#i keep editing this for accuracy lmao

[fanfictin]

a heros consequences

this entire thing needs soo much editing akfjajdj but just got to put it Somewhere for now

.

Technically, someone was always trying to 'get' the hero. It was how /being/ a hero had to work.

But, as Tails glanced over his shoulder for the upteenth time to make sure his brother was still stretched out on the sofa at the side of the workshop, despite the 'hero lifestyle', there were very few /real/ close calls with morality that haunted his dreams.

And this was going to now be one of them.

Tails exhaled shakily, forcing himself to turn back to the computer he sat in front of. He had patched sonic up best he could when they got back from the caved in factory, ignoring the weaker than usual protests against care. It wasn't like anything Sonic could say would erase the memory of him inches out of tails' grasp hitting the shallow water and immediately being lit up with what was easily lethal doses of electricity even without the lightshow and screaming of pain as surge advanced unflinching through the crackling--

The fox forcefully shook his body slightly to stop the scene from continuing in his mind. His eyes flicked from the main program he was /trying/ to work on as a distraction to the bottom left of his screen, where he'd brought up the built in link to his communication devices - though they did much more than just work as Comms. Ever concerned about his friends' wellbeing both in and out of adventures, each device had several distinct features, with the currently opened one a screen of tracking vitals.

It was one of the only things stopping him from curling up right next to his brother with an ear close enough to hear any changes in breathing or heartbeat that would indicate the slightest hint of something potentially deadly wrong. There was work to be done, so instead Tails had swallowed as much fear as he could and left Sonic to rest physically, while immediately bringing the vitals program up on the computer and pinning it to the corner before even starting to try and find something useful to work on. Still, despite its several built in alarms for various states and statistics, his gaze kept sliding to the numbers, double checking for any arrhythmia or drop in stats. Anything that would be the only input he needed to drop everything and take his brother to an actual hospital or something so someone /else/ who knew better could tell him that it would be okay, electricity didn't mess with people's heart rates or anything, doesn't mess with your brain's signals, isn't as deadly as lighting in thunderstorms…

A nearby creak made Tails jump an embarrassing amount, and he quickly gritted his teeth against the shock and thoughts that kept crowding him. He was fine. Sonic was fine. They escaped. It was over. For now, at least.

He glanced at the clock on the wall that suddenly sounded obnoxiously loud. It was almost time to wake Sonic anyway. Given the electrocution and recent beating, he would need a lot of rest, but concern about how hard he had hit one of the tanks - hard enough to /crack/ it on inpact when surge hit him back with metal - with his head, leaving a noticeable mark, Tails had quickly decided that being shaken awake every hour or so was more important to avoid coma complications from head trauma than sleeping off probable broken ribs was.

Quietly, he slipped out of his chair, glad at least for something that needed him to physically move, and padded over to his brother's back that faced him on the sofa.

Sonic looked asleep, but a frown on his face and crossed arms even with his body half curled into the pillows suggested it wasn't a pain-free rest. Tails worried his lip as he slowly reached out to carefully shake the available shoulder, making sure not to get pricked by any quills.

"Sonic? Can you hear me? I just need to check your eyes."

Despite keeping his voice soft, Tails shook the hedgehog slightly more firmly when there wasn't a real response, until Sonic groaned and half rolled towards the interruption, managing to squint open an eye after several blinks.

"Mm? Tails? Wha's up?"

His words were slightly slurred, but Tails was happy to chalk that up to exhaustion without further evidence of serious injury, and he gave an encouraging smile as he raised a small torch in his other hand into sonics sight.

"Cmon, you know the drill," he cajoled, trying for a more casual tone, "both eyes open for a second. Up and at 'em."

Sonic groaned with slightly more lucidity, and slowly opened his other eye, still half squinting in the dim workshop light. Tails quickly clicked on his tool and carefully watched as pupils sluggishly followed it to one side, slowly shrinking against the close brightness. Tails switched off the torch with a hum.

"Slightly better," he allowed, watching as sonic grumbled and screwed his eyes shut in an attempt to reset his now spotlighted vision. "Do you know where we are?" Tails pressed, ignoring the huff in reply.

"Workshop," sonic mumbled after a beat.

"That'll do," Tails allowed only slightly reluctantly. Precise location could come later. "What's your name?"

This time sonic slipped open an eye again to offer a disbelieving look. "Sonic the hedgehog," he replied with a hint of bemusement and clearer than the last answers.

Tails smirked at the attention, mood slightly lifted by a show of his brother's usual humour. "Just gotta make sure that tussle with metal didn't knock anything important around, big bro," he responded with the smirk.

Sonic huffed again, but it was more of amusement this time. Tails' grin faded into a more sincere smile.

"Did you need anything else? Hows the leg?"

"Eh. Still healing. It'll get there," sonic replied tonelessly, almost subconsciously tucking the rebandaged limb more into himself as he already started to shift in facing the back of the sofa comfortably again, tiredness quickly pulling him back under. The amusement slipped away as Tails watched the hedgehog flinch when the right side of his face touched the sofa cushions again, the covered injury from hitting the tank still sore of sudden pressure.

Tails grimaced in concern at the clear signs of a fight on his older brother. Fur was sticking up in wrong directions, dotted with blood here and there, and small gashes littered the blue body. Some were hidden under square plasters pressed against skin on his limbs and head. Neither of them were unpractised at treating the odd visible injury, but this…

It was a lot. It was a real close call. The physical injuries, the electrocution, the water damage, the /finger marks/ around his neck--

Surge had really been trying to kill him. Trying to /end his life/ to gain her freedom, as she put it.

They all liked to give benefit of the doubt. That was another thing heroes did. But there was no mistaking someone's intentions when Tails was mere metres above, watching in horror as she simultaneously tried to electrocute and strangle and drown in an attempt to /kill/ while he could do /nothing/.

His own slight knock to the head had made their escape a little fuzzy after helping sonic out the water, so consumed with fear and worry he couldnt articulate more than /oh my gosh/ even as his brother tried to put on a shaky smile and make a joke about the water.

But he remembered gripping the metal bar, his fingers strong next to sonic's slipping grasp, helping his brother over the last edge, glaring at eggman together, and then trudging out of the collapsed factory. Adrenaline had began to wear off, clearer on sonic as his trembling escalated to shaking only minutes into their walk away from the city. They had left the tornado just outside of it, barely half an hour away even at a normal pace, but when sonic stumbled so bad he had to lean heavily against a tree to keep from collapsing, breathing harshly with a hand pressed to his chest, tails had thrown concealing his concern to the wind and pulled the hedhogs free arm around his shoulders, getting a good grip before quickly flying them forward so sonics feet barely touched the ground.

His mind had raced between the restoration, a hospital, maybe shadow or chaos emeralds themselves as he got them back to the plane with his brothers pained grunts and uneven breaths in one ear, wondering if the sound were so unusual that they could be classed as /dying/ noises worthy of some emergency reaction--

It wasn't until he was trying to bundle sonic into the back seat of the tornado that he had realised he was being talked to.

"'m okay, Tails. Just a bit…" Sonic tried to take a deep inhale, as shaky as it sounded, in an attempt to calm his little brother's impossibly wide eyes, "a bit out of breath," he admitted, clumsily patting Tails' grip on his shoulder in what was hopefully reassurance.

It didn't feel that much better to get acknowledgment of /struggle/, unfortunately.

Tails did pause though, trying to slow his panicked thoughts down enough to take in his brother's state - bruised and battered, yes, but alive. His breathing was still slightly forced, and there was a lazy drop of blood clinging to a small wound just under one slightly torn ear, but he was talking and conscious, and the trembling had calmed to the occasional shiver.

"Does it hurt?" Tails asked, realising he had yet to reply, eyes still wide on smudged red mixed in with blue fur.

Sonic grimaced for a second before raising an eyebrow. "Anything in particular you're talking about?"

"Is it hard to breathe? Do you need medical help? I can call someone at the restoration, or, or knuckles could come get us--"

"Tails, hey, it's okay. I'm--" Unfortunately the attempted reassurance was again ruined as sonic coughed and wheezed for a second, retreating the hand he tried to place on Tails' shoulder to cover his face.

Catching his breath, he managed a shaky but sure smile, and Tails finally felt some of the blind fear fall away.

"Let's just go home, kid. I could do with a nap, at least."

So Tails had nodded numbly and made sure his brother was strapped in and safe before settling himself into the seat in front and automatically starting their way back.

.

Which led to now. Where sonic was still banged up, still shaky in body, and definitely exhausted everywhere.

Tails looked down at his brother quickly slipping back into sleep after being woken for coherence. This really had been a close call. Too close.

Aside from his already injured ankle and knee, his ear had been daubed with cream along with the small head wound underneath, and several scrapes disinfected and covered. It was the internal damage that was the most worrying.

But no alarms had gone off still, and when Tails hesitantly pulled himself away from the sofa to head back to the computer, his gaze immediately watched the vitals monitor calmly measure what would usually be an alarmingly fast rate, but for sonic it read as natural, even slightly slow in his rest.

The only arrhythmic movements reported was a slight jump when there was a sudden ringing as tails sat down, making him startle aswell.

Quickly, he answered the communicator call. "Hello?"

"Tails! Thank goodness. Whisper said you'd gone to get her wisps, so when they came back alone, she came to ask if we'd seen you, but no one had- wait, is sonic with you?"

It took a moment for Amy's voice to register and then its content to sink in enough for a reply.

"Oh, um, yeah, we're both here," he managed, pausing to remember what Amy had started with. "Oh, they went straight back, I should have figured," he realised. Granted, he had been half out of his mind with fright that sonic was imminently dying at the time, so it was possible he lost track of the wisps that had left the factory with them before disappearing at some point.

There was a sigh of relief and muffled talking in the background. Tails' gaze went back to sonic who shifted slightly on the sofa.

Amy's voice returned, "As long as you're both safe. Are you heading back now then?"

Innocent enough question, but even the thought of being anywhere but /home/ (or the closest thing they'd ever had to it) right now after such an experience put a lump in his throat. He swallowed.

"We're staying here," he replied, knowing it lacked information by the hesitant silence on the other end. "Sonic's…" The stress of the day, and the last few days, was catching up, tears beginning to threaten to breed. "She went after him, Amy," he half whispered, tone dropping as if speaking it quietly made it less real. "She was trying to- she wanted to /get/ him."

For once, Amy did not demand details or panic about injury. There was something in the fox's voice that kept hers as quiet as though calm.

"Okay. Okay. Do you need medical help?" She asked, background fading as she assumingly sought privacy for the conversation. "How bad is it?"

"I… I've done what I can," Tails rubbed an arm over his face despite its dryness, refusing to let that change. "And I'm monitoring him. He, uh, said that there was some numbness, sort of tingling in his hands, but I think I can. Well, I'm. I'm watching out for anything. He'll be okay."

It felt like more reassurance to himself rather than for someone who didn't know the situation, but Tails couldn't bring himself to care that much. Electrocution couldn't be messed with - he'd had enough accidental shocks with inventions to know that if nothing else. He wasn't an expert, but neither was he clueless. It would be enough.

There were a few more quiet but persistently vague details exchanged, before Amy made him promise to check in later and Tails did his best to actually focus on the computer programme to make some progress for some time.

A glance at the clock next showed another hour had passed recently. Surprised but grateful that he had actually managed to get work done for a good amount of time, Tails stretched and clicked on the still linked communicator window; in the longest gap yet between checking it, the report showed vitals were stabilising well and already resembling more normal baselines that they had never been /that/ far off.

More residual fear slipping off his shoulders, Tails sighed out a deep breath and glanced at the sofa only once before shuffling out the room into the kitchen, returning less than a minute later with a mug of juice and heading to his brother's sleeping form.

"Sonic. Hey."

This time the hedgehog reacted at the first tapping of his shoulder, groaning before shuffling to push himself up slightly as he turned around. "This again? Already?" He grumbled without heat, nevertheless keeping his eyes half open to eye his little brother grumpily.

Tails gave a half sympathetic smile. "Indulge a little brother's worries," he wheelded, but the tone was only half teasing. "Do you remember where you are?"

"Workshop. I'm sonic the hedgehog and my brother is a genius that needs to sleep more because he clearly doesn't know how it's meant to work."

Sonic stuck out his tongue slightly and Tails wouldve been worried it was lingering muscle spasms if not for the certain glint in his brother's eye that wasn't there before. Playing along, he raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? So you /don't/ want this juice? Waking up tomorrow with a dehydration headache is how to /properly/ sleep?" He retorted, no bite whatsoever to the teasing words.

Their eyes met for a moment in a typical sibling standoff. Then sonic chuckled and carefully pushed himself out a little more. Tails grinned and offered the mug when he was appropriately reclined more upright than flat, enough to drink the liquid without choking on it and causing more unecesary drama for the day.

"Thanks, tails," sonic murmured as he carefully took the mug in both hands and sipped with it close to his face, a barely visible trembling passing through the grip occasionally. Tails purses his lips.

"How's your hands?" He asked quietly, crouching down slightly so not to be looming above his brother. "Are they any less tingly?"

Sonic took another sip as he considered, turning one of them over in thought. "Not as numb," he agreed. Tails sighed in relief.

"That's good. Any dizziness or nausea? Does your chest hurt?"

After taking another sip, sonic shook his head slightly. "Just feelin' a bit drained, 's all," he smiled, and it was only slightly off.

Regardless, tails smiled back, a lot more relaxed than his previous run through of questions. He waited for sonic to drink about half the juice before offering to take the mug from trembling hands. sonic accepted and yawned, stretching his arms by his sides as tails put the mug down nearby and turned back to the sofa.

"Do you want anything else, or-" Tails started, only to be interrupted by a hand on one arm.

"I want /you/," sonic tugged slightly, making tails fall in a controlled manner down next to him on the sofa, "to relax, buddy. I'm safe. You're here. We're okay now."

