#i tend to like it for them in general anyway but those two especially? whew | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lingeringscars · 4 years ago

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i would spontaneously combust if asked to list my top five t/100 dynamics but bellamy & raven will always hold a special place in my heart. he just cares about her a lot, like go into the woods at the end of the world because the idea of living without raven does not spark joy lot. he just thinks she’s the most brilliant person he’s ever met, and he clearly has no difficulty talking about this both to and about her. he doesn’t really see the pressure this could put on her, though?? he’s just...shut off to this aspect because even when he’s making inane statements like “raven could have built a cathedral by now,” he means it. she’s raven reyes and she’s gonna save them all. “we have raven. are you telling me she can’t figure out another way to make water?” it really could be construed as blind faith because putting all of his belief into her, but like i said he believes in her more than anyone else in the world.

i’m starting my rewatch w/ my roommate tonight so this might be amended / updated and is v much from bellamy’s perspective but i do think he starts developing feelings for her around when they have sex. i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that scene in general and have tag spiraled on more than one occasion in relation to it. raven is not in the best place because of finn & clarke there and bellamy genuinely doesn’t like seeing people suffer! ( from what I remember ) he’s seen around raven more after this scene / earlier that ep was again from what i remember the first bellamy giving raven pep talks re her being a huge pain in the ass but smart. he immediately discusses everything she did to get to the ground + then asked what else she had in her brain, and later that ep they have sex which brings us to the “did that help?” “no” scene and from then on, he’s one of the first people at her side whenever anything happens.

i think about bellamy’s “is that raven” in the season 2 finale about 100 times a day. he recognized her from her scream, that’s absolutely horrifying, but he’s also so in tune with her pain and just feels that so deeply. it’s so automatic for him to give raven the support she needs !! adjusts automatically and is one of the first people if not the first to get to her if she needs it ( helping her down after being strung up & tortured by lexa, holding her during finn’s death, when he sees her trying to get back into camp after being shot, i’m sure there are others these just stand out specifically ).

bellamy is very...physically affectionate but pre-space, this usually takes form in grabbing someone’s shoulder than any other. he doesn’t tend to initiate hugs and definitely doesn’t solely initiate. as in, a lot of the hugs he has on screen are either someone else initiating it / both hugging at the same time. but that’s never been the case with raven!! in season 3 and season 4 where she really isn’t in a place where she can respond to it, he initiates a hug. she really doesn’t respond to either and yet he doesn’t let go immediately. he just loves her a lot !! i think his feelings for her kind of get buried but it’s these moments where they shine through because despite their differences, there’s a lot of love and trust there? and i think part of this is that bellamy was risking his life..every second he was in mount weather and raven really kept him tethered !! hearing her voice was enough to motivate him somedays when he didn’t know what they had to do, and talking it out with her ultimately helped w/ everything.

i’ve spent a lot of time with the “you were never that devoted to gina” and “you don’t know what you’re talking about” quote, and I think this post about the script change kind of sums up my feelings because regardless of bob changing the line, this is always how i have perceived that scene !! he doesn’t say anything until that last moment, directly after ALIE!Raven makes a comment about it. we’re never gonna really know what was going on in that scene, and Raven’s can interpret what ALIE was reading into there, but i’ve talked this out a lot with @loveisaviolence esp after she added gina, so this is largely how we’ve developed that dynamic (bellamy x gina x raven) and i’m not gonna assume it with anyone else!! with that said, i CAN see bellamy kind of pursuing Raven post mount weather. i don’t see it going further than asking about getting a drink and he really cares for her so it doesn’t need to be a romantic thing !! but he does have feelings for her too, that continue to grow deeper the more time they spend together !! raven has also made comments about gina being too good for bellamy and like....there are layers to his thoughts that like on surface level and deep down he both agrees and disagrees with this statement. gina is bright !! and not this constant reminder of mount weather / what he did. she’s who he could get to with time, but raven is connected to mount weather ( especially since it was seeing her tortured that led to him starting to question whether they really did only have one option in mount weather ) and that leads to him feeling closer with her and wanting to be around her, but it makes it hard for a relationship too. while Monty & Harper could form a romantic relationship, it makes sense that bellamy & raven wouldn’t !! they’re both people that throw themselves into their work and respond w/ “i’m fine” even if they clearly aren’t ! they’re also just independent, albeit in very different ways. raven pushed wick away, and it makes so much sense that after everything she just wouldn’t be receptive to bellamy !! and that these memories would be present during the ALIE!Raven scene, which could make it seem like gina wasn’t his first choice even if she did become that and he did care about her so so so much.

