#i didn't see a post compiling all of the issue yet...so here!

[ivyial]

okay time for some delulu gojohime analysis that's a bit of a reach.

so earlier today, i was rewatching a compilation of gojo and utahime's scenes from season 1 and it rang a bell (also, i just want to say, mappa gotta have gojohime shippers on the team cause some of the s2 gjhm elements weren't in the manga). ANYWAY.

so in episode 14 (the beginning of the tokyo-kyoto goodwill event arc), utahime is introduced (and i'm not gonna say that her literal second sentence onscreen ever is inquiring after gojo, but i am going to say that). then gojo comes in with gifts for the kyoto students - some charms from a tribe. this is how the panel goes in the manga:

nothing specific about those charms/souvenirs. gojo also explicitly mentions that they're for the kyoto kids - nothing for the staff.

now here's how it goes in the anime:

unfortunately i don't have the japanese script for this scene or the exact intended meaning, so i'll have to use the english translation :')

in the anime, there are two changes to gojo's dialogue:

the tribal charms are specifically protective. whether they work or not, they were made with the intention of protecting the user in mind

"the kyoto kids" becomes "everyone from kyoto" (including staff, technically)

now assuming that these changes are correct, it makes the scene way more relevant to gojohime.

as we know, gojo thinks utahime is weak. he says it to her multiple times and it's pretty much his go-to insult for her. we also know that gojo is loaded with cash, so spending a few more bucks isn't an issue. and yet... he didn't get her one of those. this is one amazing opportunity for gojo to make fun of utahime, by giving her one of those charms and implying that she needs it because she can't defend herself. but for some reason, he didn't take it.

there are a few ways to interpret that:

gojo is a decent enough guy to not embarrass her in public in front of other people. although, this isn't true, since he does do it in front of other people all the time: see season 2, episode 1, when he calls her weak in front of mei mei and geto. so maybe he just doesn't want to embarrass her in front of her students. again, not exactly true, since he puts her on the spot later in the goodwill event arc:

pretty 'eh' to ask her to give a speech unprepared in front of all of the students, especially since she ends up performing very poorly. maybe he draws the line at calling her weak in front of her students, because he understands that they look up to her.

2. gojo didn't give her a protective charm because despite calling her weak all the time, he doesn't fully believe that and he knows she can defend herself. it is vaguely reminiscent of their recent shared scene in the manga, in which *spoilers for the current arc* utahime's cursed technique is revealed and she acts as an amplifier for gojo's. he definitely trusts her enough to team up with her, just like he did to find the traitor at the kyoto school.

3. utahime doesn't need protection, because he is there. for this interpretation, i'm drawing a parallel between this scene and this post explaining how utahime is metaphorically always under gojo's eye. even without that detail, there's his whole spiel in 2x01 where he dramatically announces "i'm here to save you, utahime". it's worth noting that he pretty much came round to help her out because he knew she was in danger (i think? someone correct me if i'm wrong please).

one thing's for sure though, it's that gojo doesn't truly believe that utahime is too weak to be a sorcerer. is she weaker than him? sure, but that doesn't make her incompetent. and if she needs to be protected, he's more than happy to do it for her.

[meanbossart]

Misc. Ask compilation

These aren't all of the asks I want to reply to, just some that I can answer relatively quickly to clean the ol' inbox out before things get out of hand. Thanks for your patience!

HAHAHA THANK YOU FOR PERUSING AROUND and for enjoying my work! I had a... Weird Gale experience my first playthrough which led to his characterization being what it is in my comics. Here's the beat-by-beat of all the shenanigans: https://meanbossart.tumblr.com/post/740827466716807168/alright-i-am-like-90-sure-there-is-one-line-in-a

And here's just some of my personal thoughts on him! https://meanbossart.tumblr.com/post/736193145686114305/can-you-tell-me-more-about-how-you-would-make-gale

I would be lying if I said I'm not conflicted to know my style still bears some remnants of my edgy teen roots (not your fault not noticing it though, you aren't the first and won't be the last) BUT... That comic did mean a lot to me as a youth, so I guess I should be proud 🤷 and honestly it is a little cool that such a thing would survive for so long in what I do, crazy how that works.

LMAO, re: the bottom/top debacle, I was honestly so surprised to see people react to it like it's something novel. If I ever expected to get any push back on the matter, I thought it would be from people assuming DU drow was the top and taking issue with how violent and big he is (and yknow, some people are weirdly protective of Astarion as if he isn't a sneaky murder machine rippling with lean muscle)

Very disheartening to see that mindset still so alive and well among young people, but I guess it just means I gotta draw DU drow throwing more back and Astarion drooling over more ass until the stereotype is forcefully banished out of people's minds!

(more asks below the cut)

"Sleeper agent activation phrase" absolutely took me out, Thank you so much LOL

YEAH I got it pretty late though, Astarion had already told my durge that he was a vampire of his own accord (and the response was, of course, "no duh") I forgot wheter this happened before or after the first romance scene triggered, but I think after.

Since this was after DU drow decided he was gonna fuck him out of pure contrarian spite and was shamelessly laying it extremely thick, He happilly let Astarion drink his blood. Hell, he was probably a little Too Eager - the guy likes pain and he likes letting people he trusts do with his body whatever they will, and while he didn't yet trust Astarion at that point, that event might've very well reminded him of something from his past that planted a seed which would eventually grow into his genuine affection for the guy.

Ah, he definitely got a half-chub as it happened too. I'm sure Astarion noticed it and just walked off rolling his eyes and thinking "eugh of course" lmao.

Hello!!!

Oh man, I grew up fascinated with horror things. I remember from a very young age just looking at the covers and backs of horror movies at the film-rental even though I wasn't allowed to watch them. I was also easily scared but I sought those things out anyway - I think i just enjoyed the visceral reactions it drew out of me and was always curious about most things taboo.

When I got access to the internet that just opened a (very unfortunate) door to all things vile and awful like it did for so many people at that age in time. Though my tastes have changed a lot since then (Less August Underground, more The Devils kind of guy nowadays) my stories and art are just always going to fall into a horror-y category because I just... Don't think there's many better ways to showcase the human experience and emotional range without many of the elements native to the genre, and I'm all about that.

Thank you for your question and your sweet words, have a good week yourself!

I did a little write-up about that over here! https://meanbossart.tumblr.com/post/742508493562593280/i-dont-have-a-particular-question-in-mind-sorry

That's the result of a scene that happens relatively early in the story I'm writing ("A Novel Experience" on Ao3).

{SPOILERS} DU drow accidentally passes out on a blade which puts a relatively deep gash on his hip. Meanwhile, Astarion is weakened and starved after certain events that transpired the prior night. They have a private exchange both in a somewhat hazy-state of mind and Astarion ends up prodding and prying at his wound while feeding, so it's a laceration and bite mark that just scarred over badly.

Elves apparently don't grow body hair so never LOL guess they'll just have to slip&slide up on each other for heat

[technicianlearner]

Kirbtober 2023 Day 24: AU

i love accidentally posting this on the AU blog instead of my main F^CK

"Yesterday, Kirby made this machine that was supposedly able to bring us to Civis Cosmosis without the help of Elfilin or the Lor Starcutter... He did leave us a way to access the machine and enter the exact coordinates to pick him up, since he's scared that it would fail and cause him to get trapped to wherever he got sent in... And since he's been missing for a few hours and not coming back, we assumed he got lost, and we managed to enter the place... but apparently we found ourselves in a world familiar to ours, and it looks like Popstar years later after our escapades... I heard Kirby here became a king from the pedestrians living there, which is weird... but we keep trying to find our Kirby, until we bump into this strange knight. He looks a lot like me, but with a different armor and looking pretty somber and intimidating, and for some reason, I feel a weird gut feeling that he looks the way he is because of something tragic... ...not going to lie, from the looks of it, he seems to have gotten himself in a messy situation before. I have a feeling that this is related to his Kirby somehow and I don't know why. ...is this what I'll probably act like if I didn't stop him during...?!"

Prompts by @paintpanic and @peachsupremeart Fused list compiled by @desultory-novice (click here for the list!) Nextgen AU created by @itsquakey

HOLY F^CK FUTURE CONTENT + LORE????? IN A KIRBTOBER ENTRY??? AND A CROSSOVER???? WOW??? WHAT'S GOING ON???

Well, I haven't revealed this yet, but by the time of Season 3 (aka the future version of the kiddos, you can see their design here), Bandana is considering the career choice of being a knight. Well, guess which AU also has Bandana as a knight, and also angsty?

...okay maybe not that angsty but Quakey did have an sorta ongoing comic that seems to rear into that category so uh here's obligatory ad for that one

This was a continuation of sorts to an old art trade I had with him, which I haven't posted - I wanted to save it for the next art trade compendium, where I post all my art trades at once (you can see the first and currently only one here)... and I wanted one more AU creator to trade on with me, so we can form the trilogy of "Tech tests an interdimensional travel gadget, gets lost, and finds himself in other universes where his career goes differently than expected" collection. Issue is... I haven't gotten time or space to figure out who I will trade with. There's so little AU creators that want to do so, I'm afraid... but ONE DAY!

Speaking of... what incident is at the final panel, and why is Bandana so terrified that he will be as somber as Pike Knight here? Well, it was the one time our beloved Kirby finally SNAPS due to something that he discovered. Apparently it got terrible to the point he killed someone, and the team barely could contain his rage... No wonder Bandana's so wary regarding Kirby, huh...?

It has been coded by the team as 'the incident'(TM), and remembering it gives everyone chills... But what incident is it anyway? we'll never know unless I somehow get to that point F^CKS SAKE LEARNER DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR DOO DOO AU

...I guess this is making Bandee reconsidering his potential job career... if this comic's even canon... i doubt it will be anyways since crossovers and stuff. i usually like keeping my stuff crossover-free

Here's the full, blurry version, down below:

[ladyluscinia]

Oh so they're doubling down on saying that enjoying a character they don't like and being defensive (and, admittedly, a bit petty) in what's effectively a Flame War is a red flag for demonstrating cult-like fandom behavior, while clarifying that no one is actually calling Izzy fans a cult. Yet. Just saying we need to nip this in the bud, you know?

(This being... what exactly? Arguing about S2 predictions on tumblr? Vaguing people? - Hi! 🫡 Having "bad" takes that may or may not be problematic? Bitching about tagged character crit / hate about your fave, sometimes on the posts in question? Dedicating blogs to wank? Welcome to every-fandom-ever-including-BlackBonnet, I guess.)

