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lunanoc · 11 months ago

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so probably against what should have been my better judgment, i went ahead and actually wrote “meta”, except it’s only borderline meta because it ends up veering off into crack theory territory and is also insanely long, but i figure since it’s now too long to be posted as a discord liveblog like it was supposed to be, i might as well just. post it here (in several parts because no one wants a 10k post lbr)

disclaimer: i like to be transparent about where i’m coming from, so just know that i have not finished reading all the books yet. currently i’m practically through everything, books and extras included, up until and including sand sea part III, so anything i talk about relating to that is my own reading experience. i’ll sometimes reference later books i’ve either read snippets of, or talked about with people who have (and verified the information as best as i could), but because i lack full context for those, any mentions of those elements are automatically grain of salt and relegated to crack theory. for everything i have read that i can grab quotes for, i’ll be providing clear references to the specific chapters of the books they’re from

also, blanket spoiler warning for the books

but that being said, let me actually get into this thing:

king shang of lu, the iron-masked gentleman, king mu of zhou, the queen mother of the west, how they’re connected, who they might be, and what that could mean for the larger dmbj narrative

PART I: KING SHANG OF LU AND THE IRON-MASKED GENTLEMAN

writing this shaved years off of me, the rabbit-holing was insane, and there’s still no clear answers in the end but welcome to the ride i guess

starting off here, the problem with these two characters is that we have conflicting information about them from three different sources that all give a different version of the same story, all of which are various degrees of dubious for different reasons. and you could say ok but really, who cares i do apparently about these two because in the larger plot they don’t really amount to much in the end

BUT

given both the things we learn by the end of sand sea (and elements that pop up in later installments) about all the various parties involved in what’s essentially a subplot, and the fact npss goes into so much detail with such a deliberate throwback to something all the way back in the first book, i don’t think the fact that the various versions of the story of king shang of lu sometimes blatantly contradicting themselves is a mistake, but is rather proof of deliberate obfuscation of the truth. npss tends to like revisiting sometimes seemingly anecdotal or trivial things from previous books to connect them with a subsequent revelation, or open the door to a different interpretation of them, so that he’d do it here isn’t all that surprising to me

the three versions of the story of “the emperor” (or the ruler of the state of lu), king shang of lu, and the iron-masked gentleman we get are, in order of appearance:

version 1 from a silkbook found in the purple jade box in “king shang of lu”’s coffin (Book 1, Ch. 26, Purple Jade Box)

version 2 from xiaoge himself who gives an opposing account to the previous one that he supposedly read from a warring states period silkbook he found in a song dynasty tomb (Book 1, Ch. 26-27, Purple Jade Box / Lies)

version 3 from the powerpoint lesson given by the wang family to li cu (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, 133, 134, Lesson / King Mu of Zhou / Deception)

the first two accounts are both from book 1 and immediately follow each other, but neither of them quite fit with the last one, or at least it would seem so. you could argue this is simply because book 1 was when npss was still trying to figure things out both with his plot and characters, so the final account given by the wang family is a retcon, and while that’s always possible, like i mentioned, npss likes to connect things and tends to either incorporate these kinds of seemingly obscure and irrelevant details for a reason, or simply retroactively fleshes them out to revisit them at a later date and shed a new light on the bigger picture. so it’s more the fact we just don’t know which things he implements deliberately from the start and which ones he ties back to retroactively, but in the end seeing as the result is the same it doesn’t matter much. what does matter is that he does it pretty consistently, so it’s safe to assume he’s also doing it with this particular story (side tangent, but i like to think that npss has shown he’s a big fan of something called chekov’s gun and no i won’t elaborate on that or else i’ll be here for hours but google that if you’re interested it’s fun)

so tldr; i basically just want to argue that by intentionally bringing back this story with obvious divergences, it might be a way to shed light on something else that informs king shang of lu’s story while placing it as a puzzle piece in the bigger picture of dmbj lore

but let’s break down those three different accounts of the story of king shang of lu

the first account

i’m going to tldr; most of these for the sake of clarity, but i’ll be referencing the various chapters all these bits are taken from if you want to verify any of it

technically the first real account of king shang of lu’s story we get is what’s written on the stone slab in the hall with all of the coffins in the seven star palace that says that he was “born with a ghost seal and could borrow ghost soldiers from the underworld” (Book 1, Ch. 10, Shadow), but i’m not counting that as a full-blown version of the story because it’s not dwelt on all that much and mostly serves as a preamble for pangzi to later posit to wu xie that it’s a bunch of bs and was probably just an exaggeration meant to mythologize king shang of lu given that the tomb itself is a weird anachronistic mix of western zhou and warring states architecture (which is an important argument but maybe not for the reasons you’d think)

so i consider the first fleshed-out version of king shang of lu’s story we get to be the one wu xie reads off of the silkbook he and wu sanxing pull from “king shang of lu”’s coffin, and is one that very quickly gets debunked within book 1 itself multiple times, so while it may seem easy enough to write off, it’s not so much what it says that’s interesting, but rather why it exists in the first place

this version of the story essentially relates the life and deeds of king shang of lu, recorded on what’s supposed to be a warring states period silkbook pulled from the man’s own coffin. it talks about how he inherited his title from his father and was a lowly grave robber lord who was cruel and greedy, and how one day he gained from a snake demon/spirit in a tomb he excavated “two treasures” in a “purple and gold box” (this will be important later) which are never explicitated, although wu xie speculates one of those treasures to be the ghost seal as its acquisition is directly mentioned in the text. the snake comes to king shang of lu in a dream and promises to make him a high-ranking official and teach him how to use the treasures in the box if he spares its soul (he doesn’t). and so king shang of lu becomes a military officer under the command of the “emperor” of the state of lu. in his later years, however, he starts to get old and sick, and so the “emperor” demotes him back into being a lowly grave robber, and he starts to fear death, so king shang of lu goes to his military advisor, the “iron-masked gentleman” or 铁面先生 tiemian xiansheng, in search of a solution. the iron-masked gentleman then tells him that something called jade burial armor, a treasure from ancient times, exists, and that it can keep someone young forever. so king shang hunts and hunts and scours tomb after tomb until eventually he finds a western zhou dynasty tomb which will later become the seven star palace where he discovers a corpse wearing the famed jade buriam armor. iron mask takes the corpse out of the armor, subdues the blood zombie it turns into, and then helps king shang of lu fake his death in front of the “emperor” so he can be buried in the tomb he built for himself on top of the western zhou tomb he’d found (Book 1, Ch. 26, Purple Jade Box)

however

this version is quickly debunked twice in pretty quick succession, and then a third time a bit later, still in book 1, but before i get to that, a few extra little details i want to point out:

to be fair literally no one (who doesn’t speak chinese and is reading the original text anyway) would be able to guess either from the translation or merebear’s footnotes that “iron-masked scholar/gentleman” or 铁面先生 is not in fact necessarily meant to be taken literally. it’s partly an idiom. 铁面 tiemian is an expression that can mean “someone who is upright in character”, in other words someone with a positive reputation. so this man isn’t necessarily implied to have worn a mask at all (i think he did, but that’s also for later)

the purple and gold box that’s mentioned in this version of the story is the one wu xie finds in the hands of the corpse of the green-eyed fox (who’s also wearing the belt that has the qilin blood clot wu xie accidentally swallows can you believe, which is also another detail for later) that’s accompanied by a key in the corpse of a woman next to it (Book 1, Ch. 22, The Eightfold Treasure Box)

the second account

before we get into the first version of the story more, let’s briefly take a look at the second one. the first version of the story is first debunked by the second version of the story which is told in abridged format by xiaoge pretty much right after wu xie finishes reading the silkbook. he says that the silkbook’s account is incorrect because the person in the jade armor isn’t king shang of lu, but iron mask who faked his own death in order to escape the systematic execution king shang of lu enacted on all the people who knew about and/or helped build his tomb. he then snuck into the seven star palace and disposed of king shang of lu’s body before taking the jade armor for himself

xiaoge explains that he found this story in a song dynasty tomb he’d robbed a few years ago that contained a complete silkbook that turned out to be iron-masked gentleman’s memoirs (Book 1, Ch. 27, Lies). and you’d be inclined to believe this version of the story over the first one because it’s xiaoge telling it, and xiaoge usually isn’t one for intentional deception unless it serves a purpose, even less so if it’s verbal deception (literally the only time i can think of him openly lying rather than lying by omission is when he disguises himself as professor zhang). except even this version is called into question multiple times. the first time is by wu xie himself, who while choosing not to confront xiaoge about it, senses that xiaoge seems uneasy when wu xie presses him on the point that if it’s true that two people were pulled out of the jade armor in that tomb, then why is there no second blood corpse. xiaoge answers that he doesn’t know because iron masks’s memoirs only mention it briefly, and that maybe king shang of lu was pulled out early enough that he didn’t turn into a blood zombie. technically there’s the mummified body they find in the sacrificial ding cauldron next to the coffin with the monster at the entrance to the seven star palace whose head is cut off that could fit that description (Book 1, Ch. 9, Ancient Tomb), but in any case xiaoge according to wu xie looks like he’s lying. the second time this version is refuted is by wu sanxing, but i’ll get to that when i get back to the first account and how it also gets debunked

arguments against the second account

i already mentioned xiaoge isn’t typically someone who’s into overt deception as a course of action unless it’s strictly necessary (and even then). it’s always possible he was either acting on a compulsion from the heavenly gift or under some order from chen pi ah si (since he was working for him at the time, even if i doubt this to be completely honest) or even something else, so it’s mostly my own assumption that he’s not actively deceiving them by fabricating a story, because xiaoge’s deception usually relies on omission rather than a concentrated effort at producing an elaborate lie. so really, the only fact we can be certain of is that he has an “uneasy look in his eyes” when he talks about the lack of another blood corpse, and that wu xie gets the impression he’s lying, which is a sentiment wu sanxing apparently shares because they look at each other in that moment and silently agree. whether this means xiaoge was *actually* lying, or that wu sanxing was taking advantage of xiaoge’s unease to further his own deception (re: arguments against the first account i’m getting to in a bit) is really up in the air

however

i’d like to think if xiaoge was lying and there was nothing more to it than that, he wouldn’t make it so apparent that that was the case given he only ever really projects visible upset or discomfort at anything when it’s related to his memories or lack thereof, and only much later in the story does that start to extend to allowing himself moments of vulnerability, or just his own brand of open concern for wu xie and pangzi. but this is all happening in book 1 where wu xie, as perceptive as he is about people, doesn’t know xiaoge yet, and so doesn’t know his tells. therefore that he can tell xiaoge is visibly emoting when it’s xiaoge is noteworthy in itself. also, given that book 1 takes place at a time when xiaoge’s memory was still very much lacking and fragmented, and he was likely still working for chen pi ah si partly to search for his memories, i wouldn’t be surprised if his unease was visible because the confrontation of both the first and second versions of the story started triggering his memory in some capacity, or it might have even triggered the heavenly gift senses into letting him know that there was something of importance in these stories since the particular episode of it he’s going through at the time gets a bit fast-forwarded from the seven star palace onward seeing as not too long afterwards xiaoge goes into the gate at the end of book 3

something else that’s worth mentioning is the logic behind these memoirs of iron mask even existing. why it would be in a song dynasty tomb is up for debate and probably irrelevant (although it does to be fair align with king mu’s motives of perpetuating grave robbing for deliberate dissemination of information), but mostly i question how he could have written his memoirs if he faked his death and slipped into the jade armor himself shortly after, unless he waited a significant amount of time before doing so and lived his life in hiding, which is also possible given there’s nothing more we know about him. but more food for thought

arguments against the first account

let’s go back to the first account from the silkbook for a bit and take a look at the other two times besides xiaoge’s second account where this version is debunked:

the second debunking comes from wu sanxing as he and wu xie are waiting around in jinan while panzi is in the hospital, and wu sanxing comes back outraged bc when he tried to have the silkbook they brought back from “king shang of lu”’s coffin, he was apparently told it was a forgery because the gold in it was too pure to have dated back to the warring states period, and so was necessarily more recent, though how recent is never specified (Book 1, Ch. 29, Purple-and-Gold Box). he then suggests to wu xie that he thinks it’s xiaoge who snuck into the tomb ahead of them, and with his skills successfully planted a dupe to trick them. i’ll get back to this eventually, but again, while it’s not impossible, it feels unlikely to me that xiaoge would extend so much effort in deception unless it served a clear purpose he agreed with, which is why i’m not convinced he would have blindly been following orders from someone like chen pi ah ai. and xiaoge would likely not have gone to the trouble of making a fake silkbook either, so the idea would have to have come from chen pi ah si, which then brings into question what motive chen pi ah si would have had to go to such lengths to deceive wu sanxing. again, really the only time we ever see or hear of xiaoge making an effort at deliberate deception is when he disguises himself as professor zhang, and while we never get an explanation for the reasons behind that, that’s more likely to have stemmed from feeling like he had to conceal his identity rather than wanting to deceive if that makes sense. in any case, i don’t know what tangible reason xiaoge would have had to deceive wu sanxing and his team with a fake silkbook even if he’d been acting on chen pi ah si’s orders, because would chen pi ah si have had a reason to go to the effort of creating a fake silkbook to deceive wu sanxing with details so specific that you quite literally have to have been in that tomb before to know them?

