#how are they even alive the way they are after evolution

[goldkirk]

as I'm going back over my past history and items and journals and years, I come across all sorts of things, like the pencil I saved from that so-precious memory from second grade, and a pair of flip flops I've been missing for two years, and [checks notes] the modern-high-school-AU-kidnapped-by-a-serial-killer story I wrote in late high school jdfsjdfsjkjlksfd

[ryin-silverfish]

A Guide to the Chinese Underworld (and what it isn't)

As many FSYY and fox posts as there were on my blog, I am actually a huge fan of the Chinese Underworld mythos. Mostly because I was once a morbid little kid that loved reading about the excavations of ancient tombs, and found the statues depicting hellish torture in the Haw Par Villa "super cool".

Apart from the aesthetics, the history of its evolution is also fascinating. Most of us, Chinese or not, only know the most popular version of the Underworld——the "Ten Kings" system, yet that isn't always the case. So today, I'll start off with a short summary of that.

In pre-Qin era, there was already this generic idea of a "Realm of the Dead" called the Yellow Spring, Youdu, or Youming, but we know very little about it.

Then, in the Han dynasty, two ideas start to emerge: 1) the Underworld is a bureaucracy, 2) the God of Mt. Tai ruled over the dead.

This early bureaucracy might not function as an agent of punishment; the main focus was on keeping the dead segregated from the living so they wouldn't bring diseases and misfortune to the latter, as well as using those ghosts to enforce collective punishments upon people for their lineage's wrongdoings while they were still alive.

Post-Han, after Buddhism entered China and took root, its idea of karmic punishments and reincarnation and the figure of King Yama was merged with folk and Daoist ideas of the Underworld bureaucracy, and, came Tang dynasty, resulted in the "Ten Kings" system that first appeared in Dunhuang manuscripts.

It was very rudimentary and far from well-established, as seen in Tang legends, with some adopting the Ten Kings system, some sticking to the Lord of Mt. Tai and some favoring King Yama, and overall little agreements on who's in charge of the Underworld.

But the "Ten Kings" system would become the mainstream version from then onwards, used in Ming vernacular novels and made even more popular by folk religion scrolls like the Jade Records (Yuli Baochao).

As such, most points in the following sections will be based on the fully matured "Ten Kings" system of the Underworld, as seen in the Jade Records and JTTW.

What happens when you die?

(This is a fictionalized walkthrough of the posthumous fate of souls under the "Ten Kings" system. I try to stick to the very broad progression outlined in the Jade Records, but many creative liberties are taken on the details.)

Let's say there's a guy named Xiao Ming, and he had just died of a heart attack. Bummers. What now?

Well, the first thing he saw would be the ghost cops.

There isn't really an unanimous agreement on who these ghost cops are: they may be a pair of ghosts in white and black robes, wearing tall hats (Heibai Wuchang), they may have the heads of farm animals (Ox-Head and Horse-Face), or they can just be generic ghost bureaucrats. For convenience's sake, let's say it was the first scenario.

"Who are you guys and where are you taking me?"

"Glad you asked!" The taller ghost cop, being the cheerful one of the pair, replied. It wasn't very reassuring, considering that his tongue was dangling out of his mouth way further than it should. "I'm the White Impermanence, my sour-looking colleague here is the Black Impermanence, and we are taking you to the City God's office."

This City God, a.k.a. Chenghuang, is just like how it sounds: the divine guardian of a city, who also pulls double duty as the head of the local Dead People Customs Office. They are usually virtuous officials deified posthumously, and in JTTW, they fall under the category of "Ghostly immortals", together with the Earth Gods a.k.a. Tudi.

So Xiao Ming went with the two ghost cops——not like he had much of a choice, made his way through the long queue at the City God's office, and was now standing in front of a gruff old magistrate in traditional robes.

"Name?"

"Wang Xiao Ming."

"Age and birth dates?"

"21, April 16 2003…"

After he was done asking questions, the City God flipped through his ledger, then picked up a brush, ticked off Xiao Ming's name, and told him to go get his pass in the next room. More waiting in a queue. Wonderful.

"I never heard anything about needing a pass to get to the Underworld," the girl in front of Xiao Ming asked the ghost cops, who were standing guard nearby. "Is this a new policy or something?"

"Yeah. In the old days, we'd just drag y'all straight to the Ghost Gate." The ghost cop in black said, then muttered to himself, "Fuckin' paperworks and overpopulation, man…"

(This "Dead People Passport" thing was popularized in the middle-to-late Ming dynasty, as shown by the discovery of such documents inside tombs in southern China. )

(It might have evolved from similar passes to the Western Pure Land in lay Buddhism that recorded their acts of merits. Which, in turn, might be traced back to the "Dead People Belongings List" of Han dynasty, to be shown to Underworld bureaucrats so that no one would take away the dead's private property down there or something.)

Anyways, after he received his pass, Xiao Ming departed together with the rest of the bunch, to be led to the Ghost Gate. It was like the world's most depressing tourist group, where instead of tour guides, you got two ghost cops in funny hats, and the only scenery in sight was the desolation of the Yellow Spring Road.

They weren't the only travellers on the road, though. Xiao Ming noticed other groups moving in the far distance, behind the fog and the flickering ghostfire, led by similar figures in black and white.

It made a lot of sense; realistically, there was no way two ghost cops could fetch hundreds of thousands of dead people all by themselves.

(SEA Tang-ki mediums believed there were multiple Tua Di Ya Peks——Hokkien name for the Black and White Impermanences, working for different Underworld Courts.)

At last, the Ghost Gate stood in front of Xiao Ming, guarded by two towering figures. Normally, they'd be Ox-Head and Horse-Face, like what you see at Haw Par Villa's Underworld entrance.

However, older Han dynasty works like Wang Chong's 论衡·订鬼 also mentioned two gods, Shenshu and Yulei, as guardians of the Ghost Gate, who would use reed ropes to capture malicious ghosts and feed them to tigers, making them possibly the earliest incarnation of "Gate Gods".

So here, they were what Xiao Ming sees, standing side by side like proper doormen, silently watching herds of ghosts being funneled through the entrance.

The place was more crowded than a train station during the CNY Spring Rush; the ghost cops had already said their quick goodbye and left to fetch the next group of dead people, leaving the resident officials of the Underworld proper to maintain order and quell any would-be riots.

Now you started seeing the Ox-Head and Horse-Face guys, poking at unruly ghosts with their pitchforks and dragging away the violent ones in chains. Among their ranks were other monstrous beings, blue-faced yakshas and imps, but also regular dead humans who look 100% done with their jobs, like the lady who stamped Xiao Ming's pass when it was finally his turn.

After this point, Xiao Ming had entered the Underworld proper, and his next destination would be the First Court, led by King Qin'guang. Here, his fate should be decided by what is revealed in the King's magical mirror.

If Xiao Ming was a good guy, or someone who had done an equal amount of good and bad things in life, he'd be sent straight to the Tenth Court for reincarnation. However, if the mirror, while replaying his life events, had displayed more evil deeds than good ones, he'd be sent to one of the 2nd-9th Courts for judgment and then punished inside the Eighteen Hells.

Each of the Ten Kings was also assisted by ghostly judges. Many of them were righteous and just officials in life who had been recruited into the Ten Courts posthumously——Cui Jue from JTTW is one such example, while others were living people working part-time for the Underworld, like how Wei Zheng, Taizong's minister, works part-time for the Celestial Bureaucracy in JTTW.

We decide to be nice to Xiao Ming, so, after reliving some embarrassing childhood incidents and cringy teenage phases in front of a bunch of dead bureaucrats, he was found innocent and sent to the Tenth Court.

The queue here was almost as long as the First Court's, stretching on and on alongside of the banks of the Nai River. King of the Turning Wheel made his judgment without even lifting his head when it was Xiao Ming's turn:

"Path of Humans, male, healthy in body and mind, ordinary family. Next!"

Exiting the Tenth Court building, Xiao Ming saw the Terrace of Forgetfulness, standing tall before six bridges, made of gold, silver, jade, stone, wood, and…some unidentified material. Before he could get a good look at them and the little dots moving across those bridges, he was hurried into the Terrace by the ghostly officials.

Now, both JTTW and the Jade Records mention multiple bridges across the Nai River. In the former, there is 3, and the latter, 6. The bridges made of precious materials are for people who will reincarnate into better lives, as the wealthy, the fortunate, and the divine, while the Naihe Bridge is either the common option or the terribad shitty option.

However, the Naihe Bridge proved to be so iconic, it became THE bridge you walk across to reincarnate in popular legends.

Anyways, back to Xiao Ming. He found himself standing in a giant soup kitchen of sorts, with an old lady at the counter, scooping soup out of her steaming pot and into one cup after another.

This is Mengpo, the amnesia soup granny; according to the Jade Records, she was born in the Western Han era, and a pious cultivator who thought of neither the past nor the future, only knowing that her surname was Meng.

Made into an Underworld god by the Jade Emperor, she cooks a soup of five flavors that will wipe the memory of the dead, making sure they do not remember any of their past lives once they reincarnate.

It tastes awful. Like what you get after pouring corn syrup, coffee, chilli sauce, lemon juice and seawater into the same cup.

Such was Xiao Ming's last thought, as he gulped down the soup, and then he knew no more.

Things you should know about the Chinese Underworld:

1. It's not the Christian Hell.

Rather, the Chinese Underworld functions somewhat like the Purgatory, in that there are a lot of torment, but the torment's not eternal, however long the duration may be. Once you finish your sentence, you get reincarnated as something else, though that "something else" is not a guaranteed good birth.

Other people can also speed up the process via transferring of merits: hiring a priest/monk to chant sutras and perform rituals, for example, or performing good deeds in life in dedication to the dead, or they can pray to a Daoist/Buddhist deity to save their loved ones from a dreadful fate.

Interestingly enough, a thesis paper I read mentions that, whereas Buddhist salvation from the Hells was based on transference of merits——you give monks offerings and pay them to chant sutras, so they can cancel out the sinners' bad karma with good ones, Daoist ideas of salvation tend to involve the priest going down there, sorting it out with the Underworld officials, and taking the dead out of the Hells themselves.

(The paper also stops at the Northern-Southern and Tang dynasties, so the above is likely period-specific.)

2. Nor is it run by evil demons.

Underworld officials are not nice guys and look pretty monstrous and torture the sinful dead, but they are not the embodiment of evil. Rather, the faction as a whole is what I'd call Lawful Neutral, who function on this "An Eye for An Eye" logic, where every harm the sinner caused in life must be returned to them, in order for their karmic debts to be cleansed and move on to their next life.

They can absolutely be corrupt and incompetent and take bribes——Tang dynasty Zhiguai tales and Qing folklore compendiums featured plenty of such cases, but that's a very mundane and human kind of evil, not a cosmic/innate one.

This is just my personal opinion, but if you want to do an "evil" Chinese Underworld? It should be a very bureaucratic evil, whose leaders are bootlickers to the higher-ups, slavedrivers to their rank-and-file workers, and bullies who abuse their power over regular dead people.

Not, y'know, Satan and his infernal legions or conspiring Cthulu cultists.

3. The Ten Kings are not Hades.

Make no mistake, they still have a lot of power over your average dead mortal. But in the grand scheme of things? They are the backwater department of the pantheon, who only show up in JTTW to get pushed around and revive the occasional dead people.

When Taizong made his trip to the Underworld, the Ten Kings greeted him as equals——kings of ghosts to the king of the living. If they see themselves as equal in status to a mortal emperor, then, like any mortal emperors, they are subordinate to the Celestial Host, and the balance of power is not even remotely equal or in their favor.

Also, it isn't said outright, but under the Zhong-Lv classification of immortals JTTW is using, Underworld officials will likely be considered Ghostly immortals, the lowest and weakest of the five types, much like Tudis and Chenghuangs.

Essentially: they are ghosts that are powerful enough to not reincarnate and linger on and on, spirits of pure Yin as opposed to true immortals, who are beings of pure Yang.

It's pretty much the shittiest form of immortality, the result you get when you try to speedrun cultivation (the Zhong-Lv text also made a dig at Buddhist meditation here), and if they don't reincarnate or regain a physical body, there is no chance of progressing any further.

Oh, and fun fact? In the Song dynasty, commoners and literati elites alike believed that virtuous officials in life would get appointed as ghostly officials in death.

However, the latter viewed it as a punishment. Which was strange, considering how they still held the same position and the same amount of authority, just over dead people instead of living ones, so there should be no big losses, right?

Well...it was precisely the "dead people" part that made it a punishment. See, a lot of the power and prestige they had as officials came from the benefits they could bring to their families and kins and native places, as well as the potential wealth and reputation bonuses for themselves.

A job in the Dead People Supreme Court would give them the same workload, but with none of those benefits. Since all the dead people had to reincarnate eventually, they couldn't have a fixed group as their power base, or keep their old familial ties and connections. At most, they could help out an occasional dead relative or two.

Like, working for the Underworld Courts was the kind of deadend (no pun intended) job not even living officials wanted for themselves in the afterlife. That's how hilariously sad and pathetic they are.