Not a new accusation, but since people are once again making ominous statements about the "concerning" potential of a Snapewives situation... maybe we should pass around a reminder of who, exactly, they're referencing?

The Snapewives (Fanlore Link, Reddit Synopsis) were an extremely small niche forum in a really huge fandom that are pretty much only known for infamous levels of cringe that got them mocked relentlessly when discovered by Fan Wank. We are talking a tiny subsection of a subsection of a subsection of the massive HP fandom that got really earnest with their self-insert fanfic / roleplaying (and really didn't like the canon ending of Snape's arc). There's actually a really interesting paper on analyzing "Snapism" as a religion that alludes to their particular issues with Christian faith and erotic fantasies, and can kinda sketch in how they might have gotten to where they did. It's weird, no doubt, but honestly sounds pretty harmless?

Like, I'm not sure if we're using the BITE model that they would even count as a real cult - "Snape" seems very controlling and makes them do things (cook specific dinners, stop biting nails, go on diets, etc.) but, like, there's no cult leader being "Snape". These are all self-assigned "tasks" via "channeling" (which is again weird but not super unique - read the paper) and then the women themselves disagree on things and could just come across as a really intense roleplaying forum having disputes over ratings for self-insert fic, among other things.

The situation is different when there's an obvious cult leader - see the extensive documented history of Andy "thanfiction" compiled here. Trigger warnings for sexual assault, abuse, manipulation... all the stuff you expect from cults. And really getting into reading the supplementary info will take you many hours, btw.

Anyway... having looked extensively at our "fandom cult" examples, I don't think I'm remotely "concerned" that we're veering toward cult behavior. Or Snapewives behavior. The Izzy section of fandom - and, for that matter, the Izzy Anti section of fandom - haven't really done anything that hasn't been done in countless flame wars before? Like we as a collective haven't even gotten to the levels of targeted character hate that I can glimpse by searching "Teen Wolf" right now, and frankly OFMD still isn't big enough to dream of replicating 2010s fandom's biggest hits. There's some cutting edge weaponization of social justice that's a more modern development, but that's still fundamentally just fighting about the fiction. Even the one doxxing incident is unfortunately not unique.

Sheesh, "Izzy Canyon" isn't even demonstrating a unified meta or consistent S2 desires / shipping preferences / etc. We're just better at not being dicks about it by necessity?

[goldentigerfestival]

Since I'd been talking a lot about JP Vesperia (primarily Yuri and Flynn and the heavy changes that surround them, and because I'm highly passionate about them in their original context), I wanted to compile some more jarring if not outright glaring mistakes in the localization (or what were likely intentional changes, because I can't look at some of these and just call them "mistakes"). I'm not going to mention every little change throughout the game, so smaller things I'll mostly be leaving out (namely things that don't really affect characters or context). I primarily just wanted to give some insight on some of the bigger parts.

Some of the changes seem to have been mistakes in translation itself (not just localization, but misunderstanding what was being said in general; such as, there's an instance I mention of that between Patty and Don), so I've got some mentions hanging around for clarity purposes as some scenes didn't make much sense, likely because of this.

Vocal tone with Yuri was the most prominent issue that got me making this, and the context that was changed being right after if not equally next to that (most often also with Yuri but also Flynn).

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and I've been wanting to share this stuff with people interested in seeing the game with its original context. Generally speaking, the plot and story themselves are on point. The majority of the differences surround Yuri and Flynn respectively, so there's going to be a lot of mention of them throughout.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and the heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

I'd like to preface this by mentioning the chief director and producer of the game itself has also spoken about localization inaccuracy issues, so that's something to keep in mind (it's in Japanese, but you should be able to use the offered post translator).

I'd also like to preface this by mentioning that in the original, Yuri is more playful and relaxed/casual (generally but including with Flynn, which the dub pretty much entirely changed until arc 3), but also gentler and softer. He has a very large variety of tonal behaviors/tonal "moods" that were pretty much nuked from the dub.

Basically, to get the full experience for Yuri, I can only really recommend playing the game in JP audio. Obviously you won't get the actual context because all you'll have is the dub context, but that's also partly why I'm making these posts - to cover the contextual changes while the video clips cover some of the tonal changes (because lbh I don't expect anyone to actually go watch the entire game in JP with subtitles unless you're as insanely dedicated as I am, and I'm largely doing it out of my love for the original Yuri and Flynn and my disdain for how the localization treated them).

As a heads up, there won't be many skits in here because I'm going through a specific YT playthrough for these screenshots. Specific skits won't always come up in the playthrough in question, and I can't find a whole list of skits in JP anywhere online. I don't have all skits unlocked in my own save either yet (you can unlock all skits with Grade which I have yet to do in the DE), so I can't use that to compare all skits right now.

There are plenty of small changes here and there that I won't be including in these posts because there are some sentence changes that aren't impactful but do exist. I just don't want to be here for a year covering the random changes that don't matter much. I'm also not going to include details of a lot of honorifics because I'd be here all day, but there is one one major instance that I mention later on.

For reference if anything wants to actually watch the game in JP with the subs (it goes until just after Hypionia), most of the references come from here. Since in some cases the subber just reused localized text even when the context wasn't the same, I did bring some of those up in these posts too. These were subbed before the DE version came out. I used screenshots with subs where possible to make it easier to follow along.

I have a lot of passion for JP Yuri and I hope I can pass on some of that passion to others. 🙏

Apologies in advance if some of these sound cranky. If I sound cranky about some specific changes, it's probably because I am.

---

Since I talked about the whole, Raven being shady and Yuri therefore not being grateful to him incident that the localization for some reason butchered and made Yuri sound like a generally ungrateful or just outright dumb person who doesn't understand gratitude, I'll summarize that one again here:

Yuri has a skit with Estelle originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing him how to sneak out of the castle. Basically, Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes). The dub just kinda... makes him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. It doesn't really sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically but more that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game. Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from (and I imagine a weird peppy guy in jail is good cause to be skeptical).

We start off we a classic "Yuri, you idiot!" that was changed to "come on already!".

Yuri's response to Estelle mentioning he'd been in the knights doesn't actually give a time frame for how long he'd been there (the dub made up three months, but there was never originally even a time frame given).

Here when Yuri asks Estelle why she can't just leave, her response indicates she actually does know why. The dub made it more ambiguous, which could be easily misinterpreted as she really doesn't know, so I'm dropping this one here.

For some reason the localization seemed to have Estelle responding to Karol directly about the ace always performing their attack last ("I don't think so"). What she was referring to was the tiny monster that walked by, asking for confirmation that that monster was not the eggbear they were looking for (I wasn't gonna fight with the video to get a better screenshot without the annoying YT red bar in the way so the monster is in the corner mid-movement lol). Not sure if that was a genuine mistake, but it was an odd one.

(Also, side note and not putting an image here because it's more general, but Yuri refers to Karol as "Karol-sensei" which was translated in the localization to "Captain Karol". Basically, Yuri calls him "sensei" because that's a teacher/professor, and he's making a play on Karol's knowledge and being their "teacher" about monsters/maps/etc.)

I'd say this is more along the lines of overexaggerating and not overreacting, but this line was literally changed to "haha" in the dub. The whole point wasn't that Yuri just brushed her comment off or found it funny. At this point he still literally thinks she's exaggerating about her lack of knowledge out in the world, her excitement, etc.

Not the only instance you'll find of the dub just changing entire sentences to something meaningless as if they ??? didn't know what it meant (they actually changed Patty saying an entire sentence to "aye"). In some cases they added entire sentences that weren't even there...

Even though I can kind of see where they went with the dub here, the point was supposed to be that Flynn actively thought he would be happy for Yuri to go outside the barrier and see the world.

The dub changed this to Flynn saying that he, in the now, is happy that Yuri is outside the barrier, but then says he got a little less happy when he saw the wanted poster, indicating he was previously happy but got less happy, yet says in that moment that he is happy.

It's a weird case of (past/present) tense usage for the most part, but they also removed the fact that Flynn is literally saying "I thought I would be happy" (thus expressing he'd been wanting Yuri to see the world outside the barrier and would've been happy to find out he did). The reason he's not finding himself happy is because of the wanted poster and the crimes listed on it, following up that his honest happiness for Yuri (ultimately because of the poster) was a lie.

This also means they removed Flynn expressing the honesty of his happiness for a positive concept for Yuri, which, given all the changes toward Flynn in the dub, already now takes away from the fact that he'd been actively hoping for good things for someone and we're left with this more sarcastic take on him being "happy".

Obviously his happiness wasn't really a lie because most of the crimes were falsified (primarily the ones that would make him actually mad, because Flynn has had to have been aware this whole time that Yuri has committed small time crimes for the past few years now), but at the time, the focus on this conversation is that Flynn thought he'd be happy at a time that Yuri left the barrier; meaning he'd been hoping for it prior to it happening.

I'm also mentioning it because it's the very first in a whole line of changes the dub made to their relationship (and it's their first in game interaction ffs) and to Flynn himself as he's perceived as a character. The original is much more expressive of how important they are to each other in a lot of various ways.

Inserting the JP audio version of the following scene with Flynn here.

And... the following one from there.

This was changed to "damn, we if lose our balance...". I know they did it because Yuri had just fallen over, but I'm including this one because the context isn't... really the same thing?

This dub change is a bit odd to me. They had him saying something along the lines of "she is a princess after all" in the dub, regarding the council backing her.

The original context is more like, the council is backing her and he's hearing it directly from Ioder and he probably doubts Ioder would lie like that or about that, cementing that yes, she truly is, like he suspected, a princess, but it's almost still a bit odd to know. It's sort of like, he knew/had suspicions but hearing it directly from Ioder just confirms it for certain.

The dub just made it sound like well yeah, it's obvious they'd want to back her, she's a princess... but Ioder is a prince, so that doesn't explain why they're not backing him. She is a princess after all, so of course they'd back her... but what's stopping them from backing the prince?

Another weird one for me. In the dub Yuri says that "even the Commandant was a little in over his head", when he actually... really wasn't? All he did was step in. Things got bad enough that he had to, but he wasn't in over his head. Not sure how or why the dub ended up with that.

