#i am genuinely impressed by some of my rendering here

[spoopy-nevermore-dump]

Well well well, look what we have here

:)

[xuune]

Hii first of all, I FUCKIN LOVE YOUR ART! ITS GORGEOUS AND IM SURE EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND YOU REALLY GIVE YOUR SOUL INTO THAT🤧 Your color palette looks so good, What do you pay attention to when painting? (Like when do you think its better to use multiply or something like that and etc.)

first off, I'M HAPPY YOU CAN TELL THAT I PUT MY SOUL INTO MY ART!!! im genuinely in love with drawing and am always finding ways to make creating art enjoyable and impress myself with what i can achieve and learn :D

second, thanks for asking your question!! i dont mind answering it, but my response is quite long. here's my thinking process:

(you specified layer modes like multiply, so im gonna gear my answer towards that a bit) 1. REFERENCE SEARCHING IS KING. color is actually extremely hard for me, so i search around for artworks with palettes i'd like to use and study how an artist uses it. some situations i have a clear idea of what i want, but usually the images in my head are extremely vague, so i borrow palettes from various other artworks that fit the vibe of what i want. an example is this one. my main palette reference were from these artworks. im looking at this artist's use of high saturates and how drawings are overlayed on top of each other. while looking at references, im asking myself how is this artist using warm/cools, where are these warm/cools placed, if their illustration used any form of texturing (like halftones, hatching), how do they use their palette to render form/shape/gradient, when/where do they saturate/desaturate their colors. those questions inform my decisions when using colors too.

2. USING LAYER MODES WHEN NECESSARY. i used to be reliant on multiply for everything, which atp i dont do since i can definitely push colors more first before using layer modes. only when i feel like my current colors are lacking do i start tinkering with tone curves and/or brightness/contrast/hue/saturation/luminosity settings. and if that doesn't work, then i start using layer modes. using layer modes do help with achieving certain effects, color corrections, or when i want to fuck around and find out. i think having a better understanding of what these modes can do makes you more decisive on how you can properly utilize them and to achieve a particular look (like using multiply for a cel shaded style). here's an example:

this leads into my next point:

3. BALANCING OUT VALUES. big thing that makes an illustration hard to read is if values blend together which affects the hues and contrast. i check for what elements need to be distinguished from one another and if it can be read clearly. using layer modes can either help with this or not help at all. it's very dependent on the type of layer mode. here's this example where i applied pin light:

back to #2, there are various instances where i'm using layer modes for quick color corrections and/or to help with readability:

other times, i start off having my entire subject in gray and to figure out main shadow/lights (similar to the multiply cel shaded process i linked ealier). im thinking about what this should look like if i only used 2 value tones:

when in doubt though, i check my artwork in grayscale to ensure values aren't overly blended into each other, especially if i didnt start with grayscale like this one:

painting for me takes into consideration a lot of different aspects. im thinking about how colors should interact, where/when to give contrast, checking/balancing out values, etc, but im also making it a time to study off of how other artists use their colors through the references i collected.

hope this answered your question! lmk if there's more :]

[artycomicfangirl]

I really like your take on Daisy's parents and how you took real life inspirations for them. I also find it sad that Daisy lost her mother at a young age and thus her father was a bit more protective of her.

How would Daisy's father react when his daughter tells him about the relationship she is in? And how would he react towards Luigi when he eventually shows up in Sarasaland?

Ah man, I have only just managed to catch up with my inboxes that need answering! So sorry for the lateness, but here it goes!

(Like how I state in my other Daisy related Headcanons. I shall use the name Richard for her father, because that’s what it seems most of the fans use!)

- A Father’s First Impressions -

• The Princess claims she has found her soulmate? How surprising, really! As much of a leader Richard is, nothing could prepare him for THIS.

• At first, is the usual “Oh! How delightful!” As his on-the-spot response. But inside the turning cogs of his head, he’s already kind of an uncertain mode. For some reason, he always thought that Daisy wasn’t an easy person to win over. In fact, he even sort of takes pride that his daughter can be strong and super independent. That even a Prince needs to keep up with her.

Basically, he got this kind of vision of Daisy in his head that’s a bit different.

• To put it bluntly. The moment when he sees Luigi, he was a bit skeptical. The King found the plumber to be the complete opposite of what he thought Daisy would be in love with. I mean, nothing exactly bad with that. But it definitely caught him off Guard. certainly not the ideal image of a perfect Suitor for his daughter.

• Richard is definitely one of those type of fathers who appear to intimidate and interrogate. Having gotten Luigi’s first impression as a more timid and polite character, the King takes his approach steadily. Simple questions at first. Then as time goes on, he begins to try and delve for knowledge of Luigi’s being, and test him with other questions so far.

• ESPECIALLY at The Dinner feast for the guests! In a more comedic outcome, Richard might become a little too intimidating, to the point where he renders Luigi bumbling a bit over his answers. As the older brother, Mario immediately catches this (I’d like to believe Daisy actually went to Mario for help when she first found herself falling for Luigi!) and notifies Daisy for a swoop-and-save.

• After Hilariously pulling her father out from his chair and out of the room for a ‘few words’, The Princess right away tells her father to cut it out, and that He’s embarrassing her in front of the guests.

The King tries to cover up his little stunt as ‘Just asking questions!”. But upon being the subject of his Daughter’s steely glare, he gives in, defeated. He deeply apologizes, and confesses that he honestly couldn’t understand why she would choose someone like Luigi. Daisy firmly retorts back that Richard is being ridiculous.

• If I am trying to align the King’s personality with the Kodansha Conic more, He’s not the type I think to want to ‘break up’ the two. But he will be prone to nit-pick and point out things that Luigi might have done wrong. Or passive-aggressively put emphasis on Luigi’s flaws.

• I’d like to think that it’s gotten so ridiculous at some points, that a couple of times Mario’s more take-charge attitude has lead to him to defending his brother every time. And in worse case scenarios, ALMOST wanting to argue back. But by the good grace of his younger brother’s pleads to hold back and just be calm. He does it for Luigi’s sake.

• I’d like to think that at some point though, the King has been proven wrong. There would be a moment where he would see the Mario Brothers at the height of their power, leaving him in awe.

• Although at the end it still does take a bit getting used to accepting the fact that his daughter is in love with someone like Luigi. The King does genuinely apologize at the end for giving Luigi a Hard time. And it is in that moment, where the King reveals a bit on why Daisy means so much to him.

• Or picture this. An Enemy that has backed Luigi into a corner. But the King immediately jumps in front to his defense without hesitation.

And the most surprising thing? You mess with his future Son-In-Law? You mess with the King, the Royal Family…and most likely the other kings from the 4 Kingdoms.

[isalabells]

I am very curious why Ted going back to the US to be there for his son is him making the mistakes as his dad and a real tragedy. Or did I read your tags wrong and you didn’t mean it this way?

Anon, I never meant to insinuate that this is him making the same mistakes as his dad, nor do I think my tags suggests that. But it's Ted fearing he is making the same mistake as his dad that is the driving force for his ill-advised decision. (That being said, i've seen the Ted's gonna end up like his dad eventually take flying around here, and while -- even in the face of the final scenes -- this is too horrid and bleak a thought even for me I can't entirely refute it, so there's that.) As for your other question, hoo boi- I recommend going back to the post I reblogged and scrolling through some of the tags because there's a lot of people out there who've articulated it way more eloquently than I am currently capable of, and my answer is nothing but a potpourri of all these thoughts.

But let me ask you in return- Did Ted look happy to you? Did he? Did his constant dissociating throughout the episode and him being emotionally closed off and unresponsive to all the people who love and care for him so deeply, him forcefully shutting them all out so he could be A Good Dad and soldier on and do what must be done because he fears otherwise he will make Henry feel like his Dad made him feel (which in itself is a loaded thought, and I bet Sharon could dismantle it within two sessions) make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Him more or less being pushed into this decision because his mom was guilt tripping him and going through with it bc he is under the misguided impression that he has to break-the-cycle in order to prevent impending doom for Henry (guys pls this isn't Succession).

I know there's a post making rounds where people are being outraged bc how dare anyone say choosing to be a parent is the inferior choice here, why do you want Ted to abandon his child and like- I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that way.

The implication that Ted not living within close proximity to Henry renders him a bad father is just bonkers. Emotional availability and taking care of your kid, being involved in their life is not necessarily tied to local distance at all. In all those three years, Ted hasn't neglected Henry once? Hell, with all the constant facetiming and irregular visits and whatnot he's probably kept more up to date with his kid than a good chunk of parents do despite living under the same roof as their offsprings.

Emphasizing the importance of the nuclear family (one that technically doesn't even exist anymore in Ted's case) and telegraphing that this is the main if not only way to be A Good Father seems like such a shocking conservative and nearsighted move for this show, and, pardon me, a very US-American one as well. All of this seems quite tone deaf, but it wouldn't be the first time this season (maybe one day @hubba1892 will bless us all with the essay on TL taking a stand on defying Super League and pushing for 50+1 rule vs. City being a major advertising factor for the show.)

Obiously, this is strongly influenced by me being a firm believer that parenthood shouldn't swallow your whole identity. Playing at pretend happy family and, as someone else put it so nicely, sacrificing your happiness for the sake of your kid is not healthy, and it will gain your kid nothing in the end. Ted seeing himself as nothing but a vessel to fix other people's lives and help them become the best version of themselves only to remove himself from the situation, nay, the entire story (literally and metaphorically, cf him suggesting Trent change the title) once the job is done without a thought or care for his own wants and needs, let alone his happiness is just so deeply saddening. "But the second to last ep showed that they're all gonna be fine without him!!" Yes, that's exactly the point, he should stay because the wants to, not because they need him.

Now Ted 'ain't nobody in this room alone' Lasso is quite literally all alone in the big vast room that is Kansas, with his main people being Henry (a literal child), Michelle and his mom, two people who both make him fucking miserable. A less pointed take would be that he doesn't even have to stay at Richmond specifically. The opportunities that he now has at his disposal in the UK bc of his success story are endless; lots of possibilities for him to continue doing what he loves without being stuck in the depression show that is coaching little league for funsies, quenching all of his wants and needs and dreams and aspiration.

[frostbite-the-bat]

what do you do in petz + how the fuck is spam tong in petz

ok, so! petz, or in this case, PF Magic Petz specifically, is an old, OLD pet simulator game from the 90s! it's made to run on doo-doo potato computers, and uses it's own wacky technonogy called, and bear with me, "ballz", to render the pet models.

there's other games by pf magic, but we'll focus on petz. before they became stinky ubisoft petz. (ubisoft bought petz) nono ignore that. this is PURE FUCKIN' MAGIC PETZ! (thats what pf stands for)

you adopt a dog or a cat... and you take care of it! and unlike most modern pet sims - your pet truly has a personality of its own. for the game's age it's actually surprisingly complex, and the community is finding new things each year! i believe just last year (or two years ago??) we found out petz have FAVORITE COLORS.

each pet is unique in their own way!! signature animations, favorite foods, what relationships they have with other petz, how you've trained them... one pet may love being fed cheese, while the other may not.

of course there's also personalities for each breed, as each breed has it's own personality. i can't explain this one well, so give this a read!

i used to play petz a lot more back then, nowadays i just check in on it sometimes, but the genuine connection you may get to feel towards your silly guys is real.

fun fact i only adopt cats. i dont do my breeding from scratch but the guys i adopt from other people or PUGS (petz universal game site) (i hope i got that right) i dont like the sounds dogs make. i still need to finish graphics for all my cats. heres some of them. i love them.

what really makes this game is the community! it's a small, but surprisingly lively and friendly community! many of these people may even be twice your age, enjoying this silly pet game online with everyone, it's wonderful! the game is very moddable, and people make their own breeds, toys, areas... anything you think of, it can be put in this game with enough time and creativity!

some people make realistic, breeds, and some people make Silly Guys! like me for example! i'm really into fan-made media petz! it's how i got into the game, after all! i've made some hexied (modded petz) of my own!

ralsei is my best example. gif taken from my site

also, most people around the petz community have their own websites! for their downloads, shows, or to show off their petz!! what you can do is endless. i made my site because of that, though it's in constant disrepair and i SWEAR one day i will move to neocities.

and yes!! shows!! people do shows!! you can pose and take pictures of your petz and it'S actually a very pixel precise thing, trying to get your pet to do a show pose! people do these shows on forums and even give each other little graphic trinkets like badges!!

speaking of graphics... STAMPS!! petz fans love stamps!! i collect some, too, but my collection isnt as impressive as some other people.

people even have stamps for their own sites, that's where these come from!!

already creeping to petz spamton, dont worry!

but about petz hexing, i wanna give a shout out to the skinstealer system at the bad_death site. i admire their work so much. check it out!!! i reblog their things sometimes. (well..on my petz blog but i'll start doing so here, too)

ANYWAYS. PETZ SPAMTON. WHAT IN TOON IS THAT.