4. In JTTW at least, they aren't even the highest authorities of the Underworld.

That would be Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, who is technically their boss, though he seems to be more of a spiritual leader than someone who is actually involved in running the bureaucracy.

Which makes sense, since he has sworn an oath to not attain Buddhahood until all Hells are empty, and his role is to offer relief and salvation to the suffering souls, not judging and punishing them.

Now, historically...even though Ksitigarbha in early Tang legends was still the savior of the dead, he seemed to be unable to interfere with the judicial process of the Underworld, merely showing up to take people away before they were judged by King Yama.

However, in the mid-Tang apocryphal "Sutra of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha" (地藏菩萨经), he had evolved into the equal of King Yama, with the power of supervision over his judgements. By the time the Scripture on the Ten Kings came out, in artistic depictions, the Ten Kings had become fully subservient to him.

5. Diyu usually refers to the prison-torture chamber part, not the courthouse, nor is it the entirety of the Underworld.

And for the majority of souls that haven't committed crimes, they'll only see the courthouse part before they are sent to reincarnation. That's why I personally don't like, or use the name Diyu for the Chinese Underworld: I prefer the term Difu ("Earth Mansions"), which encompasses the whole realm better.

Also: even though historical sources like the Scripture on the Ten Kings and Jade Records seem to suggest that the dead were just funneled through this Courthouse-Prison-Reincarnation pipeline with no breaks in between, in practice, that isn't the case.

According to popular folk beliefs, after the dead were done with their trials/sentences, they stayed in the Underworld for a period of time and led regular lives, while functioning as ancestor spirits and receiving offerings.

Which would imply that the Underworld had a civilian district of sorts, populated by regular ghosts, making the whole realm even less of a direct Hell/Purgatory equivalent.

6. It is located in a different realm, but still part of the Six Paths and doesn't exist outside of reality.

In Buddhist cosmology, like the Celestial Realm, the Underworld is part of the Realm of Desires and thus subject to all the woes of samsara.

The pain and misery of the Path of Hell may be the worst and most obvious, but becoming a celestial being isn't the goal of serious Buddhists either: despite all the pleasures and near-infinite lifespan they enjoy, they are not free from samsara and will eventually have to reincarnate.

So if, say, the world is being destroyed at the end of a kalpa, all beings of the Six Paths will perish alongside it, leaving behind a clean slate for the cycle to start anew. The dead won't all end up in the Underworld and face eternal damnation.

7. The Black and White Impermanences would not appear in the Underworld pantheon formally until the Qing dynasty.

The concept that when you die, you get fetched to the Underworld by petty ghost bureaucrats is already well-established in Tang legends, but these were just generic ghost bureaucrats in all sorts of colorful official robes, with yellow being the most common color.

The idea of there being two specific psychopomps in black and white would only become popular in the Qing dynasty. Mengpo is kinda similar: although she existed before the Ming-Qing era as a goddess of wind, venerated by boatmen, her "amnesia soup granny" incarnation came from the Jade Records.

[thenationofzaun]

Thoughts on Act 1 of Arcane Season 2

The positives:

- The animation is fucking incredible.

- Jinx and Sevika teaming up watered my crops and cleansed my skin.

- Underwater goodbye with Jinx and Silco. That scene was made specifically for me.

- Jinx's voice actress continues to be excellent.

- Loved the designs of all the Chembarons. The glimpse we got of the gang wars was also interesting. Unfortunately, too tiny a glimpse. Which brings me to...

The negatives:

- Too many plotlines. They stuffed the season with too much shit which is why each individual plot gets a much shorter screentime than it should. Smeech is introduced and killed in the same episode. Chembarons' gang wars, a huge issue which has repercussions on the entire Undercity, gets only one musical montage before moving on. And this is coming from someone who loved that montage, as well as the song. My favourite on the soundtrack so far. But musical montages shouldn't come at the expense of the story and definitely shouldn't replace the story. There are just way too many music video scenes in general that feel like a way to condense a storyline into the sparknotes version because they don't have the screentime to flesh it out. And they would have the screentime if they cut out all the extra stuffing. Look I'm happy for the League fans who are excited for the Black Rose and all that, but what the hell is it doing in a Piltover/Zaun show. And with zero foreshadowing in Season 1 too. It would definitely be easier to swallow if they had at least hinted at it in the first season. They could have kept Ambessa's beef with this magic cult for a Noxus show. The P/Z narrative has enough to deal with, enough characters to handle already.

- The new side characters are uninteresting and generic. Maddie and the two other enforcers (we don't even know their names after three episodes LMAO) are bland. We know nothing about their characters or personalities. Maddie looks like a rookie, and one of the dudes is an alcoholic, yet they get chosen for an elite strikeforce to capture Jinx? Isha is pretty generic too - the token cute kid that needs protecting. I get the role she will play in Jinx's arc. But that's the problem - she should be a character in her own right, not just a vehicle for someone else's character development. A good example is Mylo. He died for Jinx's arc, but when he was alive he was a distinct character with his own personality. We had a sense of his insecurities, his goals, who he was as a person. Name a single personality trait of Isha and Maddie other than "generically nice person". That's right. You can't.

- Whatever the hell is going on with Viktor. He wakes up from his coma and immediately rejects Jayce so quickly that it was funny. Apparently disapproves of Jayce using the Hexcore to save his life, but then immediately goes to use the Hexcore to save random Undercity people. Bruh. I also don't really like the way the fridged woman from last season seems to be his motivation so far. Nor the way he seems to have no agency in his Machine Herald arc. Instead of Viktor himself believing in transhumanism and mechanizing himself, Jayce does it for him. Instead of Viktor having an ideological drive and wanting a "Glorious Evolution", he is driven by guilt over Sky. Meh. Also he's not even mechanized, instead he's weirdly fleshy?? In a magical way?? More like The Magic Herald :(

- Vi. Her whole character is a mess. Insanely rushed arc which I find unacceptable for one of THE main characters and one of the faces of the show. She and Jinx are supposed to be the leads, their relationship the heart of the story, but so far only Jinx is a well-written fleshed out chaacter with a believable arc. I have too much to say about Vi so I'll expand more on this on another post.

- So much nuance and detail is missing. How does Heimerdinger feel about his ex-colleagues being killed? Does he care? Does he feel guilt? Relieved that he wasn't in the chamber when the bombing happened? No clue! Let's have comedy Mission Impossible instead! How does Ekko feel about the Council attack? Does he approve of it? Think Jinx went too far? How does he feel that she even survived their fight to begin with? No clue! Here, have him joking around with a Councilor for a bit (someone whom Ekko logically should despise), then he can talk Science with Jayce and all three get sent to another dimension together. Yay. What does Vi think happened to Ekko? The last time she saw him, he was fighting Jinx to the death to give Vi and Cait time to escape. He could be dead for all she knows and she doesn't give a fuck. Doesn't even think about him nor mention him once. It's like the writers forgot they're childhood friends. What does the entirety of Zaun make of Silco's death? I assume they heard about it from Piltover (who heard about it from Caitlyn), but how do they think it happened? His body is gone and to Zaun it seems he just mysteriously disappeared. Are there conspiracy theories? Conflicting accounts and rumours? So much nuance that would give the world and characters more depth, sacrificed so we can pack in more rushed subplots and music videos.

- Caitlyn "Wifebeater" Kiramman. And Caitvi in general. So far Caitlyn has guilt-tripped Vi, manipulated her into joining the enforcers, insulted her and then physically abused her. After Vi sacrificed everything for Cait, wore a badge she hates for Cait, even let Cait kill her own fucking sister (and only intervened when the random kid got involved). Why should I give a shit about such a one-sided relationship lmao. "B-but Cait's mom is dead so she's sad about it", every other fucking character in this show has dead parents. Half the cast has faced unfathomable amounts of trauma and pain that make Cait's pale in comparison. Nothing justifies her hitting Vi. "B-b-but it's a parallel to when Vi hit Powder", a shit parallel then. Because the circumstances are not even remotely comparable. "God forbid lesbians do anything🤪", give me a break with this corny bullshit. Be serious for a second. I'm not even a Vi fan and I think she deserves better than this mess of a relationship. The power dynamic between them makes it worse. The way Caitlyn is one of the richest people in the city and Vi is broke. The way Caitlyn is highly educated and Vi never went to school and spent her entire teen years locked in a box. Did the writers think about all this when writing their relationship? Keep in mind, Vi met Caitlyn like a week ago. She barely knows this chick. She's been out of prison FOR A WEEK. Where she was physically abused every fucking day. Putting her in a relationship with a cop who hits her would certainly be a choice! Do I have faith this show will handle it with care? Not really, no. They already ignore Vi's prison trauma. Most likely they will make Vi forgive Cait way too easily because "muh mummy muh grief".

[emese-of-void]

I have so many feelings about the psychic autism creature from Scavengers Reign.

It's such an interesting idea to have a creature with telepathy but not human level intelligence. Having Kamen in his mind doesn't mean that he now knows everything Kamen knows, but it does change him in really destructive ways. Kamen's complicated feelings about the Demeter filtered through Hollow seem to translate to indiscriminate anger towards all technology - the emotions are there, but not the comprehension.

Another thing I really liked is that mind control is presented as quite bening in its natural context, and also that it's purpose is so simple and so easily achievable by other means. It's so typical of evolution to not only solve the same problem in many different ways, but also to solve it in wildly extravagant ways. Trying to reach food high up? How about claws, flight, mind control, shock waves to shake the branches. Why not. Just irrepressible abundance.

I've been trying to figure out the potential evolutionary function of Hollow's kind absorbing their symbiotic critters. I think this could be super useful if the ecological niches of Hollow and the tripod creatures only partially overlap. And there are times when the tripods are in distress or desperately lack some nutrients or something. Hollow took Kamen in when he was clearly in distress, and after Hollow was completely focused on actions driven by Kamen's feelings, not even feeding. So the critter is kept alive and safe, and through the mental link Hollow knows what it is they're in distress about and can get them to the right place. That is such a neat adaptation! And potentially really flexible, allowing Hollow to create symbiotic relationships with different species. Maybe originally it started as a gestational adaptation. If the environment was unpredictably hostile it could be useful to be able to give birth to young but then, uh, unbirth them I guess, to keep them more safe temporarily.

The problem is, Kamen's needs aren't evolutionarily driven, and Hollow has no way of fully comprehending them or achieving them.

Oh man, the scene where Hollow lies down next to Fiona's body. Kamen doesn't know and Hollow doesn't comprehend, and it's killing them both. It's like Kamen completely abandoned his responsibility to be present in the world and act upon it, but his will is still acting on the world in a blunt and uncomprehending way through Hollow. Which as far as the addiction metaphore goes, yup, that's pretty spot on.

I'm so happy that Hollow got a happy ending. For a moment when he was melting away to reveal Kamen I thought that they were going to treat him as just a container for a human, a violent problem to be solved with violence. I should have trusted the show to be kinder.

Hollow is just a little creature, he shouldn't have been forced to try to understand concepts like self loathing or divorce, and now he never has to ever again.

[petday]

your art is so so so so inspiring to me which is strange bc my style isnt very similar to yours at all. but it makes me happy to see your art, especially when you make art from things from childhood id forgotten about💫💫💫💫💫🩷🩷🩷🩷

Thanks. Your message and similar messages from others over the years inspired me to try to put into words why I draw 'nostalgic things'. I ended up writing a lot.

There was a period of time when I became cynical about being seen as an 'artist who reminds people of childhood' or a 'nostalgic artist'. I no longer feel that way but I will explain why. Some artists, who I like and respect, will sometimes mention 'nostalgia holding artist's growth back' and 'nostalgia causes learned helplessness.' But I feel differently.

Maybe I perceive time differently. I have lived long enough to witness cycles of 'what is valued, and what is not valued' repeated. For example, I loved what is now called 'Y2K' style, but during mid 2000s, for whatever reason it was derided as something to be left in the past, something embarrassing. "Aren't we glad we optimized things now, and they are 'sleeker' and less complex? Old things were childish, an embarrassing weakness for humans, we must advance and reach our ideal evolution." That became the common attitude. I felt pressure to have the same thoughts. I just couldn't make myself feel that way no matter what, though. Even with the increasing threats about, 'keep up with others or you won't ever develop positive social relationships!' I couldn't change my mind.

(If what is currently valued becomes devalued and then it becomes valuable after that… that's an odd cycle to me. For example, if we like bananas, even when bananas cannot be harvested, we still like them even though they occupy a smaller space in our minds but we don't deride them. Going even further, though, I sometimes wonder if it is possible for humans to eventually remove the 'devaluation' stage, particularly in art 'trends' as I am an artist. Whatever is considered valuable remains valuable. A counter arguement would be, 'no, the devaluation of the previous thing is exactly what causes the next thing to be valued, and then the cycle flows beautifully: X was valued -> Y is valued, X is devalued -> Y is devalued, X becomes valuable again. If you want X to always remain valuable, just develop better patience. Like we cannot pick fruit we like all year, we cannot simply keep adding onto the pile of things we like, something has to be seen as inferior by the majority of humans.' I disagree. I might explain my thoughts against this argument more in the future.)