and i think it’s kind of the same when they get to space ! the feelings for raven didn’t just disappear and she’s still someone he loves and cares about. he knew that she was their best chance of survival and leaving her behind was never an option because that’s raven!! they need her, he needs her. they also are bonded by losing clarke and he’s gonna need to rely on raven more than ever !! ( can i just insert here that bellamy x clarke x raven is ...such a hot dynamic... ) season 4 was very good for that bellamy x clarke x raven dynamic in terms of leadership and how they all respond to it / the contention it forms between them. but going off of that....bellamy and raven are very different in that regard. bellamy sees short term: people are suffering, i can do this to stop the suffering, we have months and raven will figure it out. raven sees that bellamy making that final decision to blow up the hydro-generator cost them time and lives. bellamy saved those lives now and that’s what mattered to him but raven is able to say that he just postponed the inevitable for them and now made it so they don’t have 500 spots but 100. this is just !!! one of my favorite episodes / scenes of the entire show !! it really shows so much and I absolutely live for the “i made the call and i’ll live with that” and “and you’re not the one that has to live with your call as usual.” it’s such a brilliant scene whew okay back to my point. he does that again when making the call to get to raven instead of trying to get back to the bunker, asking her if she can get them off the ground before the death wave hits.

anyway this would ... have to be plotted obviously but i could see them trying something in space within the first year just because mutual grief and comfort and having already been with each other even if it’d be different now. and ultimately...it not working out. i love them a lot and they’re one of the few t/100 romantic ships i actually ship because the show isn’t really about romance so much as just love and it’s why i can’t choose between dynamics because every single one is so rich !! but i think it also makes sense that it....would never work. i know a lot of people were excited at the prospect of b.raven getting together during the time jump but their dynamic kind of had to take a different turn as they grew? but more than that....i actually think they’re too similar! i don’t really know how to put it into words but it’s something i’ve thought about for a while... they push each other but they don’t necessarily grow from that....they just kinda push against each other. they’re also just...both so stubborn again in different ways but it makes it hard to do anything when you’re both too stubborn to bend. and as much love and care and trust they have for each other, that cannot sustain a romantic relationship !! they also just need someone to take them away from their work and i think bellamy would try and be that person for raven, but i don’t know if he could be effective at it especially considering....he has one of the strongest motivations to get back to the ground ( octavia ). they need someone that is going to get them away from throwing themselves completely into work, and that’s also another reason why they wouldn’t have worked during the first time jump. there’s always something else to grab their attention, always something else that needs to get done.

b & e clearly reach a point where they discuss things and reach a place of forgiveness, but i don’t know if b.raven could do that? in terms of actual discussions and processing of trauma instead of just focusing on work. i think that if they were to have something in space, it would be rooted in love but....would basically be seeking out comfort and support and just....another body more than having a romantic partner. they’re two people who take on the world in different ways, but i don’t know if they’re as effective as other dynamics to share that with someone else?? like b & c shoulder burdens together and i like to think that raven & emori get there too, but i don’t know if b.raven would be particularly good for each other right now !!

and i think raven is always gonna be someone that bellamy cares deeply for but all romantic feelings kind of go away after the first year -- at least for now as far as I think? i also think he’s just more adjusted at this point too. i don’t think he’s ever going to love going back to an empty room but he can find solace in it now more than before because spending all your time with the same six people can be a lot. my own personal headcanon has always been that bellamy asked raven to sleep in her room in the very beginning outside of any romantic / sexual relationship between the two of them just because she’s one of his favorite people / she’s safety / she’s comfort / they’re just kinda bonded because of everything on the ground and out of everyone...she’s the one he feels closest to especially in the beginning. ( it could be under the guise of trying to figure out how to get people to get along which i find amusing coming from these two people but their leadership dynamic wasn’t really explored and it makes sense that echo would take on a more prominent role and step into the leadership role on the ground but in space they made it clear that it was gonna be bellamy & raven and i’m ?? interested ?? in how that would have gone again because of their different leadership styles as mentioned earlier. they might be able to balance each other out ?? idk i don’t have a lot of thoughts on it bc i’ve never really explored it / thought about it )

i never really know how to end metas so in summation: bellamy loves raven a lot, believes in her a lot, thinks she’s the smartest person he has ever and will ever meet, he did develop romantic feelings for her even if it was never fully explored / him having feelings is usually assumed depending on when, whether or not anything comes of it never is, after the six years in space, he doesn’t have romantic feelings for him anymore but she is his family and he loves her.