As he reassured, sonic lightly moved his hands through yellow fur, ruffling the kit's head affectionately. Tails tried not to melt into the touch too much and put him off.

Still, it wasn't quite enough to calm the dread that had clenched into a ball in his chest ever since he saw the cubes disappear under his brother's feet with only water and danger waiting hungrily below. The way he flew down after him, their fingers centremetres apart when he landed, the shallow water barely softening the hard fall against stone and nothing blocking out the scream that followed when electricity surged through the liquid and seized his body.

Tails found himself the one to shiver now, the memory still horrifyingly fresh even as physically he could feel sonics arm draped around his shoulders, a little too tight to be completely casual.

He glanced to the side, meeting his brother's wary eyes. "I just…" He began without being sure how to phrase what he was feeling. Sonic nodded anyway.

"I know, bud. It's been a lot."

And that was all there was to say, in the end. Tails leaned against the warm solid form of his brother, and sonic sighed slowly, letting his aching body rest against the soft sofa, holding his little brother closer than usual. A hero's work was never easy, and it was never done. He did it because he wanted to, mostly. But at times like this, when the one out to get them had almost succeeded, it struck a stark reminder of mortality in such a lifestyle.

Still, they suffered close calls before. There was no time to look back, and it was not in sonic the hedgehog's interests to /dwell/ on what ifs. No matter how unclear things seemed, moving forward was the only option he was willing to take.

They were together, and alive, and /that/ was what mattered. Sonic tightened his grip to press his little brother against him for a moment, drawing comfort and courage equally from the contact. Tails glanced up at him with slight confusion, but didn't say anything. He smiled and it was only a small bit off.

"It's good, little bro," he nudged the kid affectionately to draw a giggle and his own smile felt more natural. "It'll be just fine."

[tornoleander]

men whimpering pt 3 still hasnt met the goal!!! do you still plan on continuing the series??

Ah shit someone remembered I made those LMAO

I probably will eventually the clip gathering is a pain but the comments are the best thing ever and it’s quite fun to edit but I have other projects first my YouTube upload plan right now is:

1. Skybound Video

Really the accumulation of my S6 Fixation will talk about everything that I love in skybound but also FINALLY lay out all horrors. Skybound discomfort explained. Trying to see all sides and be as objective as possible emphasizing canon/implications/theory Will be voice reveal also I guess lol. The episode summary’s at the beginning should be funny.

2. Animatic

Been working on since December. I’m like, Half done. Posted some bits. Very angsty keeping it for the adult audience only. Won’t talk to much here unless I get asks. But I will post what can be enjoyed separately here disconnected. Cause I trust YouTube more at keeping out the kids.

3. Ninjago but only when men are whimpering.

Yes my channel’s tone is… eh not what I want but that’s not new. (I’m two lazy for two Ninjago accounts to organize my madness)

Once I’m done with the first two I will likely change the goal to 666 likes which we are close too. The only way I would prioritize 3 is if it was getting close to my ridiculous like goal.

I did collect and edit down clips from just Skybound already because I was rewatching it for other reasons and oof. The tone 😭 it’s so funny in a dark humor way like… Jay after learning he’s adopted. I- won’t say more but it’s a lot.

I need to finish this very important analysis of ninja over the seasons. I am very confident in my accuracy and standards.

[callsign-rogueone]

It’s been way past 30 mins, but sending anyway just because I love you 💕

What’s your favorite thing about writing/what got you into writing?

-fw-gt

and this response is way past due lol oops

what got me into writing was my middle school friend introducing me to the strange new world of Dr. Who fanfiction. that was a very short-lived phase for me, since I wasn't really into the show, but the idea that I could write about other people's characters just... doing stuff was life changing. literally.

I've made so many friends through fic and fandom since then (love u all) and writing in already-developed worlds has really helped me with my composition skills! I'm very very slowly writing a fluffy but also deeply emotional romance novel on the side that we won't talk about (unless you ask, then I'll tell you everything. I'm actually in love with it, but it needs some spaghetti throwing and accuracy checks before it can go much further, hence why it's on the back burner lol)

my favorite thing about writing... I can't pick one, so here's two (you know how indecisive I am.)

I said this above but the community and the friends I've made!! the social aspect is definitely a big part of it for me. being able to talk about all this and play sandbox with y'all (see my last post lol) is so fun and has helped brighten each one of my days for the last six months (I started writing FW in January. that's wild to think about.) I'd been posting on this blog on and off with diff fandoms and random stuff for years, but nothing has stuck like fourth wing, and that's 1000% because of y'all. muah.

it's an outlet for me personally. this all started with Garrick and Angel, which I honestly didn't think would go anywhere. when I posted it, I told myself I would be happy if it got two likes, because I wrote it for myself -- Angel is me, just in a different universe. she's got chronic pain, anxiety, and a lot of the personality traits I have. and while I promise you I will never assign physical traits to the girls in my writing, since they're a reader insert, and I want all of us girls to be included and be able to "be" Angel, or Darling, etc., I'll admit that Angel is implied to be on the thicker side, since she's me, lmao. but I think it's still neutral enough, since gare is a giant, so he's bigger than any of us. love me a big boi. I want to feel small too, okay 🥺

anyway, the idea of having someone like Garrick be there for her through that all is helpful to me. it's a little escape from my current situation, a daydream of sorts, without pretending that I'm healthy or not in pain, but actually acknowledging that and making it part of the story, having Angel have a reason she's in pain all the time -- I say, as I'm laying here, answering asks because I can't sleep because of this mystery illness and the pain it's causing me right now lmao

similarly, and in a combo of both points: hearing from you guys that you feel seen in the girlfriends, or that my work cheers you up, that kind of stuff. seeing that y'all relate to the girls is heartbreaking sometimes, especially the ones that have been through the wringer (honestly, they've all been through the wringer, but you know what I mean -- the more anxious, insecure ones) but also it makes me feel like my thoughts are worth writing down and editing and posting, because people will see they're not alone, and can live that distant, "happy" scenario of a character they love helping them through things they're struggling with in real life.

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

that's all I have for now, partially because my brain is fried, but also because if I keep talking about this I'll cry.

just know that I love and cherish each and every one of you, you're nor alone, and our boys love you all too. and the girls (I've been neglecting them lately. oops.) anyway, muah (goodnight kiss). go get some sleep, because I'm not going to anytime soon.

[jaynovz]

20 questions for fic writers!

tagged by @septemberskye 🥰

It took me so long to get round to this I think the whole pirate and sunder fam have already done it 🙈😔😭 ummm please take this as invitation to do it if you see it and want to 💜

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

48. Notably, 19 of those are podfic. 🎙️💪

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 

380,544 💪💪💪

3. What fandoms do you write for? 

Mostly Black Sails, but have also written for Cobra Kai, OFMD, and Sunder City/The Fetch Phillips Archives. Will probably write OPLA fic here sometime soon.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? 

1. some ancient call, 7k, OFMD. A creature rom com I wrote right after s1. Weird, funny, and sweet.

2. Strike Hard, 4k, Cobra Kai/Karate Kid. LawRusso do the classic fighting to fucking. Baby's first porn in like 6 years to that point. Also written right after s1.

3. in over our heads, 13k, Black Sails. The first fic I wrote for Silverflint, called Flogging Verse because the events play out after Silver is flogged post 2.1 for firing on the warship.

4. don't let me in with no intention to keep me, 7k, Black Sails, nicknamed Petplay. Silver and Flint discover some things about themselves mid s2. Still one of like, hmmm four total petplay fics in the fandom.

5. the sweetest devotion, hitting me like an explosion, 39k, Black Sails, nicknamed Cupcakes AU. A bakery-street performer romcom, the only time I've give the boys a no strings attached happy ending.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? 

Religiously, lol. And it's because I want to talk about my story! I spent a lot of time on it so I take any chance to ramble more with someone who did me the compliment of reading it.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Definitely hand in unlovable hand aka The Worst Ending. Second place is Hanahaki.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? 

Cupcakes AU 🧁 Generally speaking, if you're looking for unambiguously happy endings, you've come to the wrong place lol. However, if you want a fluff cheat sheet--besides Cupcakes, you can also check out the Soft Verse, Milkingfic, Bellyfic, and the Halloween Corn Maze fic.

8. Do you get hate on fics? 

 Thankfully no 💜

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? 

Lmao indeed. It's part of my Brand at this point. Love to use sex and kink as tools to dissect characters. Altered states my beloved.

What kind is a mix of if something tickles my brain/what the story needs, though you will most always find some amount of powerplay dynamics.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? 

Ummm, back in middle school I wrote some crossovers, but none recently.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? 

Not that I am aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

Not yet!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? 

Yep. Many of my early offerings to the Black Sails fandom were collabs.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Oh You Know... (It's Silverflint)

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The Black Sails post canon Fix It Fic that started it all. It's just very complex, which is why it was abandoned in the first place. And there are some other factors that just make it untouchable.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Overarching structure/plot beats, poetic language, characterization, conveying emotion, searing hot smut and kink.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Editing full stop. Historical/period accuracy type details. I have to do buckets of research for that kind of stuff. External pressures on the characters. I'm very very good at the zoomed in relationship view, but expanding/getting outside of their heads is not something I've done a lot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? 

It's fine, as long as there's a story reason for it to be there.

19. First fandom you wrote for? 

InuYasha when I was about twelve years old. Those stories have since fallen into the void.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Break Up AU of course :)))) My baby, my masterpiece, my heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears. I was definitely possessed the year it took to write it.

--

Thanks for tagging me <3

[shivunin]

Happy anniversary to me and AO3!!

Here is the aforementioned more coherent post. I have divided it in two parts: a little note and a silly and self-indulgent section (affectionate) where I give some of my fics fun lil superlatives. I'll add a couple little factoids to the latter section, too, just for giggles.

But before all that: I'm not gonna get emotional this time, but I have greatly enjoyed writing Dragon Age fic. I told myself three things when I started, all of them comically incorrect now ("I'm only writing this one story," "I will never write a soulmate AU," and "I will never write a DA2 story; no way could I ever hold a candle to what already exists") and I am so, so glad I was wrong on all counts. I have grown so much as a writer because of fic and I have met some genuinely remarkable people. If you have ever commented, written something in the tags, kudo'd, or bookmarked anything I've written (and especially if you have ever sent me a writing prompt, bless you), from the bottom of my heart: thank you. It has been genuinely incredible to share my love of this series with y'all, and I can only hope you have felt as glad of the experience as I have.

That's really all you need to know---that I'm glad to know you, in whatever sense that means. Thanks for sticking around c:

(and thanks to Cullen for scrambling my brain so thoroughly that I am still doing this a year later when I swore it was just going to be the one story lol)

Anyways! (she says, setting up the cake and candles and kazoos even though the room is otherwise empty)---

I was thinking about what to do for this anniversary that only I am keeping track of, and I decided (because of a trip I took when I was sixteen, which I originally recounted here, but which has no bearing on any of this so I cut it) that it would be funny to give my fics their own imaginary certificates. You know, like participation trophies. For my own entertainment (only a few though; there are twenty-three of them, and that's too many awards). Awards follow:

Best Punch: Your Fate for Mine; after I finished Trespasser the first time, I really wanted to deck Solas, so I let Cullen do it for me. It's the best one because it was the most satisfying to write C: (fun fact also: bless him, my husband proofread all the smut in this fic for accuracy lmao. special side award to my husband for being the best)

Best Kiss: Wander the Drifting Roads; nothing has yet felt as satisfying to me as Emma and Cullen kissing in the rain after all that time. I think about it Often. Also I wrote the first draft of this fic in roughly a week and a half---which is why it needed so much editing later :)

Most Persistent: To the Bone; because I swear to whatever higher power is out there, I tried so hard not to write a soulmate story but Salshira would not be stopped. In the end, I couldn't let the idea go and well, here we are.

Specialest Baby: Tidal Lock; because it is my special baby and the first fic I ever completed. I have a soft spot for it, and oddly enough it has the highest kudos: bookmarks ratio of my works at over half. It was extremely fun to write Cullen as a kid (he is soooo serious) and (for me) there's such a pleasant full-circle element to the narrative.

Best Smut: More than Memory; this one is my imaginary people's choice award, since it was received far and away the best of any smut I've written. I think, and it's just my intuition here, that it's on account of all the yearning. But maybe it's actually cus Cullen is, as always, a hot, hot mess C:

Hyperfocus Award: This one's a tie between Misericordia and Saccharine. As soon as I knew what to write for both of them, I achieved that beautiful state of not noticing the passage of time, anyone around me, the existence of my physical body, nor any of my pressing irl tasks. I wrote both of these in a delightful fog and then came back to it later as if seeing it for the first time. Extremely nice experience, 10/10, would recommend.

Blue Ribbon, Gold Star: A Golden Bell Hung In My Heart; this one gets a special extra award because I think it's probably the best thing I've written so far (at least from a technical standpoint, but it has a lot of my favorite elements, as well). It's one of the few for which I knew what I was trying to write when I set out to write it, and I think I achieved it unequivocally. Also, you know. Presents :)

Tumblr Ficlet Award: lol I am not picking only one. Here're my top three ficlets, based on how pleased with myself I felt when I initially typed them out: Lock and Key (I loooooove a good hurt/comfort), A Fool and His Gold (love yearning, too), and A Bond Beheld (because it includes that knight/liege thing that makes the Cullen romance so!!!).

For posterity: Unless I finish this short fenris/hawke piece open in the other tab, my final word count last year is 516,937 which is....a shocking amount. I probably won't surpass that this year, which is fine. I had no idea I had at least 450,000 words to say about Cullen, but hey, here we are.

That's it for this year---and I have no idea if I'll do this again next year---but thanks if you've read this far! I really wanted an excuse to think back on what I've written this year and have a little laugh to myself :) Have a good Thursday and...yeah. Thanks for reading!