Anyway, what people call 'Y2K style' or 'art that emulates how things commonly appeared in early years of 2000s' is popular nowadays. Even someone who did not grow up with it can become attracted to it. That 'desire' itself is a communication between past and present. Something can make someone feel 'lighter' [in sense of, "wow, the crushing weight of my circumstance feels not so crushing when I look at this'] -- a similar 'light' to how someone in the past was perceiving it when it was the present and not the past. So, even though two people were born in different eras and may not become friends or even meet, they're still connected by that 'lighthearted' feeling they both like. I know it will be seen as 'lower value' soon, but I truly cannot care because as I mentioned earlier, I might perceive 'time' weirdly.

When I started playing video games, a family member would point out, 'those games were made before you were born, interesting!' but that statement confused me at the time since my perception was, 'well, if these games are from before I was born, I don't understand why she is bringing attention to it. Why is it interesting? It's just regular. They're alive in the present now, because I'm in the present and so are they.' That was when I was a very young child. I subconsciously kept the same feeling even as I was reaching teenage and adult years. The feeling echoed when people liked to ask the question 'why are you still playing games from long ago?' as I got older but still played the same 'old' games. The answer: they are beautiful and will remain beautiful, and something made in the past is still communicating in the present, so are they really truly 'outdated inferior games'...? Just because the cycle of valued and devalued happened to be in a different position and those old things were seen as an embarrassment? (Now there are popular games inspired by the era of games many people ridiculed me for consistently enjoying, lol. Similarly, I was using 'crappy' old versions of programs even through 2017. Now people from wealthy upbringing and background use 'crappy' programs willingly. lol)

The present talks to the past all the time, nostalgia is not a dead end. In that sense I cannot see nostalgia as a death trap but rather a connection made from past to present. A string between the past and present that feelings can crawl across and communicate. Feelings such as 'I wish my life took a different direction. I can't make things like how they were back then, it won't ever be the same again, so I'll do nothing.' The criticism of 'nostalgia' is towards that last sentence. But there are things you can do with those feelings. 'Doing nothing is boring. And I keep thinking of that fun drawing I saw... I kinda wanna try to make something.' Making something while thinking of the past and present at the same time, so there is a communication between past self and present self. Pure bitterness communicating with slightly light-hearted view, the 'end result' is artwork/creation.

*I used light-hearted feeling as example, but nostalgia can exist for any feeling, and not just for people who were nice when they were younger. If someone was cruel as a child/teenager, after the person has been an adult for a while, they can communicate with their younger self about what was it about the cruelty that was enjoyable, and then extract a small part from the cruelty that they wish to bring back into the present -- example, the attraction to 'high speed activities, playful mischievousness' can be extracted from 'hurting people on purpose so they will acknowledge/react to you'. The dialogue could be something like, "'honestly, you and I both know spamming people with bad things felt pretty fun at the time, so let's just keep the 'high energy mischievousness' feeling and leave behind the crap that hurt people deeply, and let's make an animation while thinking of that high energy feeling.

^ I don't answer questions or reply to messages often because of giving answers that aren't too long or too short is tough for me. lol. Thanks for liking my art. I like a lot of art that doesn't resemble mine as well. It's fun! Like appreciating different flavours in the same meal even if you cannot make the meal yourself.

[red-talkin-graves]

I feel like. HEA isn't too out of character for the smitten or princess tbh, and it feels like a very natural endpoint for the Damsel. I'm gonna. Ramble about it a lot below the cut

The smitten is blind to her flaws, single-minded, and obsessive. Even before the pristine cut all these traits were present. He never saw issue with the grey burning us alive. He never saw any issue with the razor cutting us to bits. He never took any issue with the deconstructed damsel, who existed as a two-dimensional cutout of a person that refused to have her own will and seemingly only existed for us. That's not really a healthy way to think of someone you love, I think. Which isn't to say there aren't chapters where the smitten does genuinely love the princess. The damsel just... doesn't strike me as one of them.

And the princess forgives the player so easily because the shifting mound is as we percieve her. In the damsel, we saw her as a loving being who would do anything for us, and in the chapter before, we refused to listen to the narrator's warnings(blinding ourselves to her flaws, creating the smitten). That perception becomes cemented into her nature. In the adversary, we had seen her as a capable fighter who we were evenly matched with, so that perception becomes part of her. This is how the princess is, as a narrative device and a character. There's a reason we get to the shifting mound by interacting with a mirror. She reflects what we see in her, and we see what she reflects, and that cycle goes around getting amplified every time. Every chapter is the last pushed to the extreme. The cage is the most extreme form of the prisoner, the apotheosis the most extreme evolution of the tower... she always amplifies what we see her as. And in the Damsel, we saw her as forgiving, loving; and willing to do anything for us.

Tbh I found the Damsel to be a very uncanny and uncomfortable chapter from the start, long before the pristine cut was released and even without having gotten the deconstructed ending myself. The Damsel was never romantic to me, she was always uncomfortable and jarring, because I know what it's like to be in her place, having to abandon my own autonomy and will to appease people just to survive. And I know what it's like to be loved by someone who takes no issue with me lacking autonomy, too.

At the start of the Damsel, she's still chained up. Her freedom is in our hands. She forgives us for the stabbing attempt in the damsel, and that becomes amplified. She loves us despite her lack of autonomy in the Damsel, and that gets amplified too. Even in the damsel, even after we bring her out of the cabin, she still is bound to our will for the few seconds before the world ends, because we still have the blade and still could kill her. HEA feels to me like where the Damsel was always going to end up, a natural continuation of how uncomfortable and uneasy the "romantic" parts of the Damsel were.

[kurthummeldeservesbetter]

I also think that all of non-astral Viktor’s designs always including the blanket Jayce covers him in is not only a sign of Jayce being his last tie to humanity but also as a reminder that Jayce is the reason it happened. like had he not saved Viktor/revived Viktor (depending on if you believe Viktor was on his way to dying or was dead when Jayce used the hexcore) then none of this would be happening. there would be no glorious evolution. if he just lets him die (jayce can't) then viktors 2.0-3.0 (maybe a 4.0?) never happen. (side note how many times did viktor die and get revived? like at least 3. that would make even the sanest of men probably lose it a bit)

it’s a visual reminder that Jayce has always and will forever be the reason the evolution happens. he loves Viktor so much he also dooms him. and in every universe he will always doom him because he loves him. Because Viktor saved him when he barely knew him (talking him off that ledge) and before he even knew Viktor, all the way back when he was a kid.

He gives him the blanket because comforting Viktor is his priority after knowing Viktor is alive. Viktor keeps the blanket (partially because he’s naked af/hes slaying with it on) but also because it’s his last tie to the single person he cares about.

ALSO can I just say the people who are like "but Viktor doomed Jayce/their universes by giving him the rune". like. Jayce was going to die in that snowstorm. even if he didn't leave the rune/gem Jayce was always going to chase that magic anyways. Viktor was not going to let little Jayce and his mom die yall.

[ncstalqiaa]

"Not every relationship has to be romantic."

But what do you mean Jayce, after having just survived an attack he shouldn't of, glanced amongst destruction and landed upon his partner's lifeless body, and rushed him to the hexcore where he broke his only promise on a whim, in the hopes that it would save him?

What do you mean when Viktor emerged from the hexcore substance protecting him, completely altering his appearance to one that would concern any random onlooker, but Jayce was only focused on the fact that his partner is alive? Confessed that his priorities all along were wrong and he wanted to spend the rest of his time working in the lab with Viktor?

What do you mean after barely surviving in a barren universe unknown to him, Jayce made it his priority to eliminate the hexcore, possibly killing his partner in the process, because a being of Viktor from another universe admitted to him that only he can make Viktor see what path he is leading humanity to? That Jayce was so fueled by the idea that he could bring his old partner back that he struck the man with a beam of magic as soon as he came across him on his universe?

What do you mean Viktor fought and fought to have Jayce by his side, harmed many people and put people in the way of Jayce's wraith, hoping that Jayce will recognize his plan to glorious evolution free of any imperfections, and Jayce remained hell bent on either having his old partner back or having nothing at all?

What do you mean when Jayce was cornered, kneeling before a crowd of Viktor's glorious revolution, recreating the exact world-ending scenario in the barren land he was sent to before, instead of fighting, he relaxed and let himself be transported by Viktor to whatever realm Viktor resides in, allowing complete trust in a being that for all he could know, has completely taken over his best friend? his partner?

What do you mean Jayce admitted to Viktor, or whatever was left of him, that he found beauty in his imperfections? That his weaknesses were not weaknesses, but a piece of the shattered image that was his partner? And that he admired each and every one of those pieces of Viktor, to which Viktor only saw as imperfections that needed to be cleansed?

What do you mean when Ekko's device ruptured and tore away part of Viktor's mask, his first instinct was to curl away from Jayce and hide his face? Hide whatever remained of his being, his humanity, from the one person he knew had enough sway to tear down this armour he grew around himself? This armour that upheld the image of the villain? And yet Jayce's first reaction was admit to Viktor that all he wanted, was his partner back?

What do you mean Viktor's first instinct to such an acclamation, was ask how could someone be so persistent with him? After everything he has done to the world, to his partner?

What do you mean even after all the hardship Viktor put Jayce through, endangering him and almost killing him on multiple occasions, Jayce's first reaction was to embrace his partner?

What do you mean after realizing in every single universe, Viktor would end up alone. In complete solitude. And he still fought to uphold the image of the villain and shove Jayce away? Telling him that he must leave. That to Viktor, he was deserving of whatever punishment this would be. That Jayce deserved to return to Piltover and live out his dream of creating magic and to pursue love with Mel? That he must bear this burden of eternal solitude for however long, because Jayce was not deserving of being forced to live along side him for eternity?