the third debunking of the silkbook version is ironically a reverse uno from xiaoge directed at wu sanxing when he, wu xie, and pangzi are stuck in wang zanghai’s tomb in xisha (Book 1, Ch. 63, Chain). xiaoge’s just recovered a massive amount of his memories related to the first xisha expedition, and very bluntly tells wu xie that not only is the silkbook from the seven star palace a fake, it was wu sanxing who planted it there. to which wu xie obviously responds with “wtf no you did”. to which xiaoge then replies completely deadpan as he does with “no, it was your sanshu, he and da kui dug a hole under the tree to do it, probably why da kui had to be silenced”. which leaves wu xie very torn about what and who to believe. and mind you this is also a little before they find the inscription on the wall from “xie lianhuan” accusing wu sanxing of murdering him. honestly it’s possible xiaoge is telling the truth if you consider that wu sanxing might have planted a fake if he knew ahead of time what the silkbook contained, what the seven star palace was, and basically faked his own way through the entire thing

it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me because he does sound very pretends to be shocked in the delivery of many of his remarks (but again, how much of that can you attribute to this being book 1), and while he did bring wu xie along because he was trying to ease him into the game with the wangs, it’s possible he was prudent enough that he would have made wu xie’s first tomb experience take place in a somewhat controlled environment. which doesn’t mean he’d necessarily been there before, just that as entrenched in the wang shit as he is, i wouldn’t be surprised if he’d known even vaguely what the seven star palace represented and what could be found in there. he did know about the snake cypress and about the stone used to subdue it, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean anything seeing as wu sanxing is a highly experienced tomb robber, it’s worth noting that the only times we’ve ever seen those trees is in the seven star palace and in the snake mine in gutongjing. in other words, always somewhere connected to longevity and The Secret and all the parties involved in that power struggle

but then again, we don’t really know how much wu sanxing knew about the wangs and the zhangs etc, so it’s all very up to interpretation. if he did in fact plant the fake silkbook though, it might have served the purpose of making sure there was something to string wu xie along to push him towards xisha and the conspiracy, but the copper fish ended up serving that purpose in the end. nothing really elaborates on this silkbook again, so we don’t know why xiaoge would speculate that wu sanxing was the perpetrator, unless it was because he’d just recovered his memories of xisha (but even then xiaoge doesn’t accuse people so firmly based on impression alone) or he literally saw wu sanxing do it

regardless of who did it, the bottom line is that it’s safe to say the silkbook was probably fake and was placed there intentionally, both because as wu sanxing points out, it is suspicious that wu xie would conveniently only be able to understand what happened to be key portions of the silkbook relating parts of king shang of lu’s life, and because it mentions the purple and gold box in it, which when opened, wu xie discovers contains the first snake-eyebrowed copper fish

to me this actually pushes suspicion more heavily onto two parties in particular: wu sanxing and the wang family. because to be able to forge a silkbook that would specifically contain passages tailored to wu xie’s knowledge of old chinese and not run the risk of him either knowing more or less than speculated, you would have to have extensive knowledge on wu xie as a person on a personal level. and to be fair, this idea hinges a lot on the silkbook being put into that coffin for wu xie specifically ti find, so i’m working on assumptions again, but if this were the case, then only wu sanxing and the wangs qualify to fill that role, and in some ways the wangs even more so because this kind of covert manipulation is very much the way they do things. xiaoge would not have known wu xie to that extent in book 1, if at all, and while wang zanghai himself is a tempting possibility, he was obviously in the seven star palace long before any of this took place, so it can’t be him. in fact, the only thing that ties wang zanghai to any of this at all is the purple and gold box containing the copper fish, since whether or not the box had originally been there and he simply emptied it of its contents or brought it in from outside, he’s the one who placed the copper fish in it

as to why if it was wu sanxing who planted the fake silkbook he would shift the blame onto xiaoge, my theory on that would be that xiaoge was another convenient means of stringing wu xie along into the xisha expedition mystery by virtue of him being zhang qiling and therefore both highly mysterious and suspicious, as well as personally involved. part of me wonders if part of the reason wu sanxing went to chen pi ah si to hire xiaoge specifically because he was added insurance that he would have the means to trigger wu xie’s curiosity, and provide a first clue to lead him into the It conspiracy. wu sanxing did use the picture of the expedition team to explicitly tie xiaoge into it along with the copper fish story, so there’s that to consider

the third account

which finally brings me to the final version of the king shang of lu story, which is the one given to li cu during the wang family powerpoint lesson. this particular version also overlaps with the story of king mu of zhou and the queen mother of the west, but i’ll get to in another part of this meta. so this version of the story is mostly ironically both the version that most blatantly contradicts the first two, while also being the version most accurate to the tiny introduction we get to king shang of lu at the entrance of the seven star palace that says he was “born with a ghost seal and could borrow ghost soldiers from the underworld”. the only real issue with that this third version has it’s told by the wang family to li cu, so just by virtue of it coming from obvious wang propaganda, it’s immediately suspicious by nature

going back to speculations about who planted the fake silkbook version of king shang of lu’s story in the seven star palace, it then also raises the question of, if the wangs were the ones who did it, what motive they would have had not only to do so, but to tell the story in that particular way, only to then tell a completely different one to someone they consider a candidate to join them. in my opinion, the only thing that makes this third version hold water is that given how it’s explained to li cu, and how wang xiaoyuan (the girl who passes by the window during the lesson) has the same version of it, the wang family believes this version is true, and by virtue of that, it gains a little more credibility, bc suspicious as they are and twisted by their own biases their version of history may be, the wang family is nonetheless well-informed for the most part. not to mention because the narrative has the wang family consistently mirror the zhang family and the way they function so perfectly it’s almost eerie, it stands to reason that the wang family also dabble in historical revisionism when they can, so putting out a fake version of history onto a fabricated silkbook seems up their alley

i’ll get into king mu of zhou separately because that’s a whole other can of worms, but this final version of king shang of lu’s story begins between the “emperor” of the state of lu and his advisor, the owner of a fox mask “with ancient patterns that often appeared on bronze ware” (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, Lesson). the “emperor” asks his advisor “around 1000 BC” (fyi the original says 一千年上下 which amounts to “around 1000 years” but it’s more of an approximation and can technically encompass the warring states period too) as a hypothetical whether or not it’s possible “to prevent people from dying”, to which the advisor answers that he himself doesn’t know how, but he does know where to find something that can “beneath the loess inside the mountains”. he then goes on to tell the tale of king mu of zhou to the “emperor”, and of how he was given an elixir of immortality by the queen mother of the west that he likely hid inside of his tomb centuries ago

it very quickly becomes apparent to the reader that this story is an obvious ploy by the owner of the fox mask, who in sensing that the “emperor”, while tempted, is reluctant to cast all appearance of morality aside to deploy his troops to rob king mu of zhou’s grave, calls a “strange man” to the court who’s “believed to be a descendent of the zhou emperor” (that is to say king mu of zhou) “who was able to communicate with the underworld”. the ruler of the state of lu thus gives this “strange man” a jade seal and seals him in an iron coffin deep in a well for 49 days, saying that if he can come back up from it with the ghost seal in hand after having successfully spoken to king mu of zhou, then it would be proof of king mu granting him permission to rob his tomb and take the immortality elixir from it. and so this “strange man” does, in fact, come back, not only with the ghost seal in hand, but with an imperial edict written by king mu of zhou himself that granted him the title of king shang (殇 shang meaning to die young or at war) as well as all the contents of his tomb

the ruler of the state of lu then uses this to make several leaps in logic to justify being in the right if he deploys his troops to rob king mu of zhou’s tomb, because if this “strange man” can communicate with the underworld and was given a title relating to dead people, then surely that means that this strange “king shang” is likely dead himself, and that king mu of zhou chose him as his heir after he’d died. it’s a very convenient out for the ruler of the state of lu to say that he’s only helping an esteemed deceased elder to recover his birthright if he makes him a general and lends him troops to go find king mu of zhou’s tomb (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 133, King Mu of Zhou)

it’s also quickly obvious to the reader that the owner of the fox mask and this newly minted king shang of lu are in fact working together, given it was the former who referred the latter to the state of lu’s court in the first place, which is something i’ll come back to in another part of this meta. from here, under the ruler of the state of lu’s orders, king shang and the owner of the fox mask, together with more grave robbers who also wore fox masks (as according to the wang family, foxes would live in graveyards and grave robber’s tunnels at the time, and so grave robbers associated their imagery with the profession), began their search for king mu of zhou’s tomb and the immortality elixir it supposedly contained. while this version of the story of king shang of lu more or less ends here, you could assume the rest of it might follow along the same lines of the first two versions, and maybe it does. you’d then assume that the person king shang and the owner of the fox mask (who’s by then inferred to be iron mask from the previous two versions) find in the western zhou tomb is king mu of zhou, who they then divest of the jade burial armor to take for themselves

however, one very important detail in this version compromises this assumption: king mu of zhou isn’t actually dead, and he thus gave king shang the edict personally (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 134, Deception). what this means is that the ruler of the state of lu was duped presumably not by two, but three people, all of whom were working together to find the jade burial armor for who appears to be king mu of zhou. in other words, where the other two versions of the story have two key players, this final version suddenly introduces a third one, and that changes things. how much it does is what i’ll be getting into in the next part on king mu of zhou more specifically

(tbc in part II and part III of this madness)

#dmbj #meta #dmbj meta #dmbj novels #i cannot believe i actually wrote this this was not planned #like at all #this was meant to be an unhinged liveblog mini thing #not whatever this is #i guess the crack theory conspiracy theorist is going public #if you don't know where i'm going with this that's ok i don't either

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dippydippycritiques · 5 months ago

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Under Night In Birth 2: Sys Celes is a DEAD GAME (My Last Post On The State Of UNI2)

I don't even know where to start with this. I feel like this is the third time I had to address my issues with the sequel. A few months back, I had made multiple different attempts to learn and play the damn game. I even went to discord, which in the end without going into detail, did not get me to enjoy the game either.

I gave it my best shot. I listened to the fans who said there is, in fact, a way to play with other people online (I play on the PS5, not PC cause I don't enjoy it)...but it's been six months since UNI2's release and I'm done being nice. The gloves are officially coming off.

I don't usually come off this harsh towards a video game unless I REALLY have something to say. So if you don't want to listen to me critique and/or bash UNI2 and how it was handled, scroll away, but to me. UNI2 is not only one of the worst sequels ever made. It is also, to me, the worst fighting game I have ever played, period. The gameplay is the ONLY saving grace. It's just too bad that network mode literally has a total of 0 people online to learn it! And before anyone asks. Some people have messaged me and said 'well, why don't you get friends to play with you?" Some people are unfortunately not lucky enough to have friends, or friends with the same interests as other people. When I go online every other night to play BBTAG, that is my escape from reality. It is a game I can feel good playing so that I can forget about my troubles for a couple of hours. Even though there are people who will say "Well, back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, you HAD to find someone to play fighting games with in real life."

Those days are OVER.

Having an online system with a big pool of people in your fighting game should be THE STANDARD. It's one thing if your franchise isn't the type of genre or type of game (like a single player game) that would incorporate an online mode. Fighting games are different. They should ALWAYS have an online mode for people who still want to play and can't find friends to play with. That will be my piece on this subject. Now I want to go into why Under Night In Birth 2: Sys Celes fails on every level.

It is Monday after all (or it was Monday, I had to stop writing half way through) and THIS was the face I made when I realized this game was DEAD AF.

The Character Art

OK, I want to start off with probably the most controversial thing that I cannot prove, but is just speculation, and that's the artwork. I found this out quite recently, but the artist who worked on the first UNI game, Seiichi Yoshihara, is the SAME artist for UNI2. I don't know if the guy posts artwork on a different site in Japan just so I can see if anythings changed, but to me. There is no way someone who had that much style and talent when creating the original designs would forget basic anatomy or facial structure for UNI's sequel. I need to see different artwork from him outside of UNI to really confirm my fears, but the speculation part of this is, unfortunately, I think the guy was rushed and it shows in the art he put out.

I'm not the one that usually says "toxic work environment" when it comes to extremely daunting tasks for a single person with a strict deadline...but man does this feel like it. I just don't think this artist would pump out something mediocre and be ok with it. I would like to believe he clearly trained and practiced his art style already for many years before UNI. Again, I cannot prove this so please take what I say with a gain of salt, but all the signs are there and if it turns out to be true? It was in no way Seiichi Yoshihara's fault and the blame should be shifted towards whoever heads French Bread or ArcSystems. Since we don't know the full story of how UNI2 got developed, it's hard to really point fingers at the right person at the moment until someone speaks up, but if I had to guess. I wouldn't be surprised if ArcSystems was the main contributing factor. I don't believe that the people at French Bread would what to put out a bad game either...but it happened. Until we learn more about UNI2's development, this is really all I can say on the matter when it comes to the artwork.

I'm not going to pick apart the character designs again as doing so would take an hour to really digest it all, but if you know, you know. It's not good, like at all.

Ok, thank you for making it this far. Here's a picture of a dog licking an ice cream cone.

Marketing and Lead Up To UNI2's Launch

What marketing? Welp, that pretty much sums it up. No, but in all seriousness. One of French Breads biggest mistake before the trailer was even shown was that UNI2 was rumored to be a "sequel," when it really isn't. The only reason why it was given the title "UNI2" was due to the arcade mode which was very sloppily put together with no rewarding pay off...that's it. Take that away and UNI2 is literally a copy/paste of the original except everything got downgraded and I mean EVERYTHING. I will talk more about that in a moment, but calling UNI2 a sequel immediately set high expectations for the game that were NEVER going to be there. I fell for this trap myself.

French Bread had several years to work on it. Why couldn't they make new sprites? Or give the same sprites they already had a new coat of paint? Something, anything at all! To imply that your game is a "sequel," to me, by definition would mean French Bread would take the time to create something new from the ground up and upgrade everything. If Devil May Cry 2 copy and pasted all the same mechanics, boss fights, castle areas, and items from the first game EXACTLY how they were with very little changes at all. That game would more than likely be considered a port with very minor tweaks to it, not a sequel. This use of the word "sequel" for UNI2 set up French Bread to fail right from the gate.

So when the first trailer dropped and I saw the artwork. I pretty much knew exactly what kind of game we were going to get. It would be one thing if there was ANY kind of marketing for UNI2 at all...but there wasn't. You can argue that as long as the game is still fun, which it is, you can forgot about all the other things that make it bad...but you have to have a sizable player base to play the damn game! For the time I was on Twitter, I don't even think there was any promotional material at all for UNI2. If I remember right, French Bread doesn't even have a twitter account, and if they do. Everything that was posted about the game completely went under the radar, and due to that. Most casuals who liked playing fighting games didn't know about it's existence. The only people who were following it closely are fans that were already playing BBTAG or UNICLR hoping that, maybe, UNI2 will be "the underdog that changes the fighting game community forever..." There have been many videos of people claiming that on YouTube before the damn thing even dropped. Fans who have already been playing UNICLR for years flocked to their cameras to say that "UNI2 will change everything!." No, it hasn't, and the lack of any growth in the player base for the past several years is my proof.

Point is, when the game dropped in January. There were SOME new players giving it a shot, and the people who wanted to learn it got bullied by the veterans who have already been playing UNI for YEARS! UNI2 needed to market it's game heavily towards new fans so that casuals could learn and fight other casuals instead of being forced into a match with a veteran. This lack of marketing is why UNI2 is now forever stagnant. It will never grow a player base so that beginners can learn how to play along side each other, and even outside of that. People should be able to experiment and mess around with a fighting game without thinking their livelihood is on the line. Fans of fighting games can still have fun with them without taking every match so seriously, and if these new players later on want to expand their knowledge? Let them, don't force them! Forcing players to become better overnight will drive any players who are interested left far, far away. That's the point I am trying to make.

