been if Rachel hadn't tried to make it into something bigger than it was (and if she didn't put herself on a pedestal as a "self proclaimed folklorist"). I can watch Kaos and appreciate it as a fun Greek myth inspired piece of media because that's pretty much all it's trying to be. Meanwhile LO gives us middle-school-level writing with very little real Greek myth influence (aside from what it benefits Rachel to do so) that even goes so far as to outright disrespect the myths that they were based on... all the while people praise it as the greatest Greek myth retelling ever.

I think Kaos is miles better than LO because it at least tells a more coherent story than LO ever could have, with a lot more attention paid to the stylization of a Greek epic (compared to LO which tried and failed to implement those same things, such as the Fates, self-fulfilling prophecies, and witty narration as to retell a story that's already happened).

Granted, that story still takes a lot of liberties with the source material (some that I enjoyed, others not so much), but in that regard, I refer to the above - Kaos isn't trying to be an actual retelling like LO did, so I view it the same way I do as something like Hercules or Hades, where the people who made it clearly love Greek myth and wanted to do some Greek myth-inspired story with their own twists on the narratives, and it paid off in a story that, in spite of their flaws, still feels intentional and thought out.

LO, by comparison, is just a mess of ripped off half-baked ideas thrown at a wall and filled in with self-fulfilling power fantasy garbage written by someone who claims to have deeper knowledge of the myths but clearly doesn't. It's hard to enjoy LO in spite of its flaws because it's all flaws and they're so deeply-rooted in the context of Rachel's own biases and sexual preferences that you really can't separate it from that once you know if it.

I do have some criticisms of Kaos and some of its more creative choices - Hera cheating on Zeus with Poseidon (literally wtf lmao), Persephone still being the "I went down there willingly!" archetype (though at least she's not 19 in this, the casting for her and Hades was great), as well as the fact that things weren't wrapped up by the end of the first season which really bums me out because now it's up to the mercy of Netflix to give it that second season - but ultimately, from a story-writing perspective, Kaos absolutely did accomplish having an actual narrative with themes and goal-driven writing that LO failed in having. That comparison doesn't make Kaos a 100% perfect show without flaw, but I made the comparison initially anyways because much of what I enjoyed in Kaos was what I expected from LO (and ultimately didn't get).

That's just my own two cents though! And I need to make it clear - I am not a Greek person! I have no say or merit within the discussion regarding Greek myth and how it's been appropriated!! - so ultimately... my opinion of these things really aren't as valuable as someone who actually is Greek or studied heavily in it.

So that said, I can completely see the merit in your own arguments that a lot of these "modern retellings" tend to miss the point of the stories they're trying to retell (esp with the criticisms I outlined above) and are often chewed up through a Western lens. The lesser of two evils is still evil. But if we're purely talking Kaos vs. Lore Olympus here as modern entertainment that are both attempting similar things... I'd be way more likely to rewatch and recommend one over the other. Plus there are a lot of adaptions out there made by Westerners / non-Greeks that are incredible and are, at the very least, amazing stepping stones into the world of Greek myth for those who want to learn more about it. Out of the pool of ongoing modern Greek myth retellings/inspired works - Blood of Zeus, Hades/Hades 2, Kaos, Epic: The Musical, Hadestown, Hercules, Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and Lore Olympus - it's not hard to guess which one I'd be the least likely to recommend as gateways into Greek mythology. If those titles were organized in a list of best to worst, Kaos isn't at the top of that list, but it's sure as shit higher than LO 💀😆

[suethesocks]

Maxdrillo is REAL

Its been a while since ive last done a Max 10 alien, but i wanna do them consistently again this summer

For this one i did consider reworking armodrillo, much like alot of people im not really a fan of robotic aliens. But i honestly think for armodillo the concept of your arms having pistons and a drill and being essentially a living powertool is something that can only really work for a robot-y looking alien

So i decided to stick with it and maybe run with it a little. Whats kind of like a toolbox but bigger? I thought of construction vehicles heehee

I changed his toes to look aesthetically like a forklift, his tail to be an excavator bc its dumb but i liked it hahsjh, and added a part to his body where the neck is to hopefully look kinda like the frame and window of a vehicle. Almost as if he was a constructacon or something lmao

Biggest change was the cement mixer arm, which is what gave me the idea to change up his powers too. When he absorbs materials into the inside of his arm, his forearm starts spinning around as it mixes the materials together before launching them

[demeterdefence]

been thinking a lot about how lore olympus really just could not fathom the concept of found family, it absolutely HAD to have a traditional blood-related family for the ending which is just ... so rachel honestly lmao we really should have known.

there were a lot of instances in the series where it almost seemed like rachel went out of her way to paint biological families as inherently dysfunctional, or at least not all they're cracked up to be - aphrodite is disdained by ares' family, zeus and hera are constantly arguing / zeus is constantly unfaithful, rhea and ouranos are an abusive marriage that begets three wildly traumatized sons, etc and so forth. that's not to say all families were bad or flawed (whether that was a choice or rachel spent so little time on them it just didn't come up) but the end result is that there were a lot of broken biological families in the series.

i think rachel wanted to demonstrate that you do not have to stick with an abusive family if they hurt you - that blood is not the defining aspect of family and bonds, that you can make your own and build your own family. i think rachel thought she was writing that, with how hades hates his dad and how persephone distances herself from demeter (who did nothing wrong but anyways.) the problem is, she absolutely does not follow through with it. at the end of the day, rachel is going to prioritize blood bonds and biological children over found family, because to her, that's the only family that counts.

like, hades raised thanatos from childhood and abuses the fuck out of him, completely traumatizes the god of death to the point thanatos is genuinely afraid of hades. thanatos is mocked, derided, scorned, and scoffed at by hades, constantly. thanatos did not have a CHOICE in who raised him, his mother abandoned him into hades' care. and hades does not for a single moment let up on how resentful he is about it. when thanatos finally admits that he only had hades as a parental figure (or ANY kind of family, tbh), hades turns it into how that affects him, how it makes him feel. after, we get two jokes about how hades is thanatos' dad now, and the last scene we ever get of thanatos is that "sometimes hades talks to him." thanatos never shows up in hades' daydreams of a family, he never shows up as a person who is important to hades. for centuries, hades was in charge of raising thanatos, not once does he ever appear in any of hades' dreams or wants regarding family. not biological family, so fuck off.