An example of the dub having a habit of just adding in random lines that didn't actually exist (and in this case the one added didn't even contextually make sense. This was no thank you from him, this was literally him making Yuri do something for him because he was going to ask Flynn for a favor and ended up with Yuri in the cell instead).

Another super weird one in the dub. They had Yuri saying Flynn was "too" late, implying he hadn't made it in time, but he did. He made it just before the battle started, but the original context only says he's late, not too late (which makes sense given that they were ready to fight but hadn't started yet).

This was changed to Yuri just mentioning there was one way they could get out of there without actually saying what it was, and Judith saying if he thinks it might work what's the harm in trying it out. Not sure why they changed Yuri literally telling her his plan, so... again, a super weird change that I don't get why they didn't just keep the context the way it was.

Third image was changed to "someone get me away from this psycho", which... I also don't get why they put that there unless they just wanted so much flavor text that they wanted to change the whole "they're in a fight and he's telling her not to come over here because he's pissed at her because they're fighting" part of the fake fight they had going on.

Not one I have a huge problem with, but definitely good examples of them going out of their way to change just... perfectly normal stuff that literally has no reason to be changed? Some of it is flavor text and some of it feels over the top for me. Stuff that makes me like... why would you change that when there was no reason to? Could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like unnecessary changes when there was nothing wrong or odd about the original text and doesn't at all come off odd in English. Unfortunately Vesperia got littered with those.

I didn't feel like getting a whole video for this, but basically Judith gives a little laugh instead of just the more upset/distressed(?) sound she made in the dub. Feels more fitting imo to keep up the "lie" Yuri started for her. The dub makes it seem more like she feels guilty, versus here she's giving a little forced giggle to go along with it. Again, a change I'm not sure why they put in.

Ngl I get completely different vibes from these. The JP comes across more as concern, rather than... treating them like they're some mob on the loose...?

Once again, this gives off negative vibes toward Flynn as a character imo.

Here Judith gives more of a reason for coming with them, which they changed in the dub to "with the circumstances being what they are, this is just how things turned out". Reasonably, she didn't have to stick around after they ran from Dahngrest, but here she gives a quick "reason".

The dub changed this to "I'll bet he is". They were just told he's the current magistrate in Heliord, and all Yuri says here expresses he's letting it sink in and realizing exactly why all this is happening here. It's not a huge story beat or anything that gets changed, but it's an example of changing things that don't need to be changed as if trying to play things up in a way that... doesn't feel necessary to me? In this case the situation is kind of dawning on Yuri as he realizes how bad this situation could be/why it's like it is, but in the dub it comes across as more just unimpressed and "of course he'd do that".

An unfortunate, classic moment of them changing how much Yuri believes in and trusts Flynn. They changed this to "gotta run, Flynn!" and he just... leaves. I'm sorry but in what universe does "leave the rest to you" equal "gotta run"???

This one is one of those cases where the localization text was super awkward and wonky, and worse, they actually voiced it that way (like "we have guild's job to deal with". Yes, they actually voiced it that way too on top of everything else grammatically wonky with the entire conversation that they didn't bother fixing when the DE came out).

Also here, they changed what Yuri says about Cumore and Flynn. "I don't know how I could explain this to Flynn" doesn't, at least to me, carry the same weight as Yuri actually feeling ashamed (in the dub he says "what a shame", but does not express shame, versus him saying "how pathetic" and expressing shame in feeling pathetic) and saying he can't even face Flynn because Cumore got away. The thing is, Yuri does tend to posture, so when he fails at something, it hits him pretty hard.

And let's be honest, this just hits way harder than "he will get what he deserves".

Interestingly, Yuri could also fall into the category of viewing himself as sinful later on, which I talk about in my favorites post and the usage of "crime" and "sin" within the JP context.

Not particularly important, but just another (more mild) case and example of how the dub just randomly changed tone/mood/wording for no reason.

Another case of Yuri being more aggressive in the dub than he actually was. Here, all he says is just a plain statement. In the dub, he has an attitude about it and says it in a tone that's more insulting that Ioder didn't know about Heracles.

This isn't the only case of dub Yuri acting aggressively toward Ioder when he wasn't supposed to be and we'll get to that, but Ioder is another similar case of the dub making Yuri unnecessarily vocally rude (despite that Ioder is very polite toward Yuri).

(I left out the subtitles because all they did was copy the dub's localization, which kinda defeats the point of this post LOL. This will be the case going forward for any same circumstances.)

This one's a more interesting tidbit to me and less of a harmful change (i.e. I find that a lot of if not most changes relative to Flynn do more harm than good when compared with the original context). Basically it's saying "sweet mask and sharp eyes", implying Flynn's sweet face is a mask and saying it contrasts with his sharp eyes. I could get into a whole rant about why I love that in relation to some side material, but even in the game itself, there's the knight Flynn with his sweet, polite side and his real side that only shows when he's around Yuri (basically, who Flynn has to be for his job and who he actually is as a person, which he only gets to be around someone who knows the real him).

I'd guess this got changed in the dub because they weren't sure how to word it, though there's no mention of "heartthrob" here at all and instead actually says "sweet mask" as if, again, to say his sweetness is just a mask. It's actually a very interestingly accurate representation of his character - how he tends to not be himself when he's being "knight Flynn", and how that sweet face is contrasted by the look in his eyes (which they say, you know, eyes are the windows to the soul, so this would imply the sweet face is the mask and the eyes are the real Flynn. And of course, this Flynn is implied to show himself in his sparring with Yuri in Aurnion, where sword fighting is the best way to express himself. This isn't to say Flynn being a nice person in and of itself is a lie, but that his overly polite, respectful, kind knight side is a sweet mask contrasted to the man who loves to fight and has a sharp look in his eyes)

For now, we'll be back at Mantaic in the next post (due to image per post limit).

[pruengs]

a symptom of being human - master post

a symptom of being human is my humanverse gerame & pruk hetalia au. i am hoping to write a cohesive story about it one day but for now i'm compiling this information here (taken from discord & my google doc) for you to look at. i'll link to the other posts here.

all posts of this au will be tagged as #asobh.

general info.

it's set in germany. arthur meant to study abroad for two semesters, but ran into gilbert because they studied the same thing (art history) and then never left. alfred wanted to escape the unites states and went to germany as an au pair, which is where he met ludwig.

arthur and gil are 4 years older than lud and al.

ludwig has autism.

alfred & gilbert are trans.

arthur speaks fluent german, alfred is learning german but is having a much harder time learning it than arthur.

alfred and matthew are still twins, but matthew lives with his father in canada, while alfred lived with his mother in the united states. they still talk generally.

the next paragraph is technically also general info but it needs to be expanded so it gets its own bullet point list here.

gilbert and his thing with death.

terminal illness! discussion of death and dying!

gilbert has an unspecified illness that is going to kill him before he's 30. i haven't decided on what yet, but it's a degenerative disease that he was born with, and it got diagnosed when he was a young child, and he has been raised with the knowledge that he won't make it past 30.

UPDATE: gilbert has hermansky-pudlak syndrome type 1, an extremely rare autosomal disorder, that causes albinism, bleeding diathesis, immunodeficiency, and pulmonary fibrosis.

he has a life expectancy of around 30, and has been raised with that knowledge. he's well aware he's going to die.

so is ludwig, of course, but it's still hard on everyone. ludwig cannot cope with the concept well, because he cannot fully grasp it.

gilbert's mortality especially becomes an issue once the relationship between arthur and gilbert becomes serious.

because gilbert didn't talk about it when they got together, because he assumed they wouldn't stay together long enough anyway, and then suddenly arthur is proposing to him and gilbert realizes this is a conversation they have to have immediately, 'cause he will not marry him under false pretenses.

gilbert is pretty optimistic despite the dying thing, usually. he planned his own funeral because he's pragmatic like that. his testament is written and he jokes about it constantly, he doesn't care because he never knew anything else. but of course even he has his limits and gets very, very upset about it sometimes.

when it comes to leaving his family behind, or even more personal things.

like settling down or starting a family he has difficulties dealing with it. because he's good with kids, maybe would even like some, but he knows it's not really feasible. he wouldn't live long enough to see them growing up, and he couldn't put the stress on arthur on raising children alone, and he couldn't put the stress on the children either. to lose a parent. adopting isn't an option because of that, and biological kids even less so because he would be too scared of passing his illness on. and he is really struggling with it, because it's something he always wanted.

the only person gilbert really talks about his issues with is his father. gilbert can't possibly imagine how hard it must be for him to know he's going to lose his son, but he talks things through with him a lot and in the end they both feel better, especially because gilbert sometimes just needs to rant.

that and his therapist. because you bet your ass germania put this kid in therapy the moment that diagnosis came.

links.

the german family. german family part 2.

pruk.

germerica.

bad friends trio.

roderich.

misc.

fic: baby, pull me closer. [prueng, explicit]

[will be updated with other links, like arts or fic.]

[radioactive-earthshine]

I think it was you but it may have been someone else that talked about the flashfam and their eating disorders? I tried to find the post but couldn't and I wanted to go back to it. Anyway if it wasn't you could you go into if Bart has an eating disorder anyway? I'm mostly interested in Bart over everyone else but I'll take whatever is out there

Trigger Warning: Eating disorders, food, calorie mention.

Hi.

The post you are looking for I believe was done by @givemewallywestorgivemedeath and iirc it had less to do with the Flashfam having eating disorders as a whole than it did going into Wally's past complicated "fringing on ED" relationship with food (I couldn't find the post either).

Wally used to have to consume LARGE quantities of food in order to just survive because of his metabolic rate being accelerated at all times and it was an amount that was insurmountably excessive even by Speedster standards.

Wally no longer needs to do this anymore and it is a plot that writers have generally stayed away from for a long time.

When it comes to Speedsters and their food intake, generally they DO consume more food than the normal person because of their metabolism, but for the sake of story pacing and keeping things simple we don't really have a solid caloric amount they need.

But you wanted to know mostly about Bart so here we go and I shall try my best.

Below I am just going to give examples of when Barts eats (large amounts), explore the reasons why, and then allow you to come to your own conclusions but I am NOT going to diagnose anything because I do not have the expertise in this subject to do so.

When we're talking about Bart specifically we do see him eat quite a bit across a lot of different incarnations of him.

Young Justice Phantoms.

(One of many items consumed...)

In Young Justice Phantoms for example he was shown carb-loading while talking with Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy... This was for necessity as he was planning on using his speed to traverse the galaxy like how a marathon runner would prior to a race.