[genericpuff]

k but i actually love this because i'm a tattoo artist and every time i read/watch stories with tattoo artists in them people ALWAYS fuck it up

but that booth setup looks spot on with the flash art on the walls and the little terrarium/aquarium (?) in the corner for the lil' shop pet (every shop needs one <3), that's an actual legit coil machine, and you even included the stencil of the new girl's name on the client's skin which a lot of people don't take into account when depicting this sort of thing (there's this idea that the artist is just tattooing onto bare skin without a guide which isn't the case at all LMAO)

and I've legit tattooed people like this where they just never learn after the 5th cover-up and keep getting their gf's names tattooed on them anyways LOL

edit: NVM I TAKE IT BACK ABOUT THE NAME THING, THERE'S A TWIST IN THIS COMIC THAT'S SO WHOLESOME PLS GO READ IT ‼️‼️‼️💕

the only thing that annoys me is that the guy puts his stinky fat finger on his skin when he points to the stencil but that's the client's fault, not yours and lends even more to the accuracy because people do this ALL the time and it drives me NUTS LOL remember to look don't touch when you're going under the needles folks, your fingers are nasty ~

Good luck in the competition!!! I know it's probably not a voting thing but you have my vote :D

My entry for this year’s International Manga School Competition! It’ll be my last time entering, but I think this is still some of the strongest work I’ve ever made. Please read it if you have the time!

Keep reading

[tartrazeen]

Hank's Arc through HankCon

If the magazines in this game are supposed to be symbolic, then holy shit, does it say something that the first magazine we see in a scene for Hank and Connor is that one for the Eden Club ("Sex with androids is awesome possum, gentlemen"), followed by the second article on 'Is your android spying on you?'

It's a canon fact that androids are hot. That little quip from Ben going, "So, you got yourself an android, huh?" gets us that, "Haha, very funny," line from Hank, which goes noticeably unexplained. There was a great Hankcon theory from igamrgirlzunite explaining this, as well as for that magazine in Hank's room at his own house, and it builds into the famous exchange at the Bridge with Hank asking what Connor really is.

For this magazine though, it's neat to see it symbolize a surface attraction - from Hank to Connor, playing neatly into that does-not-need-explaining-apparently joke from Ben - followed by a deep mistrust for anything Connor says.

This scene can open with Hank feeling neutral because Connor bought him a drink, or pissed that Connor's an asshole. It can also have Hank annoyed at Connor for insisting on coming along because his instructions say to, yet still getting a little boost in their relationship from it. Tying those two articles of the magazine together, we've got a guy who thinks that no matter what Connor's like on the surface, underneath he's a machine designed to fool Hank into being friends (which Hank throws at him in the Machine!Connor path). It's all a ruse to manipulate Hank into lowering his guard, and this first magazine is telling us how Hank feels about that: he ain't havin' it, and it'd be better if Connor just admits that that's what's happening.

If Connor apologizes at the Chicken Feed, Hank comments on it being a brown-nosing program. Later, Hank says Connor's got a goofy voice and weird face. But he's not a guy who's shy about being harsh or blunt ("Well they fucked up" is literally his next line), so for him to pick 'goofy' over 'ugly' or something implies a certain fondness for what he's seeing, coupled with an extreme aversion to being tricked into liking it - so, the canon lets Hank bury it under being a dick.

The magazine at Hank's house later says androids make for better romantic partners (which is what CyberLife specifically intends for the 'other North' - that BL model), but gets followed by the deeper layer/article on androids' active psychology programs.

It's a more elaborate take on the first magazine's symbolism: instead of just being a boytoy, Hank should have a better sense of who Connor in terms of a partner, and would be wondering why in hell Connor takes so much of an interest in him. He's moved on from thinking Connor's spying to learn which details can buy Hank's cooperation, because he's already asked Connor about that at the Chicken Feed. The question isn't *if* Connor was reading up on him - that's assumed. Hank's asking what Connor *thinks* of all of it, what he wants that information for. Just work? Maybe... not all for work?

Even if Connor puts Hank at ease, it only crosses off one of the theories Hank has. This second magazine now has him toying with whether Connor's pitying him for being some broken mess of a man, and planning to go when the mission's done and neatly tying in with Hank's outburst in the bathtub ("You and your fucking mission, that's all you care about").

Worse in Hank's opinion, and *as* a broken mess of a man, he might only be thinking Connor feels pity - or interest - because he can't tell what's sincere and what's just a psychological program any more. That draws on the two conclusions Connor could make to boost their relationship last chapter, but now we see Hank flipping in how he feels about being right: he's much less of a fan, and the personal questions at the Bridge start to *hit* their relationship as those thoughts dig in.

It puts Hank's reaction to the Tracis in better context. Connor shooting them confirms he's a machine accomplishing a mission. Connor sparing them freaks Hank right the fuck out, because holy shit, what if Connor *can* feel and might *actually* like Hank but fuck you, Connor, because if you could really feel, you'd panic when Hank puts a gun in your face, haha Professor Drunk strikes again.

That gun on the Bridge scene is like a precursor to the fucked up Kamski test that's coming. Hank's trying to figure out if all those thoughts he's had and hints he thinks Connor's been laying down are real or from a machine functioning according to plan. That's why it's great that Connor's wink back at the Chicken Feed blends in with Connor getting a report: did Hank really see it, or was he misinterpreting a machine's response to a new message?

When we get to the actual Kamski test offering 'proof' on whether Connor's a machine or not, Hank has backed off on wanting to know for sure. Not knowing leaves room for hope. Hope is safe, and hope comes with plausible deniability. Hope doesn't hurt. Because of Cole, we see how well Hank does with trying to come to grips with a painful reality. When the test is on, he's telling Connor not to do it, but we know he can yank the guy away from there. He doesn't. Because hope is also kinda tempting. The right answer might be waiting - he knows this whole thing is awful, he doesn't want that girl to get shot, but between that test's before and after, we see he's shifted from, "Don't play this stupid game, it doesn't matter, we don't care," to "Don't. Don't shoot. Decide your own fate and show me that you're real."

With how it goes, Hank can either take that as a fucking *rough* confirmation of exactly what he was afraid of (the "I thought you were..." line that trails off) or a pretty hopeful hint that... actually kinda sinks in for once. Hank lowers his guard. It's not a concrete confirmation of anything, obviously, but... it mattered. It's nice.

So that is why, upon meeting the Deviant Leader, Connor choosing to remain a machine is a HARD FUCKING BETRAYAL. Despite everything - despite how careful Hank was, how sure he was, how safe it seemed to try and trust Connor a little - Hank had been right from the start. And there's no coming back from that. Same with being such a dick to Hank that he quits anyway. It's not that Connor's alive but that Hank's alone, and he's too lost in it to care about anything else. He gives in to that darkness.

If instead you make it to CyberLife Tower, you've got the real and final test. It's not about whether Connor's alive or not. Hank knows he is, based on - or even despite of - everything that's happened so far. There's even room to argue that 'alive' isn't that important to Hank, either. He's interested in these androids' freedom, literally and conceptually, so this is about whether Connor freely feels something for Hank. Aliive or not, it doesn't mean it couldn't have all still just been to spy and out of psychological pity.

It's why it matters that Hank's asking questions. Even if you get one right, he just asks another. He knows Connor knows this stuff - does Connor *care*? Was there an inherent, personal interest in learning about things that weren't all just about work? Those personal questions that Hank found so annoying before, back when it could've been manipulation and programming - was that what it was, or was Connor genuinely asking? Was Hank right or wrong?

Connor would've had to put Hank above the revolution to get to this point, refusing to risk him even at the cost of losing these hundreds of thousands of androids they need. It means something. It clicks when Connor puts enough emotion into his 'final answer' for Hank to understand that no matter what it was before, it's real now. It had probably been real for a while.

It's also why 60's parting shot if Hank messes up ("Wrong choice, Lieutenant") cuts deeper in that moment than 60's victory quip when it's Connor choosing wrong ("He really liked you, Lieutenant. That's what killed him"). Both hammer home what Hank has lost, both pin it on Hank himself, but with Connor's memories, 60 can confirm that Hank just failed his own mission: he never learned to trust in what they could've had, and now because of him, they'll never have it.

Unless they do. And then they hug. :)

--

--

Edit: P.S - I lied, yes it fucking does get explained.

More Edit: sweet I found a Tumblr gif of that line

[dolliefrancais]

Learning about animal vocabulary in french with loona!

hiii, as an orbit and a beginner French learner, I wanted to start learning more about the vocabulary of animals in French by using my knowledge of loona to help memorise, since in loonaverse lore each moon girl has a specially assigned animal. I hope that this post will help you if you’re also learning French or just wanted to learn something new! also for members like Yeojin and Jinsoul who have preffered different animals than their loonaverse equivalent, I will provide translations for both animals, so sorry if that offends anyone! ALSO i cannot vouch for accuracy of each vocabulary word provided, since I am not a native French speaker and I am going off of my personal knowledge and from resources from google, some words might not be 100% correct, or widely used in certain French speaking areas and dialects, so pls keep that in mind ~ anyways lets begin!!! ALSO JUSTICE FOR CHUU and support Chuu’s new single collab, ‘dear my winter’ and ccdi!

1. Heejin - Rabbit / Lapin 

2. Hyunjin - Cat / Chat

(also check out this article for more information about cats in French, i’ve used this website before and it’s amazing, and I’ve used a lot of the information from there to make Hyunjin’s page!)

3. Haseul - Dove / Colombe 

(also I found like nothing about translations on doves in french online so the translations very well might be totally off oop-)

4 - Yeojin - Frog / La Grenouille  Bear / L’ours(e)

5. Vivi - Deer /  cervidés

(could you tell i was really confused lol 😭 I aw a lot of conflicting info so i checked out this old sketchy blog but the information seemed accurate! hopefully this isn’t super confusing lol but if you remember ‘cervidés’ and biche i believe that is all you would need to remember solely for deer, as im pretty sure ‘chevreuils’ and ‘chervettes’ are also the words for goats tho this is ony coming from my knowledge of the animal jam villager PLS)

6. Kim Lip - Owl / Chouette

7. Jinsoul . - Betta Fish / Betta Poisson  Tiger / Tigre(sse)

8. Choerry - bat / chauve souris 

9. Yves - swan / Cygne 

(the style changed bc my laptop died and I lost the template I had :/ atleast I stopped at oec so atleast theres some semblance of consistincy!)

10. Chuu - Penguins / Manchot (e)

(also justice for Chuu, and boycott bbc and all future loona projects under them!)

11. Gowon - Butterfly / Papillon 

12. Hyeju - Wolf / Loup / Louve

I hope this post was fun / helpful and that you were able to learn something new today!!! this took me wayyy too long with the image editing and the research I conducted, so please reblog if you liked this post! merci beacoup pour à lire, bonne journée!! (pretty sure i butchered that LMAO pls)

[preemshots]

johnny + the nomads lore

alright, i know this is a screenshots blog but i'm going to go ahead and start dropping some juicy lore tidbits as i dig them up. part of what i'm doing outside of just photo diarying is shard hunting, and BOY is there a lot the game likes to hide in those little shards for idiots like me who like to read so we can write unnecessarily accurate fanfiction! 

full disclosure, i know jack shit about the TTRPG/cyberpunk 2020 rulebook except what i read in the wikis. 

so here’s my lore roundup so far of everything i know about johnny joining the nomads

we know johnny likes to narrate v’s quest objectives. here’s the first mention where he says it himself: 

during the voodoo boys quest "transmission" there's a shard in the maglev tunnels beside the ice bath, presumably from brigitte's research into johnny in the first place:

okay, so the timeline is this: johnny joins the nomads after trying and failing to rescue alt. johnny hides out in the badlands for some years. then he and rogue come back to night city and nuke arasaka tower help alt escape the arasaka subnet by uploading liberator to their network once and for all.

this ultimately makes sense. in alt’s flashback, we meet santiago, who is a nomad/connected to nomads, joins rogue and johnny when they're trying to get alt back, and eventually becomes the leader of the aldecaldos. 

part of santiago’s TTRPG lore is that he, johnny, and rogue have to lay low in the badlands with nomads after they storm arasaka headquarters (i am aware the game takes many liberties with the original lore so who knows the full accuracy of anything from the original rulebooks)

ENDING spoilers: in the rogue+johnny storming AHQ ending, it's revealed that rogue has a son while they're prepping for the job. if you eavesdrop on her calling him while you're at the afterlife, you hear her tell her son to (paraphrasing here) "pull over and look at the stars", which immediately made my brain go to: nomad, badlands, santiago = dad? maybe. (santiago also canonically has a son according to the TTRPG lore)

this immediately reminded me of another interesting shard that i believe you can find in multiple locations around night city: “"what REALLY happened in arasaka tower?“

i love this dang shard. at first i thought it was just a cute conspiracy with some juicy gossip (and i love how 99% of the shards that mention johnny in this game are reminding us that he's not a real rebel, he's a poser) but it brings some interesting shit together

one: it tells us where johnny got his hands on the nukes! he and the nomads jumped a militech convoy and jacked some bombs! 

which is never directly explained, even as saburo arasaka is interrogating him shortly before using soulkiller. very nice of johnny to protect his homies like that. 

...or maybe he didn’t. saburo emphasizes that the dead don’t lie like the living do, and we don’t know what exactly arasaka did to johnny’s construct in mikoshi. 

it also explains why the obvious media narrative is that militech nuked arasaka, a nice neat political bow to the end of the fourth corpo wars, which is an entire section of the TTRPG lore that makes my eyes cross when i read it. 

it also makes the star/nomads ending extremely interesting, because i originally believed it was the ending where V’s journey deviates the most from rewalking johnny’s path... which also has weird implications if the johnny’s nomad era is being kept from v. 