#i would probably actually write if i didn't write 10 paragraph metas instead #torture tw #ask to tag #dyn: are you with me? always (rellamy)#muse: bellamy blake #i also kinda stop ?? shipping them after season 4?? i just don't really get that vibe from them anymore idk !!#long post #long post for ts #omg this really might have made it to ten paragraphs why do i not shUT UP #lmao i actually think that was my tag on this blog and my personal for them for a v long time otp: shut up #nah on this blog it was dyn: that's cute i think but still

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surveys-at-your-service · 5 years ago

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Survey #263

laptop is still broken, nvm. :’)

Do you have a favorite song by The Cure? "Sweet Soul Sister." (': Are there things you've never told for fear that others would judge you? Yep. Can sex ever be casual? I personally don't support it, but ultimately, so long it's consensual, protected, and both parties understand what's going on, you do you. Would you like to go on television to receive a make-over? Not on TV, no. It'd be awesome to see myself after a professional makeup, but I ain't going on TV to show my ugly face. What will no one ever see you do? Smoking. Are you quick to anger? Rarely. Are you slow to forgive? Not really. Usually. What do you need help with? Being an adult, lmao. Do you take the easy way out of things? More often than I'd like... What is your favorite fabric to wear? *shrugs* I don't pay attention to the fabric I wear, really. Do you still make a wish when you blow out your birthday candles? C'mon dude, you've got to! I don't believe in wishes increasing your odds of anything, but it's a must anyway! Do you look for four leaf clovers? Just casually when I'm walking or sitting outside. What are you the guardian of? My pets! Are you for or against censoring child pornography? I've seen many stupid questions in surveys. But this is the absolute dumbest. What the fuck is wrong with you. Are naked child images in paintings more acceptable than photographs of naked children? GENERALLY, yes, but it really depends on the artistic portrayal. None should be sexualized. Now that we can create such lifelike digital images, do you think it should be allowed for digital child pornography to exist (as in there were no children involved in the porn, it is all digitally made, the kids aren't real, they just look real)? Absofuckinglutely not. The concept is absolutely repulsive. Enough with these fucking questions. Do you like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy better? Wheel of Fortune, ig. Jeopardy is pretty boring to me. What is your favorite tarot deck? I don’t know enough about tarots to comment. How do you feel about Wicca and Paganism? IT'S SUPER SUPER INTERESTING AND COOL AND I LOVE LEARNING ABOUT IT!!!! I relate most to Neo-Paganism anyway, so I obviously don't mind them. Wicca especially is a very, very misconstrued religion that has just been horribly abused by the media. Do you believe that people who practise the above religions are able to accomplish magic? No, I don't. If you were given the opportunity to lead a creative writing program for a small group of students in a high school with a low budget in generally poor neighborhood, would you do it? No, but only because I could never been a teacher. Sounds fun otherwise. Should high school cafeterias stop serving twinkies and other fatty foods? BIIIIITCH whose HS sells Twinkies????? I need to know?????? Anyway, no, but I believe there must be mostly actually nutritional options. Let kids have the chance to have a little snack during a boring 'ole school day. What band is so romantic that anyone who listens to them must be romantic at heart? BOY Josh Groban. Have your gods and idols let you down? The Christian god did. What do you waste? Whew... time... time. When was the last time that you were neither going to school or working for a month or more? Currently. Ugh. What is your light at the end of the tunnel? The potential of a beautiful future. Speaking of the light, is the light that people see when they die the random firing of electrons or is it something more? Good question. I lean towards it being a natural phenomenon as everything shuts down, BUT I find the reincarnation/birth canal theory to be quite interesting. I don't really believe it, but hey, who the hell am I to decide if it is or not. If you were going to have a mural painted in your bed room what would you want it to be of? A scene of meerkats probably. Is sex more about fulfilling a need or giving yourself? Giving yourself. Do you like your belly? FUCK NO. Do you think more or act more? Think, sadly. Should there be a mandatory retirement age? Of course not. You work all you want boo. What's the craziest thing you've ever done on impulse that worked out well? This is gonna sound... very bad, but my suicide attempt. It made things abundantly clear I needed serious help. It led to my partial hospitalization program. Do you have any exercise tapes or DVDs? No but OH MY GOD this made me remember my lil sister used to a Barbie one that we followed lmaoooo. Does the sound of crickets bother you? No, I quite enjoy it actually. Is the sound of a fan on at night soothing? Yessss. How do you feel you will likely die? I really don't know, but probably cancer-related. Recent events have made it abundantly clear it does in fact run in our family, and genetic testing because of Mom's cancer revealed that at least through her, my sisters and I are susceptible to