Young Justice Invasion

Bart is also shown nibbling on food in otherwise inappropriate occasions in Young Justice Invasion (during a memorial and during a stealth mission) which could be evidence for him carb loading again (or this was his trauma instinct kicking in).

In Bart's comic adventures we also see him eat... a lot... BIG portions and he thinks about food a lot too. Most of his food intake in his own comics are just for eating with little explanation other than he was hungry.

Impulse #2

Biggest sandwich I have ever seen, Shaggy and Scooby would be proud.

Impulse #23

Bart likes sandwiches, and this was during night when Bart should have been done eating for the day.

Impulse #47

During a stake-out he is surrounded by bags and bags of food.

Young Justice 2019 The Emancipation of Bartholomew Allen (I only have the compiled books not individual issues so I don't know what issue # this is.)

In Young Justice 2019 it is suspected that Bart fainted because he didn't eat for a while, but this has yet to be confirmed. Bart INHALES the Chocos after waking up.

Young Justice #49

The above issue reveals to us that Bart does go to food for other reasons than just keeping up with his metabolism while having a normal teenage appetite.

Bart is a stress eater confirmed by this one panel, but I am not going to say this is an eating disorder because I am not at all qualified to diagnosis this.

Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #15

Bart doesn't eat A LOT in this panel here in this reality, but he does talk about his relationship with food. Bart simply eats a lot because he has to due to his metabolism.

Within the context of the animation, comics and traversing comic realities Bart does eat a lot but so far other than stress eating (which is very common) I have my doubts that he has an ED.

I hope this helps and was what you were looking for.

[littlegnome145]

I'm back in my Starter Squad brainrot so uh.. here's some speculation + Squirtle character analysis:

I got back to the Starter Squad brainrot and I decided to rewatch it again in the backround while I did some routine stuff and there's something on my mind that I haven't seen ppl talking about yet. Spoilers ahead:

So, I was watching the compilation of the 10 episodes (I usually just watch them separately, so I think that's why I hadn't noticed it till now), and in the switch between ep 9 and 10 it's not just them stiched together, but there's this little noise. An echo of a saved file and a glitch, and then bam episode 10.

I was honestly mostly surprised bc I expected them to show that one post-credit scene in ep 9, with the caterpie wearing Charmander's head as a hat, but they didn't, instead there's those sounds.

Now, it might just be a cool indication that 1) that moment had consequences (save file sound) and 2) of Missigno still being around (glitch), which is not a problem at all tbh, if that's the case it's a pretty neat way of showing it, but idk there's something scratching at the back of my mind about it.

Now, this isn't really a theory as much as it is speculation, and I'll be honest, I'm most likely ovethinking this, bc there's not really a bunch to go off of, but eh it's a fun concept to think about so I'll do it anyway:

I think episode 9 might have more than 1 ending.

And I think this will have to do with whatever Wartortle is gonna ask at the gods in the mountain.

So, episode 10 is mostly centered around time. There are alot of things that it talks about, but time is like the little bow that ties it all together.

Specifically it's mostly about being stuck in the past, about how the past affected the present, usually with too much or too little time being the biggest issue.

Too little time to save Charmander, too much time letting the war continue.Too little time spent on actually getting to know the kids you decided to take care of (what drove Turtwig away), too much time to actually see results in training (what drove, between other things, Chimchar away)

Squirtle is mostly shown to be a character here that either does too little or too much as well, especially after Charmander's death.

He did too little to save his friend, he did too little/pretty much nothing to stop caterpie over the years, he did too little to actually be a good father/uncle figure to Chimchar and Turtwig in the ways that mattered.

He did too much when trying to apprehend Charmander, attacking him to the point the guy was almost dead even BEFORE Caterpie stabbed him; he did too much during the war, having it implied that he was the main fighter, to the point where the conflict only actually ended when Squirtle was let go; he did too much trying to protect the kids, he was sheltering them because he was terrified them getting hurt like his friends did, but that only drove them apart from him further.

And he already did that before, but it was in contexts with fewer consequences. It's usually that one song and dance of doing too little and then bam, something happens and the guy goes all out (either on purpose or on accident).

With his human trainer? He does very little to get out of his situation, even trying to fake that he's actually 'very happy here, no really stop laughing, guys'. And then bam, he screams at him and is overjoyed to see him dead later.

With the first caterpie encounter? 'Welp, sucks to be them', then bam Bulbasaur accidentally guilt-trips him into saving them and he shows up running with a shiv, taking almost everyone down accidentally, but still, the guy went in swinging.

Hitmonchan? 'Bulbasaur is with a real trainer now, we're not bringing him back, he's better off without you', and then bam, Charmander apologizes and says he needs his help and he decides that 'hey how about we break a frigging pokeball. No idk what's gonna happen, but it will probably be bad, so we win right?'

The forest king? He keeps waffling the whole episode, going along with the forest king's antics and talking about empathy, and then bam, the guy starts being too annoying and he just holds him down and tells Charmander to kick his ass. Bonus points in this one because he is totally against raiding a pokémon center and at the end he just let's it happen.

And the thing is, Squirtle/Wartortle is somewhat aware of this flaw, even as a kid, but he doesn't really understand the full thing. He knows he does too little, but didn't seem aware that him going all out immediately afterwards was usually just as harmful.

With Charmander it's where we see this in full affect, as soon as he becomes friends with him, he goes all out in trying to make him a better person. He usually fails, but still tries, and we can see that Charmander becomes more mellow because of this, either because he genuinely wants to become better or because he doesn't want Squirtle to be disappointed. It goes to the point where Squirtle seemingly sees Charmander's actions as his own fault just as much as it was the fire-type's, which he says in his episode 9 speech:

"How did I ever thing I was making a difference with you, you took so many innocent lives, and all I did was stand there!"

"… We were supposed to be a team, Charmander, but you were only in this for yourself and I couldn't fix you. But thanks to them I can finally fight back!"

He lectures Charmander alot, but he never actually fought him. He never genuinely tried to hurt him after they were on the same team, because he was the voice of reason. In his mind, this was him doing too little, and like always bam, he goes to the other extreme and does too much.

Like yeah, Caterpie did the finishing blow, but Squirtle did most of the damage, not just because of the type advantage, but because Charmander didn't seem to even TRY to fight back as soon as his friend showed up.

His flame was almost extinguished. Squirtle almost killed the guy, a mixture of him wanting to make sure Charmander wouldn't hurt anyone else, pent up anger and him wanting his friend to know what it was like to be on the other side of the fight ( "Oh, I'm sorry, did you want a turn?" "Seems kind of unfair, doesn't it?!").

In episode 10, he doesn't really talk about that part, he just says that he wished he could've done things differently at Turtwig's "you didn't just jump in and save him?" (Which implies that they probably heard a censored version of the story before, which highlights how much he shelters the kids)

And I think it's probably because he doesn't see it as THE issue. Again, he is aware that he does too little, which is his reason on going all out at everything else, something he never outgrew. Even at the end of episode 10, he has his big revelation, but it's still incomplete:

Again, he only realizes that he does too little. He did too little to save Chimchar, he did too little to stop Caterpie. Too little to stick by his own choices.

And caterpie was right in that flashback, I mean they also say some ouchie stuff, like how they pity whoever gets control of him next, but Squirtle sees this moment as him doing too little. Caterpie, however seems to understand that it's a mixture of both too little and too much:

It's not just 'You let me do whatever I wanted', it's also 'you gave me complete loyalty'

They also seem to at least somewhat understand why he does it, out of fear.

And Squirtle goes back to his pattern, but this time seemingly about his own self preservation and his guilt.

He's first, willing to go back, doing what he was told like he's a soldier again. It's the best thing for his self-preservation, but for him and his morals/ideals? It's a step backwards.

Then he has his revelation, and he goes all in, clearly screaming at the other pokémon as if he was screaming at himself. Not just that, he goes all in and bam, not only finally evolves, but legit kills the guy.

And the most important aspect of it all in this scene:

"If I'm gonna make bad choices, they're gonna be my own."

Because after this, yeah the episode pretty much ends, but he does not go back to the old song and dance. Squirtle usually follows his pattern of too little, too much, too little, too much,…

And he did the "too much" aspect, so you kind of expect him to calm down a bit, but he doesn't.

He looks at his dead kid, he talks about how if he had evolved he would've given them hell (Which let's be honest, it's not true at all. I do think he was already seeing the kids for who they were a bit, but it was clear that he was still putting him in that "Charmander" box. No offense to Chimchar, but Abomasnows are at least level 40, he was at most level 13.)

Anyway, he talks to his frozen body, and instead of going back to his "too little" thing, he remains on too much, and this is one of his biggest to date: he literally goes and decides 'actually, I'm sick of this, I'm gonna go up there and fight the gods or die trying. No I don't have a plan, no I don't know what I'm gonna ask them yet, what of it?', which was cool as hell to see, but let's be honest here, half of his main problem is still alive and stronger than ever.

"Okay, Babz, but what does this have to do with the sounds between episode 9 and 10?"

I'm getting there.

So they were going up Mt. Coronet, and Wartortle is going up there because he wants to talk to the gods, and in that mountain there are three: Arceus, Dialga and Palkia. It's where Arceus made those two even.

And yeah, Arceus is all powerful, but I'm gonna focus on Dialga here since them and Palkia are pretty much the mascots of the Sinnoh region.

Dialga is the god of time.

Time began flowing when they were born, and they can turn back the clock.

(Like okay Super Smash Bros trophys are not the best place to look into but this was the quickest example I could find so bear with me):

If you're ever running late, maybe you could ask Dialga to turn back the clock… Just a little bit?

Arceus in recent stuff is shown to turn back the clock too, but idk if that should be considered.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, turning back time is something Wartortle could potentially do if he wanted, especially if he wins a fight. It's extreme, sure, but the guy is still in his "too much" gig, so if given the possibility he would most likely accept it without much thought.

And yeah, again, this is mostly speculation. I was thinking about alot of this since last year (a bunch of ppl here were also talking about possible time-travel, but like me, it was mostly in a "cool idea"/"fix it au" kind of context), but since there didn't seem to be foreshadowing aside from the character arc and location (which again, can JUST be a character-arc, it's not just bc something CAN happen that indicates that it WILL), I left it alone for the most part.

But idk these little sounds almost seem like a clue.