(this also leads into my belief that the star ending/the devil ending are narratively two sides of the same coin, but that’s a WHOLE ANOTHER POST for another day.)

TWO, just straight up the fact that they turned the raid where they actually obtained the nukes into an action flick BD that pretty much ANYONE could watch. who the hell was doing that?? 

well, who else other than the guy who johnny (optionally) punched the shit out of for filming alt's death: thompson, media guy, and according to rogue, “bad luck”. because you know, recording your crimes is straight up evidence that can be used against you.

during the alt flashback we meet thompson, and just after that in cyberspace before meeting alt, johnny tells v that he has no idea what happened to him and that they never worked together again. 

oh, johnny, you lying bastard man

this is blatantly untrue, and if V even had two braincells and better memory than a goldfish they'd know this--in the first flashback sequence where johnny and rogue nuke arasaka tower, thompson is on the comms as they ride the AV towards AHQ, questioning their plans and use of violence. 

which leaves me with some questions, like where the fuck is thompson, why does johnny keep lying about this, why doesn't johnny say almost anything about how you interact with the aldecaldo clan nonstop throughout the game when he himself may have been a member of the family for some time?? is he continuing to protect the nomad clan that saved his ass? we know that a lot of his flashbacks are unreliable at best, that johnny changes shit up as desired when presenting V with his memories.

in 2077, you can also find that there’s a remake of “badlands raid” in the shard “new release braindances” that is pretty much everywhere. that shard doesn’t add much, but does mention something along the lines of “many people don’t know the ending of the original” which probably means johnny punched thompson out for filming again, or something. 

my running theories: rogue ditched santiago and the aldecaldos with johnny and thompson to nuke arasaka tower, and when johnny died she was stuck looking for (heavily implied by johnny here:) corpo sellout ways to survive.

adam smasher obviously has something to do with this since johnny/rogue's vendetta against the guy isn't entirely clear beyond the smokescreen of "he killed johnny and he sucks". i have done 0 research into this though i'm tired of typing okay

i obviously cannot be certain i have found everything related to this in the game as i’m not even done with this playthrough where i’m trying to pay attention, but i hope this is fun for someone else to dig into. 

enjoy, fellow silverhand freaks

EDIT: additional findings

ALRIGHT I HAVE DONE MORE DIGGING AND I AM BACK WITH MORE NOMAD/JOHNNY FINDINGS. these ones are kind of a bummer but VERY interesting.

there’s a shard called “excerpts from a history of the nomads by bb pires” that goes into detail about how nomads came to be

there’s an interesting quote in it: It's hard to imagine a group less inclined to wandering than farmers, but in fact they were the ones who sparked the age of nomads. Natural catastrophes, crops ravaged by bioplagues, armed conflicts and martial law allowing corporations to speculate and privatize land - all this forced them into a life on the road.

when you ask johnny why he wants to take down arasaka, he begins by referencing this himself!!

it’s a little awkward to imagine a nomad V doesn’t also know what he’s referencing, but hey, V is the fool because we are as players and that’s only one life path... so sure.

johnny also has unique dialogue during this scene about a nomad origin V, telling them that he’s been trying to understand how V thinks, and came to the conclusion that “their family was a crutch” and essentially made them stupid because they always had a safety net (lmao johnny calling v privileged basically)

BUT this also may reference why johnny would find it confusing as hell that V doesn’t immediately share the views he does when nomads, in terms of values, seem to be more aligned with johnny than V is. but once again V is the fool for a reason and this is all my own speculation so YOU KNOW.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, at the end of chippin’ in, when you ask johnny what he meant by letting down his friends... santiago is named directly

i thought this was interesting since the only glimpse of their relationship that we get is seeing johnny meeting santiago via the alt flashback for the first time.

so now it’s obvious that while johnny and rogue were with the nomads their friendship developed, and johnny went on to disappoint santiago in some way by being his normal dickhead self

but HOW? how did he disappoint santiago? is santiago even still alive?? did smasher kill santiago and is this why rogue mentions during chippin’ in that she wants smasher to “settle a score” moreso than avenge johnny??

the only additional hints i have are from this shard, which you can find at the aldecaldos camp: “nomads at ground zero”

i’m just gonna transcribe here and bold for emphasis:

It was no secret that Night Corp offered generous pay and, in some cases, free cyberware and biomonitor upgrades to anyone willing to help clean up the crater of radioactive rubble at AHQ ground zero. Some firsthand accounts recall the incessant ticking of Geiger counters, like the loud buzz of cicadas in summer. In retrospect, we can only guess how many "crater cleaners" lost their lives to radiation sickness shortly thereafter. Both the city government and Night Corp have claimed casualties were kept to a minimum, while providing no official statistics to substantiate the claim. That being said, they have never been under pressure to release such figures. After all, most rescue, engineering, and rubble cleanup teams were not local Night Citizens, but nomads. Surprised you didn't know? Don't be. It is a fact many history courses tend to overlook. The city employed hundreds of nomad mercenaries, primarily from clans in Aldecaldo nation. These nomads were hungry for gainful work and the city needed experts who were not only experienced but brave enough to knowingly put their lives on the line - all so Arasaka could one day erect another tower in its place. But history is not without its sense of irony. These nomads, who so deliberately live outside our so-called "system," came to its very rescue. Not for the first time. And not for the last.

a main theme we find in this game is the idea that the system of corps and exploitation cannot be stopped by grandiose rebellious gestures--no amount of samurai songs, assassinating mayors, or even planting nukes in towers will change things. yet johnny, his friends and mercs at atlantis in the 2020s, including rogue, chose to rebel any way they could, thinking it better than not. johnny criticizes her lack of rebellious spirit CONSTANTLY in 2077.

but ultimately, johnny, trapped in mikoshi, didn’t get to see the outcome of what detonating the AHQ nukes did to night city’s fragile ecosystem. rogue, however, did--and likely watched their former allies, the aldecaldos, be forced to take dangerous work at AHQ’s ground zero (from lack of other opportunities as detailed in this shard), then die from radiation sickness throughout the following decades, all as a result of what she and johnny did to try and fight the system. and she also watched all the former mercenaries of atlantis be hunted down by arasaka.

so rogue sees firsthand what the cost of rebellion is and johnny doesn’t. and nomads, considered the most free of any of the factions we encounter in the game, are the cost.

[keplercryptids]

[ID: reply by @serpentsembrace that says: That's the first time I've heard that take. If you don't mind me asking, and assuming this isn't a joke, why do you dislike it? End ID.]

bounded accuracy is one of those things that seems great on paper, but in actual play (especially at high levels) becomes one of my primary complaints wrt to 5e's combat system.

one of the rationales for bounded accuracy is that it keeps low-level enemies relevant. and listen, that's true enough. in d&d 5e, a CR 1/4 goblin could technically hit a level 12 PC, doing a whopping 4 points of slashing damage (/sarcasm). but running a dozen enemies in combat that are doing single-digit HP hits, as the PCs take several rounds to clear out these goblins even though they aren't REALLY posing a threat, is not my idea of a fun evening.

and then we arrive at the problem of boss fights in 5e. high-CR enemies scale in two main ways: more HP and legendary actions (because action economy is the *most* important factor of a 5e fight). yes, AC goes up a little but that doesn't really affect much. a boss needs to be hitting at least as often as the PCs to be a challenge, which is to say, even with legendary actions, every boss needs to be edited and homebrewed (unless you wanna run a dozen minions which! i don't! no thank you!). bosses basically just become bags of HP you need to hit like a pinata until they die. that's the main goal of every d&d fight. it's boring, it's time consuming, it takes a LOT of dm effort to make fights interesting, i don't like it!

bounded accuracy also makes it so skill checks are lackluster. i think we've all heard of the scenario where a barbarian rolls a nat 20 arcana check and gets a higher score than the wizard. this makes no sense! being an expert in something should you mean you have expert knowledge! but that's not really baked into 5e's system.

to keep this incredibly long answer slightly less long lmao, in pathfinder 2e, without "bounded" numbers like 5e, all the numbers are bigger. high-level enemies will commonly have an AC of 40+, for example. but bosses are significant challenges as written, DCs scale to a point where no, the barbarian literally can't access ancient arcane knowledge, and combat is more dynamic because it's not all about HP. no, an army of goblins isn't going to be able to touch high-level PCs in pathfinder. but i don't want to run an army of goblins anyway lmao so that's fine by me!

want a tshirt that says "all my homies hate bounded accuracy"

[tunedtostatic]

Back in August, I posted a big wordy essay about how I think the handling of disability in the season two finale of Starship Iris came as close as a work of fiction can get to misinfo with the potential to cause harm. Given the nature of the internet, I geared up for what I thought was every possible outcome: disagreement, agreement, some of each. Maybe inevitably, the outcome for the first couple of months still managed to catch me by surprise by being something I hadn’t thought to expect, signs of reading but not much verbal response. (This past month, it did get three responses from people saying they were glad they’d read it, which decreased my worry that I’d screwed up big time in a way that I and my initial beta reader, who participates in fandoms but not this one, hadn’t realized.)

Originally, I wrote about these issues because I think they’re important to talk about and because I wanted to rip off the bandaid of an initial conversation. After neither of those things happened, I want to push these issues a little again, mostly for the boring and somewhat selfish reason that I think a conversation about them is going to come up sooner or later, whether because what I wrote is out on the internet for new listeners to run into or because new listeners get to the season two finale and go “WTF,” and I keep fretting that the initial rip off the bandaid starter conversation will pop up at the most awkward possible time, like the middle of the Yuletide fandom exchange or the beginning of season three.

In an earlier draft of this post, I followed the previous paragraph with a paragraph that boiled down to “Can we start a conversation about this?” But it was kindly and correctly pointed out to me that since “conversations” online are often contentious and painful, it might be helpful to say why I want to start a conversation, beyond a general “I think it’s important to talk about this, and that conversation hasn’t started yet.”

I have several answers to What are you looking for out of this? I’m interested in hearing from other people. I think conversations about disability are important. I’m not immune to the desire to do some good old-fashioned complaining. And I wanted to find ways to talk, without pressuring anyone, about ways to be aware of this stuff when creating fanworks. But at the end of the day, the problem I had with the work was its potential to spread misinfo, so what I most want is to spread accurate info. Even if people reading this are all over the place when it comes to agreeing, disagreeing, or having other thoughts on the parts that are subjective fiction crit, I hope the real world statistics I included here can provide information on issues that can come up for anyone.

The essay I wrote this summer was very long, so for this post I wrote a summary. These issues are complicated, and while the essay isn’t perfect I think the long form at least let me try to address them with more nuance than is possible in a shorter version, which is why I’m keeping it metaphorically linked (and actually linked, but in the notes so Tumblr doesn’t eat the post LMAO).

Thanks again to L for beta reading the original post and Sanvi (windywords123) for beta reading this one!

[Couple of edits, Nov 28: I’m kicking myself a little for including the thing about timing, since I don’t want anyone who runs across this later to feel like I was giving this post an expiration date. I still wish this stuff was a little more widely known and discussed and am happy to do so Whenever.

Added a TL;DR below. I realized this is still kind of long, which is in and of itself an accessibility issue. Also, a family member and possibly a friend are about to start listening to season two, and I wanted to come up with something actually short that I could adapt and send to them.]

• The scene where Arkady tries to kill Krejjh, and describes herself with apparent accuracy as a time bomb who will inevitably hurt the people she loves, is a cliché half-century-old trope about combat PTSD that doesn’t match closely to reality. In reality, any kind of violence or aggression due to PTSD is rare (between 8% to percentages in the 30s, with the variation coming from differences between studies and definitions, like whether screaming at people was included), and within that small percentage, violent/aggressive actions due to anger, stress, irritability, or a startle response are much more common than violence/aggressive actions due to losing touch with reality during a flashback.

• For both anger/stress or a flashback, the violence/aggression is more likely to be someone screaming, throwing/hitting an inanimate object, or shoving or hitting someone who startles them or gets in their space—lethal violence due to someone losing touch with reality and thinking they’re somewhere else or a person is someone/something else is possible but extremely rare. Yet so often in fiction, people with PTSD are portrayed as automatically lethally dangerous.

• I’m one of the small fraction of people with PTSD who have lost control and done something violent/aggressive. It isn’t that I don’t think we should ever write about that in fiction. The problem is seeing something painful and horrible reduced to an inaccurate, cliché fifty-year-old trope, in a context that gives its inaccuracies credibility.

• When I looked up PTSD and violence to find citations for the essay, several articles talked about the trope: “Most of us are familiar with the classic movie trope — a character with PTSD doesn’t recognize that he’s no longer at war and violently lashes out at the people around him,” as a 5 Myths About PTSD article put it. You can feel everyone’s exhaustion with it.

• In real life, the false belief that people with PTSD and other stigmatized mental health conditions are automatically severely dangerous leads to and exacerbates stigma and what is presumed to be “justified” violence against people with mental illnesses, a vulnerable minority who are statistically more likely to become victims of violence than to harm others.

• This podcast’s realism around other serious real world topics, with Violet’s anxiety and Sana’s depression being portrayed in a realistic way, seems to at least loosely imply that its portrayal of PTSD is accurate as well (and the fifty-year-old inaccurate lethal violence PTSD trope scene is indeed content warned as a “PTSD episode.”) This adds to the degree to which this trope is part of a harmful pattern.

• Because “harmful,” as compared to “unpleasant,” “benignly inaccurate” or “I didn’t like it,” is such a heavy thing to say about a story, I think that when using The H Word in fiction criticism, it’s important to untangle the different things people can mean when they use it:

1. “This was a trauma trigger for me.” Neutral, not a value judgement (and shouldn’t be used as one, IMO).