more to the point, the narrative makes it explicit to us that hades can't have children - it's brought up three times specifically, to drive the point home that hades wants children, he's definitely tried to have children, and it just won't happen. melinoe was seen as a way around that, and i won't lie, compared to rachel's usual hamfisted approaches, it wasn't the worst idea to have. but by the end of the series, it's shown that oh, nope, hades can have children (only with persephone though) and also they look like him, because biological bonds are everything. you know who doesn't count? dionysus, who was kidnapped from his dad and raised as a pet project for persephone. the kid helps her conquer winter or whatever the fuck that plot point was, but because he's not their biological child, hades and persephone ditch him after the final battle and throw him his old mom back to get rid of him.

biological children aren't a bad thing and it's not a bad thing to want or have them, but it's so fucking telling that hades and persephone have multiple people in their lives who should be considered family, and are picked up and discarded summarily once their use is over. dionysus was their proxy kid, and we literally do not see hades interact with him except maybe twice. thanatos gets absolutely trounced and i'll never not be angry about that. i don't even know what's going on with persephone's half brother, but he shows up for a single panel in the finale and then disappears.

wouldn't it have been so powerful if hades, an abuse victim, decided to be the father thanatos deserved? wouldn't it have been more in line with the supposed message of the story if hades and persephone opened their homes to people who once felt like them, abandoned and unwanted? at the very least, couldn't they have shown love to the people in their lives who sacrificed so much and put up with so much from them? what exactly is the measure of a family in lore olympus? we can't control who births us, but we can control the hurt we ourselves give, and the love we share, and that would have been an infinitely better ending for the two most selfish characters to show their growth. another disappointing pin in an already massively disappointing ending.

[loudclan-clangen]

HEY so the last ask reminded me that this is set in Alaska! As someone who used to live there it makes me very happy to see, so just for fun I brainstormed lore ideas/questions for a Clan there n I thought id share :) this is Long lmao i apologize

The terrain for one thing. Growing up I remember all the horror stories of people getting stuck in muskeg and not being able to get out before the tide comes in. so that’s always freaky, but i imagine that if theres any in the area then the cats might try and take advantage of it as safely as they can? for prey and such. on that note whats their water situation like anyways? braided rivers?

any specific ideas for what area of mountains the cats are in? are they in the higher ranges, the ones wrapped up in clouds, the rocky kind like the ones around Denali? the greener ones with all the trees? is their territory frequented by hikers and/or tourists or are they relatively untouched wilderness? I think i remember it being said that LoudClan is somewhere more towards the south, is it intended to be generally vague? :0

Predators!!!! The cats can deal with all sorts of unique stuff in a setting like this, bears n lynxes n wolves… eagles… possibly even wolverines since theyre up in the mountains? i’d be curious to see how a clan would react to a wolf pack passing through the area lol. also ive always just loved the concept of a queen finding an abandoned lynx kitten or smth and unknowingly adopting it and it just keeps… getting bigger… whoops… oh well its the clans weird child now

So many fun lil prey animals too, ground squirrels n ptarmigans n such!! I bet ptarmigans would totally harass cats during breeding season and that could be funny. maybe standard apprentice training is to learn the different ground squirrel alarm calls. maybe they even sometimes encounter dalls or caribou or moose on patrols (perhaps moose have even been known to kill before, so theyre considered dangerous).

Also just….. the day-night cycle??? I’d honestly be pretty interested to see how that ties in, like it’s daylight forever in the summer-early autumn and pretty much perpetually nighttime in the winter-early breakup. do the cats have any thoughts or beliefs towards that? do they like to look up at the northern lights, and listen when theyre so clear that they can hear them?

Okok thats all now sorry. I got way too excited lol i miss AK sm, i left when i was little 💔 if any of this has been discussed already in a lore post then ignore me its been a hot minute and i rattled this off on a whim!!!

Love this! Okay, let me try to hit all of these questions in a way that will hopefully be understandable for everyone so if you're the asker please skip past the definitions/backstory.

A 'muskeg' is like a swamp or a bog. I assume that you're referring to the area outside of Anchorage that we always called the 'Mud-Flats", because that's where I heard stories of people getting stuck. (Specifically there's a very famous urban legend of a soldier stationed in Anchorage who went out with his buddies, got stuck up to his waist, ended up tied to a helicopter, and when they tried to pull him out with the helicopter he uh... separated. And his legs can supposedly still be found in the flats. (I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THIS IS NOT TRUE. THERE WAS A SOLDIER, HE GOT STUCK, HE DROWNED, THE SEPARATION HAPPENED AFTER HE WAS DEAD AND THEY TRIED TO RETRIEVE THE BODY. THEY DID GET HIS LEGS BACK TO MY KNOWLEDGE.)) It's pretty much a long stretch of quicksand (but it's like more mud and silt than sand? idk how to really describe it i haven't been there much cause ya know, hearing stories like that will kinda cure your curiosity as a kid.)

Anyway, Ghostclan's territory used to be Mud-Flats, but long before the cats moved in twolegs came and installed the Rip Rap (big jagged rocks that are placed on the coastline to keep it from erroding) that make up Freezingclan's territory and that kinda took some of the danger out of it. Since the tide no longer comes up so high, while getting stuck is certainly not a good thing, it's not a death sentence as clanmates have time to gather help and dig you out. Though it does make it hard/near impossible to launch an attack on Ghostclan without an insider to lead you around the wet spots. Larger prey can sometimes be found stuck in the mud, having died from exhaustion, but the wetness causes the meat to rot quickly, and what is left draws the attention of larger predators, while also adding the issue of having to avoid getting stuck as you retrieve it, so it's not really a reliable source of food as much as it is a last resort. Ghostclan also contains the territory's braided river, which the cats call the "Friendly River" because it's three smaller streams that meet up into one large one. (I didn't do the best job rendering this on the map but that is what I was trying to represent. I'm not a landscape person, I'm doing my best.) Because the territory is a narrow valley set right on the coast they don't have a ton of room for the rivers to braid, but the thought was there!

