#i figured it out when i was like. 20.

[ninjasmudge]

i was raised by parents who always made it pretty clear they didnt trust the government, so for an embarrassingly long time i just assumed bonfire night was about celebrating 'that time someone almost succeed in blowing up parliament', rather than celebrating the fact they were stopped

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A fierce duel commences!

[wildflowercryptid]

some miscellaneous kieflo doodles i've done recently

[st-hedge]

It wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card that I’d draw V again. Anyway I’ll go ahead ramble in the tags

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[aroaceleovaldez]

HoO is so funny to me when you actually think about the ages of all the characters. Octavian is 18. Percy and Annabeth are 16, almost 17. Reyna is presumably 16. Frank just turned 16, Jason’s about to turn 16. Leo and Piper are like 15. Hazel’s like 14 and a half, and Nico is 13.

The Death Sibs are both the youngest and oldest on the Argo II. Octavian is a college freshman getting into petty drama with a bunch of high schoolers. He gets told to shut up at one point by a random 8th grader. Everyone is scared of the 8th grader. We Sent A 13 Year Old To Superhell and he came back weirder, Just Like Middle School. TLH was just three high school sophomores being sent to do a task and it going Exactly Like You’d Expect. Percy’s the only demigod on the ship who can legally drive (though Reyna gets her drivers license at some point before TOA). What Is Happening.

[demenior]

ao3 user unfortunatelyevent suggested Jester should be wearing a hat that says 'evil aligned wizards want AND fear me' on my fic 'a heart that howled' and i couldn't get the image out of my head

[yumemiruuuu]

The Season 2 (slays) Gays 💅✨

[fisheito]

my princess nonsense is being encouraged watch ouyt imabout to be eneaabled

OK WHATF ATHAT'S SO CUTE I HAD TO MAKE IT i know realistically there's little to no chance that rei DOESN'T know how to work heels 🤣 BUT IMAGINE.....ING.... YAKUMO GENTLY GUIDING REI IN HEELS, WEEKS BEFORE THE BIG GALA AND HAVING NONE OF HIS NORMAL FEAR OF PHYSICAL TOUCH BC HIS [TEACHER MODE] IS OVERRIDING HIS INSECURITY

[harpuiaa]

i've been dead and gone bc of school and jobsearching and everything happening all at once but ive been playing the boktai series games lately and i'm enjoying it a lot. I just got past the third boss in boktai 2. I don't know why but i'm enthralled with these games, i highly recommend them

[moonyspetwolf]

Okay so I’ve seen like 20 videos on tiktok of people saying they have no idea how exy is played so I’m gonna make a post about how I understand the rules. I’m not really an athlete but I know a bit about sports and I also coincidentally went to the same school that PSU is based on

(I haven’t read the books in like 5 years so if I’m wrong about something feel free to correct me)

First thing, exy is played inside, not outside. The game can’t work in an outdoor stadium and I’ll explain why in a minute. The stadium is like a combination basketball court and hockey rink. Wood flooring and plexiglass walls surrounding the court. There are two goals on each end.

Okay so the lineup. From what I remember there’s 4 positions you can play on an exy team: dealer, backliner, striker, and goalie.

Backliner is pretty straightforward just classic defense. They protect the goal and focus on the other team’s strikers. I think it’s similar to basketball where they’re assigned a mark (opposing striker) who they have to cover during the game. That doesn’t mean they’re not free to move or check other strikers either, but basically they try to stop the other team from scoring any goals. I’m not sure if it’s against the rules for them to make an attempt on a goal or not.

Strikers are similarly straightforward. They’re straight offense. Their job is to get as many goals as possible. They work against the opposing team’s backliner and shoot at the goal

The dealer is the most confusing position but I think they basically control possession of the ball, so I think their job is to get the ball from the other team and make sure it gets to their strikers. At the start of the game or after any breaks they’re the ones who deal the ball and try to pass to their teammates. Idk if they operate similar to backliners or not, like checking, tackling, etc.

The goalie is the same as any other sport- their job is to protect the goal. Goalies have special racket that are bigger and heavier than other players. They also wear special padding to protect them since they’re constantly getting exy balls chucked at them and often have to use parts of their body to block them.

(Side note: if exy balls are anything like lacrosse balls they seriously hurt to get hit with. They’re dense and heavy, when they work up enough speed it feels like getting hit by a slightly bouncy cannon ball)

From what I can remember, at any given time there are two backliners, two strikers, one dealer, and one goalie on the court for each team. Players are subbed in and out as needed (I might be remembering the numbers wrong, maybe they have 3 backliners at a time idk)

Exy is a high contact sport similar to lacrosse, so players are free to use physical force against each other. They can check, tackle, and basically do whatever it takes to get the ball. Just like in hockey, players often get into fights. Excessive use of violence can get them flagged by referees, but it’s by no means a gentle sport. Players go into it with the expectation of getting thrown around and bruised.

Players wear padding and helmets to protect themselves, but bruises, sprains, concussions, and broken bones aren’t uncommon within the sport.