Well. you prolly werent there for it but petz spamton took some places of the internet by storm and OH BOY WAS IT BOTH REALLY COOL BUT ALSO VERY TIRING SOMETIME. im not the creator, i do not take credit, however i am partially responsible as that entity was created on my server. (after my friends talked about the reanimated joshua and the promised land video from saberspark - its a big collab and we talked about the people who worked on it. one of them was Moonkitti who has a petz profile picture. i then left the convo but my friend who i wont name so they feel comfy <3 remembered petz and had the wonderful idea of Modding Spamton Into It.)

i was graced with being able to see THE BEASTS PREMIERE. AND LATE AT NIGHT, WATCHING A DISCORD CALL OF THIS THING BEING BORN, SCREEN RECORDING IT ON MY PHONE.... LATER USING THE FOOTAGE TO MAKE This Infamous Video.

petz spamton doesnt look like this anymore its had many updates. (you can see the history on my spamtons as id update a new one and keep it with certain updates!! for example otterpop doesnt have colored paw pads, but mango does.) but this is the original. i had an og adopted as well but i lost it </3 BACK UP YOUR FILES BACK UP YOUR FILES BACK UP YOUR FILES BACK UP YOUR FILES. I MISS YOU CHEESE-TON.

and WELL.. PEOPLE LIKED THIS MOD...! much much fanart... and even some drama uh oh please people dont sexualize feral animals. thanks. go to hell and die. it was both very fun but as you can imagine it got overwhelming especially for my friend so i am keeping them anonymous!! they do have a sideblog for petz just named "petzspamton" if you want to see The Og.

it got many people into petz!! it was wonderful to see people discover this old game. hell! even i got into it this way! though as trends are, they usually go away eventually. i stay however because im ill. hashtag number one spamton pet breeder. dont take it the wrong way. i like spamton mixies.

oh yeah! the breeding in this game! SURPRISINGLY VERY COMPLEX. WONT BE GETTING INTO IT. but! two petz can have a baby! including modded petz! it can create Monstrosities. but some are niceys! i like both the cursed ones because funny but also getting some niceys to keep :) i have many mixed spamtons!!

for example iceshock (white) and creature! (grey)

the possibilities truly are endless !!

but yeah. the hype died down but its always funny meeting people, talking about interests, we get to deltarune. I mention petz, then they say oh yeah petz spamton i know that AND THEN THEY REALIZE WHO I AM "YOU MADE THAT SPAMTON VIDEO" BRUH IT HAS 4K VIEWS ONLY LIKE HOW DO YOU FIND THIS SHIT . THIS HAPPENED ONCE OVER SOMEONE I MET ON A FUCKING CLUB PENGUIN PRIVATE SERVER. i do not like micro fame but oh my god this shit is always so fucking insane and funny to me i love it i love being a fucking cryptid. BUT ANYWAYS

things layed dormant. petz spamton server dead as hell. my own server #living tho #gaming #swag #iamruinbornaftonialwayscomeback.

and then... THEN... SPAMTON SWEEPSTAKES OCCURS. AND THERES A PETZ MENTION THERE. DID WE CAUSE THAT? OR IS IT TOBY JUST LIKING OLD GAMES AS HE DOES.

WELL READ MORE HERE BECAUSE I TALKED ABOUT THIS ON MY WEBBED SITE !

BUT YES. SPAMTON IS IN PETZ NOW. IM PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE. ITS PROBABLY BEEN REFERENCED BY TOBY FOX??? IF YES THEN I HAVE 2 NICKELS FOR HAVING A THING IM RESPONSIBLE/PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING NOTICED BY THE CREATORS. NOT A LOT BUT WEIRD IT HAPPENED TWICE.

PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT MY SPAMTONS. I LOVE THEM.

but man if i may get goopy orizfhhguguughh ill be fr height of petz spamton hype got Tiring .im sosososos glad the server we had for it was tiny as hell and secret because MAN. URUGHH

[periru3]

An Unauthorized Tafadhali Vid Starter Pack

Today I was bored, and when I am bored I make lists. The list my brain has decided to make today is a list of my favorite of my sister’s (@tafadhali) fanvids. Except “favorite” was too difficult and too vague, so I started thinking of it in terms of what vids I would recommend to someone who had never seen her vids before. That still wasn’t enough structure for me, so I decided to give myself some categories to make sure I had a wider array of vids represented, and what I ended up with was sort of... vid superlatives? Anyway, I’m quite happy with my list, so I’ve decided to share it with you all. Without further ado, here is me shouting through a megaphone about how cool my sister is for no particular reason:

YouTube Playlist

1) Most On-Brand: I am a (Library) Scientist - Multi-Fandom (Horror)

If you want to get a very quick impression on what sort of vidder Taf is, and some insight into her interests, this is pretty representative.  Multi-fandom? Check! Horror? Check! Literally about her IRL profession? Check! An ideal get-to-know-you vid for Tafadhali. 

2) Special Interest Vid: We Kiss in the Shadows - Multi-Fandom (LGBT)

Love me a vid that’s basically like “hey, come look at this rarely-vidded thing I know lots about!” (admittedly, a not dissimilar category to the one above). Anyway, Taf’s love and knowledge of classic films and of queer film history come through beautifully in this (as well as the other vid in her Screened Out series, Masculine Women! Feminine Men!), and it makes me cry every time. 

Honorable Mention: Paperback Writer - Multi-Fandom (Stephen King)

3) Critical Vid: Fortunate Son - Star Wars

This vid is amazing because it both captures all that I love about Finn as a character while also highlighting and calling out the ways in which the character what let down and done dirty by the writing of Star Wars. Also truly amazing song choice and lyrical matches. 

Honorable Mention: Hail Satan - Stranger Things

4) Character Study: Patient Zero - Harry Potter

One of Taf’s earliest vids, this character study is one I come back to again and again for it’s beautiful and insightful portrayal of Harry’s arc throughout the series, with a focus on his relationship with fame, destiny, and some really complex parental figures.

Honorable Mention: California - Mad Men

5) Shippy Vid: Umbrella - Singin’ in the Rain

Yes, it’s a Cosmo character study, but it’s also the cutest darn OT3 vid in all the land, and it’s Taf’s most popular vid for good reason! It’s a total delight! It’s full of silliness and very well-matched-to-the-music dancing! And it uses a song cover inspired by this very movie, so that’s fun!

Honorable Mention: C’est la Vie - Doctor Who

6) Emotionally Devastating Vid: Achilles Come Down - Les Miserables

If you’re looking to cry, this vid is the one for you! Tafadhali seamlessly blends multiple adaptations of the same story into one heart-wrenchingly gorgeous vid (rendered all the more stark and affecting in it’s Black and Red iteration). This story and these characters are dear to the vidder’s heart, and it shows. 

7) Intense Vid: Man on a Wire - Hannibal

This psychological horror/thriller vid is definitely one to get the adrenaline pumping! The fast-paced song paired with the super sharp editing of this vid really do justice to the visually stunning source, and capture the fractured mental state of Will Graham perfectly.

Honorable Mention: Brutal - Yellowjackets

8) Comfort Vid: Waters of March - Multi-Fandom (Miyazaki) 

This is easily one of my most re-watched of Tafadhali’s vids. While in moments this vid is tinged with sadness or sort of bittersweet nostalgic feelings, by the end of it I always feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and like my heart’s grown three sizes, and a bunch of other sappy metaphors. 

Honorable Mention: Synchronicity - Sense8

9) Vid that Makes Me LOL: Whatta Man - George of the Jungle

Honestly, whatta vid. It manages to be genuinely sweet while also making me giggle like a mad man. The song choice is inspired. It truly captures all that is delightful about this ridiculous movie. Honestly just a good, silly time from start to finish!

Honorable Mention: Short Skirt Long Jacket - What’s Up Doc?

10) Dance Party Vid: Super Bass - Sense8

Also a valid category for this one: The Sexy Vid. Basically it’s just a fun, energetic, sexy, joyous romp of a vid and it makes me want to crank the volume and dance along to Nicki Minaj and the lovely cast of Sense8! 

11) I Don’t Even Go Here: Beautiful Dirty Rich - Columbo 

So when Taf made this, I pretty much knew nothing about Columbo (I’ve since seen a couple eps), but what I did know is I loved the hell out of this vid, and sometimes that’s just how it goes! Must one know who these people are? Is it not enough that a vid entrance you with its on-point editing and its vibes? 

12) Non-English Vid: La Noyée - Portrait of a Lady on Fire

This gorgeous vid, like the movie it’s for, is in French. I think some of the beauty of this one is that while the lyrical matching is perfectly done, if you want to first experience the vid without the distraction of subtitles, I think the visuals paired with the obvious melancholy of the music paints just as clear a picture whether you understand the lyrics or not. 

Honorable Mention: Desaparecida - Carmen Sandiego

13) A Gift for Her Favorite Sister: Sound the Bells - It (Miniseries) 

Look, I never claimed to be coming at this list from an unbiased perspective. And Tafadhali makes me vids all the time, whether in the form of actual gifted works, or just vids she knows I am the main target audience for, so this seemed like a fair category to include. This one in particular is for a fandom that is super meaningful to both of us, and it makes me tear up every time! 

Honorable Mention: Derry Jukebox/Castlerock Around the Clock - Multi-Fandom (Stephen King)

14) A Co-Vid with Her Favorite Sister: The Chosen One’s Lament - Multi-Fandom

Honestly, I couldn’t make this list without this category any more than I could make a list of my own vids without it. We love making vids together, and we’ve made quite a few! This vid is the first (and arguably best) in many categories that have since defined our co-vidding body of work - multi-fandom, meta, humorous, set to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend music, just to name a few. Also the need for the 11-way split screen in this is what got us both to finally transition to using Premiere instead of iMovie, so I’d say we both owe a lot of our subsequent vid quality to this one. 

Honorable Mention: Rose Bride My World - Revolutionary Girl Utena

15) Best In Show: Pynk - Multi-Fandom (LGBT)

I literally cannot praise this vid highly enough. It’s beautifully edited, beautifully curated (what a selection of movies!), beautifully structured. The sheer scale of this project (not to mention the fact that it was editing in iMovie, where organizing clips is basically impossible) is enough for it to warrant a spot on this list, but what really takes it from merely an impressive vid to a truly great one is the love of the subject material that shines through in every clip choice and edit. It’s an earnest celebration of girlhood, adolescence, femininity, and queerness, and watching it even for the hundredth time still takes my breath away. Watching this vid, I just feel so much - I feel awkwardness and the excitement and the angst of growing up, I feel the delight and the connectedness of those formative friendships, I feel the giddiness and the heartache of first loves, I feel the confusion and the joy and the defiance of emergent queerness. I just love everything about this vid and I can’t think of a better example of Tafadhali’s skills and strengths as a vidder than this. 

Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 

[lorenzobane]

Alright- finally getting around to the last episode of Picard, and I figure why not liveblog it:

It is still SOOO unclear to me why the fuck the Changelings are even bothering to help the Borg. I guess their conceptual mission (conquer everyone) is pretty similar, but.... that feels like. Not enough.

It is very nostalgic to see everyone on the Enterprise-D, though. I can't deny that. Picard's got me there.

WHY is Jack the command signal? It remains stupid. I genuinely thought the Pah Wraith theory was more interesting than this aiuwhefs;djlk';

I do love the Borg cube's exterior design, though- its so iconic, and seeing it rendered with modern graphics

Awww poor little cook- but also he had to run the deli because his brother "had a hernia"..... sir. You're in the future. Why would that stop anyone from doing anything for longer than like. a day. I think your brother was lying to you.

Okay, I'm gonna be so real- am I the only one who kinda doesn't give a shit about Jack? I get he's there to add some stakes, but I truly don't care at all. Explode him idgaf.

If the idea is to wake Jack up from his evil slumber then why would you not send Beverley....? Who, ya know, raised him?

"And I will make it a threesome" Okay i love you Worf

Okay- like I said, I am not immune to nostalgia, "it's been an honor serving with you all" OKAY, fine Daddy Picard you got me.

Also a lot of long lingering looks between Deanna and Will... Makes me think one of them might not make it out alive

You know it really is so telling how much of the original Borg design, from the ship to the interiors, they kept. Tells you how impressive it was the first time around. It is just so creepy and excellent.

Cool. Picard has magical Borg senses.

Fine fine, the Riker/Picard/Worf scene was sweet. Can you tell that I'm a willing sap for alllll the TNG nostalgia?

LMAO I'm SORRY i actually love the camp excellence of the Borg Queen emerging from the shadows to cackle evilly

Okay HELL yeah for a Seven of Nine "Big Damn Captain" speech

This is just so funny. The Borg queen is so so fucking funny. Why is she so melodramatic. Real Miette energy.

Oh this changeling connection is dumb as hell

Worf's Bat'leth with a built in phaser is COOL okay. Sometimes I am a teenage boy.

I am not immune to TNG theme music

I am also not immune to people who have trusted each other for a lifetime coming together again. Geordi trusting Data's gut.

Ahhhh the classic "all hope is lost" moment, how I love thee

I'm sorry to say it, I really am because its the emotional heart of the story, but I just don't care about Jack

LMAO conflict solved with a hug from dad- Christ the daddy issues on star trek continue to astonish and amaze

Longest "one minute to get out" ever

I'm sorry I'm sorry but once again I'm weak for the old "the strength of their connection saves the day" and I'm a sentimentalist at heart

Kinda obsessed with the idea of Riker just being the type of guy who needs a universe-ending catastrophe every once in a while or they get bored

God Michael Dorn is sooooo good at playing Worf its not even funny. He's just. Worf. I could watch him play this character perfectly for the end of time.

Love it when Starfleet just Starfleets. "Ehh you're reckless and a little insane, but in that good way that sometimes saves the galaxy. here- have a ship and hang out on the frontiers, and don't bother us."

Worf, House of Martok...... My beloved

Poor Deanna, you do deserve a beach vacation

Starfleet history must be BUCK WILD. You tell the story of that time a crew of old people stole a ship from a museum and saved the world. Like. Okay.

NEPOTISM BABY JACK CRUSHER

uaoeisdjokf THIS fucking guy. Okay, now that I know he's lame I like him more

"What could possibly go wrong?" Wow was that a heavy-handed setup. I think I heard something about a TV show and now I feel extra convinced they are either planning one or at one point were.

Everyone being SO NORMAL about Captain starting words is so fucking. okay starfleet really MUST be the nerds of the galaxy.

Okay. I'm gonna be honest I don't think I needed quite so much nostalgia bait at the end. It was nice for like. A second. Especially when it was intercut with the younger characters.

Ending on them playing poker together, la ti da- everyone got a happy ending and in Starfleet heroes are rewarded

Anyway- it was fine. I found the episode kind of underwhelming honestly, but it wasn't horrific. Just kinda. Star trek typical levels of nonsense.

[tigerlyla-of-metinna]

Your latest painting, The Heirs of Nilfgaard. Morvran looks so smitten... and he's on eye level with her magnificent rack... And am I crazy or is there some stiring in his pants? I think I can see an outline :p. Was that included in your drafts?

WOW!

FINALLY SOMEONE NOTICED!!!!!

🥳🥳🥳

I am genuinely happy someone saw that detail. You see, there was a nonny who nitpicked about my draft that Ciri's rack is big, and it shouldn't be. There are no exact measurements on paper and every artist rendered Ciri with better mammaries than me.

After proving to the rude nonny that I did not "steal" someone else's art (I think the correct term is copying someone else's art) began to nitpick about Ciri's bosoms. I decided to be petty, and gave her an impressive rack. 😁😁😁

As for Morvran... well

This was never in the original draft.

Seeing that he is inches away from said rack, I decided he should react accordingly. Ciri is, after all, a powerful and desirable woman :), and Morvy here is a lucky lucky lucky luck boi!

Thank you for the ask. It truly brightened my day!

[saviourkingslut]

Am I crazy or wasn't there once upon a time where 3H's character designed was really liked? But now a lot of people are trying to say it "doesn't feel like FE" after Engage was announced.

Like, of the two FE games one DEFINITELY leans closer to the "FE aesthetic" than the other lol

if any game's design doesn't feel like a fire emblem entry at all it's engage. 3h might have done some new stuff here and there but overall the designs stick with the medieval warfare look. there's a lot of tunics, robes, dresses and various types of body armour that i think overal hit the mark very well for an fe game. good reflection of personalities and backgrounds without getting too camp about it, almost all designs feel right for the setting and story. engage? uhm.

i have zero problems with the guy in the right, i can even get behind the shorter girl, but UH. the other two? why do they look like that there is so much dissonance in this one pic.

this one is even worse i genuinely CANNOT take this shot seriously it's like she was copy pasted into it?? and then there's... whatever this is:

and then there is the girl with the humongous ugly dress too who i would rather get killed on classic mode than actually use.

like, far from all characters in this game are Like This, plenty of them fit the fire emblem aesthetic pretty well, but a good number of them is just... overly outlandish to me. also some of the normal outfits still look uh plain bad like these where the colour deadass seems to be slapped on without render or anything

the evil old guy has a pretty good design tho! and the royal family from brodia is pretty much right up my alley. they're pretty much exactly what i want from fe armour

for more expressive designs that actually fit i think whoever this guy is, is a pretty good example

like yeah, this works! it's more colourful, it's got some uncommon details, but it makes sense in the medieval fantasy setting/a guy who seems to be from some desert hashtag orientalism country. wish the other designs were more like this but. yeah. im not impressed with most of this game's design and that includes the environments btw they look mad stale

[hunxi-guilai]

all right guys, let’s have a conversation about linguistic register, Lan Wangji, and I guess Wei Wuxian can come too

(and I do genuinely mean conversation, I’d love to hear other people’s input on this, because I did just write a long-ass post about the subjectivity of interpretation in translations)

So when I started interacting with the fandom and reading people’s fics, I got really confused by the way some folks were writing dialogue for Lan Wangji; he often sounded super awkward, spoke in fragments, and sometimes exclusively in third person. To be fair, all of those are elements of his speech at various times, but like, seeing it in English-language material felt like a really heavy-handed way of rendering it in translation?

I guess when you use third person within the first three episodes of the show, it makes a pretty big impression on the audience

This is not at all intended to be a criticism of people who are 1000% writing and creating wonderful work, which is more than I can say for myself, but I want to poke and prod and tease at some linguistic nuance here.

Take a deep breath, grab a pot of tea (this’ll take more than a cup), because we’re going to take the scenic route on this one--

First, a few notes on the Chinese language:

(blanket disclaimer that I’m not a linguist, nor have I studied this from a historical linguistics perspective, nor do I consider myself an expert in the language. I can call a taxi and charm parents over tea and muddle my way through a few centuries of classical texts, but I do not consider myself remotely close to native speaker-levels of fluency. I’d give myself a solid ‘proficient’ grading rather than ‘expertise,’ for D&D folks out there.

I am, however, very enthusiastic, and an accredited institution of secondary education gave me a degree in this field, so maybe that counts for something)

1) like a lot of languages, there’s a noticeable difference between the written and the vernacular language. We write our thoughts with a certain academic cadence for our essays and thinkpieces -- in complete sentences, with parallelism and craft. We speak our thoughts out loud in chaotic tumbles, often discarding the the first part of a sentence in favor of another, or stalling for thinking time with additional words that make no semantic sense (‘like,’ ‘so,’ ‘well’). Likewise in Chinese -- there’s 口语 kouyu, the vernacular, and 书面语 shumianyu, literally book-language (i.e. intended for printing/writing/visual consumption). 书面语 shumianyu Chinese tends to be much more elegant and streamlined; you'd buff up the vocabulary and slim down the fluff. It’s all very Hemingway, really.

(quick note: I’ll be using 书面语 shumianyu from here on out to refer to both elevated written language and elevated speaking language; think how you’d speak while presenting at a conference as opposed to with your friends. That higher conference register will probably be what I’m gesturing at when I refer to 书面语 shumianyu later on in this post, even though as a term it technically only refers to written stuff)

The important thing to note here is that, in the process of cutting out unnecessary/colloquial language to move from 口语 kouyu to 书面语 shumianyu, you’re not losing sentence-level intelligibility. Sure, there are less words; sometimes you’ll take out the entire subject of the sentence and leave it to be assumed. This is no way means that you’re speaking in fragments. Grammatically, you’re still golden.

Here’s an exchange from the show that highlights this pretty well:

Wei Wuxian：你这腿... 真的没问题啊。nizhetui... zhendemeiwenti-a / This leg of yours...there’s really no problem?

Lan Wangji：无事 wushi / No problem.

The literal, semantic breakdown of Lan Wangji’s response is 无 wu / ‘nothing,’ ‘a lack of,’ and 事 shi / ‘affair,’ ‘incident.’ He’s saying “there is no problem.” A fuller, more colloquial response might have been 我的腿无事 wodetuiwushi / there is no problem with my leg but Chinese grammar says he can skip the subject (his leg) and go straight to 无事 wushi. It’s not a sentence fragment; it’s just a very short sentence with omitted parts.

(it’s worth noting that he uses 无 wu, which is an older/more literary version of 没 mei, which Wei Wuxian uses. We’ll see this again -- Lan Wangji is eternally on a higher plane of existence linguistic register)

2) 文言文 wenyanwen / classical/literary Chinese is related to but distinct from modern Mandarin (the distinction is usually drawn between 文言 wenyan and 白话 baihua, which you could conceivably as “literary words” and “plain speak”). Modern Mandarin Chinese as we know and learn it today in classrooms is something that didn’t really get codified until the 20th century, for a large variety of reasons I’m just going to skim over with:

modernization and colonialism blah blah Lu Xun blah blah Westernization of grammar and the whole simplified vs. traditional debacle blah blah

The relationship between modern Mandarin and classical/literary Chinese is vaguely comparable with the relationship between modern English and older forms of English, depending on how far back you go. If you’re a fluent Mandarin speaker and you’re reading back to, say, the Ming Dynasty, you’re probably hitting Shakespearean levels of difficulty. You’ll want to keep commentaries close at hand, but you can parse it with some time and effort.

If you’re a fluent Mandarin speaker and you’re reading back to, say, the Han Dynasty, this is where the texts start at Chaucer levels of difficulty and only get harder from there. One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that literary/classical Chinese has a completely different grammar system from modern Mandarin, and there are times when you can actively read the wrong meaning into a sentence even if you’re fluent in modern Mandarin, because classical grammar is out to get you straight-up different.