It is intented to be generally vague, because I'm not an expert on geography and I live a couple of hours from this exact area, I didn't want to say "yeah it's here" and then have people correct me with minute little things. Plus if it's entirely made up then I can alter things to my liking. But the territory is inspired by the land along the Seward highway, where on one side it's these big mountains and on the other it's just a short sloping coastline. It looks like this in real life:

(You can even see the railroad and layer of rip rap that I included in the territory map) I imagine it's a place where the road veers inland so that the clans can have more space to roam. While the railroad runs through the mountain the highway is just on the other side of it. The mountains here are nowhere as tall as Denali, but they aren't anything to scoff at either. I imagine them being something like this, (which I believe is Exit Glacier?):

The lower areas are densely forested with tall trees and thick shrubs, but the greenery gets thinner and shorter as the elevation rises until you get to the higher ridges and peak which is pretty much just rock. Loudclan camp would be located at the transition point between grass and rock, so that there is no place above them where their enemies might hide and wait to pounce. As for humans, the territory used to belong to a small mining town. They dug the mine, installed the rip rap, built the buildings, and leveled the area of the mountain that Loudclan camp is set on, but over time resources dried up and people left. Now it's nearly untouched save the railroad, which still runs through the mountain regardless of whether there's a stop there anymore. The fact that you have to either cross railroad tracks or mountains to get to it, and its remote nature mean that hikers don't usually put in the energy to venture that way. (My mom grew up in Sutton, a former coal mining town and railway hub that was long past it's glory days by the time she was born and so this fictional town is kind of an omage to that).

The cats absolutely will interact with unique predators! The game has done me the favor of adding in wolverines already (and let me tell you, they cause PROBLEMS), but the cats might also face off against an aggressive little ermine (which are much fiercer than their appearance would have you believe) or even find themselves stumbling upon a blackbear gorging on blueberries early in the fall. They aren't really in the correct area for a wolf pack (and to my knowledge i don't remember writing about any) but who knows what's to come? Okay, now onto Lynx. Up until about 30 seconds ago I was under the impression that domestic cats and lynx could hybridize. Why did I think that? Well because everyone and their mother up her SWEARS that their female cat got out and mated with a lynx at one point or another. That or their big long hair tom cat is part lynx. So who was I to question whether that could even happen? Well apparently it can't but oops, too late, already headcannoned that several characters are part lynx so fuck it. These cats are special. They've speciated. Juneaucliff's dad was a Lynx. What are you gonna do about it? Huh? Regardless, yes, the cats do interact with Lynx, but they speak the same language, so it's a bit of a different situation. It probably won't be mentioned unless people ask about specific characters, but anyone with ear tufts/unusually large stature/big paws may have been descended from a lynx at some point.

The prey animals I think are more dangerous than the predators honestly. So many of them are specifically adapted to the terrain in ways that the cats aren't. Imagine chasing a snowshoe hare across the mountainside, following directly in their tracks only to suddenly feel the snow fall away beneath you, because while their big feet allow them to skid across the crevasse without disturbing the crust of the snow, you're just a little bit too heavy and you sink a bit to far and now you're falling to your death. You're sitting on the edge of the river during a salmon run, watching an eagle dive down to grab a fish. What are the chances it changes it's mind and grabs you? A cat weighs a lot less than a king salmon. And moose would be a danger. 9/10 they won't even glance twice at you but the one time you get unlucky enough to jump down from a tree and land between a cow and her calf? Maybe with no snow a cat could outrun a moose but those long legs mean that there's no feasible escape in the colder months. Even in the warmer months a cat can be trampled by a herd of caribou if they aren't vigilant while walking along the flat lands of the valley. Ptarmagins are easy food, but they're annoying and they spook off every other kind of prey within their designated "territory" and are just generally a nuisance. Some of them are useful, though, Dall sheep wool is is great for insulating nests and shed antlers from moose and caribou can be used to strengthen camp walls and build dens or can be broken into smaller sections to splint broken bones.

The day/night cycle absolutely plays into it! That's why starclan moved into the Black Water Pool. It's the only place where night always exists. In moon 14 Part 2 Twistedtail explains to Wildfirecry that starclan had to move, saying "We couldn't survive there. Not when the sun silenced the stars for seasons at a time". Many cats believe that their ancestors can't see them while the stars are hidden, that the light of the sun blinds them, and therefore are more likely to do devious things in the summer when the sun never leaves the sky in order to avoid punishment. They don't live far north enough to experience perpetual night but even so, only having 6 hours of daylight in the winter does make patrolling and hunting much more difficult. As of right now, the northern lights mean something different to every cat. They each interpret them/were taught to believe something unique about them. Are they the last words of dead cats frozen in the air? Are they the souls of your ancestors dancing across the sky? Maybe they're a sign from starclan, demanding that the lead healer come speak to them at the black water or a sign of good luck for a little born beneath them. No one really knows, except for that they're something important. (I'm not committing to anything cause they could be used in so many interesting ways that i don't wanna limit myself ya know?)

anyway, thank you for the ask, this was so fun to talk about! My apologies for not answering as many asks as I had hoped to over my break, I was on a trip and then had to buckle down on school work and then got sick (just a cold. im fine) but things are looking good for a beginning of July return time still! (Note because I know what tumblr reading comprehension is like: I'm not returned quite yet. I still have to write a paper for school. But soon! Yay!) If you have asked an ask in the past month: I'm so sorry please be patient. There's so many of you. If you were sending me actual, physical mail I would be completely buried in it. I love it, and hope you keep doing it, but... just know it might be a minute... or two... or ten.

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

A little reflection on lore and AUs

This is something that's been roaming in my mind for a while, I just want to put it down on "paper".

All of us have their main AU. And with AU, I mean a universe where their characters are canon in the KND lore and live their own adventures. All of us have a main timeline with the main characters that will go on living their lives and adventures.

This AU can generate more AUs within it, where little things change, and these will be labeled as "AUs" by the creator since they derive from the main plot but then develop into something else. And these kinds of AUs are fun because you can explore different possibilities within your own story!

Now, that being said, let's talk about "adding someone else's OC into your story". I see it can have 4 main situations:

The OCs and their lore are now fused with your own, and you accept the existence of said OCs in your story since they don't change the end result, if anything they make it funnier to achieve;

The OCs are a different AU and you know it, and you just play it as a different AU from your plot, it's just for fun;

This is a "different universes meeting" kind of deal, a portal opened somewhere, and now the AUs are interacting. They won't change their final story, but this is a fun little moment that can be canon or not;

You acknowledge these OCs may exist in your own universe but also specify that, even if they might have the same story and personalities, they also might be a different experience from the main AU the creator invented for them. They just exist in your universe, but they are not the same exact people.

I love the 3rd plotline a lot, I find myself doing that but with past and future, having them meet for the lolz (even if it's just an AU into my story). I am also up for RPing AUs meeting because I find the concept really funny and interesting, with characters explaining their deal and then going on adventures together (also because let's be real, Penny ain't gonna meet anyone's OC anytime soon since there's age difference).

But when I introduced the idea that @artsygirl0315's Sector PHP meets Irwin I started diving into the 4th case: these OCs might exist in my universe but they are not the exact same.