What do you mean that Jayce would rather be reduced to atoms, spread across the universe and no longer holding any physical form, than returning to his life from before, because he would be with his partner. He would be his partner's anchor, when the rune became too erratic and out of control. He would endure such an act cradling the face of his partner, knowing they would live on within each other. That they would be together for eternity. Atoms intertwined together, blanketing the universe they watch over together.

~~~

So of course, not all relationships have to be romantic. But Jayce was able to break past every façade Viktor threw his way. He saw past Viktor's need to cure weaknesses and to be 'perfect', because he was already perfect. Jayce didn't fall in love with this Messiah version of Viktor, who gathered a cult following by stripping individuals of their identity in the name of curing them of any weaknesses. Jayce fell in love with the man who saw him at his lowest point, at his rock bottom, and yet saved him from an untimely demise because he saw strength within a field of 'weakness'. That although Jayce was ridiculed at his trial, Viktor found ambition, intrigue, curiosity.

Viktor loves his partner because he knew Jayce would always have his back, no matter the circumstances. And sure, they might argue, but Jayce never saw someone as beautiful as Viktor, no matter how weak his illness made him. Viktor's humanity was beautiful and Jayce loved him for it the night he met him.

[lilly-chou-chou]

Evolution of Gyaru

Hello everyone the long awaited post is here!! Sorry for the delay I has gone back to my he country to celebrate Lunar New Year.

As we all know Gyaru was and still is one of the most important fashion movement in the history because it's roots of opposing the "good girl" and "submissive" societal views of women that Japan had imposed into them.

During 90's with Namie Amuro being the first idol ever to popularize the Gyaru culture created a huge wave of community in all over Japan which eventually created many subcultures under it, over the years gyarus blossomed for 2 decades heavily but around early-mid 2010's the culture slowly died because people were now really trying to shun them out of the society, gyarus was losing it's popularity and old gyarus were getting to age of finding jobs or trying to get married yet the culture is still alive. There have been multiple support and love coming from international fans too.

Egg magazine, which is holy grail for us gyarus followers is still up and running to this day <3

Today i'll show you just a little glimpse of modern gyaru. Hopefully this will help new followers too.

Gyaru of the past:-

So let's start with how gyarus are usually seen, pictures below are gyarus from their peak eras so definitely from 90's to 2000's. They are all different subcultures but they all have one thing in common the eye makeup, gyarus were and are still known for their beautiful luscious eye makeup. They are what you call

They were our guide, our mothers and everything! Gyaru has always been the most supportive community to ever exist, over here women were allowed to cuss, they were allowed to be brash, they were allowed to have male friends without the judgement of two goody shoes with insecurities, they were allowed to wear clothes that liberated them doesn't matter short or modest.

People often forget that gyaru exists more than manba, agejo and kogal, few of the modest and lesser knows subcultures are amekaji and roma gyaru, although amekaji is is blue eyed perfect grass is greener on the other side take of American inspired fashion. Either way it is one of the most fun subculture to exist.

We as gyaru followers ow everything to these past mother figures, without them and without brands like alba rosa, D.I.A and MA*RS we and egg Magazine teaching us what? How? And why? We would never thrive in this era. We owe it to them all even after decades and decades the magazines, scans and tutorials on YouTube by the OG gyarus have done it all <3

Modern Gyaru:-

The pictures below are the present models of Egg magazine. The last OG gyaru issue was stopped in 2014 which was Egg last physical print of magazine but in 2018 Egg came back as online magazine.

A lot has changed in gyaru world. Long gone are the days of owning specific clothing brand or even wearing clothes that resemble even the least of typical gyaru fashion. The only key point which hasn't changed is eye makeup because that is utmost necessary thing for a gyal to have.

Over the years of almost dying to again alive fashion culture the meaning of gyaru has changed a lot, from dressing like the OG gyarus we have now evolved to the whole "gal is mind" mindset, now in this era dressing up as gyal doesn't mean that much because you can still have pointy acrylic nails, iconic eye makeup, wear casual clothes and still be a gyaru.

These days even the gyaru slangs have changed so much like instead of poyo, atonsu, pachikoku now we use yarirafi, kyun-desu, daijuobu-so?, tobu-zo and so on.

Although there are egg models that still somewhat follow OG gyaru fashion like @ / mahiroisme (left) and @ / kae. 06256 (right) on IG.

Conclusion:-

By this post I just wanted to show that as time passes it is inevitable that everything changes and fashion changing is a no brainer. What is hate is companies capitalizing and making their own rules for lure in newbies gyals who would do anything to "fit in" and ring the nostalgia bell for old gyarus and all I have to say is that no, you don't have to spend 100-500$ on eBay trying to find the OG gyaru brands because you can definitely wear your own casual clothes and still be a gyaru because if egg magazine who raised whole generation of x gen, millennials and Gen Z of gyarus then who are we to judge them?

Although if you still wish to dress up like OG then I definitely recommend finding clothes that match the subculture that you want to follow for example I follow agejo, Tsuyome and kogal so I shop in Amazon, local stores, Instagram stores, I order clothes fr abroad the most helpful and fast way to do that finding a vendor and my vendors are all from Instagram. Hope this helps.

I will meet you all in my next post bye gyals <3

[gamerwoman3d]

A Land Before Time

🔞 An MK1 x Reader 🔞

▸ includes: Liu Kang [mk1 versions] F! Reader◂

Author's Note: This was based on a sex dream that I had, that I feel @genesiswrld SHOULD have had, because Liu Kang is hot but Bi-Han is my squishy. Not saying the dream was wasted on me, just that it was misplaced 😆

Female anatomy used.

Imagine for a moment that this New Era is real, and the existence that you're currently living is also real, and contains the New Era inside it as a game - but you find a technical way through the use of coding and quantum tech, to enter Liu Kang's New Era, “cool world” style, as something of a god/goddess.

Because you live in our shared reality, the one in which the game was created, you can in fact “code” the New Era into anything you like, within reason. But you have to get past the guardian. Liu Kang and Geras are gods there. But here, they are just characters, with Geras also partially functioning as a type of uncrackable password manager/encryption software. You can give your own self all sorts of powers to take into the New Era; but you can't change the core game unless you can get past Geras and Liu Kang.

You would either need their permission, or you'd have to force/brute force them to comply.

You can literally step from our world into the New Era and live there, immortal, with godlike power. And you do that. You use the code and give yourself the boosts you think you'll need to defend yourself if necessary.

Because you have the capacity to travel to any physical point in the timeline, as well as any temporal point in the timeline, you choose something you think will be easy to start. A time with fewer enemies, a time that you wanted to see in your own world, once.

🔞 Spicy/Explicit after the cut 🔞

When you first stepped through the portal into the New Era, the pristine sands beneath your feet were deliciously toasty. You could not help but to remove your footwear and sink your toes into the sand. The air here is pure, and filled with the strange buzz of unseen insects in the distance. The soft swirl of sand in the hourglass before you quieted. Without the hiss of sand, an absence of familiar noises from your past life became distinct; no motorcars, no hum of electronics, no trace of people, and a distinct lack of birdsong.

If you peer into the reflection of the hourglass over Liu Kang’s shoulder, you can see glimpses of early six-limbed proto-vaternians being gently guided into evolution in a neighboring realm. Liu loses his concentration on the sands as he sees you. Nothing devastating happens in the universe in that instance; there is simply a pause in the work.

Liu Kang knows immediately that you are not supposed to be here, standing before him and the hourglass.

He knows because he has not yet created humans.

Outside of the very meticulously kept garden that surrounds the hourglass, dinosaurs still rule this earth. Even birds have yet to grace the planet.

“How are you here? Or perhaps I should ask, are you truly here? Is it possible that even gods can still have dreams, or hallucinations?”

You tell him you are from a timeline before his own. You are older than his entire universe, older than Kronika, than Geras, older than the hourglass. And while you yourself did not create his universe, you were alive at the time it was conceived[1].

You tell him you shared a planet with, and walked among, the beings that created his universe. His universe is based on what your people knew of their own universe. Your feedback may or may not have influenced these creators; but you have some access to their same power of creation, and have come to use the hourglass to enhance his universe for yourself.

You came prepared to fight if necessary. Liu Kang would be very particular over who has access to the hourglass.

You may even fight a few rounds if you're curious to test your code enhancements - at least until he understands that you do have the power to control parts of his universe already, and the power to defeat him if he made it necessary. Through the encounter, he learns that you aren't lying about being from an even older timeline responsible for creating the hourglass.

But whatever it is that you want to change about the New Era, he likely won't let you without a fresh fight. And another fresh fight, and another, for every single little change you think you could want.

“We don't have to fight. We can compromise.”

For Liu Kang, it has been a lonesome existence, living out the creation of the new era in solitude. Geras can offer Liu Kang company in much the same way as an AI Assistant bot can offer a human company. But you know the depths of loneliness must be unbearable for a creator who is utterly alone in the universe across all of time. You know this, because even in your own world, the mythologies of all creator gods often began with the creation of people.

Even the gods of your own reality were so unbearably lonesome that they, in myth, created all of your ancestors, either for companionship or worship.

Your offer of company is accepted graciously, the moment he understands that you won't be withholding your companionship to exchange for the powers of the hourglass. But to settle conflicts over what happens in the hourglass, you both have an idea.

Gambling, games, and wagers. But instead of betting on who will win a physical fight between you both, you gamble on which of you can bring the other the most pleasure.

You're both seated in the zen garden, where the tropical heat has warmed the sand. Sheets of some soft fabrics are laid out in a manner similar to beach towels, allowing you both to walk and sit without burning your thighs or disturbing much of the sand.

He has a very smug “I know I've already won” look on his face the moment you suggested a contest based on sexual pleasure instead of kombat. You might think billions of years of being pent up would give you an advantage over him, but it doesn't; your customized form in this new era was generated anew when you stepped through the portal into his era. This particular body has yet to experience such pleasure at all, and will react, on a neurochemical level, at its most basic “code,” reacting the same as it would if falling in love for the first time. It will, in a nutshell, intoxicate you with want and pleasure, as if you yourself had never experienced it before.

But you didn't realize this. Your overconfidence proved your ignorance.

“You decide the winner. I trust your judgment will be fair. Or at least I don't trust my own judgment call to be unbiased,” you say.

Liu Kang smiles.

“A designated judge will be unnecessary,” he says, "I am certain we will both agree on who has won the challenge.”

He looks off in the distance before continuing.

“I would appreciate it though if we could choose some less intimate positions, at least at first. I'm still not over the grief of losing my dearest friend, and my beloved. I'm not sure how I might react, looking into the face of another, knowing I shall never have these moments with her. It isn't that I don't realize the finality of her destruction; but giving this kind of pleasure to another is a turning point that I may never be ready for.”

You slide closer to him and caress his shoulder, enough for him to feel your inner warmth.

“Grief is made of the same stuff as love. It's just the love-stuff that's leftover with nowhere to go,” you say.

He lays his head on your shoulder, pulls your hand to his cheek and tilts his face into it. Peace painted across the features of his face as he melted into your touch. His relaxation left you with an indescribable euphoria that deepened with each breath.

“Thank you for saying so. I feel more comfortable now, knowing that you understand,” he says.

“And I'm glad you said something. I like it when you tell me what you want. We can do this however you like. After all, this is a kontest for providing pleasure; not receiving it,” you said.

“Buy you will be receiving it,” he gloated, “and I shall be providing as much as you can possibly stand.”

“Ooh,” you teased, “Promises, promises! Hah, I like it. I feel good about you taking the lead, if you would?”

“Of course,” he said.

As he smiled up at the heavens, he closed his eyes and bit his lip. His eyes squeezed hard enough that the apples of his cheeks warped around the outline of his eyes. He took a deep breath that sounded as if he swallowed an antagonistic laugh.

“You aren't allowed to hate me when I show you how easy this is,” he said.

He turned his body towards yours, guided your body into facing away. You removed just enough clothing to feel his touch, to not hinder him from penetrating you if he chose. The fabric that you left over the top of your glistening pussy was delightfully thin and stretchy enough to move to the side in a pinch.

You spread yourself face down across the sheets of fabric. The warm sand below the soft fabric gave way, cushioned your ribs, and pressed its warmth up into your breasts.

He crawled on top. His weight on you pressed you slightly deeper into the fabric-covered sand. The heat and weight of his muscular legs across the backs of your thighs alone was enough to make you crave completion. But then, his clothed erection pressed against the cleft of your pussy until your slit pinched around the thin fabric. He slotted himself into the fold of fabric and held you there, wedged between the hot sand and his heated, immovable body. You squirmed into him, only to discover that you couldn't move if you wanted to, with your legs pinned to the sand.

You turned your face to the side to look over your shoulder at him. He wore a smug expression as he looked down at you.

You could feel your clit throbbing against… the hot sand? or his shaft. You could not tell. Both were equally firm and toasty.

He was hard. Slotted against the fabric, he nudged his erection firmly against you, the head nestling between your folds to swipe against your clit. His breath deepend, you could feel the air from his nostrils against your neck, just below the ear.