I’m not going to rant about classical Chinese grammar right now but boy howdy the things I could tell you

the tl;dr of classical Chinese can be summed up, like most things in Chinese, with a four-character idiom: 言简意赅 yanjianyigai. Broken down, we get:

言 yan - words, speech

简 jian - simple, brief

意 yi - meaning, intent

赅 gai - complete, full, comprehensive

So you put that together and you get something along the lines of “brief words, full meaning” to describe the sheer efficiency of literary/classical Chinese. When you think about the fact that the Chinese written language originated as carvings on turtle shells and bamboo strips, you can see why ancient scholars were highly motivated to keep things concise.

2a) another important disclaimer is that we don’t think people in pre-modern China necessarily spoke in 文言 wenyan literary/classical -- in fact, we’re pretty confident that 文言 wenyan was the elite (and elitist) 书面语 shumianyu book-language to a more widely-used vernacular (which we have little-to-no record of, because, well, it was vernacular. Spoken, not written).

(I swear I’m getting back to Lan Wangji. Eventually)

3) the Chinese language also has a Thing for four-character phrases. I actually have no idea why. But especially in 书面语 shumianyu, if you can wrangle a concept into four characters, that’s good shit. That’s some good writing right there. 

(This might have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of poems/songs in the 《诗经》Shijing / Classic of Odes have four-character lines. Or maybe because it’s the perfect combination of two binomes. Or maybe it’s just a neat syllabic unit. Truly, I’ve got nothing on this.)

A lot of the time, this tendency gets codified into 成语 chengyu / idioms, which are the bane of my Chinese learning experience established four-character phrases that everyone just...knows? Magically? Sometimes, they’ll have little fables/stories that accompany them, like 自相矛盾 zixiangmaodun (lit., ‘pitting a sword and shield against each other,’ deriving from a story about a Chu merchant who boasted that he had a ‘spear that could pierce any shield’ and a ‘shield that could block any spear,’ so a sassy passerby was like ‘what if you pit your Unstoppable Spear against your Impenetrable Shield’ and to this day 矛盾 maodun / lit. ‘spear and shield’ is the binome you’d use for the word ‘contradiction’). Other times, they’ll just be descriptive and pithy, like 五颜六色 wuyanliuse (lit., “five colors and six hues,” used to describe something extremely colorful, regardless of numerical reality) or 雨后春笋 yuhouchunsun (lit., “bamboo shoots after spring rain,” used to describe the rapid growth of something).

This isn’t to say that all literary texts are written exclusively in four-character phrases; other beloved line lengths include three-character lines, five-character lines, six-character lines, and seven-character lines, but four-character lines are special.

(If you guys are interested in more about this, the Wikipedia page on 成语 chengyu does a pretty solid break-down of four-character idioms/phrases)

4) for a show like 《陈情令》Chenqingling / The Untamed with an undefined, vaguely archaic time period, the dialogue given to the characters runs all over the place, from exceedingly modern and colloquial to referencing the two oldest poetry collections in the written tradition (actually though) and back. Characters will often kick their language into a higher register of speech to match the formality of a social situation. Wei Wuxian, in particular, has a knack for language; he’s usually exquisitely informal, but tends towards more formal language when he’s making declarations of intent. And sometimes he quotes Tang Dynasty poetry when he’s drunk. It’s really a crapshoot with this one.

I screamed a little when he quoted this poem, it’s a delight. Maybe one day I’ll write a way too long post about poetry in《陈情令》too but not tonight

All righty, to recap:

1) there are multiple registers of language, moving from the informal vernacular through the more formal written (and spoken) form and occasionally hopping up/sideways into literary/classical 

2) the higher you go in linguistic registers, the more dense and concise the language becomes. You are allowed to leave out entire subjects of sentences without making any grammar-level errors

3) the Chinese language has a Thing for four-character phrases

great, now let’s talk about Lan Wangji

(whew, finally)

Remember how I said that, the more formal you go in Chinese, the more language is slimmed down and the less characters are used?

Right. That’s Lan Wangji, but like, all the time.

It’s not that he talks in sentence fragments -- he’s just constantly speaking in a higher register.

Remember in episode 5, when Lan Qiren is grilling Wei Wuxian about a hypothetical haunting case with the unburied executioner, and Lan Wangji gives a textbook-perfect answer which might be his longest speech in the entire show rip? 

That’s it. It’s literally textbook perfect. Just take a look at his lines:

方法有三：度化第一, 镇压第二，灭绝第三。先以 父母妻儿 感之念之，了其 生前所愿，化去执念。不灵，则镇压。罪大恶极，怨气不散 则 斩草除根，不容其存。玄门行事 当 谨遵次序，不得有误。 

Lan Wangji is toeing the line between 书面语 shumianyu and full-on Classical Chinese here (he’s just missing a few 之乎者也 particles, and he’s there). If there’s a subject he could leave out, he did. If there was a four-character combination he could arrange in these lines, he did. 

You don’t need to be able to read Chinese to just look at the sheer number of four-character phrases he’s got going for himself (I tried to put spaces between the phrases and the transitional characters he’ll occasionally deign to use). He literally sounds like a textbook. If I came across this passage in a pre-Han Dynasty text, I would not be surprised.

(considering that, in ye olde days, the way you learned how to read and write literary Chinese was just by reading and memorizing a truckton of classic texts and absorbing the language through general osmosis, this actually puts  Lan Xichen’s comment to Lan Wangji it’s time for you to make some friends in a pretty interesting light. Smol bb Lan Wangji probably spent a great deal more time with books rather than playing outside, so it totally checks out that he’d talk like a book.)

(side note: this method of learning literary Chinese in ye olde days is precisely why the grammar would shift over centuries, which is why ancient 文言 wenyan is different from medieval 文言 wenyan is different from late-imperial 文言 wenyan, and one of the reasons why I’m afraid to read past 250 CE -- the grammar has literally changed when I wasn’t looking, which, to be frank, is very rude)

Actually, do you know what’s a cool scene where Lan Wangji unequivocally shifts into literary/classical Chinese?

we love episode 42 for many reasons, and this scene is one of them

When Jin Guangyao gloats about unmasking Wei Wuxian on the steps of Koi Tower, he loudly proclaims that the devious ways of the Yiling Patriarch deceived even the noble Hanguang-jun. Wei Wuxian laughs softly and says 不错 bucuo / correct. 

Lan Wangji practically interrupts Wei Wuxian; he turns to Jin Guangyao and shoots back 非也 feiye / false.

I don’t think I can overstate how definitive 非也 feiye is; this goes all the way into the grammar of classical Chinese. 也 ye is an ending particle that gets tacked onto declarative, factual statements, like 曹沫者，鲁人也 Caomo zhe, Lu renye / Cao Mo was a man of Lu or 天下非一人之天下也 tianxia fei yirenzhitianxiaye / the world of all under heaven does not belong to one person. 也 ye isn’t something you’d attach to the end of a judgement or opinion (that’s actually a different particle, 矣 yi, which shows up in 人生得一知己，足矣 / In a lifetime, having one person who knows you is enough). 也 ye is something that’s reserved for like, fact, something as incontrovertible as “person A comes from place B” or the premises of philosophical arguments.

Are we getting a feel for how absolute Lan Wangji’s denial of Jin Guangyao’s accusation is? Great, because it’s very, very absolute, and Lan Wangji’s use of the highest linguistic register available to him perfectly complements his demonstration of his undying commitment to Wei Wuxian in this scene.

Speaking of Wei Wuxian, let’s look at an exchange in episode 9, when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji do their back-to-back battle sequence in the forest with their eyes closed:

Lan Wangji: 这幻音不仅能让人 迷失方向，还能 扰乱心神。我们现在 根本无法 集中念力. / These illusory sounds can not only make people lose their sense of direction, but also disturb one’s state of mind. Right now, there’s absolutely no way for us to gather our spiritual concentration.

Wei Wuxian: 诶，不对啊，那为什么你没事啊？/ Ei? That’s not right, then why are you completely fine?

Lan Wangji: 枭鸟幻音，心思越多越容易干扰。/ The more thoughts one has, the easier it is to be affected by the illusory sounds of the dire owl.

Wei Wuxian: 这不是明摆着欺负我聪明���? / Isn’t this obviously picking on me for being smart?

Lan Wangji: [internally, oh my GOD, now is NOT the time for banter]

There are a few four-character set-ups in here, not as many as textbook scene, but Lan Wangji’s fighting for his life in a foggy forest so we’ll cut him some slack. In extenuating circumstances, he’ll drop down to 书面语 shumianyu / elevated vernacular. 

What is fun to look at in this exchange is how colloquial Wei Wuxian is. Not a four-character phrase in sight, and full of colloquialisms. It’s hard to render in translation, but Wei Wuxian is constantly using exclamatory particles like 诶 ei 哦 ou 呗 bei 吗 ma/me 啊 a in his speech, which aren’t usually translated in subtitles (which is a shame for this post, because they’re a dead giveaway for vernacular). I can think of maybe one time in the entire show that Lan Wangji uses one of these particles, and it’s 吗 ma/me, which also performs a grammatical interrogative function, so that barely counts.

Here is a Brief Tangent About Third-Person I Didn’t Know Where Else to Put

There are already great posts about personal names and courtesy names and titles and the etiquette of using them, so I don’t want to re-invent the wheel here, but I do want to talk about speaking in third person.

Speaking in third person performs a similar function to shifting your speech into a higher register; it effectively moves something that might otherwise be more or less colloquial into a more formal context. It’s another way of increasing distance between speaker and listener, and one that often demonstrates respect on the part of the speaker.

Ancient China and Classical Chinese has a Whole Thing About First-Person Pronouns -- there are different first-person pronouns for different situations depending on relative social status in the room, and some people are allowed to use certain first-person pronouns and other people aren’t. For example, 朕 zhen is the imperial first-person pronoun which only the emperor can use; 臣 chen is the first-person pronoun for ministers. You’ll sometimes hear 本公子 bengongzi 本王 benwang 本宫 bengong in political intrigue dramas, which are all self-referential third-person pronouns that more or less translate as this lord / this prince / this royal hall. These are used in situations where the speaker is the highest-ranking person in the room; if a prince goes and speaks to the emperor, we might hear him use 儿臣 erchen / lit. ‘this son and minister’ instead. We hear Wei Wuxian, on occasion, call himself 魏某 Wei-mou, which is a super low-ranking self-identification -- that’s basically calling yourself “some dude with the surname Wei.” You’re not even giving yourself a personal name -- that’s how unimportant you are.

committing a faux-pas and bringing back this screenshot from earlier

Lan Xichen, in episode 3, expresses his concern that he’s overworking his brother/expecting too much of him. In response, Lan Wangji says 忘机分忧而已 / Wangji is doing nothing more than dividing [his brother’s] worries (分忧 fenyou is a lovely little binome that means “to share someone’s worries and relieve their burdens,” but literally means “to divide worries”). Yes, he’s shifts third-person here, but it’s not an idiosyncratic occurrence; he’s uses the respectful distancing granted by the self-referential third-person to demonstrate respect for his brother, right after his brother expresses concern about his own uncertainties and leadership. It’s a deliberate choice, using aspects of social ritual to communicate respect.

We probably see Lan Wangji use the third-person most often in this show, but this isn’t because he’s an awkward speaker -- he’s just exceedingly formal, all the time. And since he doesn’t have a ton of lines to begin with, I think this third-person tendency came to dominate people’s impressions of how he speaks. He uses the regular (modern) first-person pronoun 我 wo plenty of times, such as --

Lan Wangji: 我想带一个人回云深不知处。/ I want to bring someone back to Cloud Recesses.