As an example, still using Sector PHP: let's say I will have them show up for the Nightmare War and help others win it. They will be canon in that part of the lore (if the creator wants), but of course, in their main story the Nightmare War never happened and they will never experience it, and I won't force them to add it to their canon, since this is completely my creation and *I* only know how to develop and end.

Another example (sorry for dragging you in but this is relevant lol), is @roguephenon, who has the plan to make Penny canon in his AU story, but she's gonna be a different version of Penny, even if they might end up having the same main traits. He can have Penny do what he wants, and he can modify her a bit, but still, Penny is now canon in my AU and his AU too! Maybe one day these two will also meet and tbh I LIVE to see that moment!

Honestly, usually, the fandoms I was in were canon-oriented, there weren't too many OCs, and if there were, I and other creators would go the 3rd route and have AUs somehow meet.

This is the first time I find myself actually wondering if I can make it somehow canon that someone else's OC exists in my AU. And I like it!

Of course, if you don't like the idea just hit me up (literally, with a bat) and say you don't want your OC into my lore but you're up for AUs meeting or whatever you prefer!

So far, I am just playing around with OCs meeting and having fun but... well, I do need people for the Nightmare War LMAO.

What do you think? What is your favorite thing to play?

[crushedsweets]

Do you have any hcs for how Clockwork and Jeff would act around each other?

yes!! ok so i think i covered their relationship a good bit on my blog (should be in my masterlist on my pinned post), but i can try to scramble more concepts rn

ok for starters theyre really mean. like 'why are you happy you look fucking ugly smiling like that' completely unwarranted. but its very much like older sibling taunting, but theyre both fighting for role of the older sibling LMAO

i can imagine nights of them at the barn, one of them sick to their stomach from the operator(or the various other infections and illnesses theyd collect) and way too ill to do anything. jeff is partial to bringing clocky a joint to ease the pain, clocky is partial to bringing jeff actual food/water to ease his. theyre def not the type to be affectionate or whatever but jeff would scramble to grab clockys long long hair if he realizes shes abt to throw up. then he'd be like 'jesus christ thats nasty'

theyll sit with an ipod or smth and go through a lot of music together too . . . just a lot of "figured youd like this song" or bringing eachother a CD they found and showing it off.

i could see clocky incorrectly thinking toby and jeff would get along, cuz theyre honestly pretty similar. so she'd get them to connect, and then it would go poorly. i think jeff and toby would TRY to kinda hide their distaste for eachother... sorta

like, toby would just be like 'hes fuckin weird' and jeff would be like 'why do you hang around such a loser' but they wouldnt be like "clocky if you so much as mention his name around me im going to go kill him" . until the nina situation unravels, in which case clockys distancing from jeff anyway

i think jeff and clocky would have a lot of convos about like...

theyre really in similar boats. both got infected with O/S syndrome, both slaughtered so many people under the effect, both feel the symptoms/trauma to this day - but they went down different paths. upon recovering from it, clocky made a life for herself, got a job, hobbies, friends, an apartment. jeff just...kept up with the violence and power trips. lives in an abandoned barn, only friends with a freak ghost kid, etc.

clocky isnt the type to beg but when she sees him years down the line, withering away, becoming worse and worse when she tried so hard to get better and encourage HIM to get better too . i could imagine some tears and pleading there. i dunno . he's kind of a lost cause, though

[creatingblackcharacters]

solas complete context: solas is a trickster god known as the "Dread Wolf" that was said to have imprisoned all the elven gods, good and bad, for killing mythal (who was seen as the benevolent mother goddess). it was revealed in dragon age inquisition that he was a rebellion god that freed the enslaved elves from the "good" elven gods, and eventually imprisoned the corrupted "good" elven gods. in game, he betrays the player and is revealed to have set in motion the events of dragon age inquisiton

iirc, I can't find the source for it since it was like 8 or so years ago (also not justifying the choices), but I vaguely remember reading that his design was changed because he would have been the first and only Black male companion (to date when dai was released, not including davrin) and ended up the main antagonist. people have also pointed out the elves in dragon age are based off of indigenous groups (nothing specific like indigenous American, another form of bad worldbuilding in the game, it is very very generic) and somewhat the Romani (the elves live in traveling caravans that people have pointed out are similar to Romani wagons). in the original concept art, solas did have distinctly more indigenous features and (again, not justifying making him a bald white man) I can kind of see where making the trickster god that betrays you at the end of the game have very distinctly indigenous features could be perceived as being racist. especially since he would have been the only companion to have indigenous features.

again. not justifying the actions or the complete change of solas' concept art. dragon age worldbuilding is a hot mess shit show when it comes to fantasy racism, and the fandom is even worse. we have amazing fan artists, but the fandom is one of the most vile and racist fandoms I have honestly ever been in.

So if I'm understanding you correctly. They said "let's leave the world building racist but make the antagonist white so no one will notice". Which... 😐 it's weird bc it means that someone had some awareness but then somehow not enough to not do the rest of that. Because that's wild that it was already bad and then THAT'S where they drew the line lmao. QA really said "yeah! So progressive!" 🤣🤣 That's so hilariously bad, and not surprising because we see that sort of behavior often in fan spaces. It's natural professionals succumb to it.

[demigod-shenanigans]

Have not posted about mine and @queenjunothegreat’s next gen kids in way too long so: Pipeyna kiddie

-Her name is Emilia McLean. Her go-to nickname is Em. When she’s in trouble, Piper calls her Lea. Yes, she‘s named after Leo. He would not stop wailing when he was told about this.

-Em is Sofía’s best friend. She’s three years older than Sofía and they grow up considering each other sisters. (Good luck trying to tell Sofía they’re not sisters because they’re not related, she’s not related to her dads either and they’re still her dads, so checkmate)

-When they were small, Sofía followed Em around like a little duckling, insisting to play whatever Em was playing and do whatever Em was doing. There’s nothing these two wouldn’t do for each other. (Also yes I gave them matching earrings in different colors because they’re dorks and they would.)

-Em loves skirts and dresses and putting her hair up in fancy braids. Reyna’s got the braiding covered due to her time on Circe’s island, but when Em asked her moms to show her how to do her makeup, they were both sweating profusely because Piper hasn’t let anyone put makeup on her since she was twelve and Reyna’s just never really bothered with it? They spent like an hour trying to watch a makeup tutorial before giving up and admitting they need help. Hylla never lets Reyna live it down, but Emilia is thrilled because “the queen of the Amazons taught me how to do my makeup” is a pretty cool thing to brag about. (There was a discussion on whether or not to call Drew instead but in the end they settled on Hylla because they knew Hylla would be annoying but not as overly smug about it.)