2. “This story is part of a harmful pattern.” This is my central criticism of the Arkady strangling Krejjh section of the scene, which is part of a longstanding pattern of fiction portraying PTSD inaccurately. This pattern as a whole contributes to real life false beliefs about PTSD, which contribute to negative consequences for people with PTSD.

3. “This story harmed me [by being published] [by my experience of reading it].” I think this one is slung around a little too much on the internet. If it isn’t something like creative nonfiction that exploits real people, a work written by a stranger probably isn’t “harming” a reader through their experience of reading it. There’s a grey area—I don’t want to imply that no one should ever conceptualize, for example, reading something deliberately bigoted against a group of people you belong to as “harm.” But I don’t think saying a work of fiction “harmed me/harmed readers” is often a fair, or harmless, thing to say.

4. “This story on its own has the potential to cause harm.” This is the really complicated one. Like “harmed me [past tense],” it’s an intense thing to say, and like “harmed me [past tense],” it tends to get slung around on fandom social media about any work people think is part of a harmful pattern. I don’t think fictional stories have anything close to the amount of power that the news or a scientific journal has to transmit misinformation that impacts people’s ability to understand and react to real situations; however, I think that fictional stories, especially in some contexts, do have the power to do so.

• I think the second part of this scene, where RJ resolves the situation by overpowering Arkady with a gun, falls under the category of stories that have the potential to cause harm.

• Harking back to Arkady’s lesser of two evils speech, I know RJ threatening to shoot Arkady was not being presented as a good thing, more of a “problematic but endearing way of showing they care about her.” But it’s written as the successful resolution of the scene. “People with PTSD might become lethally dangerous at any time, and a way to solve that is to involve someone who can overpower them with a gun” is a…not-good combination. While things happening in a story doesn’t mean people will act them out in reality in a 1:1 way—I don’t think one podcast scene is going to single-handedly influence someone to replicate it in reality—putting that combination of ideas in a podcast that usually portrays not only mental health conditions but also the consequences of various ways of dealing with those conditions in a realistic way gives that combination of ideas a credibility that it should not be given.

• “Mental health crisis” and “Someone else has a gun” is a very dangerous combination, and there are many real life tragedies resulting from people assuming it’s a good combination. More than fifty percent of people who are killed by police in the US have a disability. Given the number of people harmed and killed by police during mental health crises, I do know for sure that we need to stop automatically seeing “Involve people with guns” as being the “safest” choice.

• In real life, when someone’s mental illness is causing them to act in a way that is immediately dangerous to themself or others, calling 911, choosing to intervene yourself, and choosing to do nothing each create different types and amounts of risk, which vary depending on the situation. If you don’t live somewhere with actual good psychological first aid services or other nonviolent public safety response, or within calling distance of anyone trained to help, it’s usually a matter of picking the least-bad choice.

• In my own life, there have been times when I chose to call 911. Sometimes it’s necessary (for example, co-occurring medical emergency), or it’s the least-bad option. So, I’m not going to tell anyone they should never call 911 in a mental health crisis. But a lot of people die every year because “Involve someone who can overpower the person in crisis with a gun or other type of potentially lethal force” (in my current city, emergency medical responders sometimes kill people or use unnecessary sedatives or force against them, sometimes because police tell them to and sometimes on their own) is seen as a good and safe option.

• I hadn’t expected a scene like that in this podcast, since it’s typically thoughtful and realistic about other serious real world topics, from other mental health conditions to characters’ LGBTQIA+ identities. There’s only one thing I sometimes give a heads up for when recommending the podcast to friends, Violet’s relief at Arkady killing that guy in 1.05/6 so that he wouldn’t live with the disabling injury Arkady had inflicted on him. Speaking of nightmare ableist tropes—but the idea of “killing/letting a disabled person die as an act of mercy,” while horrific, is very present in our culture and something that a lot of people have never been put in a position to question, so it seemed like less an endorsement of “It’s better to be dead than disabled” and more of an example of you don’t know what you don’t know.

• In the later scene in the season two finale when Brian tells Krejjh he can’t stay on Telemachus because he’s wiped from their last mission and needs a steady supply of oxygen, I was initially ready to be enthused about a scene where Brian’s crew supports him in making the right choice for himself. But with Brian's What if you have to choose between getting me an oxygen tank and saving someone else question, Brian’s hypothetical presence on the ship is reduced to the pros and cons of how his disability would potentially impact those around him, a viewpoint from which people with disabilities are seen too often in fiction and in life.

• Being physically disabled is more complex than a binary slider bar going from less to more of a burden to the people around you. In a more three-dimensional view, non-negotiably seeing disabled people as people reveals the networked importance of accessibility and inclusion (in this example, how might taking a step back and finding a way for Brian to travel safely with Krejjh in their aid work make it more likely that they and the ship will be ready to respond dynamically to the needs of disabled passengers?)

• As a less heavy comment on the Arkady-Krejjh scene, back in the realm of just finding the experience of reading the scene unpleasant (I’m a sometimes reader/sometimes listener, which is why I keep talking about reading this episode rather than listening to it!), another reason I had that punched in the gut, caving in on yourself feeling when I read the first part of the scene was because of how it was used as melodramatic entertainment in a work that usually draws a line against using other heavy real world topics that way. (I don’t think stories using serious real life stuff as entertainment is inherently bad—I mean, that’s how fiction works. In this instance, I don’t think any of those three things would have felt as viscerally crappy to read if it wasn’t for the context of the three of them together: the inaccurate fifty-year-old trope, it being lovingly described for the audience’s entertainment, and that coming out of left field in a work that was typically more tasteful about other mental health conditions.)

• I don't think we should be trying so hard to be careful about “avoiding ableist tropes” that every work is as interesting as a saltine—mentally ill people enjoy twisty mental illness horror for a reason!—and I don’t want us to worry so much about “Not portraying people with mental illness as ableist stereotypes about being dangerous” that we ignore the fact that sometimes some mental illnesses do cause people to act in ways that are dangerous or, sometimes, lethal, most often to themselves but sometimes to others as well. “Accuracy” and “tastefulness” aren’t important across the board. But I think the context of when tastefulness and (actual) accuracy are important matters.

• In the longer essay I wrote, I also talked about how problems with portraying disability are not limited to this audio drama, and many audio dramas are not great at portraying disability (and while stories are just stories, it’s hard to feel like the audio drama community’s frequent ways of viewing fictional disability are completely separate from the ways the community often sees real audience members’ disabilities as a burden...lack of accessibility, &c).

• I also wrote about a lot of other connected topics (BTW, still looking for more people interested in talking about or potentially working together on future pretentious writing on audio and accessibility and on ‘How to audio drama fandom??’, so let me know if you’re interested! Okay, end commercial break) but I’m focusing back on disability in Starship Iris season two for this post.

• Back to TSCOSI, I also wrote more in the longer essay about potential ways that fans (who are interested; I’m not trying to guilt trip anyone who isn’t) can make the fandom more welcoming to people with PTSD and other mental health conditions after season two was Like That, with the disclaimer that obviously I don’t speak for everyone with PTSD. I can summarize it kind of easily since I’m representation checklist averse: If you’re thinking about ways to avoid taking the tropes in these scenes at face value, whether through “Let’s pretend that never happened,” engaging with them in a researched way, having a disclaimer that you’re writing inaccurately for fun, or any other thoughtful approach, that’s the solid opposite of unknowingly echoing the ableist stuff.

• I originally took the long essay approach because of how complicated all of this is, so I’m metaphorically linking the longer essay again here for More Nuance. But, hopefully, this gets at the context I most wanted to talk about, and covers the real world information that I wanted to share with those who don’t have prior knowledge about this stuff. Thanks for reading this.

TL;DR: The scene where Arkady tries to kill Krejjh is a half-century-old cliché trope. In reality, any kind of violence or aggression due to PTSD is rare (between 8% to percentages in the 30s) and much more likely to be caused by anger, stress, or a startle response than a flashback. For either cause, it’s much more likely to be something like screaming, hitting an object, or shoving or hitting someone who gets in their space.

This cliché in a show usually realistic in its mental health representation is part of a pattern of people with PTSD and other stigmatized mental health conditions being portrayed as automatically severely dangerous, which contributes to real life false beliefs that exacerbate violence against a group of people statistically more likely to become victims of violence than to harm others.

In this context, the successful resolution of the scene being RJ overpowering Arkady with a gun is a harmful combination of ideas. More than fifty percent of people killed by police in the US have a disability.

What if you have to choose between getting me an oxygen tank and saving someone else reduces Brian’s potential presence on Krejjh’s ship to how his disability would potentially burden those around him.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

Among Us: Mansion Edition

Aight because I’m feeling stupid--I’m talking absolutely Willy Wonka--in this Chili’s tonight, I think it’s time I inundated you all in random crack ass Among Us Headcanons for the mansion. In no particular order: 

-Y’all see this post? This right here is Leo and MC. Don’t even @ me. He’s such a bastard and she glares at him the whole time while he just fucking dies laughing in their room. When Theo finds out? He howls with laughter too, later high fives Leo

-Dazai, Sebas, and Comte are the MOST sus players on earth. Like these mofos will handle accusations so calmly and dismantle them so quickly nobody fucking knows what they're actually doing??? The others always skip until there’s hard evidence, but because of that they will often survive by the time the tasks are done 

-Every single time Arthur has even the slightest bit of suspicion directed at him for being the imposter, everyone just immediately votes him off. Half the time he isn’t the imposter, and every single time people can hear Theo cackling from wherever he is

-One of the easiest ways to narrow down Theo as the imposter is to see how long Vincent survives HAHAHA (Vincent takes 13 yrs to do tasks)

-Since Vincent struggles with tasks a lot, Theo will often do buddy system (MC will often tag along too--but Theo will just straight up kill her when he’s imposter and tell Vincent she’s busy with another task LMFAO Vincent always scolds him after)

-Isaac hates being imposter. With every. Fiber. Of. His being. HE HATES IT!!! He vents, they see him immediately, they boot him. FML. Also gives himself away because he will usually kill Dazai and Arthur first, and stutters like a maniac trying to defend himself--has no good alibi in a pinch LMAO

-Isaac groans every single time he gets a task in the electrical room. His palms start sweating because he just knows someone is going to sneak in and snap his neck while frantically trying to connect wires. Arthur most often kills him that way just because he finds it hilarious to hear Isaac curse

-Leo, Arthur, and Shakespeare are the ones most known to sabotage while they’re imposters. Leo just loves being a headache of a person, Arthur finds it most efficient to murder in the course of the chaos (after there’s a kind of false sense of security, he picks them off), while Shakes just love watching everyone scatter desperately like mice.

-Shakespeare is 100% that imposter that like stays beside Vincent the whole time while he’s doing tasks, playing buddy system, and then the second the game is about to end just straight up murders him in cold blood out of nowhere

-Comte will almost always enact petty revenge if someone kills MC early in the game--or at all. Catch this mofo finishing his tasks lightening speed and sitting at the security monitors, slamming the emergency button the second he’s deduced who the culprit is. He’s usually the fastest to figure it out; how quickly he responds is another matter lol

-Jeanne gets caught in milliseconds because he won’t even care about the mechanics of the game, and finds sneaking boring/stupid/too much effort (also just bad with technology, it takes him forever to learn the controls). Will at least attempt to kill in isolation, but otherwise doesn’t much care about being stealthy--and so is often caught fast (always kills Comte first much to the man’s dismay)

-Mozart is...surprisingly good at the game? Not quite as skilled as the trio mentioned earlier, but he’s very good at coming up with air-tight alibis and employs a slow, methodical approach. Will have 5 or 6 of them dead before anyone suspects it’s him, kills randomized targets, and will frequent the security room while people are trying to figure out who it is. Will do buddy system with Jeanne, and will usually find the imposter to avenge his good friendo--otherwise just does tasks and chills if he ain’t imposter

-Leo just plays to have fun! He’s good at it but doesn’t really go hard enough to evade suspicion for very long if he’s imposter, mostly kills people he thinks will be most frustrated with being killed/least suspecting. People are usually yelling at him to complete his tasks bc he often zones out when he becomes a ghost LMFAO

-Leo and Comte sometimes do the buddy system, but honestly? They just devolve into murdering each other so fucking fast it’s pointless AHHAHAHAHHAHAH they’re just constantly squinting at each other; they don’t trust the other as far he can throw him (Idk if y’all have seen any of Vanoss’ streams on yt but I just keep seeing that clip of him in MedBay getting scanned and going “nogla you gonna kill me? just fucking kill me you fucking french bastard” when nogla lingers a little next to him and I start wheezing because all I see is literally Leo and Comte)

-Napoleon rarely gets imposter, so he’s usually spearheading the crewmate effort. Gets his tasks done very quickly (if he doesn’t get murdered; though he often has Isaac for buddy system) and camps outside the security room after making a few rounds. Usually figures out who it is fairly quickly--though his accuracy is spotty

-If Napoleon is imposter he tends to have a hard time killing people, so he’ll literally just pretend to do tasks and vibe until the time runs out. It’s the inactivity and aimlessness that tends to give him away

-MC tries to be stealthy, but she usually times her kills poorly or gets walked in on. Sometimes she manages to conceal the body or her boo looks the other way to let her indulge in the fun, but otherwise she gets found as imposter fast

-There are a few legendary rounds where MC manages to fool most of the house into thinking she’s a crewmate because they’re so busy pointing fingers at each other she just skates by easy, but she always feels horrible after for betraying their trust (the men all silently agree it was uproarious)

-Vincent as imposter is fucking hilarious because he’ll just turn himself in???? Like he won’t even try. Everyone will tell him it’s okay if he gets a little stabby--it’s part of the game--but he just has no heart for it. Theo will often switch devices with him to relieve him of the stress. These rounds are always so chaotic because it usually takes the residents a second to deduce the switcheroo

-You know how I said Shakespeare plays buddy and then kills Vincent in cold blood? The hilarious inversion of this is that Dazai will often try to follow Isaac to protect him but Isaac will run away, so they will often be chasing each other all over the map LMFAOOOO Dazai will do this regardless of whether he is imposter or not, so there’s really no way to tell if he’s just messing with Isaac or has a lurking killer intent

-If Theo is imposter? Pandemonium. He will kill people off one by one in isolation and vent so fast nobody can figure out who did what, always paying close attention to the tasks that need doing so he has a solid alibi. Because Vincent tends to believe him and verifies easily, it can take a little longer for people to figure out it’s Theodorus. Arthur and Dazai tend to be the ones that are the first to suspect it’s him

-Sebastian will often be doing his tasks, just chillin. One can usually see him buddy system with Napo and/or MC. He loves to watch the other men be imposter and notes down their go-to tactics and reactions to killing and being killed in the game; especially if it’s uncharacteristic of them. All well and good right? 