pancreatic, breast, and ovarian cancer. Once this virus passes over, we're all getting tested for free to get an understanding of what hell Dad gave us lmao. Have you ever been slapped in the face? No. How about punched? Yeesh, no. That was something unique about you as a child? I was CRAZY about dinos for the average little girl. Have you ever come up with a memorable quote? Not really. What is something interesting about where you live? The town is like, really, really old. Downtown looks right out of an old movie. Were you breastfed as a baby? Yeah. If you’ve lost your virginity, what was your first time like? I don't remember it because it didn't really register what we were doing was sex. I still don't know today if you could call it sex since it was really dry humping through thin clothes, but it sounds close enough. What do you think about masturbation? You do you boo. Is it sometimes better than the real thing? I don't think so, though I only had a brief episode where I did it when I was put on a new birth control that made my hormones like so, so far beyond control. I stopped that shit sooo fast. I got almost nothing out of it, honestly. Intimacy is a two-person job for me. Who do you think about most? Jason, whether I want to or not. Favorite way to pamper yourself? Go to bed early lol. What's your most expensive piece of clothing? I don't have a clue. I don't really have expensive stuff. What was your last big achievement? Ugh... I'm not the person to ask. I haven't made any big ones even semi-recently. Have you ever had a "false alarm" moment, what was it about? Oh sure. The first time that comes to mind was when I thought Venus was dying once when she had a series of horrible coughing/gagging fits a long time ago. We took her to the vet with the risk of a respiratory infection, but she was clear, thankfully. I think she had early signs, though. Do you know how to ride a bike? Ye. If you were in the hospital who are the two people you'd want by your side? Mom of course, and it'd be nice if Sara was there if she was at all capable of that, but I'm fine w/ just Mom. If you could ever take a street sign, what sign do you want? Well, I wouldn't, but probably "stop" bc that applies to a lot in my life, lmao. Have you ever not returned something you borrowed and if so what was it? I don't think so? When you pack your lunch, what's your favorite packed lunch? Usually just a good 'ole pb&j. :') What was the one most important thing you learned from your parents? Take care of your goddamn relationship. Talk shit out instead of yelling. Work together. Never neglect the reason you're with each other. Have you done something you worry could come back to haunt you, what? No, because I don't believe in karma. If you had to build a small ark, what 7 animals would you save? Those with the biggest ecological impact, like bees and spiders, for example. I wouldn't be very happy with all my choices while all other animals perished, but you've gotta think of what comes next. Out of just selfishness I'd obviously have to spare a spot for meerkats, aha. They'd help with the bug control, though! I don't know about the other four, though; I'd have to think real hard on 'em. What is something your parents love that you actually love too? Classic rock and metal. Has anyone ever said "I love you" and you couldn't say it back? I firmly remember this is how I ended that childish shit with Joel. He said it and I couldn't. Have you ever ridden a camel? No. What's been the hardest loss you've had to take? Jason. What emotion is your least favorite and the one you are not in touch with? Fear, of course. No one likes being afraid. I'm not all that in touch with greed at all. Do you think facial moles or freckles are cute? I don’t mind 'em. Sometimes they're super-duper cute. Would you ever pick up a hitchhiker? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I don't trust strangers for shit. If you're searching for a relationship, where is your go-to place to look? I don't really "look" anywhere. What book have you read multiple times? I lost count of how many times I've read Meerkat Manor: Flower of the Kalahari. Granted, in subsequent reads, I would skip over the HUGE tangent chunks that were entirely unrelated to meerkats. I seriously remember one long-ass section was like a goddamn essay on why smaller animals tend to have unnaturally large testicles like I don't fucking care talk about Flower again. I think I only decided to read it in full two times, but maybe not even that. Do you keep a budget? I don't have the income to do so. Have you ever test driven a car you knew you weren't going to buy? No, never test-drove anything. What do you have a hard time visualizing? There's a number of things, but this one thing is weird shit: I can't picture my old therapist. Even when I saw her every month, I could almost NEVER visualize her in my head. She's a fucking cryptid or something, paranormal shenanigans is going on here. She's the only person I know where I have that problem. What makes you feel uncomfortable in group settings? I worry I'll make myself look stupid in front of everyone. What was your worst date ever? I don't feel like I've really had a bad one. I've had one that did nooooot go according to plan and I know the average girl would've been annoyed, but I'm actually an understanding human being who found the adventure fun in the end. Basically a flat tire, a sketchy tire place, and a lot of walking happened lmao. Tyler felt fucking awful, felt bad for him. Have you ever gotten in a bidding war on Ebay, if