The marketing and the lack of new players to fight is ultimately what doomed this game from the start, and to make matters worse, there isn't really anything "sequel" worthy about UNI2 other then the terrible, terrible endings for many of them (with Gordeau's. Wagner's and Merkavas being some of the exceptions to that rule.) Speaking of which, we should probably move on to those terrible things, huh?

I don't know. I wanted a picture of a gerbil. Here it is! Cute huh?

Alright, now onto--

EVERYTHING ELSE

UNI2 is seriously, SERIOUSLY the definition of a copy/paste sequel with one or two exceptions. The artwork and UI (which is complete and utter trash) and the one or two new moves a character would get. The majority of them either falling into good, meh, bad, or why do I need another spacing tool category. Yes, I'm talking to you Hyde. I think a counter would have benefited him better then another red energy blast of some sort to which Hyde already has several...

Anyways, outside of the "new stuff" and the gameplay, everything is worse. EVERYTHING IS WORSE! How the hell do you do that when UNICLR has already been established???

Let's start with the opening when you boot up UNI2. Who decided that a somber song would hype people up for a fighting game? UNICLRs opening theme was already perfect! Why change it if you know the new one you're putting out is going to be worse by comparison!

That's literally my motto for this game. "Why change it," when what you had in UNICLR was already close to perfect.

All the songs that you love from UNICLR and BBTAG are gone, GONE! UNICLR's opening theme? Not present! Gather under the night? GONE! Overwhelmingly Despair? Hilda's theme? One of the few banger songs in UNICLR that was aloud to how a choir? Rip that shit out and give her a somber, toned down version! Yeah, that will show her! Like...I don't...I don't understand who makes these decisions...

Another glaring issue is the lack of things to buy in this game. After a handful of matches, you will have so much money that literally, like a character from SpongeBob once said, "You won't know what to do with it!" This is mostly because the majority of the alternate colors for every character are already unlocked. Plus, despite that, there is no reason to ever buy these skins because you can customize the sprites colors yourself! Though I do like that I can do this, I particularly hate--

A.) That the the sprites colors are split into sections of the character, meaning you don't have complete control over what the characters look like and--

B.) The lack of colors! There should be a grid somewhere so that you can choose any color you want and this mechanic is not present at all! And even if it was, things like not being able to change ONLY the color of Gordeau's belt because it's color is tied to what his pants color is just fricken frustrates me. I feel like I should be able to customize the colors of the characters accessories alone and I just can't. Same with weapon colors...where's my option for that? If I want Insulator to have a dumb looking green color while Hyde is still set to his default skin, I should be able to!

Since UNI2 decided to make the alts free essentially. All that money (or IP, in think, in this game) will be spent on 5-10+ year old artwork that we have already seen in UNICLR. The only things worth buying in this game are the customization options for your online profile...but even THAT was downgraded! I missed the profile backgrounds where the characters were laying on there sides in UNICLR and I thought we would get more stuff like that here...NOPE! Every profile background and boarder is basic AF. I wish there were more options, like in BBTAG, to put your favorite characters on your profile and it's just not here in any form. Welp, there goes any hope of spending my money.

You know, and I hate to say it. Since UNI2 for a lot of people is very dependent on sex appeal. Why couldn't they just make alts where the characters are in swimsuits? Make that the most expensive thing to buy, at least then the IP would have some purpose! Ik, ik, "they can't for many of them because they would have to change the sprite," but the reason why I suggest this is because if creating new cloths for these characters is too hard and time consuming. Maybe it would have been easier for French Bread to remove sections of the sprites and just add a bathing suit instead. It would at least be SOMETHING, but we weren't aloud to get something. We got nothing most of the time and it shows with how little there is to buy in this game.

Arcade mode...god I don't even know where to start.

I have not viewed all of them, but the ones I saw, especially when it came to the night blade group were very, very bad. There were things important to Hyde's character development (specifically him promising Linne to kill her) that were never followed through with and that contributed to not only Hydes bad ending...but his MULTIPLE bad endings (yes, he has several.) What I mean by this is while Gordeau has a solid conclusion with one canon ending, Hyde has at least four of five different endings (depending on the character you play) and to me. That is just a complete and utter copout. If we need to be technical about it, I would guess that Hyde's arcade mode is the cannon ending...but because Linne is present at the end during the other characters stories. It makes me think that French Bread wanted to leave the conclusion to Hydes story open ended...in the last game in the series...probably...

Side note, I also really hate that most of Hydes friends just sort of ditch him in his arcade mode. This is something that sort of bothered me in UNICLR where he and his friends are either forced to fight or they leave him in the dirt because "it is the only way." I just never felt like Hyde's friendships were genuine (other than maybe Orie, but we don't see enough of them interacting.) It's the same problem I have with Gordeau and Hilda where in UNICLR, Gordeau pretty much swore off to being friends with her at the end of his arcade mode. In UNI2? For SOME REASON there buddy buddies again and THAT really bothers me. Especially with what happened to Rodger and how his death effected Gord throughout the series.

But yeah, most of the endings feel like either huge copouts or let downs. Orie doesn't even speak in her ending! (The last section of her arcade mode I mean) To me, it's the little things that really add up to make UNI2 a bad game.

The last thing I will say that really pisses me off is how network mode is handled. Say what you will about BBTAG, but I think ArcSystems nailed how the lobbies should work. The only things I wished they added eventually was a spectate mode or a way to turn your tag, (and your name if you want), off so that you can fight people who are your rank without the fear of losing your tag color. There are some other nitpicks, but I liked choosing avatars and talking with other people online.

UNI2 needed something like this, and I know, I understand. They might not of had the money or time (the time thing is what I'm most curious about because the rumors say UNI2 has been in development for a couple of years). However, I still stand by that aesthetically and maybe even gameplay wise. Network mode needed to change or have a complete overhaul. This might be a me thing, but it does bother me and is something I felt needed an upgrade...if it was done right which, unfortunately, I fear that it wouldn't have been.

(My reaction to working on this long, dumb ass essay for two days.)

I will end my final statement on UNI2 by saying this. The one thing as a writer that pisses me off more than anything else is seeing the potential for game to grow and become something more....but the passion to do so from it's creators is never fully there. That itch to expand your world, to develop your characters, to try to advocate for the game you put years and years into hoping it will be the next big thing...and in the end, French Bread fumbled over the finish line, hard.

UNI2 was ripe for an anime adaptation, or a manga, or SOMETHING the would get it's name out there more because trust me. I saw it's potential! I wanted it so badly to do well so that maybe, we could get more merchandise, or a spin off game, and anime, hell, even new stickers for my laptop would have bee cool!

When I am THIS critical of a game like UNI2. It's because I want so badly for it to succeed. I WANT it to be the next big thing because I adore every single character on the roster. Other than the lack of a player base, UNICLR had it all. In my opinion, if French Bread didn't have a lot of money to spend. They should have just updated or ported UNICLR to the PS5 and used the money they had to market the game and put, oh I don't know, cross console play into your online mode! Yeah, I am still extremely bothered by that and this is also a contributing factor as to why players can't find people to fight online.

This will be the last time I say anything about UNI2. It's dead, it's done, and I'm ready to move on. At this point, the only hope UNI2 has now is if in a year, or maybe relatively soon, they start promoting the game they created. Other than advertisements, the only thing that I can think of that would really give UNI2 an overhaul is if one of the Under Night characters were put into the next smash brothers game. I don't know why this is the first thing that comes to mind for me, but smash brothers helped gamers for many years become interested in other franchises, big or small. Honestly, if French Bread has no money to advertise their game. To me, putting one of their characters into smash brothers or another fighting game feels like there only play at this point. I doubt that this will ever happen, but if it did, I honest to god believe it would at least keep people interested in UNI2 for several years.

Anyways, that's it, I'm done.

I gonna go get an ice cream now I guess.

#under night in birth 2: sys celes #under night in brith #uni2 #uniclr #uni 2 #under night inbirth #hyde kldo #gordeau #bbtag #UNI #video games #fighting games #anime fighting games

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therobotmonster · 2 years ago

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How big of a threat do you think AI Art is to the employment of concept artists? Given how artists like RJ Palmer and Bogleech are panicked about it, you've worked in fields adjacent to that, and you've worked extensively with AI art, I'd presume you'd have some perspective on that.

AI art is going to shake up the art field, any new art tool worth its salt can and will.

I was training as a graphic designer when InDesign was finally starting to hit its stride in the late 90s, but I learned on QuarkExpress and learned old-school techniques in high school Newspaper club. I'd been dealing with dot-matrix printers and photocopier work since I was 8 at my dad's office.

So I got to see the graphic design industry in a state of panic through my professors and our various industry guests. All the EM-dashes and the declaration that the " on the keyboard is the inches mark and not the quote were protective measures for the industry so that talented amateurs wouldn't know the secret handshakes and couldn't "fake" their way into being seen as real graphic designers. And they were PISSED that Adobe InDesign was easy to use and automatically converted the measure-marks into "proper" punctuation.

Yet there's still a graphic design industry.

That said, I'd be curious if the ones that are actually freaked out have ever actually used the products. Because I"ve been in a down slump and I'm prone to stim, I have done pretty much nothing but dig into Midjourney and Stable Diffusion's brains and my experience doesn't match the observations of the terrified.

I think part of it is because people only see the results and they don't see the work. And there is work involved.

Iteration and Curation: I've posted a couple hundred pics from Midjourney so far. What do you don't see is this:

Now, in Midjourney parlance "image" also includes 4-grid previews used while developing final images.

For each panel of "Glitch"/"The Bethesda Epoch", for instance, I generated at least eight options (usually more) and evolved several of them across many generations to get what I wound up with. The Bethesda Epoch took me days to put together and garners me feedback and response roughly equal to a 3d modeled piece I'd put together in the same time frame.

Truth of the matter is, you rarely get anything perfect first try, everything needs modification or massive amounts of reiteration to pass for final work.

Promptcraft: Spend even a little time on the discords and you can tell who is playing and who is trying to make art. Play is an entirely viable application of this technology (more on that later) but while this levels the technical skill barrier for a lot of people, it does not cover for a lack of vision or ideas, and it requires its own skill.

There's a big difference between "in the style of D&D art" and "as a D&D monster, full body, pen-and-ink illustration, etching, by Russ Nicholson, David A Trampier, larry elmore, 1981, HQ scan, intricate details, inside stylized border" in terms of what you get.

Play: Most people are just having fun. It's real easy for artists to take the ability to express the ideas in our heads for granted. Most of what you're seeing is people playing with ideas they've been unable to express before. A lot of what I do with it is play, too.

Accessibility: My hands cramp when I draw these days, depression and other problems frequently knock my motivation and energy out of me, but I can use AI to put my ideas out there when the other parts of me aren't cooperating.

Limitations: The tech looks miraculous, but it can't do everything. In fact, it can't do a lot of things. The artist is still needed for the vision, for the ideas, to work the outputs into something meaningful, to supplement the outputs with human intention so a copyright can be involved, the list goes on.

Even Rembrandt used a camera obscura.;

#AI artwork #don't know why this needed to be anon TBH #midjourney #ludditism

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lilover131 · 3 years ago

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Why I’m scared for Syaoran-Theories

For literal years I have shouted from the mountain tops that I am worried something bad is going to happen to Syaoran in Clear Card. I even stated it in my initial thoughts for spoilers of Chapter 1 back in 2016, so I can confidently say I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Now here we are 55 chapters and 5 years later, and I’m more worried than ever.

The thoughts I had were mostly revolving around the when, and I think CLAMP is throwing us some breadcrumbs along the way that we might be missing (or in my case, extremely over analyzing XD).

However, I will tell you that the theories I have about the ‘how’ part, which I have kept mostly to myself until now, begin with a story, and a dream….or several rather.

Under the cut due to length, and forewarning…some of this is going to sound probably crazy and like a wild crack theory. I haven’t talked about up until now out of fear that y’all might think I’m going off the rails. Lmao. So please read with a grain of salt.

For those who have followed me for a while, you might have noticed that I have CCS related dreams quite a bit. And in these dreams, it’s a common theme that nothing good ever happens to Syaoran. Lol. Now, before you say “Hey Chrissy, those are just dreams and mean nothing!”, hear me out.

Every once in a while, the dreams that I have tend to carry some truth to them or end up actually happening. Please understand I’m not trying to say I’m prophetic or anything, but rather I am a firm believer that dreams are sometimes your brain’s way of finding answers to things that you can’t while you’re awake. Granted, some things I can’t explain, but I promise I’ll get to the point here.

One specific example I can give here is when the Clear Card manga first started, none of us knew the identity of the Cloaked Figure in any capacity. All we knew was that they were about Sakura’s height and probably wanted her key, and that was really about it. When Akiho showed up in the series, people instantly pointed at her and said “it’s gotta be her”. I admittedly believed it too, but a part of me thought “that just seems too simple”.

But then I had a dream.

I was very confused by it, but I went to my friends on Discord the next day to talk about it. It was July 28th, 2017 (thank goodness for time stamps!). And in that dream, I had seen the Cloaked Figure standing on a telephone pole, staring down into Sakura’s bedroom window. Their hood was down, and I could clearly identify the back of Syaoran’s head. I thought “There’s no way that it could be Syaoran, that wouldn’t make any sense”, so I tried not to think too much about it and dismissed it as just a dream.

Then came chapter 24 almost a full year later….for those of you who don’t know what chapter this is, the one I’m referring to is when THIS bombshell was dropped on us.

Needless to say, I was pretty spooked. Not only was my dream right about Syaoran being the Cloaked Figure, but he was even standing in the exact same spot as the scene that occurred in chapter 24. I will even say that this wasn’t the first time either that I had experienced a manga related dream actually happening in some capacity. Back during the serialization of Tsubasa when I was about 15-16 years old, I had a dream of the other Syaoran (or Real Syaoran as some may know him as) appearing before Clone Syaoran in a desert, surrounded by a destroyed city, and when the first chapter of the Acid Tokyo arc came out, I about lost my mind. The moment I saw that destroyed city, I was like “This is where the other Syaoran is going to appear”, and I turned out to be right.