-Drew absolutely takes Em clothes shopping sometimes because she’s decided Reyna and Piper are both useless. Piper lets it happen because it makes Em happy but is also fuming about it. Reyna is honestly just grateful to be getting out of clothes shopping lmao her closet is almost entirely made up of work outfits.

-Piper and Reyna have a rescue dog named Kitty (Em named her when she was three, in honor of that the name is spelled in all caps in all official documents) and Em loves that dog so much. It’s entirely mutual. Kitty is wildly protective of Em and will bite people if they so much as look at her weird.

-Leo is Em’s chaotic fun uncle and they get into so many shenanigans together. Jason is a significantly less chaotic uncle than his husband but somehow always ends up caught in the crossfire of their uncle-niece shenanigans.

-Leo being the chaotic fun uncle inevitably comes back to bite him when Em takes a page out of his book and starts getting into shenanigans with Sofía. Piper is absolutely cackling in the background.

Some more lore stuff under the cut since this is getting kind of long

-Em is actually the only next gen child named specifically after another demigod. This is both because Leo is close friends with her moms and because in a universe where names have power, choosing the name of the guy who beat the odds and quite literally rewrote fate—who defied death not once but twice so he could have his happy ending—is the greatest blessing Piper can think to give her daughter.

-Leo has thought of himself as a curse for a large chunk of his life. The concept of having his name used as a blessing is something he never fully recovers from.

-Speaking of names: Reyna’s bloodline and family legacy was meant to be intricately tied to New Rome’s survival. It ruined her life and took away almost her entire childhood. She happily laid her family name to rest and took Piper’s when they married. They mostly live in the mortal world and her ties with New Rome aren’t nearly as strong as they used to be when she was growing up, but there’s a part of her is terrified that this will come back to haunt her daughter one day. She never tells her daughter about Bellona’s prophecy. She won’t allow for her to grow up with the future of New Rome on her shoulders.

-Emilia is a natural leader. Aside from her general proficiency with various weapons, her main power is a sort of motivational charmspeak—not quite Piper’s ability to control others, and not quite Reyna’s ability to project her own emotions outward, but a milder combination of both that allows her to demand the attention of other demigods, instill confidence in those listening to her and rally her troops. Everyone knows she’d be a praetor at Camp Jupiter in no time, and it terrifies Reyna.

-But Em is a legacy of Aphrodite and Bellona both. She has a place at Camp Half-Blood as well as Camp Jupiter. And when the time comes for her to choose, she chooses Camp Half-Blood and goes back to live with her moms once the summer is over. Reyna nearly cries with relief.

-Maybe Leo’s name worked. Maybe the prophecy won’t be of any relevance until they’ve all long passed, many generations down the line. But Em strays from the path that seemed so set for her. She’s free, in a way Reyna never was.

[nadiajustbe]

Quick question because I don't remember castle in the sky: is it specified that Lettie gave birth to the kid? Or it could be very well some crazy kinda plot in which this random kid appears in the lives of the three (justiman and Lettie) and now they have to navigate raising a kid while defeating all society expectancies of non biological child/Lettie and Ben are not really together/Justin and Ben are so gay/Lettie wants to be an independent witch/ what the hell is going on? Because god I'd read a magic comedy with this plot I love people who are not on love and who were not supposed to be devoting parents suddenly having to raise a child without getting together in the end (+ Justin of course the poor boy)

Thanks for the question, you're always welcome!!

Unfortunately, it was specified, even a bit too much to describe, that Lettie gave birth to a child. In fact, when we first see her and Ben in chapter fifteen, she's pregnant. Wich actually a bit concerning because CITA happened exactly one year after the first book (as Morgan, Howl and Sophie's son, is born somewhere in the middle of CITA and he's known to be two in HoMW, time difference between wich and HMC is stated to be three years) and Lettie was seventeen in HMC as she's stated to be one year younger that Sophie who is most likely eighteen there. And that is... not the best math possible, actually.

(also that's probably my personal preference but this scene is so "not it" to be lmao, like that's probably because of the smallest amount of development their pairing had, but it's just feels unrealistic or staged for unknown reason, for me at least)

This moment is stated in the end of the book and is just...there. The only fun joke it leads to is Sophie saying "she knew she was bound to be an aunt" wich is, she is.

(Although with Martha wanting ten kinds and Neil and Mari being technically a part of her family it's strangely hilarious she thought she WASN'T bound to be an aunt?)

The child doesn't even have a name, just being called "a girl with no ill effects at all" and, unlike Morgan, born about the same time, doesn't have any other mentions in the series, at all. The reason for her existence is a mystery for me. There's no plot/practical reason except for "they had a child, cool!"/nonneg

AND THE CONCEPT YOU OFFERED IS SO MUCH BETTER!!

This is something really DWJ-like in this absolutely random group of people having to raise a child no one planned would exist. And probably the only way I'd imagine Lettie being a mother or a wife (I should make a separate post about Lettie honestly I love her so much). She didn't want to be there, but that's what happens when you randomly decided to marry a Royal Wizard for a "why not' reason.

And, according to Ukrainian translation of HMC that described Ben and Justin as "inseparable" (in original it just said "great buddies" wich is also funny but not that much😔) you kinda you get Justin complete with Ben. Just like Sophie and Howl, two-in-one exclusive offer!

As I said that's all Hatter sisters do — defeating social expectations.

(Justin and Ben are really gay I guess If you're not random Ingarian citizen you can clearly see it lol)

Also this lines up with my little concept of Justing running from married life (yes he got married in CITA. Don't ask me how, that was... rather odd, especially because he run from the same marriage canonically a couple of weeks before it happened) and just having to stay with Ben because the Kind would have just destroyed him If he'd returned to the palace. And so they have to just... live together even though Lettie is not the part of the club, she just wants to learn witchcraft in peace.

And now there's a child absolutely announced. And no one can explain how. Or why.

Yeah, I would pay to read that. Probably even write myself.

[allwormdiet]

Gestation 1.6

Took like an hour and a half nap after work, hell. Time for the good guys to make an appearance

Yeah I'll fucking bet she's exhausted. Girl's out in the middle of the night and coming down from a near-death experience where she mauled people with insect swarms and got cornered on a roof by, what, the strongest cape in the city? It's incredible she has enough space left to even think.