And okay, I'm mostly someone who focuses on themes when talking about story theories/possibilities, and episode 10's is, again, centered around time and regret. Regret for the past, not enough time to change it fits a little too neatly you know?

The fact that episode 9 ends on a cliffhanger also doesn't help. At the time it came out I was not just wondering if Charmander was still alive, but also WHO was stabbed. It was one of the reasons why I was so interested when ppl started talking about "what if Squirtle was the one who was stabbed" scenarios and drew/wrote stuff for the shiv au, because back when the episode came out I genuinely thought it was a possibility and I wanted to explore it.

Anyway, this could all be wrong lmao, but I missed talking about the silly warcriminal starters so eh sfgdfhhdf

[stygiusfic]

hi styg !! i'm really curious about 14 and 15 for those end-of-year writer asks if you feel like talking about it 💖 !!

hi friend!! <333 thank you for the ask!!

14. a fic you didn't expect to write

I haven't posted this yet, but the question doesn't say it has to be posted, so. Inspired by my re-read of The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells this summer, I've written 40k words (and counting) of a Critical Role C2 fanfic trapping one of my favorite characters of the campaign, Essek, on the island that steals people's memories away and makes them slaves to the false god in its volcano. (Currently titled The Island of New Beginnings; I have a CR sideblog @bug4bread-sideblog which is where I'll share when it's done.)

It's not Hades, which is all I've posted in the past couple of years, and it doesn't mean my Hades days are over, but man, I'm having a blast playing in this new sandbox. It's also an experiment: I've only mentioned it to a few friends, and plan to start posting only after I finish. I want to see if multi-chapter is easier for me that way. So, unexpected but good!

15. something you learned this year

Feels like I learned a lot! Or gained more confidence in my process; probably a mix of both. (Under a cut because it got long!)

Overall, in the long long years I've been writing, I've written mostly short stories or one-shots, and I've always struggled the most with finishing the initial draft. There's always that perfectionist urge in me that wants to get all the themes and plot elements and character arcs in the right arrangement from the get-go, and if I'm feeling dissatisfied with my direction it's hard to stay motivated.

This year, maybe because I've recently wrangled with longer works, I feel like I'm building some endurance in that regard! You can get lucky with a one-shot and push it out in a day, and get a first draft that’s near perfect, but that’s just not possible with multichapter, for me, and I’ve finally started to accept that.

It's still hard to let go of the urge to polish right away, but I feel like I understand now more deeply that my process relies on multiple passes to get where I want to go. Especially for 20k+ stories, this is what I'm learning to accept as the process:

0.5 — Outline: In-depth outline of the whole story with its ups and downs, with a list of scenes too, and I'll usually outline each scene before I write it. (Who's in the scene? What do they want? How are the things they want out of the scene opposed?). The overall outline will be thin in the second half because I still don't know enough about my story, I'll find out what I'm actually getting at when I start writing it; I’ve learned that This is fine.

1. — First draft: Sometimes inspiration works miracles but waiting for a miracle is not a process. I really feel like this year I got a step closer to accepting that my first draft can and should be rough. It's a draft. It's sinking in that, when I look at my artist friends' progress videos, of course I don't expect them to make a perfect painting without sketching basic shapes first, so why do I keep expecting the writing equivalent of that from myself?

1.5 — Heart Notes list: This has been the game changer in 2022. It's a list of things to fix in a later draft, and/or think about on my next walk. When I'm drafting and dissatisfied with something (why would this character do this? why does this pacing fall flat? etc) or introducing some new element halfway through that I will need to rewrite earlier scenes to set up, I just put it on this list. And I don't think about it anymore for now. I used to compile these notes after the first draft was done, but those issues weigh on me enough that they would often discourage me and keep me from finishing the first draft at all. The list lets me mentally set down the weight of that problem, knowing I will address it later, so I can keep drafting now.

2. — Second draft: My beloved. Here is where I will do the larger rewrites based on my heart notes and rearrange stuff how I need it to be and just generally feel terribly relieved the first draft is behind me.

3. — Final draft: Just tweak some sentence-level stuff to make it read better and clearer, and we're done. (This is what I have always foolishly hoped the second draft would be, which meant I needed the first draft to be close to perfect already... and that’s how I got stuck.)

I still have a long way to go in terms of learning to let the first draft suck as much as it needs to, but I've been feeling a lot more secure in the idea that sucking is part of the process. I struggled a lot with writing in the first half of 2022. It's been getting better, and I think giving myself more leeway to suck at first and then seeing it work out in the end has helped a lot.

I hope 2023 is a good writing year for you (and in general too)!!

[michaelmilligan]

Endversetober Day 9: Hands

(explanation post) (compilation post - now with AO3 link)

They went back to Earth. This time, Adam wasn't surprised that it was a wasteland filled with zombies.

He was still disappointed, though.

While he'd hoped they'd at least avoid the zombie hordes, Michael seemed to have a different idea. Namely, to go right into a hot zone again, rip a metal pipe out where it stuck out of the cracked pavement, and bash some zombie heads in.

Adam cringed back from the forefront of his mind, doing the mental equivalent of closing his eyes. While he was no stranger to slasher movies or even first-person shooter games... this was a little too realistic for him.

He supposed for Michael, it was just a way to let out his frustrations. The anger he'd felt up in Heaven had almost drowned Adam for a bit there. And that was on top of Heaven already being incredibly overwhelming.

If he'd thought that seeing one angel's true form was mind-boggling...

Michael? he asked after what felt like several minutes of zombie-obliteration. Hey, you listening?

WHAT? Michael asked, clearly annoyed.

When Adam peeked between his fingers (again, mental equivalent), he saw that all the zombies around them were dead.

There was a lot of blood around them, and very disfigured corpses. Some of them even looked burned, however that had happened.

Um. You okay?

Michael scoffed. By now, Adam thought he had a pretty good grasp on the archangelic displays of emotion, even though they still mentally knocked him on his ass every time.

And that was definitely a scoff.

It's just. Don't you have better things to do than kill a bunch of zombies?

LIKE WHAT? Michael asked sarcastically. PRAY TELL, OH WISE HUMAN.

Look, you don't have to be mean about it, Adam grumbled. But didn't we come back here to find that Balthazar guy?

BALTHAZAR WILL STILL BE ON EARTH WHEN I'M FINISHED WITH ALL THE MONSTERS IN THIS CITY.

Will he? Adam questioned. Listen, I like that you're trying to clean up or whatever, but don't you have bigger fish to fry?

Michael seemed about to say something – Adam wasn't sure how he knew, but he did – but then just made a disgruntled sound.

WHATEVER, he said, throwing his – their – hands up.

Jesus Christ! Adam yelled, which seemed to startle the archangel inside him.

WHAT?

What's with all the blood?!

Pulling their – Adam's! –  face into a frown, Michael looked up to survey the landscape.

No, I mean on our –  my hands!

Michael looked down again. There was blood on their t-shirt and jacket too, Adam noticed with growing horror, so much that for a moment, he had difficulty remembering what colour the clothes were supposed to be.

WHAT ABOUT IT? Michael asked.

Why is there so much of it?? What did you do to those poor zombies??

Adam hadn't thought it possible that he would empathize with any kind of revenant, much less ones that tried to bite you. And yet.

POOR ZOMBIES? Amusement rippled from Michael to Adam, still feeling like a freaking flash flood. This time, Adam stayed upright though. YOU'RE KIDDING, RIGHT?

I mean, kinda. Adam cringed. But not really. You got, um, some anger management issues there?

I HAVE NO ISSUES MANAGING MY ANGER.

Well, if this is how you do it, no wonder all those angels basically fled when they saw you.

Adam cursed himself as soon as he'd said it. Michael had already deemed him annoying before – this would definitely set him off.

I'M NOT IN THE HABIT OF BRUTALIZING MY BRETHREN, Michael said, with an edge of indignation but otherwise surprisingly calm. WELL. AT LEAST NOT UNLESS THEY'VE DEFIED THE PLAN.

What plan?

GOD'S PLAN.

Does that happen often?

NO. Michael seemed to think about it. A LITTLE MORE OFTEN LATELY, I GUESS. THERE WAS ANNA, AND THEN CASTIEL, THOUGH THAT PROBLEM HAS SOLVED ITSELF I HEAR.

Right. Whatever that meant. Adam wasn't sure he wanted to know. Must be hard, killing your... what was it? Your siblings?

MY BRETHREN, YES. BUT IT'S NOT HARD TO ENACT PUNISHMENT ON THOSE WHO HAVE FAILED HEAVEN. IT'S MY DUTY.

And your pleasure? Adam thought before he could stop himself.

PLEASURE? A beat of silence. NO. BUT I ALSO DON'T SEE WHY I SHOULD FEEL BAD ABOUT SLAYING MY ENEMIES.

Even if they were your friends before?

Michael huffed. FRIENDS? I DON'T HAVE 'FRIENDS'.

Oh, wow. Um. Sorry, dude.

YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME. This time, the amusement coming from Michael was laced with annoyance.

Shit, Adam thought, but this time only to himself.

I'M A COMMANDER. THE VICEROY OF HEAVEN. THE OTHER ANGELS ARE MY ARMY.

Adam shifted uncomfortably. While he wasn't sure how that worked while being just a soul, he was pretty sure he was doing it.

That sounds pretty lonely, dude. But I guess I don't know enough about angels to judge that, he added quickly.

OBVIOUSLY. WE DON'T HAVE SUCH CONCEPTS AS 'FRIENDS', OR ANY OF THE OTHER TYPES OF SILLY RELATIONSHIPS YOU HUMANS HAVE.

So... you've never felt bad about killing anyone?

Another bout of silence. I MIGHT GET A LITTLE MELANCHOLIC WHEN I HAVE TO KILL MY BROTHER LUCIFER.

Adam sighed. They both looked down at their hands again.

Out, damned spot, Adam muttered.

WHAT?

What, you don't have Shakespeare in Heaven? Adam asked sarcastically.

I'D HAVE TO ASK IF HE'S IN HEAVEN OR HELL. ALL I KNOW ABOUT HIM IS THAT HE WAS AN UP-AND-COMING PLAYWRIGHT IN HIS TIME.

An up-and... yeah, okay. Sure. Adam sighed and, despite himself, laughed. This conversation was so absurd.

WAS HE ANY GOOD? Michael asked.