-- among other memorable moments, like 我有悔 woyouhui / I have regrets.

What I’m TRYING to say is that self-identification via names-as-first-person-pronouns is an established Thing. It’s not a weird verbal tic of Lan Wangji; in fact, it shows up with plenty of other characters (I’m fairly confident that self-referential third-person also happens with Wen Qing, Meng Yao, and Lan Xichen, off the top of my head. Is it a coincidence that these are some of the most polite characters?).

Here’s an example of Wei Wuxian using his personal name as a first-person pronoun in episode 7, when speaking to Lan Yi:

Wei Wuxian: 前辈放心，魏婴定当 全力以赴. / Rest assured, elder -- Wei Ying will of course spare no effort.

This is actually one of the few moments we can see Wei Wuxian kick into a higher register of speech -- both in shifting into third person, as well as strict adherence to four-character phrases. Look, look, Lan Zhan, he can be respectful too!

Okay, one last case study of linguistic register, this time with tears:

tears tears tears

Lan Wangji: 你要想好，此一去便是真正的 离经叛道，不容回头. / You have to think this through. This departure is proper desertion and rebellion. It will allow no return.

Wei Wuxian: 离经叛道？离那本经？叛何方道？/ Desertion of the classics and rebellion against the way? Deserting which classic? Rebelling against which way?

[flashback]

Wei Wuxian: 许我一生 锄奸扶弱。 而如今你告诉我：孰强孰弱，又 孰黒孰白？/ We promised that we would spend our lives eliminating the wicked and supporting the weak. Now tell me: who’s strong, who’s weak? Who’s wrong, and who’s right?

Wei Wuxian：蓝湛，如果我和他们之间 必有一战，那我宁愿和你 决一生死。要死，也至少死在你含光君的手上，不冤了。/ Lan Zhan, if I must fight with them, then I would rather fight to the death with you. If I must die, then at least I would die at your hands -- it would be worth it.

This post, at its inception, was supposed to be about Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian continues to offer an engaging and dynamic foil to Lan Wangji in every way possible so I couldn’t resist. The rain scene in episode 27 is an excellent case study of when Wei Wuxian moves from his usual, informal speech patterns into a higher register. Lan Wangji is in his usual mode of elevated vernacular, complete sentences, with two four-character phrases for the count. It’s not his most informal (that would be when he’s drunk) or his most formal (like, all the time, but the schoolroom monologue probably takes the prize).

Wei Wuxian, in his first two chunks of dialogue, is hitting the four-character phrases/idioms hard. In fact, the lines 孰强孰弱 shuqiangshuruo / who’s strong, who’s weak 孰黒孰白 shuheishubai / who’s wrong, who’s right are full-on 文言 wenyan literary/classical; the giveaway, here, is the character 孰 shu -- it’s the archaic/literary variant for 谁 shei / who. This is (I’m pretty sure) the most formal he gets in the entire show, and I think it’s worthwhile to note that he rises to this level in an attempt to reach out to Lan Wangji, of all people.

but wait! we’re not done crying yet!

Because those lines come back to haunt us in episode 43! 

It’s common knowledge that Lan Wangji borrows what Wei Wuxian said, word for word, when he’s being beaten half to death by the Lan Sect. The lines turn from

Wei Wuxian, ep 27: 如今你告诉我：孰强孰弱, 又 孰黒孰白？/ Now tell me: who’s strong, who’s weak? Who’s wrong, and who’s right?

into

Lan Wangji, ep. 43: 敢问叔父，孰正孰��，孰黑孰白？/ I dare to ask, Uncle -- who’s just, and who’s evil? Who’s wrong, and who’s right?

Wei Wuxian, back in episode 27, was literally speaking to Lan Wangji on Lan Wangji’s linguistic register, which few (if any) other characters rise to throughout the show. So it’s no accident that Lan Wangji internalizes Wei Wuxian’s words; that when Lan Wangji turns them on Lan Qiren, he’s taken the structure of Wei Wuxian’s entire line and shifted it into the highest linguistic register possible to emphasize his utmost respect for the principles he believes in, essentially codifying it into an alternate school of thought he offers up as a challenge to the Lan Sect’s fifty-second rule: 不得结交奸邪 / do not befriend the traitorous and evil.

Conclusion

this post is so long I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a tl;dr thing at the end

1) various aspects of Chinese and classical Chinese make self-referential third-person and linguistic register a demonstration of distance and respect rather than an idiosyncratic mode of speech

2) in Chinese, you can cut out a great deal of a sentence in the name of elevating language without losing grammatical integrity

3) Lan Wangji is super formal, all the time

4) when Wei Wuxian kicks into a higher linguistic register, you know shit is going down

5) I’m incapable of writing short posts and it’s a bit of a problem, send aid

[detectivejigsawpines]

Just a Normal Day

A short drabble about sea grunks having an average adventure, written in honor of their birthday.

Even before they got attacked by the Cthulhu beast, it had been a pretty average morning on the sea for the Pines twins.

Wake up at the crack of dawn (Ford) or closer to late morning (Stan); eat breakfast; reset the spell to ward off the vengeful leprechauns who might still be after them for stealing their treasure in case they’d figured out they were chasing a decoy trail by now; do a little late morning fishing, while keeping an eye out for that golden fish Stan was sure he’d seen swimming under their boat last week, and which he was hoping laid golden fish eggs or something; finally notice what time it was (Stan) and head inside to make lunch.

Just another normal day.

Stan was examining their supplies, trying to decide if it was worth breaking out some of the canned hamburger meat and throwing together sloppy Joes instead of making them eat fish again, when he was knocked skiwampus by the boat being yanked to a halt; as he struggled to regain his balance by grabbing onto the table, a vicious, blood-curdling roar came rumbling through the air from outside.

Stan sighed, and wondered if the kraken was back. In one swift motion he grabbed the spare harpoon they had hanging over the door, and stepped out to see if Ford needed help dealing with it.

It wasn’t the kraken.

It still looked like some kinda big octopus monster, though, with a mass of writhing tentacles where its face should be, and a bulbous head in the back just like an octopus body. The rest of it, at least as far as the torso, was kinda like a human’s but a little bigger (about the size of a baby whale), with slimy-looking green-brown skin and a pair of big, wrinkled, wet wings sticking out of its back. Whatever this thing was, it had grabbed onto the back of their boat, and was looming menacingly over Ford as Stan stepped outside.

“...and you are now my prisoners!” he bellowed, as his piercing golden eyes landed on Stan. “Surrender your weapons now, puny mortals, and I might be merciful!!!!”

“Yeesh, did we trespass on his territory or something?” Stan asked, leaning on the harpoon.

Ford shrugged with one shoulder, since he was trying to write in his journal at the same time. “He didn’t really say; he just jumped onboard and started threatening me.”

“Huh.” Stan looked up at the beast. “You the lord of this part of the ocean or whatever?”

The beast blinked-which looked pretty weird, his eyelids went sideways instead of up and down like humans-before nodding vigorously. “Yes! I am the lord of this part of the ocean, and you must surrender to me now, or else suffer my wrath!!!!” He slammed a fist down against the side of the boat, making it rock up and down so hard he had to scrabble to keep his balance. Stan coughed into his fist to hold back a snicker.

Ford tilted his head. “I could have sworn this was still the primary territory of the Manatee-Merfolk Alliance. Are you sure you haven’t made some kind of mistake?”

“What part of prisoners did you not understand?!” the beast demanded, spreading out his wings and shaking them as his tentacles writhed angrily. “Give up your weapons, now-all of them!!!!”

“...You sure you want that? It’s kind of gonna take awhile-”

“NOW, or I crush your boat in my mighty fist!!!!”

Stan glanced at Ford, who rolled his eyes and nodded. With a small sigh, they began disarming themselves.

********

...A minute passed and they were still at it.

Ford’s pile of weapons was almost as tall as he was, mostly consisting of long-range weapons like guns, but with a few vials of poisons and some handcuffs thrown into the mix.

Stan’s pile was more proportionate, but the number of places that weapons were produced from (including a smoke bomb that he’d somehow managed to keep tucked under his beanie) was frighteningly impressive.

The monster watched their progress with increasingly wide eyes; finally, as Stan produced another set of brass knuckles out of a secret pocket sewn onto the inside of his coat, he spluttered, “...Where were you keeping those?”

Stan just grinned shamelessly. “Trust me, sunshine, you don’t wanna know.”

“Okay, I think that’s everything,” Ford said at last, indicating the pile of weaponry.

“Yeah, well, I’m still workin’, gimme a minute.” Stan produced a switchblade, and tossed it onto his pile. Then, in a brief sleight of hand, he snatched another one from the pile and pretended to draw it out of his coat to toss it on next. “Hey, tentacles-face-ya think you could bring us back by Wednesday? We got a Zoom appointment ta keep, and our niece and nephew hate it when we’re late.” Another sleight of hand allowed him to scoop up another weapon.

“That’s not how this-now see here!” The monster drew himself up to his full height, nearly falling backwards off the boat. “You guys-you puny mortals are my prisoners! And as such, you need to understand that this is not a joking matter! I could squash you both like sea slugs if I wished! I’m all-powerful, an eons-old abomination whose very name would send you into madness if spoken aloud! So you better start quaking in fear and begging for mercy like proper captives!!!!”

Stan looked at Ford. “Sounds like we’re his first.” He looked back at the monster. “You’re doin’ great, buddy-good job on the whole threatening schtick.” He offered a thumbs-up, while using the other hand to snag another weapon that he pretended to produce from another hiding spot.

Ford winked at him, and looked back at their ‘captor.’ “Is this some sort of coming-of-age ritual for your species?” He produced his journal again, pen poised. “Very clever move, by the way, threatening our boat to get us to disarm ourselves. In the future, though, I would suggest that you try taking one of us hostage first, in order to create maximum-”

“STOP IT!”

The monster abruptly started pounding his fists against the side of the boat, nearly tipping it over before instead pitching him all the way onto the deck. “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO-I’M YOUR-IT’S NOT FAIR-!”

It took Stan a moment to realize that the angry noises leaving his mouth (?) were accompanied by the sound of frustrated sobs.

He hissed through his teeth, and shot Ford a guilty look.

“...Oh boy. Looks like we got a little one here.”

********

Stan crossed the boat and crouched down in front of the weeping monster, putting a hand on his back and rubbing the spot right between his wings.

“Deep breaths, in and out. You’re not gonna get anything done like this, so just take a bit ta calm down, okay?”

The monster hiccuped and coughed, shrinking in on himself in a way that was painfully familiar to both of them.

Ford knelt down at his other side. “Maybe if you tell us why this is so important to you, we can provide some assistance?”

The monster shook his head and buried his head in his arms. “I just wanted-hic-to show my friends I could catch the Pines twins all by myself,” he croaked.

The two old men looked at each other in a mixture of surprise and slight alarm. “...You know who we are?”

That was finally enough to get him to sit up, wiping his eyes with his tentacles. “You kidding? Every creature of the seas knows who you are! You’re the guys who beat up krakens and steal gold from leprechauns and then you and your boat vanish without a trace! You’re the coolest cryptids ever!”

It took both of them a moment to digest that. By the time they did, though, they were grinning in equal delight.

“We’re cryptids?!” Ford asked, eyes practically brimming over with overjoyed tears.

“Yeah! And people at school were sayin’ you’re just a myth, but I knew you were real cuz my uncle saw your ship up in the Arctic last winter, and I was gonna capture you and bring you to class to show everyone how wrong they were and then I’d be famous and they’d stop calling me a weird runt all the time!” After a second his wings drooped, and he stared miserably down at the deck. “...Guess it was pretty dumb of me to think I could catch you all by myself.”

Stan put a hand on his shoulder. “...Kid...as much as we wanna help, we can’t just be your prisoners. We got our own lives ta get back to.”