Against your back, you could feel his chest expand and cinch with each breath. You were caught in heat, trapped between his muscles and the sand. You liked this, being at his mercy. He rested his chin on your shoulder and huffed, resting his entire weight on you as he hunched. The cock knocking repeatedly against your throbbing clit had you squirming, whining, whimpering as you held your squeals of pleasure in. He ran one hot palm along your side. He caressed and groped your glute before freeing his cock from its cage of fabric. He hooked a finger around the strip of stretchy fabric above your mound and slipped it to the side.

The bare cockhead slipped between the fabric and your clit. Liu Kang let the fabric snap back into place, catching against the bottom of his shaft. Your pleasure built up as he rolled his hips and frotted against you, fucking the gap between your panties and your clit.

You balled your fists, grabbing handfuls of sand through the fabric sheets. He repositioned slightly so that you could feel the wet swiping of his heated cockhead against your clit more intensely. Your fingers came undone from the fabric and all ten digits splayed out in a fan shape as your quiet whimpers suddenly broke into a muffled outcry of pleasure.

His hands found yours. He covered the tops of your hands with his palms and threaded his fingers between yours, gripping each hand with interlaced fingers. You felt the tips of his fingers curl past the webbing between your digits to press against the insides of your palms. He pressed your hands, and his, to the sand, to pin them where he wanted them - where you could push back into him, but not escape. Not that you'd want to.

Your skin tingled anywhere he touched it, and the skin where the pads of his fingers glanced against the inside of your palm, threaded along the webbing of your fingers, was exceptionally sensitive in a way that made you feel safe, loved, cared for deeply, and connected.

The warm weight of his body on yours made you feel safe, while the cock massaged between your pussy lips. His thrusts massaged them open without penetration until you could feel every fiber of yourself unwinding, melting into the sand.

You looked back at him, only to see that he was still gazing at the side of your face, waiting for you to open your eye. His smug, slight smile never left his visage. He squeezed your hands with a pleasant pressure, as if he were wringing them out. You realized in that moment that you were swollen inside, and quivering at the entrance.

Then he stops moving, intentionally. You feel him, all over you, weighing you down, trapping you in the imprint of fabric in the hot sand. You feel your heavy, puffy cunt lips throbbing against his stationary cockhead. You're sensitive as fuck. Even your heartbeat rocks your clit against his cock too much.

He breathes. He breathes out through his nose, his gentle panting breath trickles underneath your ear, down your neck. His chin follows, as he rests it in the crook of your neck with his jaw at your shoulder. His skin just feels like skin, yet you're electrified by it. You're so sensitive in your new form. He could stay like this all day. You cannot. He knows. You know he knows.

You know because when you look at him, his unchanging, stoic “I told you so” smirk is so purposefully calm, that you could consider it antagonistic. Even just this look he gave you had you dripping wet for him, to say nothing of the thick smooth, hot cockhead nestled against your clit, or the warm shaft that your heavy, fevered wet pussy lips spread themselves over. You give a defeated cry of pleasure and gave in. You tap out against the sand, to tell him he's already won, and he responds by firming up his grip on your hands and moving in for the kill. He devours your neck as he nudges your clit around and fucks you, alternating between the two activities until you cum beneath him.

Your orgasm does not slow him down. He slips his cockhead against the fluttering entrance of your cunt and pauses, as if testing something, as if something changed. The slick hole winks against him and he sinks inside to stay.

“You're so creamy after you've cum,” he purred.

His cock feels amazing, warm and firm and deep, exploring inside you. He pressed it past a spot inside you where the pressure feels so good that you feel you might die unless it, that spot in particular, is beat to hell. He pressed past it, but drew back, stroking slower and deliberate against this inner spot. You felt a sudden dying urge to feel him hammer his cock into this weak spot inside you. The change in your whimpers gave you away.

“This little spot right here is particularly velvety,” he said, “it's just gooey… no. Buttery. Right here.”

He let his cockhead glide against the spot in several slow deliberate strokes for emphasis. You groaned brokenly into the sand and bucked back into him. You had chills. You had goosebumps even on the hot sand. He held and pinned your elbows to your sides. Your nipples stood erect beneath you, the tips ground into the fabric as you bucked backward into him. He paused, held you down, let you rock and buck until the fit of passion washed over you, and you could still yourself. He didn't shush you. He just pulled back until his cockhead hovered a hair away from that sweet spot and he waited for you to collect yourself. You caught your shuddering breath, but couldn't look at him without feeling like you might cum again. You looked, and groaned deep. He acknowledged your desperation.

“I'm going to start fucking that velvety, buttery spot now,” he whispered toward your ear, “I do not know when I'll stop.

Scream if you need to. I've yet to create a single person that could hear you.”

His cock pinpointed that part within you that most yearned for it the instant he buried it in you. He pressed himself against it and wrung you out. You felt it as your own cum for him seeped out, dribbled down onto the fabric and soaked through the fabric into the sand.

Every stroke is devastating. You're loud as fuck and no one else can hear it. The skies open up and it rains on the two of you, mostly upon his back. Judging by his gentle moans, the rain itself seems to give him pleasure as the droplets hiss against his back, only to turn into steam. You could swear that you're causing it, that this rain is your rain. Suddenly you are cumming because it is raining, and it is raining because you have cum. When your palms tremble, he re-interlaces his fingers with yours to squeeze your hands in his, wringing you out, wringing out your anxiety, wringing out your pleasure, and possibly wringing out the very act of rain itself from the sky above. You couldn’t explain it, but somehow you knew.

You became the rain. And the rain became you. The rain became a goddess, and the goddess was you. The wetter he made you, the more the world flooded. He had no intention of going easy, but you found yourself clenching, squeezing, sucking him in, working yourself against his body as he worked you apart with his.

“That's it,” he huffed, “now, you're getting it.”

His breath grew ragged.

He said, “Rain.”

You nodded, not fully understanding.

“Rain on me,” he said.

Your eyes widened. He knew. You knew he knew. Rain pummeled your bodies in a deluge as you felt, not just the tension of your body snap, but the tension of your sudden ascent to godhood burst into creation, almost as a miniature version of the big bang. Untold energies from deep within your soul burst forth and spread out in all directions, spreading your power throughout all the realms, both giving you power over all the rains in the entire universe, and giving the entire universe the gift of your rains.

But you couldn't focus on the sensation of becoming a god, as Liu Kang fucked another blinding orgasm from you. This time, his composure cracked, and he came screaming with you in tandem, hot against you, his inner flame temporarily quenched by the deluge of your pleasure. The two of you thrashed against each other with abandon, riding out your pleasure together, before collapsing boneless into the soaked fabric atop the muddying sands.

The rains subsided gradually as the two of you caught your breath. You moved to roll over, and Liu rolled off of you onto his rain-soaked back. He closed his eyes and let the pitter-patter of the rain wash over his body, cooling him, turning to steam in the air around you both. You rolled onto your back beside him, then onto your side to drape yourself around him.

“Wow,” you said between heavy breaths.

“...Yeah,” he replied, still panting.

When you caught enough of your breath to speak full sentences, you could only think to ask one question.

“Did you just make me a fucking rain goddess?” You asked.

He nodded and laughed.

“You didn't think I'd let the first hot sex in my new era be mediocre,” he said.

“Holy fuck though,” you said.

‘Literally?” he teased.

“Okay yeah literally, but I'm starting to think I won that one,” you said.

He just closed his eyes and smiled.

“Okay wise guy, who won?”

He bit his lip and jerked his thumbs towards his chest, gesturing to himself.

“Ugh. You're impossible. Round two!” You demanded.

“You're losing this one too,” he said.

He rolled on top of you and peppered you with kisses. He promised you a second round, and a third - if you survived the second.

But first he needed to check progress in the hourglass. You peered into it with him and saw proto-vaternians in their pre-paleolithic era. A group of them surrounded a cairn, upon which sat a strange skull decorated with stones and feathers. You asked Liu Kang what it was; he told you it was a representation of you. You were the very first art, the very first goddess. You were the first to collect worship and be created in such a manner. You arrived in the new era just in time. The ancestors of the Vaternians had just created and worshiped their first god, which happened now to be you.

Had it not been for your intervention, Liu Kang would have been forced to grant this worship to the one you knew as Rain.

[To be continued.]

[Need more MK1 smut? Check the pin 📌]

[Need more Liu Kang smut? Check the Choose Your Own Adventure, below!]

[swanpyart]

Interesting thing that no one has mentioned; the Narrator, despite trying to destroy the concept of death, doesn’t actually know what happens after you die.

When the Player asks what happens after the end of the world in the Fury Route, the Narrator and Hero have this back and forth:

You’re probably thinking, “But he used to be alive! He killed himself!”

But each version of the Narrator we see isn’t ACTUALLY dead. They are still present, experiencing what the Player experiences. The original version of the Narrator that made the Construct, the Creator, is the only version of the Narrator to have actually experienced true death before the game’s events.

I find it interesting and a bit hypocritical that when the Player gets the chance to ask questions, the Creator chastises us for asking because, as the Long Quiet, we can’t possibly understand how awful it is to die since we are immortal. But the thing is, he’s in the same boat even if he doesn’t realize it; The Narrator, the Long Quiet, and the Princess have all experienced a death that didn’t actually TRULY kill them. Sure, the two Gods can come back again and again, while each version of the Narrator will simply fade away, but the point still stands.

The Narrator expresses how awful death is, and how his people were filled with dread at the Universe’s death, but the truth is that the issue the Narrator faced in life WASN’T because of death itself, but the precipice surrounding it; the grief, the dread, the panic, the anticipation, the trauma. Ironically, all of these things are things the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound have experienced over and over…. Yet the Narrator insists that there is possible way for the Gods to relate to him in that way.

Also, it’s shown time and time again that the world the Narrator wants is unsustainable; the Player will never be satisfied with eternal life, and eternal life is arguably what makes the Player and the Princess miserable in this twisted cycle. The Hero compares the complete stagnation of the Narrator’s vision as functionally the same thing as being dead, not experiencing anything new, with no change or evolution.

Even more crazy is how the Creator describes the world without the Princess as one of “An eternal pattern of forgetfulness leading to the joys of discovery.” You know, exactly what every version of the Narrator experiences and is never ever happy to find out.

[st-whalefall]

I’m taking a big ol’ swing with this one so everyone please keep your limbs inside the vehicle until we reach our destination (let me cook)

So, what happened here? For this to go from-

Goofy ass grin <3

Summer: “Trust me..”

To this-

Raven: “The creatures of Grimm have a master named Salem. She can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.”

Raven: To Ruby with disdain, “You sound just like your mother.”

Let me lay some of my cards on the table. I’m in the “Summer is still alive” camp and I got thoughts on: if Summer is still alive, why has she not been in Yang and Ruby’s life?

Not even a peep? For 14 years?

Something BIG had to have happened to her to keep her away from them.

Now, a lot of folks will go straight to where Ruby jumped to: Summer got Grimm hound-ed by Salem

But I think that’s takes a lot of agency away from Summer and the building revelation of her character and the purpose she serves in the narrative.

If Summer has been grimmified, I posit it was by her own doing, by choice. And her choice alone.

Qrow: “You’re special the same way your mom was…The creatures of Grimm were afraid of those silver eyed warriors.”

Salem: “Do you feel it? Don’t fight it girl. It can sense your trepidation. You must make it dread you.”

How does Salem illustrate the melding of Cinders flesh with the Grimm arm and mastery over it?

In the few instances we get, how are silver eyes described in their effect on Grimm? Obliteration, yes. Resistance to their influence? Possibly (see Ruby & the apathy). But command over them? Let’s explore that.

We are working with a pretty small dataset here, so you’ll forgive me for mostly drawing from Cinder for this (separate post I think the hound is a reanimated corpse and so different from true living hybrids like Cinder (& hypothetically Summer)).

Grimm evolve and Grimm hybrids, like Cinder, adapt.

From vol4 to vol8, Cinder’s Grimm arm grows. It spreads. And she becomes more comfortable with it as time progresses.

Cinders Grimm arm has become an integral part of her and, side note, I dislike theories that revolve her hypothetical redemption around her being purified of evil (Grimm) by silver eyes.

[But that’s just me, I want the monstrous to stay monstrous rather than erased or watered down for easy digestion. Let the monster stay a monster in its appearance and still be worthy of love, and so on and so forth.]

So, we come back to Summer Rose.

Summer confronted Salem, learned something earth shattering, destroyed Raven’s faith and trust in her, and did something that prevented her from returning to her daughters for more than a decade.

What did Summer do? Agency, we’re thinking strong choices here.

Choices that are radical but in line for a character with strong convictions, an alluded to pedestal she stands upon and all the complexes that comes with, perhaps a little self destructive, and a big heart. Big enough to sympathize with the devil and do something about it.

The thing that could be preventing Summer from returning home could be as simple as:

After she learned the truth about Oz’s shadow war, she joined Salem’s side, and won’t return until she’s seen it through to the end.

But I want to put some spice on there because what if:

After learning whatever it was Salem told Summer, that turned her world upside down, Summer looked down into the pools of black and took the plunge

To understand Salem on a molecular level

To be Grimm as Salem is Grimm

To be a world changer

In the world of Remnant, that’s what the Grimm are. A force of destructive change, like hurricanes and wildfires, they shape the world through calamity. Disaster doesn’t feel any one way about you, it just is. It is devastating, but it doesn’t hate you. And it doesn’t love you either.

So, what would that make Summer?

How do you think that’s changed her, fundamentally?

Bloody evolution indeed.

And that’s why she stayed away. Summer changed, and now she looks a little more on the outside how she feels on the inside. But to the rest of the world, she is something horrifying. Unspeakable.