Well. I had to read Macbeth in High School. Or more like, I was supposed to read it. Adam squirmed again. He hadn't really understood the language, so he'd just skimmed it and read a few summaries. I guess you could say he's still pretty popular.

AH. Michael was silent for several minutes as they made their way through the city. Whether they were looking for more zombies or actually tracking Balthazar, Adam had no idea.

But eventually, Michael said: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? THE QUOTE YOU GAVE.

Oh. Well, you see in Macbeth there's this guy who ends up killing the king...

While Michael seemed rather miffed at the contents of the play, objecting the killing of a superior, he at least listened relatively patiently while Adam explained it. He even gave something like a laugh – as intended – when Adam told him how the forest had moved.

That one, Adam had always found funny, too.

The reveal about Macduff was a little lame though. Like, yeah, he was born via C-section or whatever, but he was still born by a woman, right? I liked that better in Lord of the Rings. You know, when Eowyn kills the Witch King? Oh, you probably don't know what Lord of the Rings is, huh. So, there was this guy named Tolkien, who liked making up languages...

There was an almost continuous flow of amusement from Michael now, and while it was still a whole lot to take in... Adam was beginning to get used to it.

[nerice]

alright. figure i'll make this post before im getting got by the sadness too hard,,, also bc it'll be past midnight by the time i'm done typing this up which will put it into proper anniversary territory so,, weird long crypost just bear with me i have 2 do this for myself ;;

i care ocs. if you know anything abt me it's probably that. im only alive bc of writing it's the only thing that makes life bearable and that's why i stick around. and in 2013, i happened to pick up art bc if i'm not gonna draw my ocs who will. that was five years into oc verse even if i didn't conceptualize it as such yet & alrdy a year into the profoundly normal era that continues to this day known as [still not calm abt sky plot] i cannot elaborate. if you know u know. enter the night. iykyk etc. i was not normal abt it when this song freshly delivered an entire new (and first proper,) au/canon divergence into my brain exactly 10 years ago >>>

& i have been extremely not normal wormed eeled yelling losing it etc every single hyperobsessed verb you can think of abt this story corner and this song for ten freaking years. baby me had only been drawing for a couple of months and was given an entire psychic vision for a lyricstuck/songdraw however u wanna call it in current vernacular. the full five minute song. i've written that corner ofc but just like the shape of tge is screenplay i know the shape of this has to be a full animation. im ngl with you when i say the main reason i have wanted to improve at art at any point was so i could animate this one day. nd i was content just drawing whatever i want and not slaving away at this project until i felt i could tackle it. and then 2022 happened and broke me and when i was in the hospital with that stupid ass heart issue i was terrified i'd die without ever seeing this through. and so i swore that after thesis, come november, i'd fully dedicate myself to art improvement so that for the 10yr anniversary in late september 2023 i'd have a version of it. even if it's sucky even if it's janky ofc it would never have been the full cinematic animation (not yet) rough animatic, even static lyric panels just set to the music, whatever. just have a version of it. it's what got me through thesis, in the end. and you know how this story ends

my wrist exploded (rsis what ever we are sticking with the meme)

tbh i was holding out hope until a few months ago. bc one evening in late 2020 [*holds a moment of wistful silence*] i got possessed and thumbnailed 80% of the thing (minus the 1min sequence of three different fight scenes. problem for future future me) so maybe if i just compiled those to the song n sketched over it doing one panel a day............. but it just wasn't possible. i have to rest my wrist and rushing thru a bad grief-sticken rendition of this project and probably ruining my wrist for good in the process just isn't worth it. so as nice as it would have been to have even the most rudimentary version to post on the 10 year anniversary of arguably the thing that changed my life and made me want to live and write and draw and improve forever, it's not happening. we are here and i cannot tell when i'll ever be able to draw again so all i can do is look through those thumbnails from 2020, and dream,,,,,

maybe 2024, boys. maybe 2024.......... time is fake & clean anniversaries are overrated anyways u,______,u

[heartfragment]

Okay sorry for the long asks I'm gonna send! I wanna give you my thoughts on the routes after playing and getting the good endings of all four of them (I haven't touched the bad ends yet because I'm not ready to destroy my soul 😔) and I figured it'd be easier to have one ask per route for simplicity. Also I will be as spoiler free as possible with my thoughts for the sake of anyone who hasn't played yet. These may not be the best written reviews though, my thoughts kinda go all over lol. So first off, Kay my beloved darling!

He was the one who caught my attention first and I gotta say while I adore everyone so far he's still my favorite! Man that Act 1 plot twist about who Kay really is? I'm still mind blown over it like I never ever EVER expected that to be the case! So when that was thrown at me I was basically like "?????? wtf??? WTF????" Honestly Kay's route was sooo heartbreaking in many respects, from Kay's struggles to Xani dealing with the consequences. And my gosh as someone who is the biggest baby alive when it comes to horror and anything related to it, the unsettling moments were *chef's kiss* I saw another anon bring this up and I wanna agree that Kay's VA? Outstanding, simply incredible. Every emotion, every line that came from Kay was believable and hit me in all the right ways. My fave moments being a certain breakdown in a shack and basically everything from the Branch 2 ending. And I really enjoyed how you wrote the mental health issues in this route, especially the issue regarding dependency. Kay himself was so enjoyable as a character as well, both pre and post that part of Act 1. I loved his teasing moments and kindness, I loved his more solemn moments, I loved the moments when he was struggling because of you know what. This route also had me asking a lot of questions which works that it's paired with Clive's route that contains some answers. For Kay my favorite end was the Branch 2 ending, I think it was the best way to wrap up everything that happened.

Hi anon!! This is ... one of the most sweet and most lovely asks I've ever gotten. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to write all of this. I'm sorry it took me so long to actually reply. I was away on vacation and while I saw these soon after they were sent, I didn't want to reply until I had access to a computer so that I could compile all the asks into one post.

I hope you know that this message literally lit up my entire day when I first saw it and it continues to do so as I reply to it now <3 Things like this help to encourage me to keep going even when things get tough. I'm glad you got so much enjoyment out of books one & two! If you haven't already, please consider leaving a review on the game as well. It isn't necessary of course, but it helps a LOT to have detailed comments like this... or even simple ones like "it was good"!

Wishing you a super lovely day!

Here's a compilation of this anon's other asks:

Next up, Clive you little weirdo (affectionate)!

Starting Clive's route was already breaking me because, as I said, Kay's my fave so there I was making sure not to bond with him too much so that I could get Clive's route. That coupled with The Plot Twist™ of Act 1 and basically I was already grieving with the start of this route. I say all this but truly I was already fond of Clive. He's just so incredibly, adorably, painfully earnest in all he does. It's hard not to love him even when he acting so obviously suspicious. And that sincerity in his interactions with Xani over the course of the route does help to lessen the sting of certain reveals. This route did answer some questions I had about Kay's route but it also raised so many more??? Like seriously as this route went on I was half ready to do a conspiracy board to try and piece things together. I enjoyed how this route dealt with identity and how you choose to see both yourself and others. And it was sooooo much fun interacting with Clive over the course of this route and seeing his funny and adorable reactions to Xani mixed in with how achingly sweet he was at times. And it all made the drama of the latter part of the route all the more better! Once again, shout out for the VA work because Clive's VA did a great job selling how awkward and sweet this guy truly is. Great first impression with the hiding behind the tree scene and the adorableness of the scene at the end of Branch 1. So while for Kay I preferred his Branch 2 ending (I did say that it was the Branch 2 ending I loved more for him right? The one with the party? bleh my memory is bad sometimes but yeah that's my fave of the two for Kay) in Clive's case my preferred ending for him in the Branch 1 ending. Mainly for the heart melting sweetness and partially because I couldn't bear having poor Xani deal with a certain consequence of Branch 2's ending.

Now we got my precious baby Shannon!

This book wasn't big in terms of spooks but it dealt with other kinds of fears that still chilled me to the bone. I adored how this route handled paranoia and how much do you truly understand/try to understand the people in your life. I was already attached to Shannon in the common route so finally getting to play her route was great (plus I'm a sucker for childhood friend romances)! Shannon's bubbly energy and A+ friendship was so adorable (everyone deserves to have an incredible friend like Shannon) and precious but my truly favorite scenes were the ones where she tried to open up more about what she was going through. I felt her frustration and loneliness whenever Xani wouldn't let her in (completely understandable why Xani would but I also totally felt why it hurt Shannon so much). Shannon's VA completely sold me on her adorable bubbly self and also completely sold me during the scenes where she let out emotions other than "I'm happy bubbly Shannon". A certain yelling scene after a certain other character's role in everything was revealed comes to mind most. Can I just say that gigantic WTF moment (the "memory" one for the sake of being as spoiler free as possible) nearly fried my brain? Like I was right there with Xani wondering what the hell was going on here and how that happened. Didn't get a conspiracy board but I did actually start taking a shit ton of notes in a spare notebook I have trying to piece together everything going on and all the questions I have! Also screw Dustin, all my homies hate Dustin >:( But it was fun to meet Charlie and Choi (will we see more of them later on? they were so fun it'd be a shame if we didn't). For Shannon it was actually a really close call between Branch 1 and Branch 2 for my favorite ending because each branch had something I loved so much in terms of romance, friendship and pure drama. But the Branch 2 ending just managed to win between the two because I liked that drama more and also that dance scene was too precious for words! Also the after credits scene of Branch 2 killed me with cuteness!

And last but note least, my actual mom Lana!

When I looked at the walkthrough for Lana's route and saw there seemed to be fewer choices than for the other routes I was worried that would mean her route would just be shorter. But nope, you put my fears to rest when I saw what you did with Act 3! I'm really glad you made that choice for Act 3, because it answered so many questions about the precious acts in her route but also gave a great insight into Lana's mindset! May be sounding like a broken record here but Lana's VA also did a wonderful job here, giving Lana such a caring and soothing voice. Like that finale scene between her and Xani was beautiful and made me melt into a puddle from how much love I could feel in Lana's words! I enjoyed this route's take on trust and the past, how much of it do we hold onto and how much do we need to let go of in order to move forward and heal. This route also revealed a couple somethings that I had been guessing early on and was so excited to have confirmed (namely the identity of a certain someone Lana knows and what said someone's name is). The dream sequences in this route were sooo cool and trippy and makes me want more and more because I need answers! I need all the answers!!! I adored seeing Xani and Lana interact with each other, seeing them reignite that closeness from their past while Xani also has to battle between sincere love for Lana and the mess of emotions coming from all the shit that happens over the route. Lana only has the one good end though I loved how you had variations in there via having the other three be potential love interests and also a certain other variation. It really was fun to try them all out (especially since I super curious how you were gonna pull of one particular variation considering said character's unique position at this point in the game)! Also can I say Lana was incredible in both how hard she tries and truly is a wonderful guardian for Xani and also in how she deals with the grief and despair of past tragedies and also the nonsense of general adult life. Personally I'm closer to Lana's age than the rest of the cast's ages so I ended up really connecting with many of her struggles since they mirror so many of my own.