These dreams could have been a one in a million fluke, never to happen again, but boy have I had a loooooot of dreams over the years, and I’ve been documenting them ever since that Cloaked Figure dream and paying close attention to details, particularly because that was the most accurate one I’ve had so far, and I honestly can’t explain how it happened. But over time I have come to learn how to kind of pick out the dreams I feel actually mean something compared to the ones that are probably just a result of me thinking a lot about CCS.

With that in mind, there has been one reoccurring theme in some of the CCS related dreams that I’ve had, and that was the presence of this scary, black goop like entity that doesn’t have a figure. The only thing I can really say about it is it was alive but certainly not human. I had the first dream about this entity even before the Cloaked Figure Syaoran dream, and the date appears to have been February 2nd, 2017.

In this dream, that shadowy creature completely consumed Syaoran, who was protecting someone in its path, who I can only assume was Sakura. Like many of my dreams before, I dismissed it initially until I had a second dream on April 14th, 2018.. This time I didn’t see the actual shadowy creature, but rather saw a somewhat intense conversation between Sakura, Syaoran, and Kero. Syaoran seemed frustrated and incredibly worried, and the dialogue was in Japanese, so I could not understand a word of it. But there was one word in particular that he said, and I managed to remember it even after I woke up. Somewhere in this dialogue, Syaoran had said the word ‘kagemaru’. Why that word was the only one I held onto, I’ll never know. But it’s important to remember here that I don’t speak or understand Japanese. But something here compelled me to try and look this one up.

I try to follow my intuition on things, so I googled the word ‘kagemaru’. I found mostly images of a character from Yugi-Oh GX (lmao), whose name happened to be Kagemaru. I have literally never watched anything beyond the original Yugi-Oh series, so I can promise you I wasn’t at all influenced by this. What surprised me was what the name meant...

‘Kagemaru’, appears to translate as ‘Pure Shadow’.

AGAIN, my dreams were referencing a shadow, and weird enough in a language that is not my own. But that point on, I had an actual name for this entity, ‘Kagemaru’. To me, that gave me more reason to pay closer attention, and that’s where I really started documenting my dreams on Tumblr, which you may have seen. I thought to myself “this could be important, or maybe I’m just overthinking things again and this really is just a dream”. I thought “no one is going to take any of this seriously, and neither should I”. But at least if I had it documented and it turned out happening, then I could go back and actually say “Okay, maybe it’s real”.

So I didn’t think about it for a while until episode 22 of the Clear Card anime came out on June 10th, 2018, a few months later. And there was a scene in particular that gave me chills.

The scene I’m talking about is when Akiho is telling Tomoyo about her scary dream. This differs a bit from the manga, where she didn’t have this conversation really with Tomoyo at all, but since Ohkawa was involved in the script, I still consider it relevant. The really key thing I paid attention to that Akiho said was this:

She didn’t describe what this scary thing looked like, but it was clear that it was a truly horrifying dream for her, since her hands were trembling as she spoke about it. Additionally, she had spoken about said dream just before to Kaito and stated that there was a voice that said “You can never return”. Now, we weren’t sure what this voice sounded like until the anime aired it, and I gotta say…I was not expecting it to sound the way it did. The voice that says this in my opinion doesn’t sound human, was not really recognizable as any of the characters we know already, and immediately it gave me bad vibes and reminded me of the ‘Kagemaru’ I had seen in my dreams before. But still, I went on thinking “well maybe they’re still unrelated and I’m overthinking this”.

Then chapter 27 came out in the beginning of October, 2018. Sakura and Akiho were down in the library in the basement, and right after Akiho had gotten emotional and was consoled by Sakura, they were suddenly in the dream world that Sakura had seen so many times. Again we heard that creepy disembodied voice say “You can never return…”. But what happens directly after this is what perhaps scared me the most. Akiho goes into what I call ‘Book-mode’ and says “Bring her power, too, “in” here”. There were a few words said before that, but one thing to keep in mind as well is that in the Japanese version of this chapter, different fonts were used for each speech bubble coming from Akiho, implying that multiple people that were not Akiho were speaking through her. And what did we get right after this was said?

A black, shadowy mass that tries to consume Sakura….

I cannot tell you how bad this freaked me out when I saw it. Words cannot describe it. It was such an uncomfortable feeling, and I felt I couldn’t really ignore it any more. So all this time, I have just been waiting for developments and constantly fearing for Syaoran the entire time because of my dreams.

If you’re thinking “Chrissy, this is really weird”, then buckle in, because it gets a little bit crazier still.

Sometimes I like to go back and read old fanfics I wrote up but never posted (I was a very shy child who kept most of my writing to myself). Well, in February of 2017, I recall reading back through some documents, and I found one that was only about a page, but I had written it all the way back in 2008, a long long time ago now. I had long forgotten about this and have no idea where it even came from, but something compelled me all those years ago to write about a black shadowy mass that formed into a dragon. That’s right…a dragon.

So, all in all, it’s been a pretty wild ride for me. Lmao.

Now that I’ve told you this story, let me further explain why I think Syaoran in particular will become a target. CLAMP, in my opinion, has been pointing in this direction for quite some time and hinting that something was going to happen to him. It kinda started when he said he came back to Japan to be “ready when the time came”, and it seems to be based around a future his mother saw. This future she saw has still not been disclosed to us, but Syaoran from the very first chapter seemed determined and prepared for a moment in particular that has yet to happen, and Eriol is supporting him from behind the scenes.

Throughout the series all after this were numerous, numerous occasions in which people around Syaoran expressed their concerns for his well being and expressed how much they care about him. I’ll go ahead and list them all now so you can see the sheer volume of them, which means CLAMP is really trying to hit this point home. Why you might ask? It seems obvious to me that they want to increase the emotional impact that a future moment will bring, and that is why I am so entirely convinced something bad is going to happen to him.

1. Yue—Chapter 27 of the manga

2. Meiling—Episode 16 of the anime

3. Wei—Episode 19 of anime

4. Sakura Cards-Chapter 27 of manga

5. Touya—Chapter 54 of manga

6. Eriol—Volume 7 drama cd (translation courtesy of @meimi-haneoka HERE

Eriol: So, as we thought, she ended up creating a new card? Then...

Syaoran: I know...what I’ve got to do. I’ve put a spell on the teddy bear. I’ve already given it to Sakura. Through that bear, I’ll be able to use the Sakura Cards little by little...Hiiragizawa?

Eriol: Please, just don’t forget this. Sakura-san is important for me, too. Not because we’re connected through Clow Reed, but because Sakura-san is her own person.

Syaoran: Yes (I know).

Eriol: In the same way, I care about you because you are your own person, is what I’m saying./In the same way, you are important because you are your own person. (not sure about which one)

Syaoran: -silence-

Eriol: (chuckles) ...It is typical of you, to not give a reply.

Sakura is obviously in this list too, but I thought she was obvious enough that I didn’t need to show examples. Clearly she would be very upset if anything happened to Syaoran, which may be also why she is so upset seeing the dreams of him as the Cloaked Figure. Even the mere thought of those visions are enough to give her anxiety and put a frown on her face.

So seeing all these signs that CLAMP is throwing out there, it seems practically confirmed that Syaoran is going to get into quite a bit of trouble, but it’s a matter of how and when. Here’s what I think ultimately is going to happen, and please take this as a vague idea. I don’t expect things to happen exactly this way, but this is the scene that plays out in my head when I think about it.

I think that at some point, Akiho is going to go into ‘Book-mode’ again, perhaps stirred by emotional thoughts about Kaito, and come after Sakura. That black shadowy mass is going to try and grab her, but at the last second, Syaoran rushes in and throws himself in front of her, which would be a classic sacrificial Syaoran move. Sakura might try to do something about it like grab him and pull him out of the path, because she cannot bear to have anything happen to him, but then…in that split moment, she remembers that she cannot touch him right now or else she’ll hurt him, due to the spell placed by an unknown source keeping them apart.

As a result, she hesitates and is unable to save him, just like a very similar scene that occurred in Tsubasa (for all who have read, you know what I’m talking about, and back then there was a black shadowy mass too, wasn’t there?!). Maybe this also would explain how Syaoran becomes the Cloaked Figure, why he looks so devoid of emotions and feelings in those visions as well, or maybe even how the dragon comes about and why the Cloaked Figure stands atop it. We know that the spell inside Akiho is also slowly crushing her soul with the more magic it absorbs, so what if it were to transfer to Syaoran instead? His eyes and facial expression are so cold in Sakura’s visions/dreams, and it’s clear that what she was looking at is not Syaoran, at least not in soul.

In this daydream theory I have, Sakura is devastated and wants to change things and wishes for a moment that she can go back and do things differently, and in that moment of wishing, makes the card that that Kaito needs.

I think it seems somewhat implied that the card Kaito needs is time related. The reason I believe this is because when Sakura made REWIND, Kaito said it was “close”, but still not what he needed. I can’t speak as to what Kaito’s goals are yet, but maybe he wants to go back and change a moment in time that happened long ago, but he’s not strong enough to do so. It requires an obscene amount of magic and also is considered taboo, at least in the magical world in Tsubasa, and these same ideals and lore seem to carry on through other CLAMP series. I feel this also lines up with the ‘forbidden’ magic Kaito keeps referring to and also explains why he would deem time magic in particular necessary to accomplish it and made his contract with Momo.

Another theory I can throw out there is perhaps there is an impending consequence for Syaoran already that is just not being considered. For example, we know he’s breaking a magical contract right now by holding onto the Sakura cards and that Eriol expressed he was against the idea of Syaoran doing this. I feel like there might potentially be underlying consequences to this sort of thing that CLAMP isn’t divulging, especially since it seems kinda odd for the only problem to be that he gets worn out quickly? I mean, Sakura did too when she first was transforming them, so it just seems kinda…light in terms of the gravity of what he's doing. Additionally, for Eriol to be so adamantly against something, it means it must be serious. After all, he certainly doesn’t mind putting himself in situations that make him bed ridden for the ones he cares about, so it seems unlikely that this was Eriol’s concern, unless he’s just being incredibly hypocritical.

Ultimately, we have a lot more information to find out, but here’s what I’ve got based on the things we know now. If you read all this and think I’m a crazy person, I wouldn’t blame you. Lol. I’m fully prepared to be wrong and honestly hope I am, but I thought now was the best time to get all this out and see where things go from her. Everything will surely be all right!!!

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rachelbethhines · 3 years ago

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Tangled Bonus Marathon - Before Ever After (Disney Tangled the Series): A Deluxe Novelization

Introduction

I’m not sure what makes this adaptation a ‘deluxe’ novelization over the movie’s ‘junior’ novel, but either way, I thought it only appropriate to start off the series the same way we started off the film adaptations.

Content

Much like the previous Tangled novelization, this is a pretty straight forward script to prose adaptation. Everything from the pilot is there, but there’s no additional scenes nor anything like that to flesh the story out. Though the author does do a decent job of reflecting the character’s inner thoughts.

That said, you’ll see minor differences here and there, like a line of dialogue being rearranged, or certain descriptions being a little off. Indicating that there were a few things that still needed to be finalized before the book was commissioned.

The only notable differences are, Cass being described as having ‘dark’ eyes instead of green, the author already describing Cass and Eugene as ‘friends’ despite all their bickering still existing in the story, Lady Caine’s name being spelled ‘Kane’ instead, and Arianna referring to Frederic as ‘Daddy’... yeah it sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

Beyond that though, the novel does have a few advantages over the tv show. For instance, Cassandra gets a proper introduction. It’s all told through exposition, but you have a better understanding of who she is and what she means to Rapunzel from it, rather than her just randomly being there to order Rapunzel about during the opening song. Pocket also has more of a presence and is more memorable a henchman. And the story introduces Hook Foot early.

Outside of those things however, it’s a fairly average novelization.

Presentation

So this novel does the same thing as the film adaptation where it shoves all of the illustrations into the middle of the book. Only instead of screenshots from the pilot, we get character portraits and little blurbs about who everyone is.

I can’t tell if this is even lazier or not. I mean, it’s more than just a screen grab, yet it’s also pointless filler... so, I don’t know. I guess it’s up to you. The only notable thing you’ll learn from them is that Hook Foot’s dream of being a dancer has existed since the pilot.

Would I Recommend It

It depends, do you like owning novelizations? I mean, this isn’t a bad adaptation, but it’s still only an adaptation. You can just watch the episode itself whenever. The only reason to keep it is if you’re trying to collect all the TTS novels, like myself, or if you don’t have access to the show. Otherwise, this might be more of a check out from you local library deal than a full on purchase.

Up Next

Before diving into another multi-chapter novel I want to break things up with a bit of lighter reading. So next I’ll be talking about the series ‘official guide’, Rapunzel’s World.

Also the Salt Stream is still happening with four episodes shown each week over on the discord.