She didn’t want to give her girls nightmares.

Yeah, Summer was the inspiration for the Hound, and Cinder’s Grimm arm. But not in the way Ruby thinks.

[sepublic]

            The Owl House is a story that begins with a mother and child being separated by a system, and then throughout the series, is the story of the two of them working to get back to one another; Luz putting in so much effort to create a new portal, while Camila becomes more understanding of her daughter.

            Luz went with Eda, who wasn’t meant to replace Camila, but the system Luz herself was supposed to be sent to anyway. And Luz planned to go back to her mother once camp ended, with Eda recognizing Camila’s connection and encouraging Luz to do so; Helping Luz self-actualize, which would allow her to reconnect with Camila on a genuine level, instead of suppressing herself for Camila’s misguided efforts and building up resentment in the long-term, as had happened between Gwen and Eda.

            Mother and daughter thought the other didn’t want them back yet, but they did; Camila clearly had second thoughts and that led her to go back and drive Luz to camp herself, which helped her meet Vee, which gave her a reference to better understand Luz as she waited for her daughter to come back. Luz wanted to tell her mom everything, but had her fears worsened by Grometheus, and then had that taken out of her hands in a way that only exacerbated their misunderstandings and made Luz feel more unwelcomed.

            And who took that from her? An arrogant, bigoted white man with delusions of grandeur and an enthusiasm for dehumanization. Jacob Hopkins’ attempted murder creates a stressful situation for Camila, which leads to her having an outburst towards Luz (one she regrets) that helps inspire a lot of shame in Luz for her decision. And Jacob is someone who explicitly fashions himself after Puritans like Belos, who are infamous for their culture of shame.

            Belos especially is someone who insists that Luz is being ‘corrupted’ by a family and culture she actually enjoys and benefits from, and the way he talks about ‘saving’ Luz’s soul by taking her away from these people (and no doubt re-educating her under his proper Christian tutelage) is an example of how the U.S. would kidnap and whitewash children of color; Such as in separating Native children from their tribes, to raise them with white names and Christian beliefs, with white hairstyles and fashion.

            And the evolution of this is in the racism of the foster care system, which many, including its own workers, call out for its biases; Placing families of color under particular scrutiny compared to their white counterparts, assuming the worst of them, sending them to ‘better’ (AKA white and Christian) families.

            Puritans and Protestants are alike, and it was a Protestant minister who argued for taking Irish children from their parents. Black women like Camila are dismissed and seen as incapable of looking after their children (despite black women historically being forced to look after their white masters’ children), and poorer families are punished for not having the wealth to take care of their children as easily as wealthier ones.

            (Satisfyingly ironic, then, that in TOH we see the children of two white, wealthy families get to cut ties from their abusers and find actual healthy relationships in others, many of whom are working-class PoC.)

            Luz’s interactions with Belos are isolated, and he’s the one doing the isolating too; He whisks away King and Lilith, has Lilith taken by the Stonesleeper, buries Hunter alive, sends Kikimora and the Collector away, and suppresses Hunter within his own body. Sometimes her friends come in to help, but when it comes to talking with him? Luz is left alone with that dude far too often, left alone to explain and defend herself against a grown man who manipulates people; It’s no wonder Belos still managed to gaslight Luz on her personal guilt, even if not the ‘guilt’ of the Boiling Isles.

            Makes it all the more satisfying then that his death comes not just from Luz refusing to waste energy in entertaining Belos’ rhetoric (“You’re not coming from a place of intellectual honesty, so debating you would be pointless!”), but also from her family getting to step in for Luz; Her family getting to have the last word and speak and argue for Luz, in her defense, after she argued for the defense of the isles and her loved ones against Belos by herself, so many times.

            Isolation is not just a cult tactic; It’s the racial implications of separating a child from people like her, in order to tell her they’re a bad influence, in order to keep them from supporting her. In particular, Belos’ demeaning attitude towards Luz in King’s Tide reeks of a racist who wants to ‘civilize’ a child of color; He might claim to want to bring Luz back to her ‘home’ with humanity as she tried, but it would be on his terms, Belos would mean it the same way as the system does, where he means Luz going to a specific type of humanity that isn’t her mother, making her home on Earth more hostile until it isn’t home; Plus Luz’s friends in the demon realm ARE her home as well, so both would be cut off.

            If Belos had his way in the human realm he’d have separated her from Camila, not unlike how white slave owners would claim the children of their slaves as property, and separate them from their mothers; Black women have often had their motherhood towards their own children stolen away from them in the U.S., only to be expected to exercise it towards white charges.

            And in the very next episode? We see the implicit threats of the counselor towards Camila, who preys on her own struggles with ostracizing in the past. And where does that come from? We’re reminded in Gravesfield’s shameful past of witch hunting, which is itself intertwined with its bigotry in many forms, from misogyny to racism; A historical re-enactment calls out the insincerity of all witch hunters.

            Gravesfield is a Puritan colony, and the Puritans helped found and inform the United States and its many, MANY issues, such as its punitive justice system, its racism, its religious colonialism, etc. Belos tricks witches in the Demon Realm and profits off their labor, just as the U.S. often tricks native tribes, immigrant workers, and freed slaves via exploitative contracts; And then take credit and act like their ‘achievements’ are what make white men like them so great.

            So while deeply toned down in the present-day, there’s a connection between a state/school system that takes a child away from her mother to be molded into what they deem more fitting, and how Gravesfield threatened violence on those who don’t agree to fit in; Particularly Evelyn, as well as Caleb, who actually took his opportunity to flee. That school counselor is the modern Belos, taking Luz from her family to be re-educated.

            Things have certainly improved, and kids in that Reality Check Camp were able to find camaraderie (either because of or in spite of the camp), but the dark past of Gravesfield was haunting the Nocedas even before Luz visited the Demon Realm. Things like Child Protective Services can be a tool for good and have been, but there’s always the implicit biases to beware, and the darker origins that those who act in good faith are attempting to overcome via reform; The same can be said for the U.S. as a whole, really, with PoC familiar with the criticisms playing a big part in both.

            And the hostility towards outsiders, the categorization of a default that then defines those who don’t fit in as ‘weirdos’, clearly affected Camila as it does many immigrant families; If immigrants cannot find other ‘weirdos’ as defined by the white majority, a place to belong in a community like them, then they will be vulnerable to the system’s exploitation.

            Note that of the four kids sent to camp, three of them appear to be from migrant families and/or PoC; One of them is white but evidently Russian (So not white in the typical U.S. hegemony way, plus they’re a NB witch), and you could parallel Belos perceiving an outside world as an inherent threat to humanity, as like the U.S.’s Red Scare paranoia towards Russian “commies” that affected Russian migrants.

            So amidst migrant kids being disproportionately targeted, there’s that sense of necessary community that informs a sentiment you don’t have to be an immigrant or even a PoC to empathize with; “Us weirdoes have to stick together.” Camila found Manny, and she found happiness in him and then Luz, and then Vee… And then so many more.

            Because after an entire show of mother and daughter trying to get back to each other, despite the implicitly or explicitly racist system and its representatives that tear them apart, they finally do. Near the end of S3 we finally see Luz and Camila succeed, not just in reuniting physically, but emotionally too; Their bond is rekindled, the system doesn’t break that permanently through what felt like Luz to be a betrayal. And so what would’ve been a hollow return in King’s Tide is made truly sincere, and the damages of the first episode truly recovered from.

            Because if you think about it; Luz and Camila were the original weirdoes, before we even see Eda or King! You could take it even further with Manny and Camila; And then with his death, Camila and Luz tried to stay together, tried to find ways to not let the system take them apart, even if that meant compromises like the Reality Check Camp. It’s Luz, Eda, and King in the first episode; But it’s also Luz and Camila. All three characters are Luz’s loved ones, her fellow ‘weirdoes’. Luz spends the latter half of the show getting back to Camila physically, and then most of S3 doing that on an emotional level; While at the same time reuniting with Eda and King.

            S3 is the climax where despite the efforts of a man who is the remnants of an old system, Luz reunites with her entire family, found and blood, after the show establishes itself via her relationship with them, and the story doesn’t happen without that; No Camila, no Luz accidentally finding the Boiling Isles, and without Eda and King, no Luz deciding to stay and pursue herself. It’s a bond not even death can break, not just literally thanks to the Titan, but also symbolically because we see how Manny still inspires Luz; And once again the Titan helps with that too, being the literal foundation for Luz to meet Eda and King and be inspired to continue that passion.

            And with the Titan technically debuting via her body in the first episode, that’s another loved one Luz gets to reunite with in S3, who she still maintains a connection with posthumously despite his death, not unlike Manny. They’re both father figures for Luz in that and other ways, guiding her from beyond and still spiritually ‘alive’, even if for the Titan that becomes only metaphorical after the finale.

            Because it’s Luz and Camila, King and Eda, and Manny and the Titan; Two worlds, two kids, two mothers, and two fathers who still look after them. Both families trying to survive the loss of a father, one of them not even knowing it. Eda keeps the Titan’s wild magic alive (something they both share an interest in) through successful rebellion, and looks after King; While Camila remembers Manny’s support by re-engaging with that which they bonded over (Cosmic Frontier) and supporting herself again, as well as Luz.

            Even the Clawthornes are alike, not just in Eda and King, but with sisters Eda and Lilith, and their parents Gwen and Dell; A branching offshoot of the same system that antagonizes families like the Nocedas, also antagonized them. It took Lilith from her family by promising things it would never give, and then forced her to change her appearance and beliefs, her personality.

            With Lilith especially, despite or because of her conforming to the system’s mold, she was still taken away from her family physically; Even with both parents (and a daughter) not showing any intention to go along, that still happened, and it’s a sickening thing that this is billed as a positive goal, in a way that the Reality Check Camp’s plausible deniability can’t ever measure up to.

            Again, it’s not unlike what was discussed earlier about the U.S. with Native Americans, and with Eda and Lilith being redheaded and wild magic like Paganism, there’s a potential tie-in to how the Irish were colonized by the British, for whom the U.S. was an offshoot of (just as the Emperor’s Coven is an offshoot of the Puritans); Or even a tie-in to the aforementioned Protestant minister wanting to separate Irish children from their families! The coven influenced Lilith in cursing Eda, which led to Gwen trying to get back one child still taken from her, and Eda her sister. But the erasure of the coven, down to a Puritan’s masks that hide the true appearance of the isles, is undone.

            The Owl House is a story about a lot of things, and one of those stories is the U.S.’s hostility towards PoC, and its attempts to divide and conquer them, often resorting to physical and/or cultural destruction to do so. Even Death itself is an obstacle, whether by the system or by sheer coincidence. But the Nocedas survive anyway; Similarly, the Clawthornes are an indigenous family pulled apart by a branch of that same system, but get together.

            Both families get new additions in each other when reuniting. Everyone survives no matter the damage because there’s always weirdoes and the system fighting so hard to suppress that proves how natural and inevitable such people really are; Because when ‘weirdoes’ have a community, is their status as ‘weird’ really so legitimate to begin with, unlike the ‘weirdoes’ themselves?

[clonedchaos]

My Chaos Theory Season 2 Nonsensical Rambles! 🦖🦕

Okay, okay. This season was sooo good y’all! For those of you that have watched the season all the way through already, feel free to read. They’re just my comments, notes, and theories that I wrote down after watching each episode. It’s a whole lot of nonsense, really. THIS INCLUDES SPOILERS SO DO NOT READ BELOW THE CUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ANY!!!

Happy JWCT Season 2 release day, too! 🎉 Happy Viewing! And thank you so much to our wonderful writers, animators, voice actors, and everyone in between who came together to make this absolutely phenomenal series come to life! I appreciate you all so very much for all your dedication towards a project that means the absolute world to me! ❤️💐 This season really tugged at the heart strings, and even got some tears out of me at the end. I want everyone to watch this beloved series spoiler free, so last warning— HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD! I hope you all enjoy it just as much as me.

And again, thank you so so so much to the people who brought this amazing series to fruition. I’ve been struggling a lot lately, and this show— and its franchise— has really made the hard days in my life more bearable to overcome. It has helped me in many ways, and I just wanted you to know how much its meant to me (if they somehow see this). So… Thank you. 💐🌸🌺

🦕🦖 Camp Fam For Life! 🦖🦕

Episode 1:

KENJI WHAT THE HECK?! Why are you being so self sacrificing?! (I know why, but still) Painful to watch. The little spark of Yaz’s and Kenji’s old friendship is so cute, and I really hope she can help him work through this trauma more.

Okay, the beginning with Sammy and Yaz was so simple yet adorable. And the way Yaz wraps her arms around Sammy and pulls her close— STOP MY HEART! 😭🩷💜

Majungasaurus’s are cannibals in this franchise? I need to brush up on research for their species, but I’m just used to having a lot of them in one enclosure when playing Jurassic World Evolution. I’m glad they’re finally getting some spotlight, I’ve always had a soft spot for them. (Okay, I have a soft spot for every carnivore in this entire franchise but you know what I mean).

The lightning and animation was absolutely incredible, especially in the storm sequences. They did great at making the atmosphere fill you with a sense of dread as the characters were getting stalked at every turn. That one frame of Darius hiding behind a crate and holding up his phone towards the Majunga is a personal favorite of mine.