Here we get more lore on the big dogs I was thinking about previously, and of course the local big dog himself. I wonder if he would be galled at Taylor's narration describing him as one of the wing members in the V formation, feel like a lot of capes would have an ego thing

Thank you Armsmaster, now I get to holler about my stance on polearms. Polearm are the best melee weapon in most scenarios, simple as anything. Tight quarters and CQB, sure, not so much, but that's what sidearms are for. Swords, axes, hammers, whatever, that's for people trying to be cool. Polearms are for people trying to fucking win. I dunno if Armsmaster is good people but he has reasonable taste in primary arms so that's points in his favor.

On the one hand, poor Taylor, she's gonna be dealing with that first impression for a long time, but on the other hand lol and also lmao. I told you that costume design was gonna come back around as being too scary.

Armsmaster underwear is like, so distracting as a concept, actually. Honestly any underwear that's got real people on it. What a fucking weird product to sell, like I get Spider-Man undies but Spider-Man isn't real, y'know? Does Taylor get underwear made about her down the line? Does owning Taylor's merch after a certain point in the timeline get you weird looks?

This kind of thing must be such a pain in the ass, I've mucked around with my own original superhero setting and names were such a fucking dilemma with so many characters. Having to deal with that but like, as your own self? You're the super? And you gotta worry if taking a name is gonna get you sued or assassinated by someone who already has that name? Fuck that noise.

Couple things here, take it one at a time.

This is legitimately a huge moment of vulnerability for Taylor. She can't tell anyone about the night she's had, there's nobody in her life that she can trust with this massive weight on her entire soul. She almost died, and she knows how it would've happened, and she knows that it wasn't even her own play that saved her life in that final moment of the confrontation. A sympathetic moment from someone else who's lived this life and faced this danger could be such a balm for her right now.

So obviously what Armsmaster does is softball a recruitment pitch. "That's rough buddy" would have actually been way more tactful at this point, for real. I don't know if this is who Armsmaster is as a person or if this is the kind of party line you're supposed to hold as a Protectorate member, nudging scared teenaged capes into the Wards so they stop running around unsupervised, but either way it's such a bad read.

And then yeah, of course Taylor doesn't want to be a Ward, it's just being a high schooler but even worse because now the other hormone-addled teenagers you're locked in with have trauma and superpowers. Not only no, not only hell no, but fuck no. Especially knowing about Shadow Stalker, like Christ.

These two lines are a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but girl you almost died, nobody in their right minds would blame you for being in a bit of a mood

God the Undersiders are so cool. Like yeah they're criminals but they're criminals with an underdog flair. Good on them for managing to come out on top when they're outgunned, I know that like Bitch is basically the only one with an offensive power so the fact that they've won fights is impressive as hell.

The vulnerabilities that get shown by these characters feel so critical. Taylor, the Undersiders, and Armsmaster all show their underbellies over the last two chapters in conversation, admitting to fears and failures. Like even setting aside the masks and the bravado, that's the real stuff.

Also that costume thing is gonna haunt Taylor for at least as long as she has it, and maybe longer.

In a fight, righ*gunshots*

Jokes aside, good on Taylor for understanding some of her limits. Enough to realize antagonizing the Undersiders was a bad call (although that's assuming she would even think to do so with how shaken she'd been in the immediate aftermath of the fight with Lung), but she still went and picked a fight with fucking Lung so partial credit.

Beyond that, didn't expect the "flip the negative" trick to come back up from Armsmaster of all characters. Might have expected it from Taylor's dad maybe, I dunno. And of course Taylor immediately envies his ability to do that better than she can, because that's just kinda where she's at.

Taylor finally gets praise from a hero for doing hero shit, and of course there's strings attached. Fucked up. Let's see where this goes.

Don't know why I thought the ABB were restricted to operating in the Bay, but I guess it makes sense that they have connections and operations outside.

Anyway, this and everything we learn about Bakuda being a bomb Tinker makes me think that someone at the Protectorate isn't doing their fucking job. I think if there's someone in your city whose specialty is fucking super bombs, you maybe put out like some public service announcements? TV, radio, fucking posters up on a wall? "If you see this woman fucking leg it and call the cops" kinda stuff, what are we doing where a Brockton native doesn't know there's a bomber in the city.

Armsmaster rolls up to the aftermath of a cape fight to find an unconscious Lung and a shivering, exhausted teenaged hero who almost died taking down one of the beefiest villains in the whole town, and he has the nerve to ask "are you gonna finish that?"

Joking aside, this sucks. And I get it, and Taylor gets it too obviously, and I'm certain that Armsmaster is legitimately concerned about an indie hero getting blown to fucking pieces by a vengeful ABB, but Armsmaster getting credit is at least partly a factor. Maybe 60% concern 40% opportunism, I dunno, it's hard to gauge just meeting the guy.

...Actually knowing that he's angling for the credit on Lung I'm more willing to bet that "in the wings of the V formation" line earlier would have gotten under his skin.

Taylor is walking away from tonight with favors owed from a minor villain team and the Protectorate's local honcho. All it took was throwing down with the leader of a major gang and staring death in the burning metal face. Good job, kid, now go fucking sleep.

Current Thoughts

It strikes me as very deliberate that Taylor's first non-hostile interaction with villains and heroes are back to back with notable contrast. The Undersiders, who know full well that Lung wants to kill them all, find out that some random cape decided to take the fight to Lung for them and immediately jump in for the assist, expressing their gratitude as they go. Armsmaster rolls up after the dust has already settled and congratulates Taylor for a job well done, saying he owes her a favor even, but only after securing the credit for himself in the doing, and being just that much less delicate with an obviously shaken rookie.

This isn't to say "villains good heroes bad" because I don't think that's true, I'm absolutely certain the Undersiders have hurt people and will hurt more people down the road, and Armsmaster is operating within what I guess is a pretty inflexible organization. This isn't The Boys, where every alleged hero is a huge piece of shit and all their good will is propaganda consumed by mindless sheeple (I haven't actually watched The Boys but I don't enjoy the vibes and am not really in a rush to see it for myself). Capes are people here, warts and all, and sometimes the career criminals are easier to get along with than the career law enforcement officer.

Was kinda shocked this little arc is already over, but I guess it's interlude time. Get a glimpse into the head of someone who isn't Taylor.

[tora-the-cat]

How would you have preferred Inner Sakura as a concept to have resolved? Honestly, I think no matter what the idea, it would've been so much more impactful than just having her quietly drop off like she did in canon!