-Sebastian as imposter? The funniest shit in the world. He’s similar to Isaac in that he hates it, mutters apologies and grimaces every time he has to kill people (note: he does not include Arthur and Dazai among people, sometimes smiles a little if he takes them out;;;;). Will lie convincingly only because his voice/writing does not waver--his stoicism serves him well. When he has to kill Napoleon, though? Forget it. He apologizes a million times after, but honestly Napo just finds it hilarious--will just be like “well-played, Sebas, as expected of our resourceful butler.” Sebas still. Feels guilty. Like you can literally look at the chat history and see Napo as ghost like “AAHAHAHHA oh he killed my ass, nice” while MC’s like “lolol” and Jeanne like “he got me good too, never saw him coming in nav”

-Person who gets killed the least? Vincent (I mean come on, it’s Vincent.) MC is runner-up. They don’t like killing her, but there are a lot of idiots in the mansion that do it just to get a rise out of her (cough Leonardo/Dazai) or just because she’s an easy target in the moment

-Person who gets killed the most? Usually Arthur, runner-up Isaac (Arthur because everyone seeks to get back at him for his shenanigans irl, Isaac because he tends to get indecisive/nervous)

-Also this happens to Dazai once as imposter (Isaac plans it out of sheer spite) and the entire mansion was wheezing about it for weeks

In-game Colors: 

Comte: yellow/white/black (when he’s feeling emo) + little baby accompaniment or party hat  Napoleon: black or green, cyan when he’s feeling chaotic + sergeant/army hat Leonardo: brown + toilet paper roll Vincent: yellow + green sprout Theo: dark blue or red (feral energy) + cowboy hat or gladiator helmet Isaac: pink + cherry Arthur: dark blue or lime + backwards cap Dazai: purple or yellow + toilet plunger or bird’s nest Jeanne: always purple + “DUM” sticky note Mozart: cyan + surgical mask Shakes: red or orange + flamingo hat Sebas: always black + either the ninja mask or the chef hat

[sugar-petals]

BTS Tarot Reading ➝ What Kind Of Porn Do They Watch? (18+)

↳ NOTE - due to several requests, a steamy and detailed one. ☕️ we’re asking the cards about the erotica they fancy in a wider sense. 

warning ⚠️ 18+ // bdsm mentions, worship, kinks left and right. we’re going graphic in all types o’ ways, lads.

♡ DISCLAIMER // tarot is speculative, there is no guarantee for accuracy. believing in the cards is a choice. all portrayals are fictive and for entertainment purposes only.

SPREAD #1:

yoongi

⌈ THE WORLD �� Jesus... Someone’s obsessed with girls in the nude. That card has a stark naked woman wrapped in very little satin on it so you know what our funky little guy is up to. Luscious aesthetic fotos might be just around his corner. Big duh, he’s a photography major. These folks are all about body appreciation. He’s also on a personal vendetta against lingerie 😂 Yoongi won’t get hard looking at even the most HD panty and bra ads. Only the skin in its full splendor will do, no editing. He loves pictures of nipples peaking through shirt fabric, it’s all over his phone. Yoongi likes his gals without underwear 24/7 just like he dislikes underwear himself. If we’re talking porn, the woman on the card is holding two very long rods so may I connect the dots: Threesomes, handjobs, blowbangs, spitroasting. Friction, friction, and more friction. To Yoongi’s brain, handjobs are a great um new version of holding hands. Sex standing up also, keeping it vertical. Yoongi doesn’t care about girth, inches count. Nice and elongated with a perfect plunge, something to hold onto. Yep, he’s pretty deliberate when searching that up. Yes, he loves the look of it. However, and you’ll be surprised: Even if he likes poly porn, it’s still nothing too extreme. This card is more about pleasure than pain. If a guy likes rough and degrading sex, you get swords and wands in his spread. THE WORLD is more about perfected skills and success. So, he likes the more accomplished porn stars. With a preference for curly blondes and redheads, that’s sort of the hair color on the card. Natural B or C cup. Medium height, not too curvy. Oversized booty not needed. In terms of nationality: We have three representative animals on the card. Eagle, lion and bull, plus a light blonde man’s head. So, anything that America/Germany/Albania/Mexico/Namibia (and so on, lot of countries with eagles as their national bird my dude), England, Spain and Scandinavia have to offer. Honey sugar is going international, baby.

hoseok

⌈ QUEEN OF WANDS ⇁ Did I just mention that guys who like rough sex in porn get wand cards in their readings in Yoongi’s segment? Well, there we have our candidate, with a very obvious card since it’s a court figure. Now, the thing is, this is not the guy being rough. The QUEEN OF WANDS is as notoriously femdom as can be. The very fiery and raw and fun version. So, with a degree of lightheartedness, but still being very fit — even buff — and hands-on with the sub. If you get the QUEEN OF SWORDS, that’s the more cool and calculated domme who signs you up for torture and humiliation, and she really looks like a domme. She’s all over the internet because she has the grit. Now wands combined with a tarot queen... it’s more about the stamina and she is approachable. Hobi does not like watching cruel girls, he likes challenging ones. Upbeat porn stars who can take a lot but most importantly dole it out assertively like pros are Hobi’s schtick. He’s unapologetic about that. With him it’s like, please not the local newcomers that turned legal a month ago. The queen cards are all about mature women. Mommy kink, hint hint. The kind of mommy who’s gonna whip out the spreader bar or cane (= wands again) and give a playful type of punishment. See how desert-like that imagery is, Hobi wants to sweat big time when he gets off to this. Now since wands also make for a damn good pole to dance on, go figure. This whole card has me wondering if, well alright, he is a Cardi B hard stan 😅 If Hobi blasts Money to get in the mood, I’d not be surprised. Anyway. Back to pole stuff: If you go through his youtube search history, you will find astounding things. I think he watches the more professional and athletic performers in competition though. High production value is key. Finally, an interesting card detail: There’s a sunflower on it. This is definitely his kind of tarot imagery.

jimin

⌈ KING OF COINS  ⇁ This card always looks like a scene from a medieval movie so you might have an erotic film enthusiast here. The more chaste type of genre, pentacles are very grounded and not hypersexualized. The intimacy is slow and more about security and pleasure. It’s graphic and detailed, but gives you a sense of relaxation. With a bit of romance in the plot, that might absolutely be Jimin’s thing. Castles and wine and nobility. Interesting type of erotica. Historical and classy. As expected of a prince, mind you. He might enjoy books of that genre also. And we know Jimin is an avid reader, right up there with Namjoon. Now, even with more risque and contemporary stuff that he googles up, we have similar dynamics going down on screen. With Hobi we had femdom because it’s a queen card, now with Jimin we get the classic male dom type of porn because that’s how the King usually rolls, unless it’s the KING OF CUPS who’s touchy-feely and subby. Meanwhile, the KING OF COINS is your local sugar daddy. Leaning towards being a soft dom, he’s not aggressive. And Jimin surely has a little crush on that concept. Ye know, if all the other members have female cards and Jimin gets the sugar daddy, we might be dealing with mxm action. Because if this card was a porn star, he’d be a really, really rich producer and a bear who’s done this since the frickin’ 90s. He’s treating his subs very gently and lets them sit on their lap, the imagery is sort of like that because the King is balancing a pentacle on his left thigh. Sex and comfort all in one are life for Jimin. A sexy detail I only noticed at a second glance, the King also has a shortened golden staff with him, which has a rounded tip. If that’s not a butt plug… whenever I see props like that in tarot, I interpret it as a sex toy. So, good vibes in here. And a bunch of aphrodisiacs, the KING OF COINS is a foodie. Which you know, might just be a food porn type of reference. Jimin’s taste in sexy things is quite something else.

jungkook

⌈ THE EMPRESS ⇁ If there’s one thing I like, it’s the Tarot giving me the important archetypes during readings of that kind. The Queens, the Kings, the Major arcana (see Yoongi’s and Jin’s segment). You can really draw a lot of hints out of it. Now with the EMPRESS you have a similar case to Hobi’s, just a lot more softcore. Jungkook has a refined and pretty vast taste in erotica, if not the most refined in Bangtan next to Jimin who likes that kind of dignified touch to it as well as we saw. Jungkook knows his stuff when it comes to searching things up, he is a first class netizen in that regard. In terms of genre: The EMPRESS is your highkey feminist and wholesomeness legend, so — you won’t find any super creepy things in some hidden file on his PC, and things by female producers instead. No slut-shaming or name-calling here, everyone gets their pleasure in their own right. Thanks to online sex ed, Jungkook has a map to the clit and he’s not afraid to use it. He’s the type to watch solo videos ad nauseam. He’s fascinated. Masturbation until it gets all messy with the juices flowing, and you bet he wants to see the girls buzzing themselves off lying on their back. Maybe even outdoors in a field. Cum play is a must, cunnilingus is a must, he loves unprotected sex and creampies, he loves breast massages. And yes. Anything that involves sex with pregnant and chubby women. Similar to Taehyung, it’s all about the focus on the girl, he doesn’t bother much with the guy performers. And given Yoongi’s reading on top of that, we have three members in BTS who are all about worshipping the female body right here, breasts over ass, and he likes blondes, too. The EMPRESS card is like… the entire porn industry who does the MILF and BBW genre is financed by Jeon Jungkook’s website subscriptions. Cue GOT7, with Jungkook it’s girls, girls, girls. The thirst is going strong, and he’s unashamed times ten, sex is sex. 

➝ we also have members who don’t really bother with erotica or have a complicated relationship with it.

SPREAD #2

taehyung

⌈  ACE OF WANDS reversed ⇁ He’s not about beating off until the world ends. Taehyung gets bored by porn or heated literature and doesn’t feel very motivated to search it up. He would rather come up with his own ideas to write but doesn’t have the energy. Sex drive: On hold, even if he tries to look something up it doesn’t feel very fulfilling to him. Most of it fails to turn him on, it’s not his kind of taste. He gets frustrated when he masturbates and would rather rest, dream, and doze. The only thing I can see him watch somewhat frequently — hold your horses — is lesbian porn. I’ll explain. The ACE OF WANDS is pretty much your most glaring handjob symbolism card. A hand gripping a stick. Yoongi’s THE WORLD card has very similar imagery, I mean even two wands and a girl, bisexual explosion much. He would be a big fan of the upright ACE OF WANDS card lmao! But the reversal is like, um no silly guys jerking off in here, pls. Keep your cum to yourself. That means: Zero dicks in Taehyung’s zone, girl-on-girl stuff is his very last resort for quality that he is desperate for but cannot find. And not the stuff where the producers just replace the guys with heavy arsenal sex toys, double-ended dildos, fucking machines, endless strap-on action without any clit stimulation on either side and whatnot. Taehyung is like ugh, cherie, why, give me the juicy stuff, give me the basics. What he wants is just pure scissoring, fingering, oral, little gentle bites, a lot of caresses and kisses. And slow, slow sex. Probably the amateur kind. He hates how brutal and exaggerated most things online are. Tae is looking for softness, a lot of lesbian action is what delivers in that regard so he takes all he gets. And it goes further than that, Taehyung knows the finest yuri recommendations, I’m telling you.

seokjin

⌈  THE STAR reverse ⇁ The opposite of Yoongi: not keeping it very naked in here. The upright card shows a nude woman pouring water from two cups. Hence a strong connection to the card of sexuality, TWO OF CUPS. Everything is very gentle and positive in that scenery. But then, the reversed card rather shows us that Jin doesn’t feel too thrilled watching other people film or write or photograph sex. Like in Tae’s case, he becomes bored, it’s all the same to him. Nothing’s ever new to him in porn. He feels negative and guilty rather than refreshed or entertained. He also doesn’t like a lot of kinks that very literally connect to, well, the pouring water. Squirting, cum play, watersports, sex in the pool or showers, lube overuse, creampies, bukkake, fake cum — Jin is rolling his eyes at that, he thinks it’s a circus. He’s surely given it a try, but ended up feeling worse and even more pent-up or dissatisfied. At best, you will find him on unknown websites looking for the most amateur videos there are. Because: THE STAR quite unequivocally hints at porn stars. If you reverse the card, it becomes someone not very well-known. He roots for the underdog. Accordingly, Jin’s reaction to mainstream videos goes this way: ‚Pipe down, you non-artists!’ 😆 Cause maybe, he does do it better aye, without the awkward angles anyway. He doesn’t want the body cult, like, put that airbrush and silicone out of my face bro. Not because he’s against surgery, but the idea behind sexual extremes and the shady high standards. It’s too polished for him to get turned on. And robotic/staged. Likely because he’s had an IRL sexual experience (gasp!) that set a different ideal to him, so the more glossy porn feels off. Home video has all he needs instead. I think it’s especially because you get so see more body hair there. The woman on the THE STAR card is all sleek, so the reversed card is the opposite, Jin wants that unshaved goodness.