The fluffy moment of Darius, Ben, and Sammy trying to be the first to match a roar with its proper dinosaur was soooo cute. My favorite parts of this series have always been times when they can just relax and have fun— I’m a fluff enjoyer, what can I say? One thing this show really excels at is fostering a lovely friendship between the campers. Their interactions are always lovely.

Darius being the first one to reach out to Kenji and haul him from the boat… I’m glad they’re slowly reconnecting again.

Okay, LETS TALK about the Ben noticing Brooklynn thing. I feel like the DLN fumbled the bag in terms of keeping her a secret. Like… why did they have her in the video? If they’re using her for their own gain like I’m assuming, why would you want to give anyone the inkling that she could be alive? I guess they just didn’t think no one would notice? I mean, she’s the only one not wearing the mask in the photo.

Not Kenji making jokes about his deceased father… It’s in character for him, yes. But still… as his friends said: “Too soon.”

Episode 2:

I read the title “Marooned 5” as “Maroon 5”…

Already I love the new character. It’s really cute how Zayna’s friendship with the Gallimimus sort of mirrors Darius and his ties towards the same species. The Stegos also looked like they were protecting her when they sensed danger.

Sammy being the mama bear of the group now is so 🥺🥺. She’s still the cheerful, positive gal she always was, but I love how she’s matured as she’s grown up.

Kenji trolling Darius got a laugh out of me. Brothers will be brothers.

Suchomimus appreciation! I absolutely adore its patterning, it reminds me a lot of the African savanna’s. It’s ironic, given that Sucho’s were first discovered in Africa. I wonder if that’s merely coincidence, or maybe, just maybe, they’re being transported to continents that they would have lived on millions of years ago? Could it be the DLN’s doing? Or am I just looking into it too much? (Future Me here: Yes, you are)

KENJI WHY DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH?!?!?! Bro literally squared up with a Suchomimus. Admire the bravery Kenj, but you’re making my anxiety worse, my guy. 😭😭

I really enjoyed the hints of cohabitation that was present in this episode. Humans gave the stegosaurus’s food, while the stegos offered them protection from predators. THIS is stuff I wanted to see in Jurassic World Dominion. I wanted to see HOW humans coexisted with these dinosaurs.

THE CONCEPT ART *chef’s kiss*

Episode 3:

Ah. We come to the episode a large part of the fandom has been waiting on… A Brooklynn backstory. Boy, was it a doozy. For starters, I didn’t know Brooklynn was a biker. Really hyping up that bad girl persona.

The campers keeping in touch on a zoom call makes this so much more upsetting. They still seemed very close up until Brooklynn died. Then, they just lost touch for a while.

I’ve started realizing I relate a lot to Brooklynn, especially in this episode. She’s overworked and “all over the place”. As someone who can sometimes put too much on her own shoulders, I 100% understand the level of stress she’s putting on herself. Not to mention she can be so caught up in one thing that she misses the actual moment in reality. It’s something I myself am working on; adhd doesn’t exactly help. But I definitely get where’s she’s coming from.

THE DARIUS CONFESSION STRESSED ME OUT HOLY CRAP— Like, the way Brooklynn inches away, Darius quickly tries to change the subject. Gods, it made me anxious just watching. I literally put my head in my hands and started mumbling to myself during the scene. (I’m slowly going insane 😭)

Seeing Brooklynn in pain and anguish once she realized how she lost her arm was heartbreaking. This was the time she needed her friends most. But for their safety in Brooklynn’s eyes, they couldn’t be there.

THE POOR COMPY WITH A CONE AROUND HIS NECK! 😭😭😭 No nibbling, he’s banished to cone jail!!!

So… the camp fam and Brooklynn’s dads came together for her funeral… I could have only imagined how rough that would’ve been. I’m honestly glad they didn’t show it, because I would’ve been balling uncontrollably for the next hour. And the fact that she was going to reveal her false death to her friends and family RIGHT before the DFW came in and screwed it up?!?! Ahhhh!!!!

THAT GUY?! WASN’T HE THE ONE WHO COULDN’T SHOOT A GUN IN SEASON 1?! AND SAMMY’S FARM WAS A SETUP, DID I HEAR THAT RIGHT?!?!?!?! (Someone please clarify, idk if he was talking about farms in general or if it meant Sammy, I forgot)

Episode 4:

Heck yeah! Malta! Crossing my fingers they show it in a later episode.

The small moment of Sammy watching Zayna and her mom… I NEED to know what went on between her and her parents.

Love the parallel between the opening of JW Dominion and Brooklynn’s escape at the farm. It’s a nice little throwback.

Dubai? Why Dubai? I absolutely love the mystery aspect, it’s like the more they reveal, the more questions are brought to the surface. The writers and everyone really went above and beyond this season.

Episode 5:

Sammy acting as the protective older sister of Zayna is so in character for her. “14 and 3/4. She’s still countin’ quarters, Kenj!”

Okay, I probably should’ve said this in an earlier episode, but Ronnie having the user Clever Girl just makes me so inexplicably happy.

SOYONA SANTOS?!?! AAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

WE’VE WON GUYS, WE’VE WON!!!! GUYS IM LOSING MY MIND AS IM TYPING THIS!!! IVE ALWAYS WANTED HER TO HAVE A BIGGER PART TO PLAY AND HOLY MOLY SHE DOES! OF COURSE SHES THE BROKER! HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS?!?!?! AND IT’S HER ACTUAL ACTRESS VOICING HER TOO!!!

*ahem* Anyways… I’ll try and keep my cool.

Soyona is artsy? She’s very demure, very mindful. In all actuality, I’ve always been very interested by her character. She’s very poised an elegant, yet calm and calculating at the same time. Her and Brooklynn having a sort of “chess match of wits” which was very entertaining to watch.

Well, Camp Fam, looks like we know where Red has been all this time. I wonder if Red is Soyona’s favorite of the pack, much like Blue is to Owen.

Poor Yaz having to share a boat with Kenji and Ben while they’re arguing like an old married couple. She’s such a mood, no wonder I kin her.

Episode 6:

Poor Ben. Why is everyone having panic attacks? 😭😭😭

I think it’s interesting how Yaz, whom is the most introverted of the 6, ends up being the peacekeeper in this season. She knows when her friends are hiding something, and she’s going back and forth trying to help everyone out all at once. Her and Brooklynn are pretty similar in that regard, I’ve noticed.

Sammy’s a vegetarian? I guess it makes sense given her love of animals.

OKAY THE HIPPO VS SUCHO SCENE?!?!?! THEY LEFT YAZ?!?! Nononono I’m panicking!!! SAMMY’S FACE WHEN SHE REALIZED!!! I’m so worried, she definitely must’ve gotten a concussion from that hit.

I really wanna know if Red would have attacked Soyona during her deal with Brooklynn. Every cut in film is directed with a purpose. If they’re showing you something, it’s meant with intent. Maybe it’s a coincidence they kept cutting toward Red and having her in the limelight between them, but was the Raptor debating having Brooklynn in charge of her? Maybe Atrociraptors aren’t THAT smart, but I’m curious to know. After all, it’s implied Soyona raised them with a personal connection. If Red is similar to Blue, would she had done it had Brooklynn asked?

Episode 7:

Sammy’s 100% in distress mode. She doesn’t care if what she’s doing is level headed, she just wants to protect her girlfriend. And honestly… I could blame her. If I were in her position, I would’ve reacted the same.

I know I’m supposed to be scared of the Suchomimus and all that, but… it looked so adorable when it was curled up!!! Darn it, carnivores can be cute too!!!

I love how Darius tries his best to talk to Zayna… with Sammy sitting right behind them. Like Darius she’s hearing EVERY WORD you say my man 😭. And Zayna’s RESPONSE and EXPRESSION! “Sammy’s girlfriend is by herself surrounded by killer dinosaurs. Why would I take anything she says personally?” 😐 She is very mature for her age, honestly.

Flying Pterosaurs… ITS ALWAYS THE FLYING PTEROSAURS THAT RUIN EVERYTHING!!!

More animals coexisting was fun. Well, coexisting as in Sucho’s eat hippos for a late night snack and Lions eat Dimorphodons for dinner. I’m sure it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, of course, but I really like how this series is giving us more of dinosaurs living among other animals and humans. As stated earlier, it barely got touched on in Dominion. THIS is the type of content I’ve been waiting for!

NAH THAT SUCHO SWIMMING SCENE WAS CREEPY—-

I love how Kenji immediately embraces Yaz. She just wants to hug her girlfriend and Sammy’s standing there straight faced like “…” And Yaz saying “I really wanna hug my girl right now.” 😭😭😭😭😭 YASAMMY DESERVES THE WORLD!!!

Episode 8:

YAZ HUGGING KENJI IM ABOUT TO CRY SO MUCH Y’ALL!

Darn it, I was hoping for an Indoraptor hidden in the lab. 😞 Wouldn’t have made sense, but hey, worth a shot. But what DOES make sense is how there got to be so many dinosaurs roaming around the world once Dominion rolled around. Of course they would try and clone new ones to maximize profits. There was only so many that got released post Fallen Kingdom.

The blind Baryonyx… all I can think about is giving it a hug. Poor little one is stuck down there, more than likely because Santos figured she couldn’t sell it. I wanna adopt them. :(

NO IM NOT READY FOR THE ARGUMENT I DONT WANNA SEE IT!!!!!!

Episode 9:

Ironic how creation… kills the creator. It’s honestly sad how he manipulated the baryonyx’s genes to remove its eyesight entirely. It’s nice to see a use of echolocation, however. The movies never get it quite right imo or just don’t bring it up ever.

Okay, Soyona’s “Trust is hard to come by” line makes me think… what if The Handler could have stolen some of the raptors from her? Sure, she hired a hit out for the campers and more than likely enlisted the Handler’s help. However, both of them have a deep connection with the raptors. Maybe Red was the only one who stayed by Soyona’s side? It’s a great stretch, but it just got me thinking.

Brooklynn needs evidence to send Santos to jail, right? But… she’s out doing stuff in Dominion. So either someone bails her out of jail, OR, Brooklynn fails… which one is it?

Episode 10:

WE MADE IT! Did I spend roughly 5-6 hours binge watching this for the entire day? Maybe. Do I feel like garbage for not getting out of bed? Umm… Kinda. (I’ll try to exercise, I promise…)

I WAS SO SCARED KENJI WAS ABOUT TO PUNCH BEN! DUDE WHAT?!?!?!

I love how the villains in this franchise aren’t just treating their Dino’s like the Indominus and Indoraptor were treated. Both the scientist and Soyona ended up forming bonds with their animals. AND WHAT WAS THE THING WITH RED?! HELLO? SHE CAN LITERALLY MIMIC NOISES?!?! THIS WAS LITERALLY MY FACE DURING THAT PART NO JOKE:

ITS SO CUTE BUT HORRIFYING?!?!?! ITS LITERALLY A PARALLEL OF THE INDOMINUS GETTING THE RAPTORS TO TURN AGAINST OWEN!!! RED IS BECOMING ONE OF MY FAVORITE DINOSAURS Y’ALL, I’M FREAKING OUT!!!!

I literally do not care how unbelievable of a scenario that would be. It was freaking cool!

That one frame of the Baryonyx in the dark hallway is so creepy… My sleep paralysis demon fr.

So… let’s talk about the end… Not only do I really really need a season 3, but I just… I don’t know… The moment Kenji grabbed Brooklynn’s hand before she headed into the jet is what prompted me to cry. Yes, I did cry, don’t judge me plz. 😭 “I’m not the Brooklynn you once knew”… NO! YOU ARE!!!! I was waiting, waiting for Brooklynn to ditch Soyona and embrace her friends, leaving the show off on a note where they have to stop her and Biosyn. But… Brooklynn left them. This entire season, I was waiting for them to be with one another again… All I can think about is- where do they go from here? Brooklynn has shown she’s willing to do whatever it takes to expose this mess, even if it meant abandoning her friends… So what’s going to happen when her friends follow her? How long can she keep this up?

[greyspirehollow]

Bound. For... Science. [Request]

Pairing : Quaestor Valdemar x gn! reader

Fandom : The Arcana visual novel

Warnings : brief depiction of scientific stuff ; fluff

Summary : Could you have imagined that the scary and mysterious Quaestor Valdemar would become the person you see on a daily basis? Probably not. You even have a surprise for them...

They didn't pay much attention to you at first. Nor did you pay much attention to them. If you were honest with yourself, you probably couldn't have seen it coming. Once they started looking into your general direction however, you couldn't be any more nervous. You can't exactly remember how or when it started, but they had crept up on you so many times that you couldn't keep count anymore. Good thing your heart wasn't too jumpy (to their greatest disappointment).

You were minding your own business in the library, devouring a tome written by probably your favorite scientist : the genius who is Wilfried Magnes, an eminent biologist who had just published the third part of his theory on the evolution of species, this volume being dedicated to camouflages. You were so absorbed by the author's words that Valdemar had to clear their throat to get your attention. Your head whipped around at the sound, and you let out a relieved sigh. You were about to speak but they interrupted you : "Come. I would like to show you something..." and with that, they tugged three books out of the library's bookshelf, opening a secret passage. Your eyes widened as they grinned. Oh they were going to have fun scaring the sweet heavens out of you. You reluctantly closed your book, tucked it under your arm and went down with them.

You'd half expected the elevator to just give up and drive you both down to your respective deaths, but it seemed to be holding itself together. And that is the days you reached Valdemar's dungeons. They looked... Undeniably giddy. It was fun to scare mortals after all. And well... You didn't feel... the best. You hesitantly followed them, the strong smell of blood and iron hitting your nostrils, making your nose scrunch and a discreet cough escape you. And they seemed unfazed, inhaling the dungeon's scent blissfully. The more steps you took forward, the less you were sure you'd come out of this alive. You two then reached the main hall, operation tables lined across the walls and seemingly frozen in time since the last time they were used. Your eyebrows knitted in worry, your gaze falling onto Valdemar who had a wide, sharp-toothy grin on full display. "This-" they gestured around "-is *my* haven. The heart of all my works, where lies the remains of the most unspeakable procedures one can think of. Feast your eyes, maybe this is, who knows... the last thing you'll see~" your heart thumped violently against your ribs, and your eyes couldn't look away from- oh, what was that?

Your gaze landed on something behind them, in the faint distance : a shelf, upon which rested various things, but it is the white spot that caught your attention. You gasped, and it is as if all your fears... vanished. Wiped out in a snap of fingers. You excitedly walked over to the shelf, put your book aside, and took the human skull in your hands. "Gods, that's a beautiful specimen!" you exclaimed "how did you manage to extract it- i-it's in perfect condition ! what did you use to clean it? no don't tell me- let me guess- uh hydrogen peroxide* ? or did you clean it by hand?? Who- no wait ; I think it's... it's definitely a man's, and I'd say in their... in their 40's? something? did you-" you interrupted yourself with another gasp as you spotted the wet specimen of a heart sitting on the shelf. You carefully put the skull down "wait wait wait- you do not have a heart contaminated by a dark magical parasite- you do !!! How did you even get your hands on that ?? How did you remove it without getting- no way, you have- NO, stop it-" then your hands reached for a small closed test tube "you do not have a sample of a necromancer's magical decay !!! Where the hell do you even go to get that ?!" you gasped and picked up and examined specimen after specimen, object after object, rambling aloud. Valdemar could only watch with utter confusion as you rummaged excitedly through the shelf, all giddy. But soon, they grinned ; they seemed genuinely excited at the idea of explaining each and every single procedure they went through for each item, and so they went to stand by your side as they started rambling themselves. Your excitement was contagious - mainly because they didn't exactly have anyone else to share their passion with. And so when they started to go on about every recent experiment they'd done you clasped your hands together, looked them in the eyes, and said, determined : "teach me."