so for what item? HAHA yeah, though it was technically Mom, but she had me keep an eye on it. I remember Parasite Eve took some battling to get. I think maybe a Legend of Spyro game, too? Are you supportive of your friends even if you don't agree with them? So long it's not literally insane or stupid, usually. It really does depend. What did you think was stupid until you tried it? Hm. I'm not sure. What subject do you and your parents never see eye to eye on? Religion. I keep most of my beliefs to myself now. Where do you see yourself in 1 year's time? Honestly, I don't want to ponder and picture this. What is your favorite type of seafood? I only like shrimp. What triggers your inner shopaholic? HA, do tattoos count? See cool ones, and then I'm planning (more than only always...) tons of new ones I want and will just be DYING (ALSO more than always lakdjfwe) to go to the parlor. What public figure do you disagree with the most? I really can't say considering I'm just not educated enough here. What is your opinion on rats as pets? They are absolutely wonderful! Smart, sweet, and very clean despite their stigma. I've had quite a few. What is something you're afraid to try? Sky diving, the Tower of Terror ride. ;___; That kinda stuff. What song makes you dance uncontrollably? None. Do you like nachos, if so what topping is a MUST have? Cheese is all I really need for nachos. Do you have any subscriptions? Yes, to Adobe Creative Cloud. Which is better, Mario or Sonic? Mario games are cute, Sonic's make me cringe - I've watched enough Game Grumps to know lmao. I hate hate hate cringe culture, like let people enjoy whatever, but I absolutely cannot stop my cringe reaction to some shit. I don't judge the people that enjoy whatever it is, though. THAT pisses me off. Who is the most creative person you know? I've known Sara and Connie much too long to not say them. They have such vast imaginations. Besides a pickle, what is your favorite thing pickled? I've actually never tried anything pickled, I think... no wait. Aren't jalapenos? Well there, jalapenos. What did you do for your 21st birthday? If not, 21 what are your plans? I had my normal therapy sessions in the mental hospital lmfao. It's unfortunate, but I do have fond memories of the day. Everyone was so damn sweet, and the friend I made there even got in touch with one of the lunch ladies, who literally went to go buy me a slice of cake. She and the other employees in the kitchen brought it out at dinner, and everyone sang happy birthday. I think I remember tearing up just because it was so goddamn sweet, but also bittersweet in that I was in a fucking mental institution for my BIGGEST birthday. When I got out, Colleen bought me a red velvet cake to "make up for it," ha ha. I miss her every now and then alsdkjf;wae. Are you a role model for anyone in your life? Oh, I doubt it. Do you think you need to slow down and enjoy life more? I don't need to go any fucking slower in my life. Can you impersonate anyone famous? I don't believe so. Never really tried anyone. What is your favorite salty snack? Spicy Cheetos mmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM What is your favorite restaurant? Olive Garden for sit-down, Sonic for fast food. Have you ever been in a play for school? In elementary school. I never had a big roll, though. Do you wish you had more friends? Very much. What is the main character’s name in the book you’re reading? Aunt Lydia. Which famous author would you like to meet? I'm not particularly interested in any. Which artist would you like to meet? Hey hey hey. Mark's brother is a comic artist. Meet him, one step closer to meeting God Himself. (ง ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ)ง Which singer would you like to meet? OZZY sobs What celebrity do you have a crush on? Anyone who's even heard about a hint of my Markiplier obsession knows I would fuck him into oblivion. When you were in middle school, were you in love with someone you never talked to? No, I didn't romantically love anyone. Do you believe that there is an unseen spirit realm? I do. Martini, margarita, or sangria? YO STOP I'm weak with these things. I can't pick. Do you feel you are extremely gifted but no one appreciates you? No. I honestly feel like people have more faith in what I'm capable of than deserved. What Lisa Frank character is your favourite? The angel cat, probably. Or tiger. Do you know how to use Braille? No. When you use stairs, do you usually hold the rail? Currently, I have to because of my muscle atrophy. I need help to stay steady. Have you ever worn a veil? No. Have you ever planted a tree? We actually did plant an apple tree in our front yard at my childhood home. Never grew much. Have you ever made anything with clay? A number of things from art classes. Has today been a good day? No, honestly. Have you ever fed a horse hay? Yes. Are you more likely to text "Okay", "OK" or just "K"? "'Okay.' The other two are restricted for when I am in a mood and want someone to know I am in a mood." <<<< HA HA SAME. Do you like the taste of lime? Sure. Have you ever seen a mime (in real life)? Not to my recollection. Have you ever seen a deer (in real life)? Plenty of times; whitetails are common here. Right now, what can you hear? "Game Over" by Falling In Reverse. Have you ever seen a bear (in real life)? In the zoo, yes. I think there's a possibility I have in the wild, but only from a distance? Have you ever eaten glue? No. Do you tend to buy clothes used or new? New. If you have Netflix, how many items are in your queue? N/A