“Plus, neither of us is able to breathe underwater,” Ford added.

The monster sighed, and pulled a strip of kelp from around his neck, turning one of the leaves until it was facing him. He squirted a stream of black ink from one of his tentacles, and dipped the tip of another one into the ink and used it to trace something that looked like a bunch of gobbledygook to Stan onto the leaf. “Humans...don’t...breathe...underwater.”

Awww...he’s a super nerd, just like Ford and Dipper!

That gave Stan an idea.

“Hey.” He nudged the monster. “What about a picture of us instead? Along with genuine proof of a close encounter?”

The monster’s head jerked up. “A picture?! Like with one of those weird magic boxes you humans carry around sometimes?!”

“That’s the one.” Stan grinned. He looked at Ford and jerked his head towards the cabin; his brother took the hint and headed for it, returning with an antique Polaroid camera that Ford had been experimenting on, but still took good pictures.

The monster’s tentacles began writhing around his face like they’d come to life, and he let out a high-pitched squeal of excitement.

“This is the greatest day of my life!!!!”

********

It took a bit of staging and directing and trying out different angles, but eventually they produced a set of photos that appeared to be of an eldritch abomination in training being attacked by, and bravely fighting off, the ferocious monster hunter Pines twins (hopefully nobody would think to ask how and why the monster had managed to get these pictures taken).

Then, while Stan took them into the cabin and soaked them in a special substance Ford had invented that would render them waterproof, Ford sat on the prow next to the young cryptid enthusiast and offered tips on future hunting adventures, comparing notes with him on some of the creatures they’d both seen. He also (with permission) took a few samples from the monster, including a long strip of skin (“Make it look like a wound I got in the fight! Man, this is gonna be so cool, Yog-Sothoth is gonna eat his heart out! Possibly literally!”) and some of the ink from his tentacles.

When Stan came back with the photos, he also handed over one of his spare brass knuckles that had lost a corner. “Have another souvenir, kid.”

The monster’s tentacles lashed out and wrapped around their faces in what felt like a really weird version of a hug before pulling away, leaving them covered in some of the slimy stuff they were coated in.

“Thank you so much! I really really hope the leprechauns don’t catch you-if they come this way I’ll make sure to eat some of them so they won’t!” He waved at them joyfully as he dived back into the ocean and disappeared.

********

After a moment Stan wiped his face on his coat sleeve.

“...Well, that happened.”

He turned away and began gathering up his weapons.

“Such a strange mixture of childlike innocence and barbarity,” Ford mused as he pulled out a jar and gathered the slime into it for yet another sample. “His culture must be fascinating-I almost wish he would have taken us with him so I could have seen it.”

“You would’ve drowned before you could gather any data.”

“...You don’t know that.”

“He literally didn’t know that humans can’t breathe underwater, Sixer. Not gonna happen.”

He ignored Ford’s sulking and kept cleaning, while musing to himself over the possible monetary opportunities being a couple of cryptids could bring...

[algernoninwonderland]

Hello, I was wondering how you feel about the "Cat Blanc" ML episode? It thought it strange for reasons I can't really articulate so I was hoping to read your thoughts. I am not that good at analysis but I love your episode reviews. They are very insightful and usual help me understand why I liked/didn't like a certain episode.

A belated review/analysis of Chat Blanc! Here we go!

So, Chat Blanc… It wasn't all that great, now, was it?

The good:

Gabriel's motives are made crystal clear once more, which makes his pushing them to their very limits all the more shocking. The Agreste family vault looks impressive, almost church-like, it's some pretty strong imagery. Not outstandingly original but pretty good stuff nevertheless.

Angry Rose is funny.

Marinette's “Know what I won't take for an answer?” and a smash cut to Nathalie's “No.” That's good comedy.

Ladybug goofing around in the Burrow. It's harmless, she's a kid, these different points in time look interesting.

Chat Blanc's future looks eery and white and blue and it really works, we rarely see post-apocalyptic landscapes like this one, usually it's all muddy and dark and this isn't the case here. I appreciate that. The first wide shot in which the camera spins around Montparnasse tower is great.

Chat Blanc's animation is really creepy and for the most part, it's intentional.

if you’re a sucker for mid 2000s evil sadboys aesthetics, you’ll love this.

Have a montage of Adrienette being sickeningly cute.

I’m watching this in French and let me tell you, Benjamin Bollen might have to work with terrible lines but he’s doing a damn fine job with them

That shot in which the debris and Ladybug break the water’s surface, the bubbles and all… It looks great. I don’t know who is in charge of this but it looked genuinely great.

Chat Noir’s akumatisation and his trying to control his power and not hurt anybody is pretty great, as a concept.

The final scene is a nice parallel to the one earlier in the episode. Repetition with variation is an easy way to make me like things and it works nicely.

The bad:

The Girl Squad bullying Marinette is… Eh.

Stalkerish obsessed Marinette is a joke that overstayed its welcome by that point. Had this been an early season 2 joke, it would have worked. It's a late season 3 joke, it's honestly a bit creepy at this point.

That reveal is fanfic-worthy. It feels really light, and not as big a deal as would have been the case if that episode had any consequences. You can already tell this'll be retconned by the end of the episode.

Bunnyx's burrow. It's unimpressive. It's neither bizarre enough nor flashy enough to really work for me. And that TARDIS joke made me roll my eyes.

If you hate mid 2000s evil sadboys aesthetics, you’ll hate this.

They re-use the same two cars for Ladybug to jump on and it’s pretty obvious. There are smart ways of recycling assets. This isn’t one of them.

Wow, that’s a terrible first kiss, the shot is… Pretty bad.

Gabriel being an asshole and breaking Adrienette up for the stupidest, most selfish reasons feels unfair and that’s the point… But also that scene at the bakery is pretty lame, it doesn’t flow very well, the characters are oddly static and not expressive enough for it to be striking, the lighting doesn’t work with the mood of the scene at all. It feels abrupt, yes, but also cheap.

“It was our love that did this to the world milady.” What a stupid, edgy line.

Bad low-res textures being stretched are clearly visible in quite an awful lot of shots.

Wow. Destroyed Paris is the exact same city as usual, just as empty, only this time they replaced the sky with a “water surface” animation loop. It’s… Underwhelming. You had a great concept and this is what you do with it?

Can you believe they made destruction on a cosmic scale look so bland? How do you mess up that bad?

That confrontation between Hawk Moth and our heroes. This should be season finale material. It’s considerably cheapened.

The ugly:

With the few exceptions listed above, the rendering is not good at all, the lighting is flat and inexpressive which could give everything a kind of otherworldly feel if only used in some sequences (and that would be clever!)… Only it's off, all of the time. Chat Blanc is the only character that looks okay in his timeline.

The animation is off when it shouldn't be, outside of the exception listed earlier. Everything is much too stiff, characters' expressions are off, the timing is off. It's a shame, really. The action sequences are decently boarded but look pretty bad.

“Just because I know her secret identity doesn't mean she has to know about mine.” That's a terrible line. And we're supposed to be rooting for that kid. That's not how healthy relationships work, the episode never addresses that because Adrien is perfect, he's just sad and understandably troubled by these revelations.

Do you remember when Gabriel was shown to care for his son, the complex character drama that could have arisen from that? Well it sure as hell ain’t there.

That Guy boarded that episode. He has a weird, err, fixation on a 14yo girl’s butt and makes sure to include a shot in which it is shoved at the viewers’ faces. Seriously? What is wrong with you? If you so badly want to sexualise characters, it’s not like there aren’t any adults in Miraculous.

Perfectly good ideas are skimmed over in a matter of seconds because this episode is only 22 minutes long. The audience is bombarded with pretty major turning points in a matter of seconds and can barely process any of them.

If the point of your episode is, “it’s better if it doesn’t exist” then you obviously shouldn’t be making this episode… Right? Seems pretty obvious to me, but apparently it isn’t since Chat Blanc exists.

That end card has Hawk Moth look like he’s rolling his eyes and so was I by the end of this episode. The overwhelming feeling of all of this for nothing but the reassertion that these two are “made for each other” which, yawn.

Perfectly good ideas wasted on an episode with mediocre writing and bad animation and rendering.

It's a pretty forgettable episode, funnily enough, I had to rewatch it to be able to write this review.

Hope this helped, Anon! Thanks for the compliment!

[hopelesshawks]

Ash and Dust Part 6- Small Victories

18+ Dabi x fem!reader (MINORS DNI)

Summary: You first meet Dabi on the worst night of your life after unwittingly walking into the very bar the League of Villains made infamous. That should probably be the end of the story. You stumble on the remnants of one of the most infamous terrorist groups in the history of Japan, get viciously murdered or call the cops and get them arrested, the end. Except that’s not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning.

Masterlist Help Lulu (Kofi)

It’s been a month now.

A month of the worst game you’ve ever played in your entire life.

Dabi enjoys the back and forth the two of you have, that much is clear. He seems to get a sick thrill prodding you to see what elicits a quip out of you and what renders you speechless. It’s nerve-wracking constantly standing up to him, trying to navigate the line between jabs that will amuse him and those that will genuinely anger him. By now you feel you’ve got a pretty solid handle on where that line is. You’ve made an art form out of treading around it, but every so often you’ll say something particularly witty or biting and there will be a moment of silence. Those cold blue eyes will fix on you and your heart will pound in your chest. You used to identify the feeling as fear but you think it’s something else now, something you’re unwilling to put a name to. That one moment always seems to extend infinitely before collapsing back in on itself as the words sink in and you pull another amused smirk or even a full-blown cackle from the man. You don’t think he likes you per se, but there’s a persistent fascination that you’re pretty sure makes him want to keep you around. If that were the only facet of the game you think you could live with it, but there’s one more thing.

Dabi is determined to keep you unemployed.

Or perhaps more accurately he’s determined to see how long it’ll take you to give up on being employed.

Every morning for the past month you’ve attempted to get a new job and every morning for the past month Dabi has managed to fuck it up for you one way or the other. From preventing you from doing any prep work for the numerous interviews you’ve attempted to set up, to sabotaging your morning to ensure you show up late, he’s done it all. On one occasion he pretended to be your concerned husband calling to cancel the interview on your behalf, on another he’d burned all of the paperwork you’d needed to bring in to cinders. The interviewers hadn’t been very amused when you opened your manila envelope only for ash to come slipping out and onto the table instead of the requested files. The only reason you aren’t terrified of being unable to pay the rent is because of your artwork. A sentence you never thought would apply to you.

Those two retweets you’d gotten on the Deku painting you’d posted had quickly grown to twenty, then thirty, then a hundred, and then a couple hundred. A few people had even started tagging Deku himself in hopes of drawing his attention to it. The recognition had drawn people to your page and then, finding no other work there, to your dm’s, begging for copies of the painting or their very own Deku fanart. It had reached the point that a couple weeks ago you had decided to start advertising commissions and a few people had taken you up on the offer. It’s not much, but between the commissions and your savings, it would be enough to get you through this month’s rent at least.

You love creating art and it’s surreal getting to do what you love to pay some of your bills, but between spending more time slouched in front of your easel or over a sketchbook and sleeping on the couch, your back is the sorest it’s ever been. As you finish getting ready for bed, slipping into a pair of comfortable pajama shorts and an old college t-shirt, you stare at your bedroom door longingly, yearning for the comfort of your mattress. As you hear the creaking of its springs, a sign Dabi must be crawling into bed after another successful day of fucking your life up, something in you snaps. Your feet carry you into your bedroom, shoving the door open with righteous indignation. You’re a little surprised to see that Dabi is shirtless as he lies in the bed nonchalantly, brow quirking at your sudden entrance. Your eyes can’t help but wander over his chest, noting where scarred tissue is stapled to unmarred flesh but also drinking in the lean muscle on display.

“Ever heard of knocking Doll?”

The sound of his voice breaks you from your thoughts.