And that's when you became Quaestor Valdemar's apprentice. You two would spend most of your time in the dungeons, and at times you would giggle excitedly when performing a dissection with them, or when you found something exciting. Ah, science. Wonderful science. The word got around eventually, when people saw you practically live at the Palace and with your very own labcoat, gloves and apron. Countess Nadia eventually gave you one of the guest rooms to reside in, and that's basically when your new life began. At times, you would conduct experiments of your own in your basement. You did it before you'd met Valdemar, but now that you had a person to show your work to, one can say you'd become productive. You had obviously endlessly rambled about Magnes' theories of evolution to them, and they happily reflected upon it with you. The Quaestor had even brought up a few names they knew, and well, despite being somewhat outdated (and for some proven wrong and so put a little on the side in scientific history), and when I mean outdated I do mean dating at least a millenia back, you had heard of or read about some. Sometimes you would pester them with tons of questions about the scientific breakthroughs and theories of their own epoch, and they did reluctantly reply to some of them, despite your unquenchable thirst for every piece of knowledge you could get your hands on (the mind of a great scientist).

You loved the time you spent with them. But there was one thing you were particularly excited about... You hadn't told them yet. You'd simply mentioned how it would be nice to go for a simple walk in the streets of Vesuvia, enjoy the sunlight and the fresh air -because as much as you liked the dungeons and your basement, you didn't exactly appreciate the smell down there, unlike them- and to your surprise, they'd agreed. You'd reserved your places in advance, thankfully, because you knew that despite being relatively niche still, it was nonetheless booked by all the other scientists of the city. And of neighboring cities. And countries. Now that you thought about it- the scientific field was a rather closed circle, but people really came from everywhere. Anyways. As D-day approached, you couldn't help but feel both excited and anxious. Valdemar seemed to have noticed : you were talking a lot faster than usual, and your movements were a bit less organized than they usually were. You'd always dismissed it, saying it was only 'seasonal'. Not sure how you could prove that to them, but they didn't question you further. When the day finally came, you were absolutely restless. You laid there in your bed, it was probably... 3 AM. And you were successively falling asleep and waking up by periods of thirty minutes. Gods, this was torture... You tried tiring your eyes by reading Magnes, and... It worked, actually. You sighed as you finally managed to sleep through a few more hours before sunrise.

But once you did wake up for good... Oh you were worse than a grasshoper. You couldn't even focus on the experiment with Valdemar- you couldn't even stay sitting for more than two seconds. When the clock struck noon, you agitated even more, insisting that you and them go on that walk in Vesuvia NOW. They initially resisted, but their patience ran thinner and thinner with your insistence. "fine, FINE ! We'll go on that stupid walk!" they said, irritated. If you were honest with yourself, you would've dragged them by the horns if they'd continued to refuse. They sighed, annoyed, as you gripped their arm and pulled them out of the dungeon. Valdemar knew something was up. No human -especially not you- was so excited about a walk in the streets. You were definitely up to something, and they didn't like the fact that they didn't know what it was. But your (nearly feral) eagerness did ease a bit of their concern : it was entertaining to see you so jumpy. You'd not talked about anything scientific on the way to your... surprise. You were afraid that you might accidentally spill the beans. And you wanted it to remain the most surprise it could be. You both walked the busy streets of Vesuvia, the sun hitting your labcoats, reminding you that they were actually a clear color, nearly white, making you squint your eyes every time you glanced at Valdemar. Now that they thought about it... They weren't exactly used to the outdoors. They haven't been recently, anyway. It was nice to feel the warm sun on the skin of their face again... They allowed themselves a small smile behind their mask.

After what felt like endless turns, you smiled with undeniable joy as you both reached your destination. You walked a few steps ahead of them and cheerfully announced : "Tadaaa ! Welcome to the Third Edition of Vesuvia's annual Scientific Exhibition !!", with a wide and toothy smile. Valdemar's eyes widened slightly. They'd never heard of this event before... They looked at the building which hosted it, and the crowd of what were definitely scientists -or at least curious souls- lined up at the entrance, the sun hitting the bright red of the laid out carpet and the banners on the walls, embroided with the event's symbol. You excitedly waited for their reaction. They smiled and looked back at you "ooh, so that's what you were all jumpy about..." you chuckled, slightly embarrassed "I really wanted it to be a surprise..." you said sheepishly. They hummed : "well, that is definitely a pleasant surprise... Shall we go in?" You nodded eagerly as you went to wait in line with them. They struck conversation as you both waited :

"What does... what happens there, if I may ask?

-Well, it is an event that allows scientists of all backgrounds to come and show off either their discoveries or their handiwork. There are also often books and manuals being sold, as well as materials and products -ouh, I could definitely use a few brand new scalpels- but there can also be specimens. Last year I've seen reconstruction of animal skeletons, things like that.

-My, that is most interesting... *they replied, their eyes sparkling with interest* I do hope this will be a fruitful experience.

-Oh, it most definitely will!

-How come I have not been informed of such event? You said it was annual?

-Well, it's still very niche, and not many people outside the scientific field know about it.

-But the Countess must've known, no? Third edition- meaning this is the third year they're doing this. Ooh, or maybe it was put on hold during the years of the Plague... Meaning it was Lucio who-... Hm. He most definitely wouldn't have told me. He must've said yes for the event to be hosted without even giving it proper attention. Tsk.

*you chuckled*

-Well, now we're here, and I'm pretty sure the Countess will give the exhibition a bit more care and attention from now on..."

You both arrived at the reception, and the man behind the desk looked up to both of you "Ah, greetings, Misters.. Misses...?"

"Doctor." you both replied at the same time, on a nearly identical tone. The receptionist raised an eyebrow and blinked, before reading over his list "hm.. Ah yes ! I do have two Doctors : Dr. Y/N and Dr. Valdemar?" you beamed "that is us!" the receptionist nodded and handed you a quill "I'm just going to need you both yo sign here..." and you both did. The man bid you a good visit and you both walked into the building, excited to see what would the exhibition hold for your curious eyes. Valdemar had noticed the little paper at the entrance, and decided to tease you about it : "You didn't take the couple's discount?" you briefly froze in your tracks and stammered "wh- uhm I didnt- I ju- uh... Should I have?" They laughed "No, I just thought maybe you could've spared a little bit of money... Those places were expensive, no?" your cheeks reddened and you frowned "don't worry about that- Let us enjoy science!!" They nodded and followed you through the building.

And the event did NOT disappoint. You went from person to person, lingering on some more interesting than others. you bought supplies, both for the dungeons and for your own little experiments at home, and you and Valdemar spent a copious amount of time with a surgeon, Dr. Milestone, who had successfully extracted a whole human nervous system, which was on full display under a glass protection for you to admire. Both of you swarmed him with questions, undoubtedly interested. Maybe you had even... Intimidated him somewhat. If it weren't for the exhibition's most interesting part, you would probably have spent a lot more time with him. You both walked into a separate room, which was basically a small amphitheater, and when you sat down, an auction began. There were various specimens -live or dead- being sold, but you hadn't managed to get your hands on any, despite the juicy offer of an amnesic brain and two hundred coins for a complete collection of the tools of the late scientist Oscar McArthy, a reference in the world of science... But that was a very little loss compared to the amazing afternoon you spent with Quaestor Valdemar. And they seemed to be thinking the same thing. However, around 5PM, you'd lost them in the crowd. Unable to catch a glimpse of them, you went and waited by the entrance, thinking it would be the most logical thing to do. They appeared again around half an hour later, and before you could scold them, they apologized, and you weren't so upset anymore.

Eventually, you both returned to the Palace around the evening. You didn't head straight for the dungeons however... Your legs felt weak and all the excitement, all the attention and focus you gave the exhibition had drained you. You let yourself slump down onto the couch of one of the drawing rooms with a groan, already feeling your eyelids begin to weight and threaten to close. Valdemar only chuckled at the sight "Can I at least sit down, too?" you briefly sat up "oh- yes, sure.. sorry" and made room for them. But as soon as they sat down, they grabbed a pillow, placed it on their lap and patted it gently. Your eyes widened at the invitation, and before you could wonder why they'd even done that, they said : "it's the least I can do for such a wonderful afternoon.". You didn't need to be told twice. Your head slumped down on the pillow on their lap and your eyes closed with a comfortable sigh.

It's not before they were sure that you were knocked out asleep that they started gently running their fingers through your hair...

*nota bene : I am in no way a scientist, so I may give inaccurate depictions of certain elements in the story.

Bonus !!______________________________

The following day, around breakfast, Valdemar came up to you : "I didn't have time to give you that yesterday - you were pretty tired." they handed you your copy of Magnes' theory on camouflage and you raised an eyebrow "what do you mean? I hadn't lost it..." you opened it and your eyes nearly popped out of your sockets- there, on the first page, was a handwritten dedication :

"Y/N, may your thirst for science and knowledge never quench"

-W. Magnes

"you.... when did you ...?" your voice squeaked as you stood up from your seat. Valdemar only smiled smugly. "He was surrounded by quite the crowd... We didn't even notice him, near the auction room. But I did manage to capture his attention briefly." You didn't even question how they'd gotten the book -since you were pretty sure you'd left it at the Palace- or the fact you missed the chance to see your favorite scientist, you were nearly crying, this was just so sweet of them to do-

You nearly knocked them off their feet with the force of your hug "oooowhhh, Valdemar !!" you squeaked out "there there, it's nothing." they said, patting your back, seemingly amused "I could kiss you-" you said. "ah- maybe not for such a futile favor?" the replied, a little embarrassed. You didn't care, but if they didn't want to be kissed, you wouldn't kiss. But you wouldn't let go of them either.

"Y/N, will you let me go now, it's roughly been three hours-"

[thelunarfairy]

The Moon Prince's Secrets 🌙

Hanako's evolution throughout history. Amane, the enigmatic boy from the moon, as I sometimes call him. He made me create so many, many questions, he made me create so many, many hypotheses.

He started out as a playful boy, he didn't want anything serious, just to have fun and hide the darkness that had been stuck in his chest for so many years under the rug. The darkness that those eyes hid so well.

The darkness that guided him to do things he shouldn't do to save someone he loves. It's comically tragic that he planned to use Nene's life for a dead end, even though he never wanted to do anything bad to her, fate, the short path she had, guided him to those choices.

But still, he tried to give her the best life he could give, he didn't expect her to be so sweet and kind to him, that she would be the first person who would show so much affection, of course, she is not perfect, she makes mistakes , like anyone else, but she was there, when no one else was.

He fell in love with the sacrifice, and little by little the pain increased. It was like dejavu, reliving the same suffering again, of being destined to receive and give love to people who will leave, to people who are destined not to be by his side.

Because every reality he finds himself in, Tsukasa is never there as he should be, he's not there just as a younger brother, nothing more than that, in the same way that Nene is not there to be the woman who will live by his side. .

It's distressing.

The two try to save Amane, but he doesn't want to be saved, not if he can't live with the people he loves. What's the point of being alive if he won't be with the one he loves?

I can't call Hanako's evolution that, I must call it discoveries. He's still the same Hanako, the same Amane who trapped Tsukasa so he wouldn't be abandoned, the same Amane who tried to trap Nene so she wouldn't die, so she wouldn't abandon him.

He is slowly showing us sides of himself that we didn't know, it's not an evolution, it's just a little truth being shown here and there about his real nature.

The obsessive love, the love that hurts and that doesn't allow him to let go of the ropes, the boy who loves so intensely that he doesn't care about certain limits, not only for the people he loves, but also for himself.

How far will he go to get what he wants?

Amane started out not knowing how to talk about his own feelings, and he still doesn't know how.

Amane started hiding everything he could from the people he loved from the beginning, and he still does.

Amane knows that what he did in the past was wrong, but he continues to do the same.

Amane started out afraid to talk about his past and himself, he is still afraid.

Tsukasa and Nene are the same, the same mistakes he made with Tsukasa, he is making with her.

Or maybe not?

There are things he didn't allow himself to do with Nene. The death of Tsukasa and himself differs from Hanako's desire for Nene to live.

Tsukasa was surprised by this, Amane did a double murder, but he wants Nene to live. This time, he let her free from the prison he created, but still, Tsukasa says he is selfish.

That's because Amane killed Tsukasa, arrested him, but didn't give him the freedom to choose to leave, like he gave Nene. Even though he had already tried to arrest Nene other times, Amane gave her the freedom to live, but did not give her the freedom to choose to take her own life, like he did with Tsukasa.

Amane's love imprisons.

His evolution…. how could I say… a boy who started one way and remains in that state… has he evolved or are we just getting to know him little by little?

He is someone who fears himself, he is not evolving, he is slowly showing us who he really is, making the same mistakes.

After all, Nene is just like Tsukasa, what happened to him will happen to her.

Perhaps?

Even after all these years, I still wonder who the real Amane is.