There are some basic rules for how the game is played. Exy is kinda like lacrosse in that players pass the ball back and forth with their raquets. I don’t know a lot about all the rules of lacrosse but I know exy has a rule about possession that’s similar to basketball. In basketball a player has to dribble the ball while they’re moving, if they hold it in their hands without dribbling for too many steps it’s called traveling and it’s a foul. Exy is the same, a player can only be in possession of the ball for 10 (?) steps before they have to pass it. If they carry it farther than that it’s traveling (idk if there’s a special term for it in exy speak). There are ways for players to get around this. They can either pass the ball to a teammate after they’ve taken their 10 steps OR they can rebound it off a wall, catch it in their racquet, and keep moving. This is the reason exy has to be played inside and not outside, so that the players can use the walls. If it’s played outside they can’t rebound the ball and they have to rely strictly on passing back and forth, which isn’t always possible especially if a player is being heavily guarded. I’m not positive if this possession rule applies to all players or only strikers, but it would make sense for it to be all players.

I can’t remember if the books say anything about who is allowed to shoot at the goal. Obviously strikers can but I can’t remember if there are any rules saying backliners, dealers, and goalies can’t score points

The game is played in 2 halves, a total of 4 quarters. I’m not sure if the book ever says how long each quarter is but it’s probably safe to assume each is 15 minutes, so a total of 1 hour playing time. However with timeouts, breaks, penalty time and other interruptions games usually last far longer.

The foxes are a unique team because they’re much smaller than pretty much any other team in the league. They only have 9 players by the end of the year, so they can’t sub players in and out as easily. Most teams have upwards of 18 people so the players are usually on court for a much shorter time and have more time to rest between playing time. In the foxes vs. Trojans game, USC decided to play with the same size roster as the foxes meaning they rarely got to sub out players, which is why they were so exhausted by the end. Throwing yourself around a huge court at top speed for an hour is tiring.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, I’m not an expert and it’s been a while since I’ve read the books but I think exy is a pretty cool sport :)

[oh-warizoro]

Exactly 3 years ago I wrote my first Zolu fanfic 😭❤️💚

Link to Ao3 for anyone that might want to read it ⬇️

So happy to be part of the Zolu brainrot ahah

[shannonsketches]

Disregard that last post, OP's definitely mad that Bulla is treated like a toddler and Trunks is treated like a teenager askljda

[razzle-zazzle]

Hi, not sure if you answered this already but for your between au when branch gets adopted by gristle do you have any plans to continue with it? You kinda skipped the part during the first movie and I’d really like to know what happens when jd goes to get Bruce and clay. The fight scene would be so much more brutal than in canon. Either branch talking about how much worse he had it than his brothers or him not caring at all about their fighting. Oh and clay being out “serioused” by branch! I just really like ur au and your writing. I understand if you’re occupied with other stuff but do you atleast have so hc to give?

Oh don't worry, I do! My next Trolls piece should hopefully be for the Between AU! I usually do write stuff out of order, though, so I'll get to the first and second movies too, don't worry!

And that argument in the third movie... it'll definitely be a bit different, though not exactly in the ways you're guessing... actually, here, have a little snippet from when I wrote out a rough draft for the scene several weeks ago:

"I'm not calming down until John apologizes!" Clay declared, Bruce echoing the sentiment. "Well," John Dory started, voice beginning to rise, "sorry I tried to make Brozone the best it could be! Sorry I took care of you all when our parents got eaten!" He didn't sound very sorry. "A real apology!" Bruce shot back. "For the way you treated us! For the way you're treating us now!" "Ohhhh, so I shouldda just left y'all to your own devices, then, is that it?" John Dory's voice had dropped, but the bitter intensity remained. "Should've just left Floyd to die in that diamond, because TROLL FORBID I EVER DO ANYTHING TO MESS WITH YOUR PERFECT LIVES!" His hands waved about wildly as he spoke, rage etched in every feature. "That's not what we're saying and you know it!" Bruce riposted, "You just can't admit to your faults at all, can you? Because oh, noooo, perfect John Dory never makes any mistakes—" "I'M TRYING, DAMMIT!" John Dory roared. Clay interjected. "Well you're doing it wrong! Bossing us around and ruining things just like you always do!" "ENOUGH!" Branch yelled, in the same voice he used to be heard in a room full of Bergens, the same voice he used to project himself further and larger and safer. "You're all ruining this! None of you are listening and you're all going in circles!"

As for Vaycay Island and Hole-n-Fun, I have a few plans for how they'll go >:] Vaycay Island will probably be a lot tamer, with the most stress coming from Bruce being nervous about Groth & Bernice' presence (they got paid leave and so they immediately went on vacation) and Branch's familiarity with them, but otherwise the scene goes pretty similarly to in canon. Hole-n-Fun, though... oh boy.

AND I HAVE A JOKE I PROBABLY WON'T GET TO USE WHERE IN RESPONSE TO CLAY CLAIMING RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FINANCES BRANCH GOES "But logistics are MY thing!" AND IT'S NOT THE SAME AS BRANCH "OUT-SERIOUSING" CLAY BUT IT'S CLOSE ENOUGH ASDFDGYTDRFSDHFGFDZDFSDGFHGF

and then there's a lot more you can find in the AU tag! I even discuss my plans for the first movie (it was. a struggle to figure out)

[dailykugisaki]

Day 121 | id in alt

They're recreating something that happened on a mission. Gojo is invested. Fushiguro? Lightly shaken.

[nobodysdaydreams]

Giving a complicated tragic childhood backstory to your favorite character is all fun and games, until you realize you need to account for how old all the other adult characters would have been at the time and realize that scenes that would work perfectly if one character was twenty three and the other was fourteen stop working when you need other characters who are played by adult actors clearly younger than they are to be in college at the same time so your story beats line up thematically.