Last one, I promise!!!

Anyways yeah those are my scrambled thoughts after playing the routes. I'm over here basically vibrating intensely because I cannot wait for Book 3 and the final book to be released. I'm getting closer and closer to upgrading my notebook to a full blown conspiracy board 😂 But seriously, I have so many questions and all the hints and teases you put throughout these routes has my brain going into overdrive trying to figure it all out. Because I noticed certain things and was glad the game was like "yeah isn't this off?" but there was other stuff pointed out to me that I didn't even realize (the dates…THE DATES). Also Xani is such a wonderful MC, my love and light. Both female Xani and male Xani have such adorable designs and their VAs did great when it came to bringing them to life in both sweet moments and in the harsher moments (also loved seeing the different reactions the other characters would have based on Xani's gender it was so cool you added those variations in dialogue). Anyways you have done such a good job on the writing on this game and please pass along my admiration and love to the artists who made the incredible images, the composers and singers and all the music folks who made some absolutely amazing tracks that were perfect for the scenes, and also to all the fantastic VAs who brought these characters to life! Love the game and am eagerly awaiting the next part!!!

[hedaswarrior]

 Barbara & Maca Cosmopolitan Cover + entire interview spread!

[sokkas1mp]

I gonna break in this acocunt with me being angry about something that doesn't really matter (very fitting for tumblr if you ask me), this article.

First: "And I’m sorry to open with this, but part of that is due to the age difference between them. Two years is hardly worlds apart (I’m personally working with four), but a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl are. Especially the way these two are drawn. Not to be too voyeuristic about Y7 cartoons, but Katara has clearly gone through puberty, while Aang hasn’t. There is something just…off, about a sixth grade boy having a full on make-out sesh with a high school girl."

This argument is one of the most stupid ones if you ask me, because it blatantly ignores the culture we have been presented by the show. I can understand why people find this weird, but we have to try not to look at it as if its our society, because its not. In A:tla, specifically the water tribes, 16 is marrying age. Right there, our "age norms" (idk what else to call it) are very different. And there are no divisions between ages in their world like we have with middle and high school. To me, two people are fit to be together based on their maturity, not their age. That's why 45 & 40 is not the same as 15 & 10, or 20 & 15. This is the same for Kataang. They have very similar life experiences and matured together, literally side by side, so a two year ago gap is irrelevant.

Second: "...Katara took on a very maternal role with Aang. Sure, she’s a caretaker and sort of a “mom friend,” but it’s a bit more than that. She served as his literal guardian during the show’s run—there’s just no other way to look at it. By the third episode, she called herself his “family,” and later even went on to role play as his mother to get him out of trouble at school. Aang, meanwhile, was… Well, I wouldn’t say “immature” for his age, […] However, Katara is 14 going on 25, while Aang is just, Aang."

There's a compilation of Katara doing thing with Aang that if someone saw a mother doing with her son they would call it incest:

Katara definitely acts motherly towards Aang, but that is just her nature. She is more than just motherly with him. And some people like to call the check kisses familial (which is kinda weird imo), but we know Katara herself doesnt think that:

"Easy there, big brother" She pushes Sokka away. Not to mention, this was about a scene or two before she kisses Aang on the check.

Calling someone close to you your family does not mean you see them in the same way you see your parents/siblings. And Sokka played Aang's father in that scene, but we aren't sitting here using that as evidence to call him Aang's paternal figure.

Something Aang haters forget (or chose to ignore) is that being lighthearted and goofy does not equal immature. Yes, Aang does some juvenile things, but that shouldn't take away from his growth and maturity.

Third: "In fact, in the last season, Katara was shown to be uncomfortable each time Aang kisses her, and even went as far as to tell him to back off with the romantic stuff in the episode before the finale, because she was confused about how she felt. [*new paragraph*] Yet, in the end, she just trots up and blushes at Aang, than happily makes out with him when he goes for it,"

Katara initiated 2/4 of the kataang kisses (not including the check kisses). The kiss in The Cave of Two Lovers and the kiss in the finale. Yes, she's the one that "goes for it" in the finale (she also initiates the hug). She only pulls away once out of the 3 times we see a kiss end (this would be excluding the kiss in The Cave of Two Lovers). She wasn't confused about her feelings, she didn't want to have to worry about a relationship when they were nearing the end of the war.

Fourth: "The post-canon comics only furthered the lack of exploration of her feelings in this relationship"

Fifth: "[referencing a scene in The Promise in which Katara is jealous of a fanclub being around Aang] "I'm sorry, this amazing, adult communication is blowing me away"

The are both still teenagers, who have zero previous relationship experience. Also, Aang had no ill intentions and Katara recognized it.

Sixth: [refencing Katara's role in The Legend of Korra] "Did Katara want to do anything other than sit in a healing hut and be known for having Aang's kids?"

This is another argument that just pisses me off. You can not use Katara's lifestyle in her 80s (she is 85 in s1) as judgement for her adulthood. It's purely assumption based. Constantly this author assumes that because she is in a relationship with Aang, Katara would drop her whole personality. What? Katara would not and could not be forced to do something or conform to some label and Aang wouldn't let it get to that point either. He would squash any idea that she is just "The Avatar's wife" or "The mother of the Avatar's children" the minute he heard it.

Seven: [comparing Katara's reaction to Aang The Desert to Aang's reaction to Katara in The Southern Raiders] "You'll spend a long time looking for her condescending tones. "Anger won't help, Aang," Katara never said, because she got that he was processing something painful and needed to sort it out himself. This difference in behavior is something that would be really fitting for a twelve year old boy to learn and understand. There's just no indication that he ever did."

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I don't remember Aang being condescending towards Katara. He was offering his advice because he knew her and knew that she would regret doing what she thought was right when her judgement was clouded by anger. And guess what. He was right. He never forced anything on her, either. Sure, he was a bit more pushy than he could've been, but in the end he let her go on the trip with no complaints. He even agreed that this was something she had to do.

Eighth: [referencing The Ember Island Players] "When the actor says 'Wait! I thought you were the Avatar's girl', Aang agrees. Katara is his."

You know damn well Aang doesn't see Katara as just his. And she's give him PLENTY of reason to believe that his feelings are reciprocated (which they are).

Ninth: "It's the story of a woman who swallows everything lest the man she's interested in has to learn anything about his behavior that violates her boundaries."

Ha! You said she was interested in him.

But in all seriousness, you mentioned how Katara stood her ground and told Aang that she was confused, but apparently now she's swallowing her feeings.

Tenth: [talks about the cloud babies daddy issues]

I don't disagree with what is said here, for the most part, but I don't think it is a reflection on Aang and Katara's relationship.

Eleventh: "... given what what we got with Kataang, it's completely unsurprising that Aang and Katara's parenthood/adult life was defined by a lack of communication and availability, at least from what we can tell. This also puts Katara's choice to immediately moved to the South Pole once Aang died in perspective; perhaps the city he poured all his energy into, at the cost of his family, held some bitter memories."

Once again with the lack communication. We can't use the early years of their relationship to determine their whole relationship. Also, there wasn't consistently a lack of communication, you just pointed out one time and ran with it.

We don't know at what point Katara moved back to the South Pole, but there are plenty of reasons for Katara to leave Air Temple Island:

a) Her son moving in/or planning to move in with his family.

b) She was no longer needed in the city and thus had no need to stay.

c) She wanted to go back to her native home for comfort after the love of her life died at a relatively early age.

d) The next Avatar was discovered and she came home to train them.

That's all. Thank you for reading my unnecessary rant if you made it this far, and I just want to close out with a few things:

- There were some things in the article that I did not include for the fear of this becoming a novel of me repeating myself.

- I agree with most thing said in the final segment of the the article. Most, not all.

- I appreciate the author for not trying to shove Zutara in just because Kataang wasn't there. That is becoming increasingly uncommon, so it was nice to see.

[ra-tutubixi]

A Chronicle of the Ways in Which Upturned Canoe Mountain Has Wronged Me

i've had to write this whole parable two and a half times now. fuck you too, tumblr (lovingly).

anyway

i was writing a not-so-small post on architectural calendarics that i'll eventually share here, and i'd gone pretty well all things considered, even with exams and whatnot massively slowing things down. but Toluquilla posed a perfect storm of problems i was not prepared for.

see, before it, most of the calendarics i'd researched and digested were Horizon Calendarics. what are Horizon Calendarics? Horizon Calendarics are when you align a building or smth in one to a certain feature of the horizon, be it a prominent peak or a noticeable dip, and put the thing at just the right angles and distances to sort of create a calendar that tracks the movement of a celestial body, with notches or protrusions on important dates or period boundaries.

cool shit right?

up until this point, i'd done a fair few descriptions and put a few images to illustrate what i'm talking about. obviously i hate myself and i'm working with relatively less popular or outright obscure sites, but decided to work first with the better known and gradually crawl down to lesser-known ones.

Ranas and Toluquilla are very cool sites i'll eventually talk about, but i decided to do them for two reasons:

they both have described architectural calendarics

i love the sierra and i want others to love it as well

i'm no scholar. i am good at boiling dense info down into equally dense but more accessible terms and can compile much, but i don't know shit about astronomy, much less about calculating dates and azimuths and stuff.

for historical contexts and... just about everything that's not mercury poisoning (yes, really), there's very limited information on the region. like things do come up on google scholar, but they're either very old, impossible to get, or obtuse references to the previous both.

yet fortunately again, there is a book on alignments.