“Sorry what?” you ask, cheeks heating up as you realize where your mind had gone.

“I didn’t take you for a pervert but here you are, bursting into my room just to ogle me,” Dabi teases, and immediately your embarrassment from before melts into anger.

“Your room? This is my room! And that’s my bed! And I didn’t come in here to ogle you, I came to sleep in my bed in my room in my apartment!”

“I have zero intention of leaving this bed, but I don’t recall ever saying you couldn’t sleep here.”

Your eyes narrow at him. He’s so smug you want to wipe that stupid look off his face. He’s bluffing and it’s a damn good bluff but it’s a bluff all the same.

“What’s wrong, Doll? Scared to sleep next to the big bad Wolf?” he smirks and that’s the last straw.

Without a word, you storm over towards the bed and practically launch yourself into the limited space Dabi isn’t occupying. You groan appreciatively and within minutes you’re under the covers and getting comfortable. When you look up to Dabi’s face where he’s still sitting up there’s a brief moment of genuine shock and discomfort that flits across his features. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared but a smug feeling of triumph swells in your chest in response.

“What’s wrong Dabi? Scared to sleep next to your Doll?” you smirk and the amount of serotonin you get seeing the look on his face could last you a lifetime. It’s a combination of affronted at your audacity, annoyed you’d called him on his bluff, and begrudgingly impressed you’d had the courage to do it. “We both know I’m not scared of anything,” he growls. “Then sleeping next to each other shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Since I’m not scared and you’re not scared,” you fire back. “No, it shouldn’t.”

Dabi makes himself comfortable as you both stare each other down, daring the other to chicken out and move to the couch outside. Stubbornness cements you both in place though and eventually with a smug goodnight you roll over to face away from him. You hear him scoff and do the same but it feels distant as your aching body settles into the mattress and you drift off to sleep.

A/N: I am very much obsessed with the dynamic reader and Dabi are forming and really enjoy the idea of her feeling out where the line is between “I’m gonna fire back and he’ll be amused my puny ass had the tits to do it” and “oh he’s genuinely pissed and debating ending my life”

Taglist: @thechroniclesofawriter @simpsfortodoroki @ahtsuwu @oliviasslut @larkspyrr @oikawaandkuroostan @tina-98 @vibesdontlie

[amachaheadcanons]

Do you think the cast of Danganronpa v3 is chilling and vibin' in heaven? What happens to Rantaro and Tenko in the afterlife. Do they form a ghost relationship?

˚ᆺ˚

I've...actually never considered-- Um-- OMG YES!!!! AMACHA GHOST/AFTERLIFE AU FTW!!!!!

Or- OR. Instead of waking up the cast asap and shocking their system immediately, Team DR instigated level "limbo" as a way to ease the participants back into their real bodies. Slowly.

OKOKOK

Tenko would definitely be salty at first and seek out vengeance, however, I feel like Kiyo would be in hell due to his crimes but instead let's just say the kids are in limbo whilst the killing game is going on. . . yeah. Like a period of time to ease the deceased back into reality without simply awakening them and rendering them mentally and physically paralysed from the cruel reality they imposed on themselves!

She shakes and throws Kiyo to teach him a lesson whenever she gets close enough. Kaede and Kirumi stop her as much as they can but eventually stop trying due to her incredible persistence and the fact that it doesn't hurt him it's just time-consuming.

She pays no mind to Rantaro and Ryoma, considering they were victims. Excluding the odd degenerate comment here and there. Still harbouring some lingering hostility towards Angie.

She spies on Himiko and is happy to see her loosen up and begin her character arc. But is painfully aware of the fact they might never see each other ever again. She's rooting for her from the bottom of her heart so it's a bittersweet realisation.

Kaede still tries to help Tenko get over her bias, following around Shuichi and dragging Tenko along so she can witness his goodness. Eventually, Kaede gets tired of Tenko tarnishing his name so she turns to Rantaro as a live example. Often catching him being charismatic or really focused on something with that cute expression.

Considering they're probably going to spend eternity together, Rantaro's keen to form a bond. She throws him for being so casual about it. He doesn't mind cuz it's kinda fun. He just floats in a circle and back in front of her. Gravity in limbo is similar to on the moon only they can float. And the windy feeling when her hands brush against his limbs is really cool.

He apologises for not taking her more seriously and reintroduces himself adding, "C'mon, shake my hand, my soul's as transparent as ever," and "I'm not going anywhere Chabashira-san, no point holding a grudge into the afterlife,"

She's very stubborn at first, but considering how peaceful the living cast are, Tenko slowly realises this may potentially be the only people she'll be able to make amends with before passing into...hopefully, heaven.

Angie gets tired of the hostility and says the only way to enter heaven is to make amends. Kaede lies with good intentions, hoping her agreeance will push Tenko in the right direction.

It's a slow process until Miu is found dead. Tenko attempts to cling to the inventor, lacking protective malice as she learns there was no way to harm the searching soul. Miu acts normally and demands some alone time, complaining about Tenko's clingy nature and slips a, "Don't you get it Chabashitstain?! This is why Yusmello ran off with Yonorganism!"

Tenko starts distancing herself after that. Miu is mildly excluded until she makes it up to Tenko. Tenko verbally insists she forgives Miu. Deep down she can't hate a girl, though Angie & Miu were tempting that moral of hers.

Kaede attempts to console Tenko, followed by Kirumi, Angie, Miu, Hoshi then Gonta. But to no anvil. Gonta's pretty good at consoling too but it didn't sway her. She's startled by Gonta so much so, she throws him, along with assumptions of his murderous intent. The girl's groan in unison at her lack of hearing and self-centred nature before filling her in on how Kokichi manipulated the situation.

Tenko began to feel more and more alone despite the growing number of interactivity.

Rantaro grows concerned and bold, attempting a method unused thus far. "Chabashira-san, when you fell off a tree for the first time, did it scare you into trying again?"

"When your Sensei defeated you in a match time and time again, did you falter in challenging him again?" "How does Amami know th--" "Tenko, when you failed to throw your opponent over your shoulder, would you stop there and let the aggressor roam free?" "Of course not! Don't insult Ten--" "Then what's making you give up now??"

Cue Rantaro and his amazing words of conflicting. Being able to gently corner people with what they needed to face. "Don't run away from your emotions. Take your own advice and be honest with yourself. What else is there left for us?"

He reached her when everybody else lacked the knowledge and experience to touch her weeping heart. She starts reinviting herself into open discussions. Progress.

Tenko observes and attempts to understand the boys for the first time ever. She finds herself following Rantaro around the massive campus. Considering he's still trying to piece together the mastermind of such a grand scheme. They bond over their search. She gets to know him. And the other boys due to Rantaro being so friendly and charismatic.

By the time Kokichi joins them she's instinctively distant but Rantaro again has a soft spot for the misunderstood ones. Rantaro's kindness is so large it makes Tenko weak and frustrated. Suddenly, she worries he'll fall into Kokichi's trap. She starts worrying and watching his back silently.

Angie "gets a hint from the Gods" and starts shipping them. After a few funny comments from Angie, Kaede and Kirumi are on board. It's entertaining watching the almighty Aikido master blush, stutter, trip over nothing and float aimlessly despite her persistent walking and attempt to perfect her form.

Kaito quickly jumps on the bandwagon and suddenly their relationship is the most interesting thing that can link the kids to some form of normalcy. It was a good distraction from the pressing matters of the killing game.

Rantaro is none the wiser. However, when Kaede pushes Tenko to befriend Kaito and he notices her genuinely trying to find interest in conversing with the space-enthused boy...he's conflicted. He's proud of watching her progress unfold and honoured he took part in it, yet, feels a pang of tightness when seeing everyone boast about their blossoming friendship.

Considering Rantaro doesn't hear the teasing and gossip about Tenko's potential struggle. And upon noticing Tenko avoiding him oftentimes, he grows jealous. However, this makes the time she spends with him alone willingly, appear all the more special. He appreciates their friendship and confesses one night during training... "You've come a long way in the past month Tenko, I'm very impressed. Be proud of yourself. I know I am."

Somehow, his words make her chest tight. "I'm honoured to call you a friend."

Kokichi "boo"s him, the little eavesdropper. Angie slaps his mouth shut, Kaede scolds him, while Miu continues to embarrass the couple attempting to join their living comrades in their nightly training.

This however starts the tradition of the dead training alongside the living. Being with them in spirit and whatnot.

Tenko's bias dies down a lot in the span of 4 chapters. And when the truth is revealed to the deceased cast in the grand finale. The deceased cast is forced to awaken after Kiibo's blinding sacrifice. Tenko awakens with hasty breaths, demanding to see her friends. All of them. Boys included. Not allowing anything to take them away from her.

If Kirumi's the mum of the group, Tenko's definitely the overprotective big sister once she reaches her character arc.

I like this idea, it brings a little more hope to the despair. Plus I like the idea of them all being friends in the afterlife cuz there's no more threats or stress.

[paperclipninja]

Some finale thoughts

I’ve been sitting with the Younger finale the past couple of days and trying to wrap my head around it all and why I feel the way I feel. And how do I feel? Great question - sad maybe? Disappointed? Underwhelmed? A little bit of all of the above? But most of all I think I feel duped. And that is the feeling I’m having the hardest time reconciling with my overall love for this show. Also, heads up, this post is focusing solely on Liza and where her story ended up.

I want to be clear that this isn’t to do with who I wanted Liza to end up with romantically. Yes, I have always been an unabashed Charles and Liza fan, but I am first and foremost a fan of good storytelling. I am genuinely a showrunner’s dream audience because you tell me a compelling, well written story and I will follow you wherever you want to take me and appreciate the heck out of the journey and find satisfaction in the resolution. Because good storytelling isn’t about appeasing factions of an audience or taking pleasure in exploiting the trust viewers have in the way certain narrative conventions play out, only to hoodwink them at the 11th hour. It is about striking the balance between the predictable and unpredictable, staying true to the story that has come before and the endpoint that has been set, but doing so in a way that acknowledges that there are ways that certain conventions need to play out in order for an audience to feel satisfied. And for me, this is why Younger has fallen so incredibly short in the finale.

I am here every day of the week for a a clever twist but I have said it before, when it comes to executing any kind of bait and switch well, there is a really fine line between an audience feeling elated because they ‘got it’- they read the cues correctly and get the sense they were ‘in on it’ - and feeling like a fool. The Younger finale left me feeling as though my entire understanding of this season (and maybe series) was completely wrong. I was led to believe that I was supposed to be Team Liza, to be rooting for her to find success in life and love after starting over again. 

So imagine my elation when during this entire season Liza seemed to have identified who she wanted in her life romantically and so, as the drama of season 7 unfolded, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that the heavy focus on Liza’s relationship with Charles was going to culminate in her FINALLY getting who she wanted romantically, while achieving the career success she desired (and set her on this journey in the first place) would be the final obstacle for the character to overcome. Is that route predictable? Maybe. Could it have maintained the follow through that we come to expect in this kind narrative but still have delighted with unexpected ways of getting there? Absolutely. 

To feel like this entire season has been working to convince me that romance was a big part of what Liza wanted in her life, fabricate an inordinate amount of drama around the character she wanted to spend her life with, reunite them and then suddenly try to convince me in the final episode that the lie, which has not been mentioned once in two and a bit seasons, is an issue between Charles and Liza, only to have the protagonist serve as some kind of example that if you lie you can’t have it all...I’m sorry, what? And wanting to bookend the series with the bar scene, I totally get it, full circle, it ends where it all began - it’s a basic storytelling technique that I have marked in many a high school essay - but it once again comes back to me wanting to feel a sense that this was a looming possibility, that it was earned and I was ‘in on it’. 