#tangled the series #tangled #rapunzel's tangled adventure #before ever after

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randompurplepanthergorl · 3 years ago

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Ya know what? Fuck it, I'mma make "Neighbor" versions of Paul and Patryck, to go alongside my Todd It only makes sense :P plus I saw someone else do it (@/spaceistheplaceart ) and it made ME want to do it cause I really liked the idea, so the person I mentioned made the og Idea for Pat and Pau neighbors, I'm just being inspired by it, to give them credit for that,

also I put airquotes around "Neighbors" because they're not a part of the main neighbor group unlike Todd but I WILL set 'em up as Pau and Pat's neighbors and have them visit the main neighbors at times

Anyways on with the idea,

So my neighbor Paul and Patryck would be named Prince and Peyton (@/salt-apple came up with the name for the Patryck neighbor on Discord while I made the Paul one so thank you for the Pat neighbor name Salt) and they originate from Australia/are Aussie's like my Todd, but they are snuck up snot-nosed JERKS

You see, Prince and Peyton are these snotty rich kids that used to be Todd's friends in kindergarten, they loved learning about royalty as very little kids and where born and raised as spoiled as fuck rich kids, they went to a normal kindergarten though, just because they're parents thought they would like interacting with other kids, no they're NOT related, they just so happened to live very similarly, anyways they met each other and became "Super besties forevsies" and then later, met Todd, Prince and Peyton got along with Todd but they did not like him TOO much because A: Average kid, not rich but he was not fuggin POOR- and B: He was basically the male "Dora the Explorer" of kindergarten, but Prince and Peyton thought this was "just a phase commoners go through" and became his friends out of pity cause he was a scrawny tiny kid (Little did they know he'd become this huge massive buff as hell 6'5 dude that explores jungles and such daily in his 20s-30s lmfao) but eventually they became Todds personal bullies instead, so Todd ended up hating their guts until Prince and Peyton left for private school for the rest of their school years because normal school was, and I quote "Too full of DiRtY commoners"

Years later Todd had a friend, which was his penpal Jon, and still lived in Australia, while Prince and Peyton moved to London, as housemates as Paul and Patryck's neighbors, this was around the time Pau and Pat just came close enough after meeting in highschool (hc) to become housemates, Prin and Pey actually bought an entire property space and built a huge ass mansion on it, cause REALLY REALLY REEEEALLLLY rich motherfuckers,

Prin and Pey lived next to Pau and Pat for a long time, they've been there about 2-3 years when Todd finally moved from Australia to London to become Jon, Eduardo and Mark's housemate

Also Prin and Pey have lived there for so long they ended up dropping the Aussie accents and started speaking with full ass British accents so whenever Todd sees them he jokes going "AAH! THEY'VE TURNED BRITISH!" in the heaviest Aussie accent he can do just to get on their nerves

Prin and Pey are Ace and Aro, but not the other, Prin being Aro and Pey being Ace, which means Prince wants sex but not a romantic relationship while Payton wants a romantic relationship but nothing to do with sex

As for their relationships,

You can already tell their relationship with each other is "Besties Forevsies" and their relationship with Todd is hate-hate

As for their relationship with Paul and Patryck

Prince does not HATE his non-neighbor counterpart Paul but he does not like him ether he sees him as "A rugged war and flea written commoner" but "Tolerable I guess"

As for Peyton and Patryck's relationship this is it in a nutshell:

Peyton: HOE- *flips him off*

Patryck, who's got a massive ass: Well at least I'M thicc and have a bakery unlike YOU FLAT-ASS RICH BOY

Peyton, who has literally NO ass:

Peyton: *Insert that meme of the guy crying in the mirror after the dude making a fursona says "YOU'RE cringe"*

Anyways, as for their personalities:

Since (In my interpretation!) Paul is a tough as fuck dude who is also really soft on the inside and is loyal while also being is a little shit, Prince is a play by the rules man who is a huge perfectionist, he also thinks there is no such thing as a "cloudburg" Prince also hates getting his hands dirty and is overall a rotten dude-

And since (Again in MY interpretation!) Patryck is a slut- *gets shot* Is a whore- *gets shot* IS A HOE PRETTY MUCH- Who is a tough ass sassy ass bitch who is pretty loyal to who he trusts and likes, anyone else he's gonna manipulate you like the snake he is- And is not at all afraid to get his hands dirty by fighting, he actually enjoys the adrenaline from it, not nearly as much as Pau though, and is a mutant snake man, he also likes chaos as much as Paul, Peyton is a "gentleman" he acts like one and is more "civilized" Peyton would never manipulate and he hates fighting but he WILL emotionally kick your ass, Peyton also really hates dirt and germs and one the inside is just as much of a snot-nose rotten jerk as Prince and Pey is a bat mutant man just because I said so, and snakes eat bats sometimes :] Also Pey believes in Cloudburgs unlike Pat, right up there with Paul lmao

As for designs I don't know yet but I DO know they're both gonna be fuckin TWIGS because my Pau is chubby while my Pat is buff and Pey has NO ass and Prin has NO eyebrows, he's an eyebrow-less mofo lol (@/noodle-eggs suggested/said that Prince should have no eyebrows on Discord and I liked it so I used it so they came up with that idea)

#eddsworld #eddsworld neighbors #ew neighbors #ew prince #ew peyton

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meimae · 3 years ago

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I assume not, but I'd like to ask if you ever go back to a novel after you have read some other stuff. Perhaps I'm weak willed but paying attention to so many things are rather difficult. Going through them so slowly is unsatisfying thus I'd mine words first, then read another one the same way, after that going back to the previous one to mine sentences, paying attention to grammar etc etc. Do you think it's better to do them at once or seperately?

Hello! As someone who likes intensive reading and is obsessed with looking up and learning every single word, this interesting question speaks to me, so thanks!

As of the moment, I haven't gone back to reread anything yet (except for some manga and a couple of books I read in English years ago which doesn't count for this question), although I do plan on doing that far into the future just to see if there are improvements in overall comprehension and ease in reading.

I do however switch reading materials a lot when I find something too difficult (looking up multiple words in a sentence continuously for several paragraphs). I'll later then go back to it if I feel like I've mined enough words to tackle it again.

Right now, the "hard level" book for me is 1Q84, because although I read it in English and have context for what's going on, there's just so many words to look up that I feel like reading it too early would do it injustice. After mining a couple of hundred words, I usually go back and check the first few paragraphs again. There's always some improvement, but I have yet to hit that perfect balance of reading continuously enough and looking up words occasionally to not get bored.

I get how overwhelming it is to look at a page where you don't know like 40-60% of the words/grammar. Do not force yourself to read anything so far beyond your level of comprehension because that's the perfect recipe for a burnout.

I never did this with English books in Japanese, I' ve turned into my worst nightmare - a serial starter and reading procrastinator help, but I literally have 4 books, 5 VNs, and a ton of manga that I have been shuffling around and reading when I'm in the mood for them. A lot of them are interesting, but are either too hard or too long or easy that it puts me to sleep or have topics that puts me off, so its hard for me to stick to one thing at a time. Occasionally though, when something does grab my attention, even if it's above my level I never put it down for like a week or however long til I finish which feels great! So always try to find something that interests you first and foremost. It's easier to get comfortable with ambiguity that way.

You can always try VNs with its one sentence at a time feature. Its great because you only have to look and concentrate on so little at a time, so it makes reading less overwhelming which enables you to read for longer periods given that you've been consistent at doing so.

Anyway, don't be afraid to switch to easier material when reading! You might think it's useless because you know most of the words, but even reading easy material is practice and helps cement what you already know. I have a book review coming out soon regarding this so stick around!

Also, and this is not for everybody, I like hoarding keeping a large backlog of words to learn that I have encountered in previous material, usually from novels and VNs, labelled accordingly in their own subdeck. For example, I have all the words I have mined from the visual novel Island in a subdeck that I've been slowly reviewing alongside a few other VNs. A lot of them have pictures, and most of them have word audio from Forvo, and even sentence audio if I bothered recording, so I always have some context even though it's been a few months since I've read it. Knowing that after I review everything necessary in those decks would mean that I can go back one day to Island and have close to full comprehension gives me enough motivation to review them. The words being a good chunk of N1+ words is a bonus. So yes, I read and mine at the same and I keep my precious them to review at 20 new cards a day.

If you want a gauge of what level a book would be and how many new words you will encounter based on your existing Anki decks try jpdb.io . Rating difficulty is both word frequency and opinion based so take it with a grain of salt, but its a great resource to look into to find your next read. Also look into vndb.org for VNs. You can always filter by all time ratings or by your own preferences, too.

Other than that, TheMoeWay Discord, a Japanese language immersion learning community, holds reading clubs for novels, visual novels, and manga every month. They have both beginner and intermediate picks that anyone can read, and if those are not your cup of tea, there are a bunch of other recommendations that people share in different channels. August is about to start, so this is the perfect time to join in on the fun!

A bit of a word vomit, but hopefully something here helps you!

#language acquisition #language learning #langblr #study blog #studyblr #japanese language #japanese #language immersion #japanese langblr #japanese studyblr #i rarely get asks and i get super excited aha #anon ask #answered ask #discord #themoeway #look man this aint miss universe i aint about to answer as concisely as possible anytime soon wwww

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angelofthequeers · 4 years ago

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What brought you into salting for ML, and what led you away from it? You’ve written some things that were very salty in the past, and more recently written that you were ashamed of those things, and now work to combat salt and write positive things. What brought about the change? And I’m sorry if I sound accusatory, I’m genuinely curious.

No, you don’t sound accusatory at all! I’ve been trying to avoid talking about it because I’d have to name specific people but honestly? I don’t even care anymore. I’m done not calling people out just because I was afraid of them sending their groupies after me. (I wish I could put this under a read more but my laptop charger is fried and idk how to do it on mobile 😭).

So when I was new to the fandom, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what opinion I should have about things. All I knew was tha I was coming from Supernatural, where I’d started to criticise a LOT of things about it, which was my mindset coming into ML. And the biggest and most popular bloggers were the Big Four, as I took to calling them: zoe-oneesama, lenoreofraven, gale-of-the-nomads and nobodyfamousposts. There were others, like miraculouscontent and jacquesthepigeon, and these were the dominant voices in the fandom from where I was. And if they’re the dominant voices and they’re being what I see as critical, of course I’m going to assume that they’re in the right. Not to mention that I’ve always had a problem with idolising people I see as cooler than me, so that definitely didn’t help. Plus they seemed to be Enlightened, claiming x and y were racist and problematic, and I was so desperate to be unproblematic that I didn’t stop and realise that they were the ones being problematic in the first place and just projecting the blame onto others to deflect from themselves. The racism in Zoe’s Scarlet Lady comic in particular is particularly disgusting and I’ve vented about it in private more than once, but it’s okay because it’s improving the show.

(Never mind that you can be critical of something and still enjoy it. Critical doesn’t equal salty as fuck. That’s something I’ve finally learned and I’m happy loving and gushing over the show while still pointing out where it needs to improve)

I eventually ended up joining a salty Discord and that’s what actually ended up pushing me away from salt, because it was so...bad. Everyone was egging each other on and encouraging each other to be salty and toxic about the show and I was starting to resent the show, and why should I waste my energy on something I hate? Salt legitimately very nearly killed my love for not only this show but children’s media in general, which was also why I left SPN because I was done with the constant gritty darkness. I wanted to love Adrien, I wanted to love Alya, I wanted to love the show, but I was being bombarded with Perfect Princess Saltinette and Perfect Boyfriend Loocah and Kickass Queen Chloé/Kagami (whichever one the author liked) and it just...all got internalised and reinforced. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to love Adrien and Alya and the show or I’d be doing something wrong, because clearly these fans knew better than I did.

And then we come to Défenseure. At the time of writing it, I legitimately didn’t mean for it to be overly salty. I intended for it to be like ‘Little Devil’, where the characters were fucking up but they stopped and learned lessons, albeit through the salter lens of what those lessons should be. Adrien was never going to lose his ring. He was just going to get a stern talking-to and end up apologising to Ladybug (despite that itself being exaggerated bc of how salters see him). But the Discord kept going and going and egging me on and providing “support” when I got negative feedback, and I let them push me to the point of full salt. And that’s when I stepped back and realised that I hated it. I hated being here, I hated interacting with the fandom, I hated writing. So I bowed out and never looked back.

But it’s not that simple. I was invited to another Discord by someone who, I will give a smidge of credit, did help pull me out of that dark place. But I didn’t realise that GalahadWilder was predatory and just outright yuck and literally manipulating me, especially with how he used his own autism to connect with me and empathise in a way that non-autistics couldn’t. Again, I couldn’t read people and I didn’t realise that I was being played until I ended up embroiled in another fandom drama. The less said about that, the better, but anyone who’s been around for any length of time knows what Drama I’m talking about.

And somehow, that ended up being even more toxic than the salt. We were actively attacking the showrunners (doxxing and then deleting to save face aka “do damage control over an impulsive mistake”), jabbing at other fans who I won’t name, constantly screenshotting one specific person (who legitimately is disgusting and hated by most of the fandom) and laughing at how pathetic they were, even going to one side of the drama and sending anons to try and pin the blame on the other side. And granted, I didn’t actively participate in most of this, but I still sat there and watched and laughed and believed the manipulations. It wasn’t until I got sick of this drama and someone informed me of the true nature of it (because I definitely wouldn’t have gotten involved and supported who I did if I’d been told the whole truth) that I left, but even then I still had people from both sides of the internal drama in that Discord messaging me and trying desperately to get me to believe them, and it was just. Too much.

Fandom’s supposed to be fun. Fandom’s supposed to be an escape. And yet I was ending up in more drama than a reality TV show because people were playing me like a puppet and I was sick of it.

But I’m in a healthier place now in the fandom. I’ve found the balance between roasting and being outright cruel; between criticising the show and spewing salt over it. And while I do hate what I’ve written and the drama I got messed up in, I’m grateful in a way. Without my salty writing, I wouldn’t have found that I hate doing it. Without that drama, I wouldn’t have found the true natures of certain people and I wouldn’t have made the friends I have now, like ladybuginettes, emsylcatac, amimons, bugabisous and yeet-noir. We jokingly call me a babie egg because I’ve been reborn as sugar and sweetness 😌 Especially since joining APS, which has let me actually love Adrien and even other characters like Alya and shower them in the positivity that I wanted to in the first place.

So, uh...yeah. That’s how I went from being a salty bitch to wanting to be more positive and sugary. And at least now I’m disillusioned enough that I just. Don’t idolise anyone anymore 🤷🏽‍♀️

#ask #aotq answers #miraculous ladybug #ml fandom salt #yeah I named names here #i’m just #done with everything

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humangeode · 4 years ago

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I’ve developed a full headcannon for Hugo’s backstory from a hodgepodge of things we’ve come up with on the Varian and the Seven Kingdoms Discord server. (Buckle up, cause it’s a long one):

Hugo was an only child.

Child labor was definitely a thing in the Iron Kingdom. When Hugo was little, up until the time he was abandoned, he was sent to work to make money for the family.

The place he worked had a sort of assembly-line manufacturing system. Hugo’s first experiences with invention were collecting parts and tools he’d snatch from the factory and tinkering with them at home. It is out of this collection of parts that he would later build Olivia/Cheese.

His parents realized he needed glasses when his eyesight became such a problem that he got hurt at work. (Probably broke a bone). Once Hugo started needing glasses, they decided that the cost of keeping him was not worth the little money he brought home, so they got rid of him.

Hugo is sold by his parents to a snobby rich couple couldn’t conceive and want to keep up a false appearance of charitability. Of course, it’s all for image and, in reality, they treat him like crap, constantly putting him down because of his poor background.

Eventually he runs away, and he tries to go home, only to find that his parents have left. They had set their minds on moving up in society and Hugo was “bogging them down.”

After that, Hugo is on the streets for a few years, fending for himself. He builds Olivia so that he’ll have a friend that won’t leave him. During this time, he learns to steel and gets into plenty of trouble.

Now we tie into Miles’s art. At some point, he nearly dies after getting beat up by some other gang. This is when Donella finds him and takes him in, becoming his mentor.