Orientaciones astronómicas en la arquitectura de Mesoamérica: Occidente y Norte was so very useful for Ranas after i finished the history bits. it uses fairly complex language, but the times it describes are easy to comprehend, albeit the text is a little ambiguous where it doesn't need to be.

in retrospect, the same can be said for Toluquilla, but nighttime me does badly with texts that cannot decide what numbers are most important to mention and where to mention them.

the crux of the issue came in the last few lines, which are essentially a lightning round of "things we tried but we don't know how to order them" and which contain a single word i didn't know. azimuth didn't scare me, especially not with the little degree sign, but the word orto had an unknown i couldn't parse out immediately. hablo bien la castilla, formal y mi variante local, pero no sé de términos tan astronómicos porque nunca se me ocurrió buscarlos. es mi primera vez viéndola.

being too knocked out to remember that Wiktionary is a thing that exists but just conscious enough to decide that attempting incredibly complex calculations was a good idea, i delved into inah's rough map of the site and a website that could output the different angles at which sunrise and sunset happened in relationship to the north of a given site for a day or in a datasheet for the year.

"there's probably some mountains that i can read," said a naïve me, full of hubris and thinking that the authors were wrong or something. with what little i could pick up, i learned that the Temple of the Second Ballcourt is the place with the alignments, and as such picked it for my own purposes.

the foremost problem showed up when i couldn't find a tool to get those sorta elevation heatmaps but in relative elevation to just grab a pic and overlay enough lines and circles to see where there could reasonably exist an axis, one of the most recurrent points that Horizon Calendarics use, or notable extremes, another set of points that define the most northern and most southern sunsets and sunrises.

"oh well, i'll just use peakvisor and check a range of angles to see if anything comes up." reasonable to a point, ig.

instead of grabbing my protractor, i used a fairly accurate but still very prone to error method of using a compass to measure the difference in angle from north of a given line. i don't have a compass, let alone one at hand and one with guides, so i used my very prone-to-sliding phone's compass and did a relatively good job at it, only some 5 degrees off. i shouldn't be celebrating this. ...anyway

i got the datasheet for the solar angle and got the minimum and maximum ones from all sunrises and sunsets. i was eventually left with four numbers, maximum and minimum sunrise and sunset azimuths.

i plotted these on desmos into lines (y = xcos ß btw), along with the flawed alignment and the perpendicular (y= x / cos ßa), and lo and behold i got something that looked like an alignment.

[blue line close close to purple line is the perpendicular; lrA is minimum rising] needless to say i was excited. i got something, different of course, but not too different.

then i checked the date for that minimal — June the 23rd and 24th. it's close to the solstice, about 2 or 3 days off. i went onto the calculator that projected minimals and maximals per day and... the result was off by about 5 degrees further — indeed, the minimal absolute was on the 22nd, @ 64.45°...

the line was off, and for large large distances like actual sunrise this is bad.

by now it was the morning and i was much more open to the possibility of failure, so i turned to read again, fresh and full of energy...

all this was useless to me. i already had my answer and i could've avoided all this extra strain if i had only slept a bit. literally, in the first few sentences it says the dates and the way in which the site can be read: it, along with its Ballcourt and the city's First Ballcourt, is pointed towards April 30th and August 13th's sunrises. notably, these are very close if not outright identical (these were calculated with actual formulae by actually knowledgeable people, but calculations, as they are, are still prone to a little deviancy sometimes; alternatively, they could be a nod but not a total homage) to the aligned sunsets of Teotiwakan's Pyramid of the Sun, April 29th and August 12th~13th.

instead of considering for a minute that maybe it wasn't a Horizon Calendaric but a Staked Calendaric (similar to the other one, but uses "stakes" or just a few closer landmarks to indicate the date, much like E-groups further south), i was too stubborn to even consider it. i even approached the point and almost changed my viewpoint, but no, no, it was too jarring at the time.

i then looked up orto on wiktionary and lo and behold, it fucking means sunrise.

with this cleared up, i was able to read the last few lines, lines which say that the Temple of the First Ballcourt have another alignment, for the 27th of May and the 18th of July. these seem like unusual at first, and indeed, one is displaced by 27 (april->may) and the other by 26 (july->august) days. however, the number 13 is a bit of a motif in mesoamerican stuffs, and in this case lends credence to this separation seeing as 26 is a multiple of 13. the 27 is likely intentional, as total symmetry seems a tad secondary to the Classic Sierra Gorda people — in the sister city of Ranas, which does use Horizon Calendarics, the count for one of its two timereader temples is of 140 days, while for the other it's 145~146, with two gaps of 40 between their tailends to complete the whole year.

so far we have 105 days accounted for by the four stakes, 13*8 + 1 (possibly 1 more sometimes to account for the extra decimals accumulating).

the other 260 are hidden at the other side of the Temple of the 2nd Ballcourt, which has sunset stakes in february 9th and november first — each tailend is gapped by 80 days, multiples of the important 20-day concept, and between the two stakes there are 100 more, completing our cycle neatly.

take this as a cautionary tale. i was open to many things, to different ways of counting times, but i was so tired and so infatuated with Ranas' (and primordially by Kwikwilko and T'ajin's) way that i forgot the sheer diversity inside the continent. in a way i was Horizon-centric, and now i know better.

but hey, everything's better than being eurocentric :^)

[myrandom-fandomlife]

Hello! I'm the anon from the 4 part ask that you answered earlier! I saw your post about the different "eras" of DNF and I would like to share some of my opinions since I've been in the fandom since March of last year, so maybe I can write my own analysis and briefly explain what happened during these times (and hopefully someone will find enjoyment in reading this)!

So the first era was probably the most "baity" period where every interaction between Dream and George with slight romantic undertones was pure bait. From Dream placing romantic music in the background, to the small texts on screen that would read "arguing like a married couple" and even proclaiming his love to George any second he could, it was obvious that it was a means to garner a reaction and moments that could be used in compilations, edits, videos, etc. Dream addressed George just the same as he currently does Sapnap or Bad: Dude, Bro, etc, and when they weren't attempting to bait, for example on streams, things were chill, no tension, just two bros hanging out in minecraft.

LOVE OR HOST ERA. The catalyst in DNF's relationship, in my humble opinion. Now, where do I begin? So, LOH was definitely a time that I believe Dream became aware of his feelings towards George (platonic or romantic, I can't be sure) and his fear of losing him. Before/During George's LOH, we got Dream saying some interesting things, the most notable one "George is the only man I can see myself dating". Now, I'm pretty sure this was meant as bait, but how he reacted prior to LOH, was very telling. Dream would avoid George like the plague in every situation that didn't require them to interact. Twitter? Only one mention (and that was literally him tagging George in Andrea's post in spite). Stream? That I can remember he didn't join much during this time, nor did he stream that often. During MCC, the DT was separated in different teams, Sapnap & George together and Dream alone. Now Sapnap DID pop off. He was doing amazing. And Dream complimented him and his team quite a lot. But what about George? I believe he mentioned him ONCE. This was the first time we see Dream jealous in regards to George, and the lack of content and interactions between these two made many believe DNF was dead and abandon the ship all together.

QUACKITY AND KARL. Now there is a lot that happened in between LOH Arc and the friendship between the DT with Karl and Quackity. Dream and George seemed to have solved whatever occured between them, and things were tranquil. We got a few baity moments here and there, but we also started to get the start of the infamous "name-truthing", the soft voices and other subtle moments. Now, during this time George, Dream and Sapnap started developing their friendship with Quackity and Karl, George in particular started getting closer with them and spending LOTS of time with them, so much so that we got more G/K/Q content than we did DT content. And we get Jealous Dream 2.0., only difference from the other occurence of jealously? He addressed it publicly, admitted that he was frustrated and physically affected by the lack of attention from the british man. He confronted George while he was streaming, with an audience of 50k+ viewers. He was desperate.

Things were pretty calm after that, the more intimate and subtle moments between the two became more and more apparent and began to outweight the baity moments. Quackity/George/Karl continued to blossom their friendship, and DNF was slowly becoming a topic to tease George and Dream (I can only compare their teasing to that of middle schoolers when their friends had a crush). We can compare this teasing to that of Skephalo, the difference, while one is leaning on the more explicit side and used to make others laugh or get an over the top reaction, the other was used as an inside joke of sorts, only brought up to embarass or shut up Dream/George when they got over-confident (most times it would effectively leave them quiet, important to note, is that they never denied the claims nor attempted to).

TRAINS PODCAST. Oh boy, was this a night to remember. A historical mark for DNF. The point in history that George decided to become BOLD and actively flirt with Dream whenever he wanted to, rendering or poor Leo speechless most of the time. That podcast changed these men, it unlocked something within them and things have never been the same since. This is where we see the dynamic take a major switch, and baity moments had become almost non-existent, and instead we got probably some of the most tension filled convos between these himbos. Name-truthing had become something natural between them, the unavoidable excitement whenever they hear one another in call, suddenly ever call became a matter of how long until they were third-wheeling everyone. It's also during this time that we clearly see a difference in between Dream & Sapnap's relationship and Dream & George's relationship (not that one outweighed the other, but the nature of these relationships were very much opposing)

And finally we are in our current stance. Where the sweet, obnoxious moments continue to pile; More and more of their friends are calling them out (you can literally see Quackity and Karl becoming more direct and, quite honestly, aggressive with their call-outs. I bet they are just as tired as we are); The whole hoodie fiasco and the secretive pictures; Syncing sleep schedules once again; Tension continue to grow and you can see them testing the waters, in a game of tug of war until one of them caves in and starts the conversation.

As I said before, they have nothing to gain from the bait they are currently doing. They excuse it as being a joke, and hide behind this lie, as a means to test the development and seriousness of whatever they have going on. The whole Valentine's thing proves that they (unfortunately) do not understand when the other is being sincere or baity...

Also here is some food for thought. George has been very clingy with Dream ever since he and Sapnap moved in together. Not being able to see each other is certainly another factor that is affecting them.

I'm anxious to figure out what in the hell is happening next between our oblivious idiots with communication issues. It sometimes seems surreal the things that occur between them, and straight out of a fanfic.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant and if this wasn't very interesting to read! Just wanted to get some thoughts out of my head!! Stay safe and hope you have a good day/afternoon/night! ❤

Hi love! Glad to have you back <3

Firstly, don’t ever be sorry for ranting in my inbox, especially ab dnf. I love to see it!

Thank you for this, especially the early parts when I wasn’t in the fandom yet. Ahh this is super helpful.

I agree that George has gotten more clingy since Sapnap and Dream moved in together which is so funny because Dream and George have a more similar sleep schedule than Sapnap and Dream do LMAO

But yes all of this ugh I’m deeming you my genius anon