I always kinda assumed that, canonically, Sakura came to grips with her inner self the same way Naruto did in the "Waterfall of Truth", except it took place off-screen in her brain somewhere. Though the DID/Ino Mind-Transfer Shenanigans is waaaaayyyyyy more interesting a thought, in my humble opinion. Maybe Ino even helping Inner Sakura and Outer Sakura compromise and live together in one body? The possibilities...

Speaking of Inner Selves, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Kabuto also had one too given his hefty identity issues? Maybe for his sake it's better if he didn't, because his brain would be like a bumpin' nightclub lmao😅

(Also, please feel free to speak on this matter as much as you'd like! I love reading through your posts while I'm drinking my coffee! :>)

Okay. Okay. So. There are like....several answers to these questions lmao.

CANNONICALLY, Inner was resolved in the most annoying way possible. Sakura never referances having an 'inner self' in shippuden (to my memory), but she does say that training with Tsunade helped her work through her 'emotional issues'. I've always taken this as implying that the INTENDED reading is that Inner was just an inner diolouge Sakura had with herself of all the thoughts and emotions she repressed due to social pressure, and Inner is gone post time-skip because Sakura doesn't repress those anymore, she punches mountains in half. No longer having Inner is supposed to symbolize character growth.

But this, of course, would ALMOST make sense, were it not for. Ino Yamanaka. Who, after doing the mind transfer jutsu in the premils, confirms something that most viewers weren't even really considering until that point; Inner is NOT a personified inner diolouge in Sakura. She's a seperate mind. She is another soul INSIDE Sakura's body that operates even without Sakura's input.

And girls have to be strong to survive.

SO. That said. My read on cannon is that Sakura realized Inner wasn't normal and basically locked her in a mental box in the back of her brain for the rest of her life and refuses to think about her, because she's worried that Tsunade wouldn't see her as a worthy student if she was Crazy (because she thinks. she's Crazy). I don't think she had a waterfall of truth moment, cause that would require Sakura THINKING about Inner, which she. does not want to do.

As far as how I would have PREFERRED Inner Sakura being handled?

Kishimoto could, tomorrow, wake up and write a chapter of Boruto with my propisition that Inner is in a box and, once let free, would kind of just chill while Sakura lost her shit, and have a little side arc where Sakura works through that and DOES reconcile with Inner and stuff. He never WILL do that, but, yeah, I think that would work fine enough for finally tying off the 20 year old loose thread of Inner's disappearance. They've resolved stupider shit for less in Boruto.

This may be a surprising take from me but, honestly, I don't hate 'sakura realizes inner is real and immediately banishes her to the darkest corner of her mind so she never has to actually confront her existance'. I think that's ETREMELY in character for miss 'will DIE if she takes responsibility for ANY action EVER', especially at 14 years old. If I could rewrite naruto JUST to sneak Inner more neatly into it, I think I would still have Sakura box her away during the timeskip, with the caveat that we would like....actually get a vauge flashback scene of her actually repressing Inner just after she starts her training with Tsunade, and occasionally Sakura would say and/or think something a little weird that just gently reminds you that Inner is a thing, every once in a while- kinda like what little we see of Gaara before he looses shukaku but after him and naruto become friends. We would only get the Inner release/full reveal of what's going on with Sakura after she's hit an emotional breaking point and needs to let Inner out to help her regulate her emotions- I'm thinking around the time she does the whole fake confession scene with Naruto, but if we wanna give the plot point some breathing room it could just be an emotional spike as sharp and sudden of her hearing one too many people talk shit about Sasuke WITHOUT getting hit, or Ino daring to ask 'hey. what happened to the second soul in your body? how's she doing?' and Sakura trying desprately to change the subject because she has been NOT THINKING ABOUT IT for like 3 years thank you VERY much.

Honestly, I'd settle for Inner just continuing to be a running joke. Sakura fighting with her internally now that she has the confidence to ALSO be loud and angry, Inner having more emotional intelligence and transparency and Sakura never listening to her cause she's still in denial about Inner being a Person with anything worth listening to. Sakura thinking she's SO normal even though she's been muttering to herself about how she does NOT want to kick Ino's ass (Inner does. a lot) on and off for like 3 hours. Things of this nature. I think a lot of this is repeating what I've said about already so I'll stop here but like....I love you forever inner sakura they can NEVER make me hate you inner sakura <3

As far as what I think Inner 'is': it being a training mishap where Ino accidently split Sakura's soul in half as kids is SO much fun and especially has some steller InoSaku potential, but I personally just....Like the idea of sakura just. being like that lmao. I usually write it as Sakura being born a twin and Inner being her stillborn twin sister who's soul went into Sakura cause it had no where else to go (it's a LITTLE more complicated then that cause I think about her. a lot. but basically). Sakura WAS just born this way!!!! NORMALEST GIRL EVER!!!

On a similar note; I don't really EVER write Inner as a DID alter, because DID is like....real. DID manifests (to my understanding, I'm obviously not a doctor or anything) when a child is in such traumatizing circumstances during their developmental years that they dissociate frequently enough to fracture their psyche into different conciousness, so they can compartmentalize their trauma and remain a mostly-functioning person. You almost always have more then one alter, and often (without therapy) can't clearly draw the lines between 'you' and your alters cause. well. the point is that you're so chronically disocciated that you have trouble being 'all there' in the first place. LOTS of people have DID and don't recognize that's what it is for a long ass while, cause they think it's as simple as, like, that one stupid shamalan movie.

Canon Sakura almost CERTAINLY does not have DID, unless she went through some SHIT that was never even mentioned in cannon- which, to be fair, WOULD map on to DID because. she would NOT remember it lmao that's probably what Inner is FOR. But, for the story that Naruto is and the character that Sakura is, it doesn't really read. Sakura's supposed to be an insanely driven girl who drags herself from the mediocrity of her civilian upbringing to be the second coming of Tsunade, so, for all that you can read into and joke about Inner's existance and Sakura's low empathy generally and how Sakura seems concerningly releived that her parents are dead in RTN (all of which I LOVE doing), in order for her to work as a character she can't have too much of a tragic backstory in canon. Outside of canon is another matter of course, but idk. you can write an interesting plurality dynamic without calling it DID, especially in a world of ninja magic bullshit.

ON THAT NOTE THOUGH. Yeah. Kabuto has DID <3 <3 <3 LOOK AT HIM. LISTEN TO HIM TALK. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. YOU ARE RIGHT. HIS BRAIN IS BUMPING LIKE A NIGHTCLUB. AND HE IS NOT INVITED TO THE PARTY!!!!!