Now we get into how this all comes up again with the 7k gang:

When they stop in the Iron Kingdom, they get this warm welcome by the high class because they’re traveling with Princess Nuru, and these people are always looking for a wealthy person to make connections with. They end up having to attend some event in order to ask around for info on the location of the next trial.

At this banquet, high class people of the Iron kingdom are so greedy, they try to offer Varian their investment in his quest. When Varian explains he’s not making any money at the end, they’re like, “what? You unlock infinite knowledge and you’re not gonna capitalize on that?” Varian’s like, “we don’t own the library. It’s Dimanitus’s.” And they would say, “yeah but, LOOPHOLE, you build and therefore own the only ENTRANCE to the library and can charge people to go through it.” And Varian would have to bring the hammer down like, “No. we’re not making knowledge exclusive, a-holes.”

All of them loathe the stuffy, stuck-up atmosphere, but Hugo is taking is the worst. He’s all jumpy and looking over his shoulder constantly. He spots his old foster parents and is like,” we gotta leave right now!” The rest of the gang is confused like “ what’s up with Hugo?”

Inevitably, they run into the parents and they start talking all snarky and condescendingly to Hugo about how they “gave him everything” and he ran away. Hugo is just dead silent but growling under his breath. He’s clenching his campaign glass so hard it nearly shatters. Varian, Nuru, and Yong are also getting more and more pissed. Even angrier than Hugo.

They’ve finally had enough and start standing up for Hugo, telling them how Hugo deserves better than them anyways and “good for him for running away from you idiots!” A fight gets started. The 7k gang trash the place and ditch the rich snobs. Hugo is pretty amazed that they stood up for him like that. Anyways, they end up getting their info on the next trial from some of the poorer people, who are way more helpful. The wealthy ones were dumb as stumps.

At some point along their journey, they purely by chance run into his birth parents too. When Hugo sees them, he becomes furious and confronts them alone, but they seem to feel no remorse.

They still believe they made the right choice and rub it in Hugo’s face (very casually) that they really were better off without him. Years after abandoning Hugo, when they were finally higher up in society (a large part thanks to the money they made from selling Hugo) they started having kids again (ones that they didn’t sell, and kept, unlike Hugo). This obviously adds salt to the wound.

Hugo can’t believe they don’t even feel bad in the slightest, so he runs off extremely upset, tearing up a bit, but trying to hide it. He confronted them in his own, so Varian and the gang don’t know what’s wrong with him when he suddenly starts acting differently. Varian is sure something is wrong when he gives Hugo the perfect opportunity to crack a joke at his expense and Hugo doesn’t take it.

So the gang finally sends Varian to try to figure out what’s up (because Hugo is more likely to open up to him.) When Varian asks, it’s not long before Hugo breaks down and tells him everything.

As soon as he hears it, Varian is absolutely livid. He marches back to Hugo’s parents to go absolutely ape-shit on them.

He marches back out and Hugo is shocked but doesn’t say anything. Varian finally calms down and realizes that in his rage, he forgot to comfort Hugo and make sure he was ok. He worries that going after his parents was the wrong move, so he goes to Hugo and apologizes, explaining that he did it because he was just so mad for what they did to Hugo. Hugo says that he’s not upset at Varian at all and is just shocked that Varian cares so much.

That night, Hugo finally tells the whole group what had been going on with him. Nuru insists that he absolutely deserved better that what he got out of childhood and is genuinely very upset that Hugo’s parents seemed to suffer no consequences for their actions. She absolutely hates injustice. Yong is constantly telling Hugo how awesome he his and how his parents are so dumb for thinking they’re better off without him. They spend the rest of the night trying to comfort him and let him know that he’s a valued member of their group.

Throughout all this (including the part where they meet his foster parents) Hugo is constantly shocked that the 7k group appear to be more angry for him than he is angry for himself. They accept him in a way Donella told him no one ever would.

All of this together is largely what gets Hugo to finally decide to stay with them and betray Donella when they run into her later in the Iron Kingdom.

———

Edit:

By the way y’all, I forgot to mention the idea of the rich couple foster parents originated from @asingleaceinthedeck

#rapunzels tangled adventure #the tangled series #tts #varian and the seven kingdoms #varian #Hugo #analysis #angst #humangeode

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scribbleboxfox · 4 years ago

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Some thoughts about the use of Unreal assets in the new season of Red vs. Blue.

This wound up being longer than I meant for it to be, so I’m putting it under a cut for courtesy bc I don’t wanna clog up anyone’s dash :’D

It’s just genuinely so funny to me that ppl are upset that they used Unreal assets for RvB:Zero. Like you’re going to call them lazy for using free stock assets in the middle of a pandemic? Okay. So I guess that means I’m lazy for licensing a photo from Adobe Stock for my company to use instead of filling out a request form for a professional camera, waiting for the next budget meeting to make my case about why I need it, learn how to use it, gather props, hire models, book a location for the shoot, gather costumes, learn how to use Lightroom, spend 4-6 hours shooting photos and directing the models, and edit the photos.

I’ve seen the argument that RvB has always stuck close to Halo as a reason for why the Unreal assets are bad. But this isn’t true. The closest RvB’s ever gotten to real Halo lore was with Project Freelancer*, and it barely scratched the surface. Yes they have references to it scattered throughout the show on occasion, but their whole arrangement with Microsoft makes it so that they can’t overlap too much.

Also, we’re really going to get mad about that, and not the really shitty snowmen in Season 12?

Those don’t look like Halo assets to me.

I just think it’s so silly. The argument that they should have only used assets from Halo is ridiculous because there’s plenty of times where they straight up haven’t done that. Like the knights in Season 16. Which were also free assets that they grabbed from somewhere.

3D models take time to make. You have to come up with an idea, make concept art for that idea, review the concept art and pick a direction to go in, sit down and make the 3D model (which can take hours and hours depending on what you’re making,) take down the poly count after creating a normal map so you don’t have a million faces that will slow down your render time, make sure the UV’s are all laid out properly so the model can be textured, pass it off to the people who texture the UV’s or do it yourself, test the textures to make sure the seams aren’t too visible on the model, do render tests to make sure the textures and normals and bump maps all look the way you want them to, and THEN you have to rig it yourself or pass it off to the coworker in charge of that sort of thing, apply constraints and controls, skinweight it, and apply physics (depending on the model.) And once you’re done with all of that, then you can give it to an animator to add it to a scene and animate it. And bear in mind that people have to do this while also keeping up with their meeting schedules, breaks, mealtimes, childcare, pet care, grocery runs, doctor’s appointments, etc.

I’m definitely missing a few steps/mis-naming a few things, but it’s been literally 3 years since I’ve created a full 3D asset from start to finish so...take it with a grain of salt.

The point is that creating one model is a lot of work. Top it off with the fact that we’re in a pandemic, and it gets even more strenuous. Things like ad-hoc design reviews may be harder to do because people might have their notifications for Slack/Teams/Discord/etc. off so they can get work done. And that can mean the difference between getting an asset finished in the middle of the day today, or waiting until early morning tomorrow when the rest of your team is online.

It’s much more cost-efficient to just buy/download pre-made assets. And frankly, in the middle of a pandemic, it’s a lot more ethical too.

I just wish that ppl would step back and ask themselves why they might be using Unreal assets for this season. Companies use stock assets all the time. Rooster Teeth is a company. I worry that people forget that sometimes.

Anyways, that’s just my two cents on it. As someone whose done the whole 3D animation process multiple times (albeit mostly for college,) it’s frustrating that people are making arguments against the use of stock assets without having an understanding of the amount of work that goes into making them yourself.

---

*The use of AI’s and the Huragok in Project Freelancer were two very direct references to canon Halo lore.

** Also worth noting that they DO use canon Halo guns in the first episode. I can’t speak for the other episodes because I haven’t seen them yet as of today (11/9/20) but I personally doubt they’re getting rid of them entirely.

Edit://

I mixed up Unity with Unreal. They’re Unreal Marketplace assets. Thanks @banditsheath for pointing that out.

#rvb critical #rvb wank #rvb fandom wank #rvb18 wank #rvb18 critical #rvb:0 critical #rvb:0 wank #this isn't me saying ppl HAVE to like the season #I'm just asking that ppl stop and think for a second about why they'd use different assets #I'm bad at conveying my own tone of voice in posts but I'm not really all that mad tbh #just annoyed and a little frustrated that ppl are saying the team should have just made their own assets #ng it on #like mocap or music or both #i'm tag rambling again #anyways sorry if this came off harsh #it's really not meant to be #also keeping this out of the main tag for etiquette reasons #if you wanna talk about this feel free to dm me #but please be civil lol

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uwua3 · 5 years ago

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family.

🌸🌷 sakuma sakuya

summary: sakuya remembers when the dorms were silent, but he never wants to go back to that time ever again

dedication: written for my friends in the golden gays discord server. i love you all ♡

warnings: anxiety, family trauma, the future

author’s note: hi!!! this is the first writing piece i’ve published~ sorry for the delay; school kept me busy for so long! i hope you love it as much as i love my great friends!

i wanted to reflect on sakuya’s deep fear of being alone again that stemmed from an absent household. i believe there is power in reclaiming yourself from people who took advantage of you and doing your best for the people who love you ♡ this is a tribute to everyone who decided they wouldn’t be held back anymore at the expense of their families and found happiness in friends!

word count: 1,702

music: to die for – sam smith

Celebrations were being held inside the Mankai Company dorms as the four troupes partied, laughing about the Winter Troupe’s latest success against the God Troupe and effectively paying off the theatre’s debt. Stepping out into the courtyard, Sakuma Sakuya escaped the loud and irresponsible shenanigans that could only ensue between 20 boys with a quiet sigh of relief. The glass door closed behind him as the noise faded into the background. Unfortunately, the sound of something breaking and frantic screaming became a normal occurrence in the dorms. Leaning against the building’s brick exterior, Sakuya pushed his hands in his hoodie pockets before realizing he wore the same clothes at his Mankai auditions almost a year ago. The printed “SPRING” words across his chest was closest to his heart, making him subconsciously smile at the thought of his troupe members.

His Spring Troupe members... Sakuya could vividly recall meeting each and every single of them for the first time. Each one of them, at completely different parts of life, and they all found each other to be the start of something absolutely life–changing. Sakuya basked in the warmth of his fondness for his boys despite the cold frost solidifying his breath in the thin air. Yet, it didn’t feel like it was a winter dusk underneath the full moon. Sakuya swore he opened his eyes and was embraced by the spring warmth of blooming cherry blossoms above his head as he practiced by Hana High’s river with the Romeo & Julius script gripped in his hand. Sakuma Sakuya felt the same as he did right before his first performance as leader of the Spring Troupe: completely, and utterly, happy.

Masumi was Sakuya’s right hand man no matter what, where his harsh criticism and natural talent influenced all of them to become a troupe worthy of a sold out show. Tsuzuru’s persistence and unrelenting drive to be the best playwright possible inspired Sakuya to work even harder to expand his range of abilities. Citron’s perseverance and unwavering spirit that defined his charisma made Sakuya laugh into the night, reminiscing on Citron’s faulty Japanese that somehow got pulled all together to recite his otherworldly stories way past bedtime. Even Itaru’s rocky transition into acting was monumental, where it’s like the spark that died in the adult’s eyes was ignited back to life, like a firecracker in a summer festival. At the thought of summer, which led to Summer Troupe, then Autumn and Winter, Sakuya became overwhelmed with the thought of his friends, the boys he would do anything for just right behind him. Never in his life, did Sakuya ever fathom he could feel this happy. But, did he deserve them?

It was enough to make Sakuya suddenly cry alone, outside in the freezing cold as the rambunctious bunch continued celebrating into the hours of the next day. At first, a single drop fell from his eye and before he knew it, it was an onslaught of a repressed emotion he had to hide as the first Mankai company leader: fear. Dropping to a crouching position, Sakuya attempted to muffle his cries as he hid his face in his arms, pretending like it was the comfort of a beloved family member. Yet, no particular face came to mind. It was a blurry, distorted mixture of everyone who has ever abandoned him.

Nothing was permanent, if Sakuya learned anything from his family. He almost pushed out the feeling of that cold house but it came back in the form of his turbulent childhood, living to please and seeking to serve in any way possible as he was taken advantage of senselessly. You’d think after all that, he would know to disguise his true feelings and thoughts with his quick acting impulse, but Sakuya was just as naive as before. Sakuya was so honest in his face, his expressions betraying his intentions. Like right now, where his theatre company members were having the time of their lives together, without him.

How awful of him to be so sad on a night of fun and new beginnings! Sakuya sniffled as he roughly rubbed his eyes, muttering comforting lies to no avail. He was being selfish... maybe, he was really crying because Sakuya knew deep down he didn’t deserve any of this. The spring glow faded away as Sakuya opened his eyes again only to face the snowy scape of the courtyard. The gray stone was slippery with ice as the salt was scattered under his feet. At the center of it all, the building’s massive tree was rustling with the wind. Sakuya’s tears froze in their tracks as he exhaled, his body shaking as his thoughts ran a mile a minute. It didn’t feel like time existed in that moment, like the world stopped as he endured years of suffering and guilt in that very moment.

But, the world didn’t stop for anybody. In fact, for a moment, it sounded like the bubbly and catchy J-Pop blasting from Kazunari’s modern smartphone sounded even louder. It’s as if his ears became heightened to notice the amplified sound of the expensive alcohol Azuma swindled out of his eager customers spilling into multiple glasses. Sakuya heard the sizzling of the frying pan as Omi was feeding the peanut gallery, even Banri’s exaggerated mockery of Juza’s excitement for the desserts Tenma received as a gift from his newest movie set. Sakuya could envision it now: Taichi impressing Misumi with making triangular origami and enjoying the amazed grin on the latter’s innocent face, Muku & Yuki doing their schoolwork at the sofa before Yuki started cursing out the puppy pair for screaming, even the Winter troupe’s quiet disbelief but immense pride amongst themselves. Sakuya knew, for once, Hisoka wasn’t taking a nap. That’s how electric the energy was throughout the room. The party was in full swing, Sakuya even caught out of the corner of his eye Director and Sakyo sharing an intimate moment before it was ruined by the Director’s spices rant. Thank god Kamekichi and the manager didn’t hear it, or else a very sad Matsukawa would be paying a hefty sum to the scheming parrot.

Maybe he would vocally never admit it, but Sakuya felt himself turn as pink as the sakura petals that led him to a flyer for the Mankai tryouts. Sakuya felt the same as that moment: like he was staring into the face of his destiny. Sakuya pushed himself off the ground, catching his own mind off guard before it morphed into a phase of curiousity, like even his own brain couldn’t have any idea what could come next. Sakuya faced the moonlight shining upon him, like the stage spotlight he couldn’t wait to be underneath again. Sakuya could almost see the future in the clear surface.