namjoon

⌈ EIGHT OF CUPS ⇁ Now you’d think — and I thought, kinda — we’d get the master of erotica right here. And he’s had one hell of a reputation for that. Think of the ever-infamous Yaman TV interview where BTS were super upfront and revealing about their taste and what they watch privately. With especially Namjoon having the lion’s share. But this card says otherwise if his current state is concerned. The EIGHT OF CUPS shows a man wandering off into the night, leaving eight cups behind him. I think what that means is, he’s moved on. Namjoon’s cravings aren’t as strong as they used to be, nor does he have the time. He knows it won’t fix his loneliness or answer the questions of life. He might be on the search for different things to fulfill him, or ignore much of his hormones in favor for his career. Not that he didn’t dabble in it, he sure did, but that chapter is slowly closing and what’s next he doesn’t really know yet. He thinks about family and being a father, so the smaller and more risque pleasures become less significant. Desire, too. Ye olde soul syndrome is kicking in. The card is also centered around introspection, a quest for self, all these higher topics that aren’t the most grounded and don’t leave much space for being horny. Joon is simply to preoccupied and on the move. He sees porn as a distraction from his real self at this point, and he’s not the type to feel satiated after masturbating to something, similar to Jin and Taehyung. Instead, I think he carries that energy elsewhere, hence the wanderer going from A to B onto a mountain. In short, Namjoon naturally grew out of it by becoming more, well: Namjoon. He’s left a lot behind, he’s choosing self-development over temporary fun, and he will ponder a lot on the topic, the hows and whys and whats more often than not. So, he’s passed the baton to Yoongi and Jungkook if you will, and keeps a low profile as of now. 

tarot mlist | ko-fi

----

for anon:

[springfieldblues]

my long ass review for S32E03 Now Museum, Now You Don’t

warning: LONG because i rambled about history more than i thought i would

id been looking forward to this one because i like art history, especially after seeing how they tried their best to stick to historical accuracy in the previous episode I, Carumbus. this time however….they didnt try that hard. i dont know why i thought theyd go through that sort of trouble again LMAO

but its okay, i dont really expect the simpsons to be the paragon of historical accuracy or anything. especially in anthology episodes told through a particular character's lens (in this case, lisa, whos already feverish so whatever)

first i just wanna say that this is, i guess, less of a review and more of an accidental list of history fun facts. so im just gonna get my general thoughts out of the way first.

the episode was fun! to me at least haha. i mean it got me to think and do a lot of research on my own so that must count for something. besides a couple of really weird ones, the jokes were good. anthology episodes tend to be….not that good but i thought this one was one of the better ones so far. idk.

anyway on to lisanardo da vinky its the renaissance! jesus christ the italian accents in the beginning of this segment were annoying as hell but i also feel like that was the joke lmao. ill be real i kind of tuned out for a second there when grampa started rambling so idk what he said.

i told myself i wouldnt get nitpicky with historical accuracy if the jokes were funny (final edit: so that was a lie) but this meh bit with the pizza guys and mascots was really not worth ignoring the fact that its impossible for italy to have any tomato-based food in the 15th century (tomatoes were brought to europe from the americas in the 16th century, and pizza as we know it today—flatbread, cheese, tomato—originated in the late 18th century)

oh this next part was kind of legit tho. lisanardo, like the real leonardo, became andrea del verrochio's apprentice at his workshop. i loved this next bit:

"Whoever paints the sweetest cherub will have the honor of having MY name signed on their work. That's what great artists do!"

SO YEAH as it turns out, lisanardo painted the sweetest cherubs. the painting here is called The Baptism of Christ, and the real leonardo assisted verrochio in finishing it. specifically, he painted the cherubs in the corner.

this causes verrochio to quit and go someplace with less talented people: a music school (yes, verrochio did quit painting after getting owned by young leo and his mad angel painting skills. he never did anything with music tho, he was more of a sculptor)

alongside lisanardo, in mr largo-verrochio's workshop we have barticelli (botticelli bart), dolphatello (donatello dolph), ralphael (raphael...ralph) and mediocrito (no one that i know of. sorry milhouse) (and kearney i guess but they dont refer to him by name). botticelli and donatello are said to have also been apprentices at verrochio's workshop, but raphael came a couple of decades later so he couldnt have been there. and donatello was too old so that claim is a bit questionable. but anyway

it IS true that leonardo's peers envied him, to the point where he was anonymously and purposefully accused of being gay (a major crime punishable by death in 15th century florence) while he was still working at verrochio's workshop

we are then treated by what im pretty sure is the fourth time the show has used 'at seventeen' by janis ian, this time sung by a dejected lisanardo (man they really do keep making yeardley sing these days huh) who only wishes to be appreciated and not envied.

"I'll show them all! I'll show them all in a secret diary that no one will decipher for 400 years!"

some of lisanardo's future inventions. who wouldve known

so after barticelli, for some reason (revenge??? or something?? what was his plan here idgi) steals lisanardo's diaries full of blueprints of her inventions and takes them to mr burns who i have to assume is pope alexander VI here, they decide to use her inventions for war.

"With these, we can kill the most evil people in the world!! ....Slightly different Christians."

leo actually did this of his own accord. im surprised this is what they decided to do with lisanardo instead of talking about leo's love of nature and vegetarianism (not a single mention of that in this episode? come on...) then again, trying to do good only to end up indirectly making things worse is a very standard lisa storyline. i guess they didnt want to miss the chance to have evil pope burns (very fitting, especially for that era since they were all about money and controlling the people)

so lisanardo decides to leave for france, unlike the real leonardo who was more or less persuaded by his ultimate fanboy king francis I to move to france.

"Lisanardo, I have many questions. Why are you hitting yourself? A nerd says 'what'? And how is it possible that I am rubber and you are glue? Et cetera, et cetera."

that line may seem a little random, like hes just nelson saying nelson things (and i mean, obviously he is) but the real francis also "had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and Leonardo was the world’s best source of experimental knowledge. He could teach the king about almost any subject there was to know, from how the eye works to why the moon shines." so yeah, he did have many questions and lisanardo, finally being appreciated for her intellect, was happy to answer them all. its very interesting how lisa assigned this role to nelson in her retelling of da vinci’s life :^)

and so she lived the rest of her days in france, nat king cole's 'mona lisa' plays because duh, and they make a da vinci code reference because duh. and the segment ends. and not a single time did they show the actual mona lisa painting. the fuck?

(ngl i was fully expecting bart to say 'leonardo da vinky' for a second here)

so this next segment is about french impressionist painters, most likely the batignolles group, a name adopted by the early representatives of impressionism. its much more vague than the lisanardo segment since no one here is referred to by name (except moe, more on him in a sec) but i dont feel like it really matters in this case. bart is prrrrooobably claude monet but its hard to say, this segment is kind of a mish-mash of a lot of things. also i gotta say i really liked how lisa introduced the story to bart with an 'if you hate the formal study of art' and not 'if you hate art' because thats exactly my headcanon. i LOVE the concept of artist bart and whenever its referenced it just makes perfect sense to me.

anyway the segment opens in 1863 at the école des beaux-arts (back then it was actually known as the académie des beaux-arts), preserver of traditional french art styles. skinner reviews his students’ paintings one by one. praises the plain, unimaginative paintings depicting your typical european countryside landscapes. very run-of-the-mill (haha get it...cuz theres….a windmill) (although the real académie didnt approve of such basic stuff, they wanted artists to draw epic historical and mythological scenes) then he gets to barts painting and he gives him an F- because the painting made him think.

(the paintings in this scene arent real famous paintings as far as i know but they are inspired by real paintings enough to get the point across)

in comes barney dressed as bacchus as a model for the students to sketch, which i just loved:

barney: “You prefer robe open or robe off?” skinner: “Just cover your privates with this walnut shell.” barney: “Whoa!!! So roomy!”

skinner gasps in horror at bart’s sketch, which “looks nothing like him” and bart explains that “it shouldn’t; we’re making the art that we feel because we can’t compete with a camera.” damn, you go bart. take that, realism. draw what you feel!!

(also no, you didnt need to hold still for 17 hours for a daguerreotype. 30 min tops.)

nelson haw-haw of the week: FOIE-gras!

so here they are at the moulin rouge (“enjoy it before baz luhrmann ruins it” hey shut up. i love that movie), which wouldnt be built for another 26 years, but it is the most widely known gathering place for bohemians in the public consciousness so i can understand why they went with the moulin. nelson delivers this anachronistic line:

“This époque keeps getting beller and beller!”

which alludes to la belle époque, the golden age of france usually dated from 1880 to 1914. made me snort so ill let that slide

and heres moe! as henri de toulouse-lautrec, who was actually born a year after the year this segment is set in. yo moe szyslak he was just 1

toulouse-moetrec introduces himself as the chronicler of the demimonde (not an actual job). an iconic figure associated with the moulin rouge (largely due to his affinity for alcohol and prostitutes), toulouse-lautrec was also a painter, having illustrated a series of posters for the moulin himself. he simply had to be in this segment, anachronisms be damned, just because they decided to include the moulin. cant have one without the other.

and yes he did have a walking cane where he kept his liquor.

i love how everyone drinks absinthe in this place. theyre bohemians what else would they drink

toulouse-moetrec points out that barts paintings are the greatest thing hes ever seen (and hes seen like five things!) and that hes a genius. milhouse realizes that they should stop doing what the teacher says and use their own minds to instead...start doing what bart says lmao. to the easels!

next we have skinner hyping up chalmers about the art his students made for the salon de paris, an art exhibition that the emperor of france will attend. he assures him that none of these paintings will encourage debate, provoke thought or be out of place at a dentist’s office. when they unveil the art, theyre both SHOCKED at how scandalous the paintings actually are.

this reaction was kind of accurate. impressionism was severely rejected at the salon de paris, due to paintings not looking finished enough to them, they thought they were ugly and vulgar for depicting nudity in a contemporary setting (historical and mythological nudity was fine). these impressionist paintings were sent to the salon de refusés, which is. yeah. the place where they sent the rejects. the salon de refusés does not make an appearance but this scene makes a reference to it when the artists get expelled from the royal salon. also:

“What about our student loans?” “Oh they’ll be refunded. We are not barbarians, I mean, come on.”

(god if only)

so the painters are down because they want the emperor to actually see their paintings. toulouse-moetrec pipes in once again with an idea.

“There is one thing the emperor loves more than anything.” “France?” “No, he hates France.”

apparently the emperor really loves cheese, which makes sense since its napoleon III (who loved cheese) and homer (who loves cheese.) so the painters roll into the salon inside a giant wheel of cheese (obviously.) as lenny said, “Eh, you know French cheese. Very runny.” napoleon III chases after the wheel into a room, where the wheel falls apart after getting chomped on by the emperor. now that they got his attention, the painters proudly show the emperor their impressionist art, which he couldnt be more indifferent about because he just wants to eat his cheese dammit, and he awards them with the royal medallion just to kind of get them out of his way. skinner immediately starts kissing ass (as he does) until marge’s like ‘hey wait a minute. you expelled these students from the royal salon’ and an executioner immediately starts ominously measuring skinners neck.

“Uh, sir...is your tongue sticking out because you’re dead or because you’re mad at me?”

and thats the end of that lmao (gore in this episode, gore in the last episode, and next week we’re getting gore too cuz its THOH, what the hell is goin on)

we get a short intermission with maggie, who wants a story for her too! lisa tells her that renaissance artists loved to put babies in their paintings, especially baby angels.

here she is showing her The Triumph Of Galatea by raphael:

King David Playing The Harp by peter paul reubens:

and a very simplified version of pretty much any depiction of hell by hyeronimus bosch lmao:

not much else to say about this one, really. but i really liked that sky!

the last segment is about frida kahlo and diego rivera. or as bart puts it ‘the one about a fat guy whos wife is too good for him.’ i was REALLY looking forward to this one because i love frida and i thought itd be a cool opportunity for animators to go bonkers and do really cool shit with her art as inspiration…..but the segment is not about frida, its about diego and his selling out to capitalism. and its also yet another story with homer and marge drama. no funky cool animation here. sigh i guess i’ll take it

the story begins in 1929 at la casa azul, frida’s home (now museum dedicated to her life and work.) frida and diego are getting married. this courtyard definitely did not look this way yet back in 1929. also theres something very cringy yet funny about lovejoy saying spanish words the way he does, i honestly cant decide how i feel about that one

the writers know theyre being cringy with their gringoness so they go along with it.

moe: “Spanish for ‘best wishes’!” mel: “Spanish for ‘congratulations’!” bumblebee man: “Spanish for ‘muy bueno’!”

OH YEAH BUMBLEBEE MAN this is his new voice actor, eric lopez! hes not mexican but its still great to finally have a latino actor voicing a latino character and hes very excited to be part of the show so i hope to hear more of him!! im rooting for him

el barto/zorro makes an appearance which i am very confused about. he has jack shit to do with frida and diego and mexico in the 20s-30s. el zorro was set in the spanish california of the early 19th century. their use of the original theme song makes me think they just wanted to flex their disney privileges tbh

lets not talk about that that whole scene was bad

anyway diego announces he and frida are going to new york, without even asking her first. frida is obviously pissed.