An effective twist doesn’t come out of nowhere and any argument that this didn’t, it came from the start of the series, is rubbish. In the context of this season, which is what any viewer holds in their mind as a season winds up, Josh and Liza reconnecting in this way was completely tacked on and contrived. Again, it could have been a really sweet moment if the break up that had just occurred between Liza and the man she had been desperately in love with for the entire season, didn’t render the entire season redundant, or if Josh and Liza had had more than one 2 minute interaction in episode 1. Like, what was the point of any of the drama from this season if the focus of the series was never meant to be the romantic relationships? And if the series was never meant to be about the romantic relationships, why end with the possibility of reconnecting with Josh at all and instead end with the four women toasting one another's’ success? 

And THAT is why I feel duped. It’s not about who Liza may or may not have ended up with or the mental gymnastics required for the finale to make any sense in relation to the rest of the season. I feel duped because all the way up until this final episode I was under the impression that I was watching a different kind of show. One that was feel-good and light and fluffy and had its fair share of drama but the fun kind, and resolved in ways that were sometimes predictable, sometimes not, but always satisfying.

I was under the impression that by rooting for Liza, I was rooting for her to succeed and that telling a lie to combat ageism was worth it because the ridiculous premise paid off and she did get it all. Is it cheesy and too happily ever after? Maybe. But you know what? That is what I felt like I was sold all these years. A happy escapism that would often take the ridiculous and make it delightfully entertaining and never take itself too seriously. And with that comes certain expectations of the way storylines will build and resolve: reducing such a significant aspect of Liza's story to a cautionary tale on the perils of lying seemed completely out of place for the tone and type of show Younger has always been.

So perhaps I did misunderstand the type of show I was watching all these years, perhaps my expectation of my favourite series (and yes it remains my fave) to end all wrapped up in a neat way that saw these characters I’m so invested in ride off into the sunset with everything they desired was unrealistic (or perhaps for many they all did and if that’s how you felt then I’m honestly thrilled for you). 

The loop back to the moment when the lie was conceived, right down to the verbatim dialogue from Josh and Liza’s first interaction, essentially creates a Groundhog Day scenario - Liza is back where she started, sure with some career success and some pretty great experiences, but the character growth has been stagnated by this lie from the very beginning apparently. And again, if this season had been working towards this moment of another reset, starting over once again but without the lie in place, I’d be so on board because I actually really like this idea. But to expect an audience to make the leap from one story that’s been told the entire season to this one is too much of a leap at the last minute IMO.

I will always love Younger, I was excited that season 7 seemed to be really deliberately building towards a clear ending, but I will be forever perplexed by the choices made in that finale. 

[ask-spider-man-61610]

The Infiltration: Part One of Three

To say that two shapeshifters stood in the basement laboratory of a government building wouldn't be quite accurate. One shapeshifter stood in the basement laboratory. The other could more honestly be described as meticulously sculpted into shape. The particles that made up his body were arranged into the shape of a standing man, held in place by static cling, but that wasn't really standing. It was a rough approximation of standing, just like everything about Flint Marko was a rough approximation of a human being. He'd long since gotten used to the fact, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant.

The other shapeshifter, Reed Richards, leaned against a table that was great for projecting holograms but terrible for holding papers or drinks. Fancy and impractical equipment like this was one of the Cape Code Authority's most well-known features.

A third man stood in this laboratory too, off to one side. He was, in a way, the exact opposite of a shapeshifter. More on him later.

"I've taken some time to look into your request," Richards said as he tapped a few icons on the tabletop. "Here's the basics of my thoughts so far. A shell to house your nervous system and respond to electrical signals."

There was a sound like sand sliding down a dune before Flint began to speak. It had taken him a long time to relearn how to talk after becoming the Sandman; even now, it took effort to hold the shape of those granular vocal cords as he spoke in a deep and raspy voice. "Yeah. Y'said that last time, Doc. What's changed?"

Richards, in response, pinched an image on the tabletop and widened it out, his fingers stretching like rubber bands to expand the picture further. He raised his arm--he seemed to ignore his joints, the entire limb bending like a garden hose--and flicked one finger up, and a hologram rose out of the table's display to cast a soft white glow over the room. The hologram looked like eggshells glued to an Erector set, arranged into the shape of a bipedal form that lay on the table as if it were a stretcher. "What's changed is that I've done some research into actually making that shell. Take a look, I've drafted up a basic schematic for what it'd look like."

"And you decided it'd look like a Phantom?"

Richards snorted, but ignored the question. "The outermost shell is solid-light holography," he continued, making a vague swiping gesture through the air above the image. The eggshell faded out, revealing the bare animatronic beneath, which (judging by the sculpted face made of sand) Flint found even less impressive. Frowning, Richards looked down at the hologram again and added, "We could, given some finagling, calibrate it to resemble an actual human. But generating these 3D models is a pain, so I didn't bother."

Perhaps a more critical mind would have asked why, if 3D models were such a pain, they bothered to use holograms at all instead of pen and paper. But Flint's mind had never been an especially critical one; he was in no way stupid, but for all his life had tended to take things as they came. Instead he asked, "Is that why it looks like a Phantom? 'Cuz you're just recycling a picture you already had?"

"Not letting that go, eh?" Richards replied, the ghost of a smirk on his face as he glanced up at the Sandman again. He waved his hand again, and the computer misinterpreted his gesture and deactivated the projection of the suit. Rolling his eyes, Richards reactivated the hologram and said, "No. Well, partially. It looks like a Phantom because that technology is what a lot of my idea is based on. You see, what you're asking for is very similar to how the technology works anyway--an artificial support structure for a unique nervous system. The only difference is that your nervous system is two gallons of granulated silica, whereas the Phantoms are currently working with--"

And here he stopped, falling silent and stoic. His eyes, suddenly devoid of their smiling crow's feet, glanced Flint's way before his disgusting elastic fingers returned to typing on the touchscreen between them. The pile of sand, insomuch as it could, looked confused.

"What?" he said, in a voice like a seashell crushed underfoot on a beach. "What're the Phantoms workin' with? I thought they were just robots."

This was a common misconception, and Richards, like most of the Cape Code Authority, had a vested interest in upholding it. "Phantoms" were the colloquial name for Perpetual Holographic Avatar/Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters. Bipedal, autonomous drones with light weaponry, they were the foot soldiers of the CCA, the beat cops, the cavalry when an agent wanted reinforcement. They had been in development since the War of the Worlds had brought the Chitauri and all their technology to Earth six years ago, and some of the core technology of the drones was better kept unknown. What Richards had said threatened to jeopardise that secrecy.

The third man in the room chose then to speak. Stepping forward, his black cloak obscuring the entirety of his six-foot-plus form, he spoke with a voice that was digitally altered to be an octave deeper. "They are robots," he said, his white face mask moving like genuine flesh. "Their processors have a unique method of operation, though. They have some of the most sophisticated A.I. in the world, and their microprocessors are similar enough to a human's that it won't require too much tinkering to render it compatible with your...situation."

This was Scrier--or rather, a Scrier; one of many--and he was a champion liar. Nobody quite knew when he had joined the CCA or what level he occupied, but the executives of the organization seemed to treat him as a special case. He never answered distress calls, except to break up protests and strikes. He had no patrol routes, no assigned partners, and the only training courses he attended were the ones he taught--the ones about corporate rights and the agency's responsibility to them. Agents weren't allowed to try and investigate Scrier's identity. For all they knew, he was an undercover boss trying to hear his subordinates' opinions on him.

This was true, but it was a little more specific than that.

"Yes!" Richards said, gesturing towards the man gratefully. "Thank you, Scrier. I didn't know how exactly to put that. Yes, Phantoms run on a very human-like system. In theory, adapting it to suit your nervous system should be far easier than trying to create something out of whole cloth."

"I thought you were like a super genius," Flint said, sounding a bit annoyed. "You've invented flying cars and indestructible fabrics that let you go to space. You have yer own interdimensional portal. Why is this taking so much thought? Why does this need to be made out of other stuff and spit and prayers?"

Richards gave him a blank glare for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay," he said, leaning on the table. "First of all, I am a genius. I'm one of the smartest people to ever live, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I have to research and experiment. Any innovation, even one from me, takes time." He waved his hand again and the hologram vanished. "Second of all, remember: I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart."

"You're doing this because that was my condition!" Flint shot back, and the pile of sand swelled slightly and grew almost half a foot. He raised his arms; granules fell from the sculptures and scattered across the floor. "That's what I said when I joined this stupid super-cop thing! I hate being the Sandman, Doc! You guys offered to give me this--this job of disrupting protests and taking down unregistered super-guys because your bosses told me you could make me...not."

He glanced down at his hands. And indeed hands they were; years of practice had let him sculpt the sand at the end of his arms into an incredibly realistic form, with perfectly jointed fingers. You could almost see what must have once been his fingerprints. But as he looked at them a small stream of sand fell from them to the ground.

"I'm not expectin' you to make me human again," he said. "But just...something that'll make me feel more human. Something that feels like a body." His features hardened again, sand dunes into sandstone. "If you're just half-assing that--if you're just giving me something that-that makes people treat me like a Phantom and that'll break in like a week--"

And here he stopped. There was more than just a salary that kept agents of the Cape Code Authority in line. You had a lot of wiggle room as a superhero registered under them: you could slack off on the job, you could issue arrests for what you were pretty sure was a crime, you could stop and frisk anyone you liked, you could be sure that the beatings you gave to unarmed suspects were graciously forgiven by your superiors. But one thing you couldn't do was leave. Quitting the CCA was a surefire way to bring the coworkers you had once trusted down on your head; no longer registered, you had no more immunity than a child experimenting with the most basic powers did. Nobody wanted to find themselves imprisoned in Complex 42--stranded inescapably in the Negative Zone, tortured by armed guards and experimented on to replicate your powers, only protected from the hostile, annihilating environment outside the prison by a few wafer-thin force fields. But that was exactly where Flint's line of thinking threatened to take him.

"...Forget it," he mumbled, defeated, and as he slumped down slightly his face and body lost much of its detail.

Richards stared across the table with an uncomfortable air. Glancing down at the table, he tapped a few keys on it and the hologram vanished. With one hand he pushed his glasses up, and then his arm stretched the five feet across the table and patted Flint's semblance of a shoulder.

"Look," he said. "I can't make any promises. You're...unprecedented, Marko. The only shapeshifter of your kind. I'm doing the best I can to help you. But if I can use technology we already have to do it, then I'm going to. You're not my only job in the CCA. But I'm working on it." He took his hand back, and then needed a second to brush off the sand that had come with it. "...It's getting late. We ought to call it a day, I need to head home."

"Have to convince Susan not to walk out on you again?" Scrier suggested, already heading for the door.

Reed just dragged his hand down his face, his features stretching in his grip, and didn't answer. His eyes were bagged and his posture tired. Instead he began to trudge towards the door, each leg bending like it was made of plasticine, and followed by an animate pile of sand.

The light of streetlights and storefront signs shone through the windows as the three of them stepped out of the laboratory. About ten feet away, a custodian looked up from the floor he was mopping and gave the trio a quizzical expression, but the only one who paid him any mind was Scrier, whose expression was hard to parse through the prosthetic mask. Richards and Flint just began to head the opposite direction down the hall.

"Hey! Scrier! Don't you have some skulking to do somewhere else?!" Flint called back.

As the door to the lab swung closed, the janitor adjusted his grip on the mop and looked back down at his work. Scrier, after a second more of staring, turned away and began to saunter off.

It was a long hallway. They kept walking for a good long while before they turned and were out of sight. And for all that time the janitor continued to mop and silently sweated, waiting for them to notice that the security cameras weren't moving like they usually did. Even when the three Cape Code Authority agents were gone, the custodian continued to work. He worked until the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor had faded into the background tremors of the environment. And even longer than that, until the buzz of spider-sense in the back of his mind had subsided slightly, no longer quite so focused on them.