Sakuya could see the next Spring Troupe play. The fantasy elements, the strong message of friendship, and the bond between him and his boys growing like the cherry blossoms. They would take a bow together in front of a standing ovation, where they’d celebrate by having a hanami picnic beneath the petals as they sat in the crowded park. They’d share their favorite parts and sleep that night on stage, just like the old times. He could imagine the spring nostalgia shifting into an exhilarating summer heat, even hearing the sound of traditional drums and booth workers advertising their games cutting the night air as chatters of his friends enveloped him in the best place possible to see the fireworks. The hot, humid summer would become a chilly and spooky autumn where they’d all have cool costumes and a competition to see who could trick & treat the most candy that night. It would move into the frigid but festive winter, as Secret Santa became too complex in a group of 20 as they would decorate the dorms to look like a Christmas bomb exploded. No matter what season it was, Sakuya knew they’d pull off whatever they put their heads to. The cycle would repeat another year. That was enough for now.

Sakuya stopped crying. There was nothing to be sad about; how could he when his true family was inside? Turning on his heel, Sakuya felt the warmth against his face as he opened the glass door to the cheers of his fellow Mankai members. He was right; Kazunari was DJ-ing with glowing cat ear headphones at the kitchen counter as he pushed the mic to his mouth with a wide, infectious grin.

“Just in time! Sakuma Sakuya, everybody! Everyone give it up for Mankai’s first member and leader ever!”

The room cheered even louder, pushing Sakuya into the group celebration as Yuki jokingly got on his case for letting the cold air in. But even then, Yuki’s smile reached his eyes as Sakuya took in everyone finally went quiet, waiting for his speech. They all looked towards him for guidance, for words of wisdom, something to remember for the rest of their lives. Then, it clicked. Sakuya hugged himself, the distorted face in his mind suddenly becoming 20. This was his family.

This home was warm. It was filled with endless, unconditional love & support. No hurtful judgement or prejudices, not even serious scorn for one another despite Juza and Banri & Sakyo and Yuki’s petty arguments. This was what family is: love, no matter what. Sakuya loved his brothers, his Mankai boys and his favorite Director. That was enough. They’re family.

Whether it was due to the sudden embarrassing attention or the quick beating of his resurrected heart, Sakuya smiled as he stood up on the coffee table, ignoring Sakyo’s comment about how they didn’t have the budget to fund a hospital visit if he fell. Picking up an opened soda can besides his feet, Sakuya lifted the discarded drink in the air as everyone mimicked his actions like it was a professional banquet. With absolute pure joy in his voice, Sakuya felt the tears threatening to pour from his eyes but for a completely different reason. They are happy, he is happy.

“To Mankai!”

“To Mankai!” The room chorused back with just as much love, and would do so for many, many more years.

#sakuma sakuya #sakuya sakuma #a3! act! addict! actors!#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game #a3! one shots #act! addict! actors! one shots #mankai a3!#mankai company #a3! sakuya #a3 sakuya

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harbinger--of--dawn · 5 years ago

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jotaro bg ideas idfk i just copy pasted this from discord after a 3 am brainrot session read it [mind the tw tags]

jotaro thought time because i cant sleep no matter how hard im trying

clearly jotaro went through some type of major trauma during high school between when we see him in flashback panels and where he is at the start of part three. you just dont have that sort of emotional change w/o trauma

because i have severe brainrot i think perhaps it has something to do with the ocean

ocean life is his spin and has been since he was tiny tiny ofc, but maybe seeing something he holds so dear take from him caused him to become so guarded and afraid-- what im saying is, perhaps he understood what the ocean can take on paper but experienced it personally and couldnt handle it for a very long time

im thinking ! he was likely hanging out and exploring and tried to help a small child who was caught in an undertow and just. couldnt help them

just. a small and physically weak 15 year old jotaro desperately performing cpr on this poor 7 year old. hes barely conscious himself from over exertion and hes swallowed his fair share of seawater but he cant get this kid breathing. theyre in a somewhat secluded area and no one can see these two kids and every time jotaro tries to yell for help more saltwater springs up from his lungs.

someone finds them and jotaro thinks. thank god this poor kid can be helped and there's yelling and sirens and touching and pulling and its terrifyingly overwhelming. it goes into sensory overload almost instantly and after he vomits seawater on a lifeguard he goes into a full on shutdown. holy isnt at the beach-- sadao brought him in his yearly attempt to be a Good Father and hadnt kept a close enough eye. theres no one familiar and this freshman is losing his mind over this kid he fished out and he goes into a shutdown. they cant get him to talk.

jotaros not responding and someone says shock and someone else says "no hes r/tarded cant you see it" and hes too tired to care. his limbs feel like lead and they cart him off to the hospital because his lungs are full of water and hes not looking at them and despite the ableist bystander, this lifeguard is very scared he's in shock. jotaro watches the kid the longest he can but theyre not bringing him to an ambulance. theyre not doing cpr. theyre not doing anything. jotaro coughs up brine and lets himself shutdown entirely

he ends up with a severe case of pneumonia. they had to have him on a ventilator for the water and hes stuck in the hospital for days due to a mix of his shutdown and actual shock. they never tell him what happened to the kid. he doesnt ask. he knows.

holy is at the hospital before sadao is. she got the call first. sadao's phone went to voicemail.

they tell holy they can take him home when he wakes up if the foundation is there. shes worried and begs these doctors to keep him in the hospital a little longer. just a couple more days. they relent. jotaro comes out of shock only to very quickly develop sepsis. its nasty. hes really badly off for a while and. sadao just doesnt show up. he was ‘called for a show’. nothing. just. gone.

jotaro misses a lot of school. hes really badly off. they try and get him into therapy but hes unresponsive. hes stopped caring in class. hes barely there for a very long time and it tears holy up to bits. suzie q n joseph come over to help because its too much. holy gets therapy too. she responds though. jotaro just sits through his sessions, staring at the kids toys. the doctor tells him he can play with them. he tells her that the little boy should be playing instead of him.

hes gone after that. he pieces himself back together but its wrong. hes angry. hes afraid. hes paranoid and certain everything he loves and cares about is going to turn on him. he sees the endless love he put into the sea and the lifeless body it gave back to him and is terrified of putting anything into anything else anymore. terrified of loving, caring. hes afraid of the consequences hes made up for himself.

he lashes out at holy. tells her shes a b/tch and that he hates her. hes keeping her safe. the farther she is the safer. hes terrified of loving loving loving and losing. hes certain the best thing is to never get attached because you will lose it and it will only hurt just that much more.

he doesnt learn. he sees kakyoin in the water tower and the water up to his ankles and feels the salt in his lungs and knows hes drowning again.

#jjba #sdc #jotaro kujo #// drowning #// ableism #// r slur #// child death #tw drowning #tw ableism #tw r slur #tw child death #theres probably more to tag jic but i have no idea whats happening at any time ever so #ask to tag #mine #// b word #jic !

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tbatf-callout · 6 years ago

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Tbatf Callout

This is a collection of over 20+ people, with their own stories and issues with the creators of TBATF.

TBATF is a popular eddsworld comic with a huge fanbase. Of course, these people who all chose to remain anonymous to avoid being attacked and harassed came together and decided enough was enough. We want to make this clear, we aren't jealous of their fame, or who they interact with. We aren't jealous of their fans. We are concern individuals, who either been hurt, shunned and/or manipulated. We weren't lurking in the shadows and we certainly aren't liars. Everything posted below is the truth share between-now friends. Now you have the right to take what we say with a grain of salt but we assure you we aren't lying. For this reason, we will not be referencing anything from the official TBATF comic. The issues with the comic itself are purely speculation and humor is different for everyone.

What we want from doing this post, is that we all as fans learn to not blindly follow others, and understand that even our favorite people can do horrible things. We don't want a fandom war, we don't want people being hurt or attacked over their decision after reading this. It just to get the truth out.

This is Jax, one of the creators of TBATF personal discord, and this was her message to this ex-fan. This is horrible, this is disgusting. No matter what, that was a line she decided to cross. Now it's well known, Jax is in her later 20's. Jax is in control of her own actions, and mature enough to know that this is wrong, but she sent it anyway. Now you can say "but maybe they deserve that message". No. They did nothing, and here what happen before Jax sent this.

We have cut out our friend name for their safety, and Eli is a fake name for the sake of avoiding any harassing. This person did nothing wrong, we aren't even sure why Jax was so angry to even start attacking this person. But this is disgusting and shame on her, for thinking she could ever send this to someone.

Manipulation Intentional or not, manipulation can be severely damaging to everybody's mentality and the people around them. One big red flag of manipulation is changing the story and bringing out what seems like "love" and "support" when people start calling you out for bad behaviors. You ever hear the phrase "I didn't mean it, you know I love you"? That is one of the most common manipulation tactics that we see going through the posts that the crew of TBATF has pushed out.

Once criticizing becomes too hard for the crew to bare, they often send out what they call a heartfelt post of "we love you all and don't believe what other people are saying about us" type of post. These contribute to them not only guilt-tripping their audiences to be on their side. When this offense is repeated, it shows that the crew knows exactly what they're doing is wrong and gathers "supporters" who know absolutely nothing about the full situation and only knows what the TBATF crew tells them.

According to Psychology Today, "guilt trips are a form of verbal or nonverbal communication in which a guilt inducer tries to induce guilty feelings in a target, in an effort to control their behavior. As such, guilt trips are a clear form of psychological manipulation and coercion." In other words, guilt-tripping is the conscious act of forcing your feelings into other people in order to control their decisions and behavior patterns. You control them like sheep and not letting the audience choose their own sides when all the evidence is placed on the table.

On the site "Learning Mind", we learn that there are a few ways that we as a group can recognize blatant guilt-tripping. One of the big ones is the seventh one that is listed "7. You don’t feel as if you can say ‘No’." When it comes to the conditions that TBATF layout, they have strict rules and a narrow mindset, these are big creators that have in the past lashed out at other creators that had different harmless viewpoints. To them, agree to disagree doesn't exist and they don't seem to put those viewpoints past the person in front of them. When younger children interact with these people (we know their fanbase are younger kids) they want to live up to their expectations and don't seem to look at their idol's awful behaviors and instead of blinding themselves to a toxic idolization of a toxic person. It happens often with big YouTubers who have either done appalling things or started dreadful trends.

Anti-Ship/Anti-Fandom

The main rule enforced in the servers any of the creators are mods or admins in having this one rule in common. No Shipping

However, as most know, this is a rule they've been well known for breaking, as long as it's not two men or two women. In their server, they have a strict no ship rule. Which we are aganist, but not for their reason of "avoiding ship wars". The problem is how they do handle the issue when ships is brought up. There a correct way and wrong way of coming at it.People who post art have to do this

or else they get gang on and harassed and their content deleted if the boys are close together or something stupid like that.

They act like people who draw or write these ships or different fanon ideas as...kinda bad people.

They seem to act that if you don't follow eddsworld canon, you aren't in the right and people who have interacted with them, came forward and said they felt bad for shipping or for liking certain characters. It's dishearting to hear from people you look too, saying how awful certain things you enjoy when the things you enjoy aren't bad. Shipping isn't bad as long as you respect others. If you ship and someone else doesn't, then that's okay. If you have a headcanon and someone else doesn't, also okay. As long as it isn't a problematic trope, then go for it. But these creators don't seem to understand this, and instead attack and belittle.

Now they used to have blog, which they consider their steampunk au. In said au, each of the boys, or how they phrase it, their ancestors (while completely identical to the main characters with altered outfits), have a female partner. Three of them are white, except for Tord's wife, who is a whitewashed Japanese character.

The main focus will now be on her, as she is the most problematic. When Tord is portrayed, he is seen as a cheater, along with the other boys every once in a while. When asked why he doesn't get a divorce, he gets a gun put to his head, and states she is the daughter of the leader of the mafia and would kill him if he even tried. They are still portrayed as very sexual with each other, almost ignoring the fact Tord is not willingly with her. It also pushes some stereotypes (usually European) of violent and forceful Asian people, while highly sexualizing her. When cosplayed, she is always depicted as a white woman, as long as she has a large bust. They don't mind this ship and don't get on people either when they ship Eduardo and Laurel. So what assumption are we suppose to make? Hetero ships is fine, but if we make it same-sex couple it's bad?

(This isn’t true in our experience and were all in many servers? This is a trick to try to sell their nonshipping in rule. Like look what happens if we don’t have this rule, the fandom is nasty and horrible and we’re the only safe place)

There still a lot of issues but we figure to end it here and be open to discussion. It took a lot to even decide to get to this point and we want the truth to be out. We're tired of being label as liars, people who are jealous, haters, etc. Please don't harass anyone, and don't send hate to each other. Thank you for your time.

#eddsworld #ew tbatf #eddsworld tbatf #tbatf #callout #txt post

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xserpentlife · 5 years ago

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Relief - Pt.2

Requested: No, written for the Southside Archive discord server prompt of the week.

A/N: Here is the long-awaited part two of Relief my werewolf AU. I am so sorry I made you guys wait so long but I really wanted to perfect it. I also am 100000% down to continue this story for yall but I wanna do it through concepts/blurbs and stuff. SO if you wanna know anything about pea and the people you learn about through this part to or the reader and pea learning how to live after all of this send me a message or submit to me love you all and thanks for being so patient.

Warnings: Talk of impregnation, birth (nothing detailed)

Word Count: 3327

This morning was different than any open you had ever woken up to. You smelled the pancakes as soon as you woke up wanting nothing more than to devour them since it had been a day or two since your last meal. Your heat, so much worse, so much more intense this time and since Sweet Pea helped it subsided so much faster than usual but you know it was over the ending most likely in the middle of the night since the scent of an Alpha helped ward it off. You ended up trying to stand but to no avail, you fell over, your legs like jelly as soon as you stood. The door opened as you were trying to pull yourself onto the bed the plate being placed on your bureau as Pea came over helping you onto the bed.

“Hey, hey you okay?”

“Yeah I’m good Pea, m’ sorry”

“For what babygirl?”