“Don’t worry, as a woman, you’ll be treated with much more respect in America.”

so in new york, diego is having a bit of a business meeting with mr burns as one of the members of the rockefellers, who is commissioning him to draw a mural for the rockefeller center. its kinda funny how he refers to him and frida as socialists even though they were very much communists lmao its okay you can say it. ok so far, but then frida says ‘yes, we hate the capitalists! right now, a young socialist is being born who will take them down! mr. bernie sanders. i hope hes quick about it’ and that was a simple enough joke and couldve been left at that but then its immediately followed by this weird as fuck family guy-esque cutaway gag to bernie as a baby:

“Getting a cootie shot should not cost your lunch money. And if you don’t listen to me, listen to the Bernie Babies! What? Everybody’s got goons.” *larger babies start beating up this other baby* “I disavow that, and welcome it.”

this confused me so much that i had to ask one of my american friends to help me understand, but even she was like ‘uhhh yeah thats a weird joke,’ especially now that hes been out of the race for months (then again these episodes take almost a year to produce. i guess they couldnt be bothered to replace it with something more relevant.) whatever that was weird and confusing and unfunny moving on

frida is pretty irked that diego is going through with this deal. after all, it goes against everything they believe in. im not sure how the real frida felt about diego doing the mural, but she did feel a bit of rage during her visit to the united states, especially the obvious disparity between rich and poor. she hated having to interact with capitalists and found americans very boring. in this segment, frida seems to be acting more like the american communist party, which diego got kicked out of for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons. in any case, frida is pretty upset about this whole thing.

and finally we get the first and only kind of surreal frida moment. kinda. maybe. its more cartoonish than anything but im desperate ok

interesting how they felt like they had to add a “don’t smoke” in big letters after showing patty and selma flying away on their giant cigarettes. i wonder if this is something theyre making them do now? i remember hearing something about them toning down patty and selma’s smoking

diego comes home to frida, drunk as hell, followed by the marx brothers. i cant believe they didnt make a marxism joke come on it was RIGHT THERE. THE MARX BROTHERS. KARL MARX. COME ON

frida paints her feelings.

this makes diego realize that frida is a genius and he is not half the artist she is. he proclaims he will now show his awe of her by sleeping with other women, starting “an hour ago.” to which frida replies, “and i will start sleeping with other women, starting two hours ago.” yes this was pretty much their relationship. though im just wondering how the hell did diego not know frida was this kind of artist until now? i know homers an idiot but jeez. art was how frida and diego met, diego knew from the get-go that frida was an incredible artist. i guess the fame got to his head or something. again, homer just being stupid.

“well enough already, while the art is still deco, okay?”

its time for the mural diego painted, Man At The Crossroads, to be unveiled:

rockefeller examines it. good and great so far, and then...uh oh

“Who’s that fellow…? With the beard, and the bolshevik smile…” “That’s the founder of Soviet Russia, Lenin!”

“B-b-but he’s a communist!” “Oh he just attended a couple of meetings.”

rockefeller will not have this communist in the temple to capitalism that is the rockefeller center, so he orders diego to paint over it. diego stands his ground and refuses. despite rockefeller’s threats, diego says that theres only one person he wants to be proud of him no matter what and in true homer & marge fashion, frida is touched by this. they happily leave the rockefeller center.

now, the real story of Man At The Crossroads and the rockefeller center was actually not that different. as soon as the rockefellers found out diego had snuck in a portrait of lenin into the mural, they ordered him to paint over it, to which he refused. diego even offered to include abraham lincoln and even american abolitionists in the mural as a compromise, but the rockefellers simply did not want any references to communism whatsoever. they did not complain about the hammer and sickle, though. yes, they did know diego was a communist and hired him anyway. what did they expect? lmao. diego said:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."

so they decided to destroy the mural before it was even finished and they never talked to each other again.

diego then repainted the mural at the palacio de bellas artes back in mexico, this time known as Man, Controller of the Universe. this new version included even more communist leaders and a depiction of john d. rockefeller jr. drinking at a nightclub, right underneath a depiction of syphilis bacteria. cue nelson haw-haw:

this was the version they used in the episode also, since the original was, well, never finished and also destroyed. only a black and white photograph of it exists, taken by diego before it was destroyed so he could remake it.

right so, homer!diego then pulls a Barthood and finishes the episode with a large mural summarizing the entire episode. he says some rick and morty thing i didnt get because i dont watch the show idk idc

the end

ALRIGHT NOW ITS TIME FOR THE STORY OF VINCENT VAN MOE

[sonofcern]

So I stumbled on a popular neodruidic Facebook page... But they mock environmentalists...

Note: This has honestly sat in my drafts since sometime late 2019 forgotten about as well, life happened and I kind of stopped keeping up with this blog. However I was just checking my old shit now and I still think this needs to be said so here it goes.

The Druid Circle is a neodruidic Facebook page with over 54,000 likes (edit: just checked before posting this draft, now it's up to 69,087) as of me writing this, who posted this meme~

And naturally they got inundated with some criticisms. To which they responded with blocks and bans, and a comment, "sorry about the liberal trolls." Because critiquing the accuracy of a meme makes you a liberal troll now I guess.

That was cringey enough as it was, but then, there's this post:

I don't even think I need to tell anyone that's following my blog just what load of ridiculousness this is it would be preaching to the choir. I mean druids mocking people for trying to be more environmentally friendly based on some dirty vegan hippie stereotypes, (and... cockroach milk? seriously?) then trying to claim they're the "true" druids? Good fucking grief lmao. I don't even know why I bother to make this post and frankly idk if I just want to laugh at the idiots or cry that these are the idiots that may well be getting popular traction within our community and representing us now...

[lady-plantagenet]

What hasn’t already been said: The Spanish Princess 2

Episode 3: GOOD Grief! (we finally have a good episode on our hands)

To all those of you keen enough to have come back for another segment of ‘what hasn’t already been said: TSP’, as opposed to have just been scrolling when you see this - welcome back! (Scrollers you too <3)

Drawing of Thomas More’s Son AKA who Margaret Pole at this point wants to be the step baby momma of ;).

To anyone who’s seeing this for the first time: what this is a list of observations, jokes, reactions and criticism which occur to me upon a rewatch. I wait every week until Saturday to do this so that I have had my fill of scrolling through the tag and aggregating what has already been said. I tried doing a whole spoof (here where I gave up 10% in) but tbh a) I don’t know the history well enough b) it’s more time consuming than I thought and c) this series is just not as funny or as crazy as TWQ, so it’s untenable. Having said that: This is not a hatepost. I’m not hatewatching this series and nitpicking on purpose but expressing my honest views and trying to find the good in it as well as the bad.

Without further ado...

First Scenes: 

LMAO the way Wolsey suggests they break their alliance with Spain is freaking hilarious because the actor delivers the lines as if he were a high school girl making a personal attack by suggesting the prom change its theme to 70s disco to the chagrin of the peppy up-and-coming rival.

Also @ Henry VIII looking like the peppy up-and-comer’s bff and shy stan with that pencil bite and small smirk when Catherine loses her cool against Wolsey.

I’m sorry... who is Henry married to again?

Also what is Margaret Pole doing at the council meeting?? I’m not saying I don’t like it.

Margaret Pole warning against certain repetitive thinking creating madness :(((

Attempted Naked Twister:

Oh Catherine, what is with you and all the other STARZ protagonists and that weird politcky bedroom talk? Who actually finds this sexy?

‘Catherine you are unnatural’ ooof that line delivery was somehow haunting.

Was the whole ‘I can’t be rushed you are off-putting with your overpowering’ a callback to Arthur and Catherine? Apparently there’s another writer for this episode so I won’t put all subtly past them. 

Scotland:

‘Shitey men’ asdkjashd

Look I’m tired of all this ‘my children won’t be safe’ line getting repeated. Look mate, murder of royal infants and children was not exactly a common occurence, even in cases of deposition. The Princes in the Tower are an exception to this but a very infamous case for that reason. Child murder was extremely taboo. In situations like this with an infant kid, no one is going to bother murdering the babies and taking their thrones, the lords will just vie for power and make themselves de facto rulers and oust the queen. It’s not a question of safety but a question of holding power. Stop giving all women characters perma mummy brains.

Maggie being all caring:

‘Barnaby’ *scoffs* ‘Such an English name’ - OH MAN 0_0 is Catherine mocking them for trying to adapt ? Like I know it’s meant to show her envy for Lina, but it’s coming out all messed up.

Our girl Maggie’s smile screams I’m beating your ass in chess.

Anyhow this is the least histrionic we’ve seen Catherine so far.

Chaplain vs Catherine:

I’m interested how Catherine will feel at Stafford’s execution given that I have noticed this show build up to a friendship between them.

Why is everyone laughing at the whole ‘will you delight us with new schemes’ line was not that funny?

LMAO at Thomas Boleyn’s attempted brown-nosing. 

You know what? Ruairi is a decent actor. When he says ‘so you admit it? you lost the child because you tried to be a man?” the actor conveys Henry’s troubled mind, lowkey scare towards Catherine and bewilderment all in one. The way his eyes do not move but just widen emotionlessly also gives this sense that he is being manipulated (which I guess they are going for with Wolsey). Then the whole choir music in the background.. I don’t know.. I’m liking this, it’s creating a vibe of a king of haunted and increasingly paranoid Henry. I’m sure they are going for that, so good.

Ursula Pole and Mama:

Maggie Pole say ‘riches don’t keep you safe’ with tears in her eyes :’(. Please tell me how this is not her thinking on her parents and granddad Warwick and what befell them ;’(.

I find Ursula refreshing actually, don’t get those types of heroines often. But they are making her similar to a gold-digger, an exhalted marriage was first and foremost considered a thing of honour. Noblepeople wouldn’t speak in such mercenary terms regarding their marriages. 

Post Mary Defiance:

I love the ‘horse’ nickname from Brandon n’awwww

Also just realised what made TWQ so atmospheric - that wierd ‘oooo’ sound effect in the background when a character was being paranoid or worrying. They are using it during Henry’s ‘How is it that I have no sons?’ and it is just... so effective.

Catherine calling them ordinary children... she just keeps striking me as more and more classist. Like ok, I know every royal was... but still, I thought she was meant to see Lina as a friend and equal despite her race and status. To add the race element, this kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Also it is so clear by the end when Catherine states how the king is upset with her, she expects Maggie to ask her about it.. but she doesn’t lmao.

Back to Scotland until Sexy boy fencing:

I love me this soft boi. Angus <3 <3

I like how they address that some men don’t really like killing and that violence isn’t inherent in a man’s nature.

Oh man, are we supposed to look at Lina’s house and deplore the impoverished conditions? It would go for at least 3,000,000 pounds in today’s property market?

Is Catherine being particularly classist again with ‘Why u not becoming a butcher Wolsey, ey?’. 

Though I will admit the ‘but giving meat to the poor is also good’ was one of her only smart comebacks.

Just realised, Catherine’s pink dress pretty as it is, looks straight out of the 1570s... why?

Montage and After:

You guys are right, there is this weird longing between Henry and Wolsey lmao. It is actually insane.

So basically Catherine is officially depressed

OOOFF we have Stafford as regent instead of Catherine. (edit: I suppose it’s cause they go to France which they didn’t historically? Also if Stafford is at home then what is his son later doing in France, why would he be there without his father. This show didn’t think this through)

Meg Singing:

An impassionate speech is not too anachronistic. But despite the title of this post (what hasn’t been said) I will reiterate that 16th century and Medieval people’s problem wasn’t that they were ashamed of their grief and didn’t cry. In fact, crying was somewhat more socially acceptable then than it even is now! Even manly men like Arthur were written as crying in literature such as Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Obviously you couldn’t go overboard, but in truth crying was indeed often too performative rather than hidden too much behind doors.

Pole and More UWUWU in France and after:

I LIKE THIS INTELLECTUAL FLIRTING

It’s nice to see a depiction of romantic feelings between mature and level-headed subjects.

God Mary Tudor is so beautiful in this scene jesus. and the music when she was being presented was also very beautiful.

Maggie Pole getting given ‘a modest income’ yeah... she was one of the wealthiest peers of her day.

Also Maggie’s lady cousin not lady aunt Frost!

‘shaking of the sheets’ lmaoooo

William Compton cracks the hell out of me. I love this guy. He is just so creepy and twisted yet super keen and friendly. ahaha He looks like a riot, I hope we see him more. lmao tiles.

Also this palace feels very anachronistic almost 18th century-ish.

I like the Louis and Mary sequence, it’s nice seeing him trying to make her feel less scared, but OMFG when he lay on that chair.. for one second I thought they were trying to kill him off already.

Scotland: ‘Love is an open doooooorrrrr’ + Last Scene:

I ship Meg and Douglas ahhhh this soft boi x strong woman match is everything Henry and Catherine could have been.

I wonder... why is Lina speaking in Spanish more than Catherine. hmmm Are they trying to foreshadow Lina’s eventual return home and how Catherine become a true englishwoman?

Conclusion:

7.5/10

I cannot in all fairness believe it. This was actually decent. I’ve given up on historical accuracy long ago so by this point I’m focusing more on how it stands as as drama. I mean, TWQ was also a flop when it came to grasping the complex issues of that era but why do I feel compelled to rewatch it every year? Because it had atmosphere when it came to acting, music, certain aesthetics (though the costumes let me down often). It felt adequately gothic and dark, yet bright and jewel-lish when it had to be, sometimes both at the same time. Some one-liners were also memorable etc...

So far TSP 2 did not have any of this. Everything felt way too off and anachronistic. But not even consistently anachronistic. The music was also often very meh (though I just noted the absence of the spanish stringy theme that kept playing in season 1 - I guess I understand why), the dialogue very clichéd (‘alright lads let’s throw in the words: king, crown, power, fight, battle + other buzzwords and we have ourselves Shakespeare’) and so on... but I saw a change in this episode and I couldn’t initially point out what it was.

Upon rewatch, I identified some of the improvements (noted above) but above all: The producer was different! Boy does it show. Unfortunately, I think she is only for this one episode which really sucks. Come back! There is more chemistry between the couples, less predictable interactions, pervy Compton, cinnamonroll Douglas, better music, more scenic shots (e.g Douglas and Margaret in church) e.t.c. I hope it will match the rest of the STARZ productions in getting better towards the end.

Look it’s no masterpiece. But I’ll give credit where it’s due because at least this time it didn’t leave me feeling wanting and unsatisfied (if that makes sense).