[liyawritesss]

Hey beautiful, can you write more hcs about yusei i really loved the one you did mwah 🫶🏻

ʏᴜꜱᴇɪ ꜰᴜᴅᴏ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ

-> synopsis: what's it like to be in the presence of Satellite's Rising Star, Yusei Fudo?

-> pairing: yusei fudo + black!gn!reader

-> from: yu-gi-oh! 5ds

-> contains: can be read as either platonic or romantic, spoilers from Fortune Cup Arc - Post-World Racing Grand Prix and beyond (basically the entirety of the show if you havent watched it), brief mention of Bonds Beyond Time, mentions of sleep issues, brief allusion to death if you squint real hard, 2nd person ('you', 'your', 'yours')

-> a/n: can you tell he's taken over my brain? Lol I've been rewatching yugioh for the past 2 weeks and my love for yusei is just as strong as the day I first saw him (at like..8 lmao). Thank you so much for this request lovelie! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to get to it, but i do hope you enjoy!

-> join my taglist!

-> tags: @mbakuetshurisprincess @shuriszn @writingintheshadowsforever @cafehyunji @niyahwrites @marsfunzon22 @briology @asensitivecookie @moon-bo-young @flo-milli-shit-hoe @romiantic @shuinami @badass-dora-milaje @uranometrias @elvenxwarrior

-> YUSEI FUDO whom you met as orphans under Martha's care. He was this rugged little boy with his knees constantly scuffed up and who practically lived in the junk yards, but he was kind and compassionate and made you his friend almost immediately. You remember his reticent voice when he peeked around the corner to your room, asking to go to the scrap yards with him to find Duel Monsters cards...if only you knew the lifelong friend you were making when you took him up on his offer.

-> YUSEI FUDO who doesn't sleep.....I don't think we've actually see this man get a solid few hours of sleep in the show, every time he's shown in a bed he's awake and thinking. I feel like, with a mix of programmed hyper-alertness from growing up in the satellite and a bit of insomnia, it's very hard for yusei to actually fall asleep. unless he's somewhere or surrounded with people he knows he's safe with, he barely closes his eyes for more than an hour or two at a time.

-> YUSEI FUDO who, in the mean time, got things to keep him busy. there's never not any tinkering he could do to his runner; he's always checking up on luna and leo due to their parents absence, and generally just riding around the city on his runner. I think he prefers to keep his mind busy so that he doesn't end up thinking about things that have happened in the past. yusei preaches about not being too hard on oneself and giving yourself grace, but I think it's a bit hard for him to practice what he preaches, especially as more people start to look up to him as an example of what a good person should be like. he's constantly thinking about how things could have been different, how he could have done things different. for certain things, especially the situation with kalin, I feel he holds some guilt for that he's steadily working to overcome.

-> YUSEI FUDO who, in speaking of the twins (and honestly any of the orphaned kids that crow has looked after, once they've met him and got to know him) yusei becomes this honorary big brother figure to them, and at first he wasn't sure how to feel about it. like, when he met the twins, he himself was still a kid, and his only concept of siblings was growing up with jack and crow under martha's care. so he uses his past experiences, and ties them with the compassion and immense care that he already has, and applies that to situations when dealing with the twins. he'll show up to their school on his duel runner to pick them up (to either a) allow leo to brag to everyone about how cool yusei is, and b) to scare off any so called bullies that call themselves messing with them), help with homework (what little he can help with - living in the satellite didn't grant great education unfortunately), and overall just be a support system to them

-> YUSEI FUDO who genuinely didn't think he'd see himself being a sort of businessman as an adult but he takes pride in being able to continue on his father's work, and genuinely believes that there is good being done with the work on the Ener-D Reactor (yknow, contrary to what Paradox claims from BBT). though it does take up majority of his time now, he does try and visit his friends as often as possible. it's a little bittersweet - everyone's going off on their own adventures and journeys, but it's exactly what everyone wanted. if yusei hadn't stepped up to the plate and be the face of liberation for the people of the satellite, who knows where they all would be; still off in that trash heap separated from the rest of the world, or worse. he's happy he gets to see the people he loves living their best lives, even if said lives take them away from where it all began.

-> YUSEI FUDO as a friend means you're always taken care of. in need of some help? call him up and he'll be there if he's available. if you're feeling down or under the weather? he's doing his best to get you back to full health. birthdays, holidays, milestones; if they're important to you, they're important to him, and he'll try to make them memorable for you. he's very attentive and thoughtful when it comes to the people he cares about. it's never about putting himself before others or prioritizing others before himself - he's a born team player, so whatever you're going through, whatever you may need, he's right there with you, taking on the challenge with you, getting his hands dirty if need be with you as well.

-> YUSEI FUDO loves a good beat. Any song that can get his fingers or feet tapping or his head bobbing, he's immediately going to like. There's a certain momentum he likes to keep when he's doing things, and usually listening to music helps him with that. It also helps him to keep his mind on track. And you know if he starts singing the song too, then he really likes it. While he's a fan of good drumming, I like to think a decent rift will also hit well. If I had to choose a song from my playlist that I think he'd enjoy, I'd say "Carried Away" By H.E.R.

-> YUSEI FUDO who is generally quiet over all out of a habit of observation. I don't see him growing into a chatterbox when he's around people who make him feel comfortable, however, I do think that the reason for his quietness changes. instead of it being due to hyper-alertness and keeping his guard up, being around the people he cares about, and who care about him, allow him to .... essentially not think. it takes a long time for this to even occur, and longer for people to actually notice, but eventually yusei relinquishes the need for having to always be aware. He allows himself to be comfortable, relaxed, and at ease. he may even crack a joke or two. please let this man have a comfort space, he truly does need it

-> YUSEI FUDO who, as a lover, I feel like much doesn't change with yusei from a standard friendship. he's always there for you and will always let you know how much of a priority you are to him, and how much he values your affection and care for him. though he has no proper example of what a relationship ought to look like, he goes with what feels right. he treats you with the utmost respect, tends to your needs as best as he can, and tries to keep communication as open as possible. with his job, and his past, that can be hard, but as long as you're understanding and patient with him, it all works out. he may be a bit brash with certain things, but it's all because he sees you and your relationship as a gift from the heavens - something to be nurtured and cherished for all his lifetimes to come. he doesn't wanna do something to screw it up; he's lost too much to the world as it is, and he doesn't know what he'll do if he loses you. he might even be afraid of the kind of man he'd become if he did lose you - in his darkest hours, you've always kept him sane and focused. losing you would mean losing a part of him, and he doesn't know how he'll take it.

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