“Falling”

“Don't’ be, but are you sure you’re okay”

“Yeah I’m good my legs just hurt a bit s’all”

“Okay well hey I made your favorite breakfast”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t leave, why not”

“Cause I wasn’t kidding when I said that I wanted to make you mine forever”

“Pea…”

“I’m serious Y/N, I like you a lot and it was stupid and it took me a while to realize I mean fuck we have known each other since high school and I know it is stupid because I should have made you mine so long ago. I have known for years that something was off. Every time you were in pain I was too an...”

“You felt that too?”

“Mhm, because apparently, we've been mates Y/N and I don’t know when it happened because I can’t even remember back that far but I regret not making you mine sooner. I’m so fucking sorry for letting you go through your heats alone for this long. I always believed you when you said you were sick, but last night fuck it never felt like that before and I knew something wasn’t right and I’m sorry” You reached your hand to cup his cheek as he was sitting next to you on the bed.

“Hey, shhh. It’s not your fault it’s neither of our faults okay. I love you too Pea so fucking much”

“So you still wanna be mine?’

“Always Pea” His lips were brought to your forehead as he pulled you into his body, his scent was radiating off of him, and even though you were not in your heat anymore it felt like it was so much stronger than normal.

“Well hey, why don’t you eat your pancakes and then we take a bath I uh need to talk to you, how does that sound?”

“Perfect, everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything is fine” The pancakes were some of the best you’ve had, after eating Pea had helped you into the bathroom turning the tub on and letting it fill, throwing in your favorite salts and things that always helped you calm down. He climbed in first letting you get in front of him.

“So what did you wanna talk about?”

“Before I say anything I am so fucking sorry”

“What’s going on?”

“Last night we fell asleep, both of us”

“Yeah, it was nice… I thought”

“No, no it was, that wasn’t the issue that part I loved, I loved having you in my arms but when we got closer to morning you started waking up, and I woke up but you were still asleep. Anyway, I woke up and was just running my hand through your hair and then you started stirring so I stopped but you were smiling like a dream and then you uhm…”

“I what pea? Did I snore? Talk?”

“No you uh you clenched you know cause I was still inside you and I didn’t mean to but I had already had a dream about you before I woke up and, and I well I finished inside you and I know it wasn’t technically consensual and I am so fucking sorry that I did, I tried to pull out but it just wasn’t fast enough”

“Oh..”

“I’m so so sorry, I think your heat was over though I mean I’m pretty sure it was cause your scent wasn’t as strong when I was running my hand in your hair”

“Yeah, it was probably over Pea because usually, I can’t sleep when I am in my heat”

“But what if…”

“Nothing is gonna happen”

“My heat was basically over when we went to sleep I felt it going away so I’m sure everything was fine by this morning, plus like you said my scent wasn’t as strong so it most likely was anyway”

------------------------------------

You’ve now been Pea’s official mate and girlfriend for months now, 4 to be exact. He was always feeding you always, making new dishes for dinner and so much more. He was taking care of you better than anyone had in your entire life. He was currently cooking your favorite dinner.

“Babe are you about to go through heat again?”

“I don’t think so why?”

“Well you haven't in a while and you just smell so much fucking sweeter recently”

“I do?”

“Yeah I don’t know why, but uhm, dinner is done want me to make you a plate and bring it to the couch?”

“That would be perfect” With a quick kiss to your cheek he was back in the kitchen clanging around before coming back and placing the two plates on the coffee table in front of you. Your plate was filled entirely while his was only about 25% full.

“Pea what are you doing?” You looked over as he had food shoved into his mouth.

“Eating…”

“Why did you give me so much?”

“You need to eat”

“Pea this is too much for me”

“Y/N just eat it”

“Pea, what is wrong with you?” “Just don't want you to be hungry”

“Pea you have to eat too, and I know damn well that isn’t enough for you”

“I’m fine Y/N!”

“You are fucking impossible, I’m going to the Wyrm call me when you get the stick out of your ass”

------------------------------------

“He is fucking impossible Toni, I don’t know what the fuck is going on with him, to be honest. So like you know how I used to make us dinner”

“Yeah he loves when you cook”

“He won’t fucking let me anymore T, all he does is make food. Like he won’t even let me go to fucking work without giving me two containers of food and I work at POPS!. Also, he won’t let FP send me on jobs like ever since we fucked it’s like I'm this small fucking porcelain doll”

“ you know he just loves you Y/N”

“Don’t defend him Fangs, it’s fucking infuriating”

“Look you guys mated Y/N he bonded with you that shit goes so much deeper than just being someone's mate”

“Guys I appreciate this but I came here to vent so I’m just gonna go” As soon as you got up you felt a crushing pain being kicked against your abdomen, a pain you only felt once before when pea was hit with a bat in the chest. Your worry instantly kicked in but then it happened again and as soon as you stepped off the stool you fell to the ground clutching your stomach. You heard Fangs and Toni screaming around you but then everything went black.

You slowly felt the light coming into your eyes.

“Y/N, Y/N can you hear me?”

“Fangs” You gained your vision back as you looked to Toni who was above you, your head in her lap. Fangs to your left and a new recruit to your right. “What happened”

“You passed out you’ve been out for a minute or two what happened?”

“I don’t know I felt this massive pain and then…. No, no! where’s Pea! Something has to be wrong where is he!”

“Shhhh. Calm down we’ll call hi….” Then you heard the familiar grunt coming through the doors of the Wyrm. Slowly walking over a low growl came out of him, getting louder and louder until Fangs and Toni were helping you stand. The new recruit still having his arm on yours.

“Tanner you have 5 seconds to get your hand off of her arm before I send you flying out those doors. Slowly you smelled the familiar scent. His alpha scent. No, not the one that could calm you instantly the one that was meant to scare people, meant to deter them from your land, or from his property.

“Pea you stink”

“How long has it been since you showered”

“I just did, Tanner is pissing me off, get your fucking hands off her dude” You looked to Tanner hoping he would let go but he didn’t, his eyes meeting yours as he sent you a devilish smirk. So you used your boot stomping down on his, and sending a fist into his gut as you ran to Pea. He didn’t care about anyone else at that moment because Fangs and the others were taking care of Tanner.

“Let’s go upstairs”

You made your way upstairs Pea letting you lean on him than helping you slowly sit on the couch before the familiar pain came again but so, so much stronger. You watched as pea keeled over just as you did and a whimper came from your mouth to which his wolf whimpered right back walking over so you could nuzzle your head into his neck. His wolf was hoping the scent would calm you down.

“Did you feel it too Pea?”

“Yeah, why? Did you? It was you earlier too wasn’t it? Fuck I knew something was wrong what’s going on?”

“I wish I knew, hopefully, it'll go away soon though”

“Yeah, hopefully. Now let’s get you home

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You were building a new nest waiting for Pea to get home. You had taken pillows from everywhere you could possibly think of. Every sweatshirt Pea had ever left you, every shit, every sock you needed his scent you craved it. But it was odd, this didn’t feel like it usually is when you were going into heat.

“Hey, babe how are…” Pea looked to you down on the floor slowly building up your nest. “What are ya doing?”

“nothin, relaxing” and you went right back to what you were doing instantly. For months now Pea had been having these very strong urges to protect you his mate, but he could never figure out why he figured that maybe his world was just on edge since mating and bonding with you. But that definitely was not it, he knew it was more than that, and seeing you today proved it to him. Something was definitely wrong and he would be damned if he didn’t figure out what it was. He then felt that familiar kick into his stomach again as he saw your hand reach to your stomach and you coil over as a whimper came from you. Pea then comforted you for a bit after that until you finally fell asleep, and he had a chance to call the pack doctor who confirmed his worry right over the phone.

You slept for hours after that, something you usually didn’t do. You were not one to take naps, not one to sleep during the day always waiting till the last possible minute, but not after the episode of kicking you felt. And now Sweet Pea knew exactly why you were feeling it all, and he had to be the one to break it to you. But first, he had some things to get done…

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The next morning you woke up to the smell of pancakes like you have been the last few months. But they smelt so much sweeter so much better to you. You ran out to the kitchen hugging Pea from behind.

“Thank you!”

“For what?”

“Being you… are they my favorite”

“Of course they are, why would I ever make anything else, grab a plate” You grabbed two out of the cabinet, as Pea stacked up some pancakes on both giving you way more as per usual recently.

“Can you stop that…”

“I can’t, just please don’t argue right now Y/N I gotta talk to you”

“Uhm, okay, uh can you grab me the hot sauce” he looked over at you so odd as you had already poured the maple syrup all over your pancakes.

“Why do you need the hot sauce”

“I want it for my pancakes”

“What the fuc… wait nevermind. Yeah, here now sit down we need to talk”

“Pea, what’s going on?”

“Well remember when we mated for the first time when I uh ya know… uhm”

“What? came inside me?”

“Yeah… well, I uh called the doctor last night because you’ve been acting so off, and you’ve been gaining a little weight along with all the pain in your stomach”

“No, I haven't! And the only reason I’m getting big is because your fucking ass won't stop feeding me shit!!”

“Baby girl you may not realize it but you definitely have been, and no the weight is not because of me… well, it may be a bit but I’m only feeding you more because my wolf knows that you are pregnant.” He didn’t mean to just come outright and say it but shit happens.

“I’m sorry, repeat that”

“Pregnant…”

“There's no way…”

“I talked to the doctor, you must have still been in heat, I think your scent was masked by mine after we mated and everything and I just didn’t realize. I am so fucking sorry I should have been more careful should have tried to pull out and now your pregnant and it is all my fucking fault and I am so so sorry”

“Pea calm down, everything is going to be fine, but… wait that means that I’m what 6 months?”

“Yeah babe, we have a pup coming soon”

“We’re gonna be parents Pea”

“Yeah baby we are, I love you so so much”

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Now with a month to go, you were constantly trying to build your nest bigger and bigger constantly taking the clothes that Pea would throw away into the hamper. He had to actually end up buying new ones because you even stole all the clothes from his place when you were over one night.

“Hey baby, how is your nest coming?”

“Great, do you like it?”

“Baby Uhm I do, I love it but I wanted to ask you something”

“Okay, what is it?”

“Would you maybe want to move in with me, I have a whole room you can have just for your nest and, and then we could sleep in each other's arms every night”

“Is this nest not good enough?” “No baby I love this nest so much, but if you let me I want to take everything that is here and bring it to my place. Our pup is coming soon and I would really love it if I could fit in the closet with you when your giving birth” You felt your baby kick, they were getting stronger by the day. It was somewhat a sign, a sign telling you to go with Pea. A sign telling you that you were not alone anymore that you finally had someone on your side, and that you would never be alone again.

“I wanna move in with you Pea”

“Really!”

“Mhm,” He came over scooping you off the floor and wrapping you in the best way he could consider your belly was very prominent.

That same month you began moving into the old house that Sweet Pea hadn’t been in since he was a child. See when he was 18 he moved out too afraid to live in the big house on his own, but his grandmother had left it to him when she passed so it was his. He began cleaning it up when he turned 20 knowing he would eventually need a house one day, and he was so glad he did because he could not give you and your baby the lives you both deserved. Your new nest was separate from the nursery he began building with Fangs. It was about double the size of your previous nest and Pea had even gifted you some blankets for it. More blankets than you’d ever need but it made it so soft and cozy he even slept with them for a few days so his scent was around every inch. It was the best your nest had ever been. He even bought string lights and little things to hang and place around. It was the first time your nest was wholeheartedly you and smelled just like him making your comfort increase instantaneously.

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Home birth was the way you wanted to go. You hated hospitals, hated needles and you wanted to do it all on your own. I mean it was only one pup and you were not alone. With the exception of Pea and a few friends in the trailer just in case you needed them due to an emergency you felt like you were at peace, ready to bring your pup into the world.

Your pregnancy wasn’t hard only really the last couple weeks. The back pain was worse than any heat pains you had ever felt. Luckily Pea stayed by your side not leaving to even take a shower unless he had brought you in with him. Whenever you would whimper he would give a croon in response giving you a sense of relief, and comfort. Without him, you definitely would not have made it through.

You knew it was getting closer. You wouldn’t leave your nest not even for a second. Pea ended up sleeping with you on the floor because of it. You were sleeping peacefully beside him until you felt a wet spot pool around you body as you were slowly waking up and hits of intense pain rolling through you, Sweet Pea shooting up directly after hearing your loud whimper the loudest he had ever heard come out of you, almost as bad as when you got attacked from the ghoulies.

You had made Pea get Toni and Fangs, You couldn’t handle him letting go of your hand and you needed someone to help deliver the babies. Usually, it was only an Alpha and their mate but at that moment you needed all the support you could get.

You pushed for an hour before the baby came A little boy. Maddox. You both laid shirtless next to one another as you held the little boy in your arms, scenting him instantly. But the joy stopped all too soon you felt the familiar pain of the contractions once again. And you screamed out in agony. You were afraid that something was wrong.

“Baby hey what’s wrong”

“Pea, Pea! I feel it again what’s going on.

“Hey shh it’s gonna be fine okay. Fangs can you take Maddox and get him cleaned up.” Tears started welling in your eyes as you looked away from him trying to sit up and he pushed you down just slightly. His wolf knew you were scared his wolf could feel it but he could see it “Baby look at me” but you couldn’t too focused on the pain and if you were gonna be okay, and where your baby was. “Look at me y/n” a croon coming from deep inside got your focuses as you brought your eyes to meet his “yeah that’s my girl just keep your eyes on me okay, your gonna be fine I promise” You pushed again feeling the familiar wave as you heard the wails of a boy you figure it was Fangs bringing Maddox back in but soon another baby was placed onto your chest.

“Pea what…”

“We had another little boy Y/N, fuck baby you're doing so good, oh fuck I shouldn’t curse, sorry. Baby, you did so so good, God I love you” Your second baby boy

You had both your babies laying on your chest until you felt the familiar pain come once again, Pea helping you push through it. And the cries different from what you previously heard and a baby being placed on your chest as you felt a wet teardrop onto your chest as you looked up to see Pea placing the baby on you and him crying.

“It’s a baby girl Y/N, we have a little girl” Jinx.

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That was the last baby you had that night. Three little ones. Triplets. You knew your life would be a whole lot crazier than on out. A little girl with 2 “older” brothers and a badass for dad. You couldn’t wait to see Pea be their father. You looked over to see him in the chair having skin to skin contact with all of them as you were getting cleaned up. Now Sweet Pea was the father of 3 pups Maddox, Aleric, and Jinx. Three kids under the age of 1, oh boy would the toddler years be tough, and oh god you couldn’t even begin to fathom the teenage years. But you wouldn’t want to be a parent with anyone else other than your Sweetest Pea.

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