#survey #quiz #questions

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dragimalsdaydreams · 5 years ago

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WHEW BOY, I’ve been itchin’ to draw these designs up for quite a while now and finally got around to it, haha. I’ve struggled a lot with my personal style for MLP ponies, trying to make something nice out of “realism with MLP proportions” with.... mixed results, lmao. but I was inspired by @jayrockin‘s tiny sapient ungulate au to draw up my own more specevo designs, and I think I finally got something here I rly like

while I took heavy inspiration from Jay’s au (esp for the pegasus wings, which I will discuss in further detail in that section), I genuinely want to make something of my own here, and hope that comes through. if I’ve failed to do so, I apologize Jay, and I’ll be happy to delete or shift designs as needed-- I don’t want to infringe on ur designs or anything,,

anyways, I have a lot to say abt these designs, so I’ll throw it under the cut

BASE

while this is basically the starting point for my ponies-- the “unaligned” base-- it got me thinking about how it could possibly appear in-canon. magic is such a critical element of pony life, it would have to be something pretty drastic to strip a pony of all unique, class-defining features. which leads me to believe that if it would ever occur in the show, it would have happened in Starlight’s equality town. I imagine this wouldn’t necessarily be on purpose, but perhaps an unintended consequence removing a pony’s cutie mark? or maybe just a consequence of the particular spell Starlight used? either way, she prolly wouldn’t complain about “equalizing” her townsfolk on yet another level (tho she might have to explain why she gets to keep her horn for the removal spell). either way, it’s fun to imagine a uniform, blank set of unaligned ponies..

I had a hell of a time trying to figure out the relationship b/t magic and evolution, and how that translated to hexapods vs. tetrapods and the presence of a magic horn. my tentative lore is that alicorns are the basal ancestors of ponies (briefly: vertebrate hexapod clade >> ungulate-analogue clade >> magic-horn clade >> alicorns >> ponies). the eventual division of labor in early pony society redirected magical energy towards the most essential morphology for the three classes of labor, resulting in earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. though the genetic structures for horns, hoof-nails, and wings (+ secondary traits) are still present in any given pony’s genetic code-- it’s simply a matter of whether the switch for a particular set of traits is activated or not

physical remnants of horns and wings are still subtly present in ponies who don’t have those structures, in the form of a small bump on the skull and reduced wing-nubs just behind the front legs. often, the bump or nubs will have some identifying pelt pattern, though this isn’t always the case

now since my take on ponies is that they’re ~technically~ all genetically alicorns, this has the potential for more of a gradient b/t classes. in rare cases, an individual may be born with two different classes of magic+traits activated at once, dubbed a “bicorn”. however, without the regulation of a powerful alicorn to consciously divvy out the traits/magic in an individual’s body (as was the case for Twilight’s ascension), these traits/magic don’t express to the full extent that they could have if they’d been activated individually. as an example, I think Fluttershy would absolutely be a “bicorn”-- a pony who has the innate earth-bound magic of an earth pony, but the physique and wings of a pegasus (and I would hc her with small, underdeveloped hoof-nails as well, in this case). without the full extent of air magic to keep her aloft, Fluttershy can barely keep up with her swift pegasi cousins, and she doesn’t have the brawn typically associated with earth ponies. she’s still a very successful pony in her own right, but she had to find unique ways to fill in the gaps between earth and pegasi life that weren’t necessarily inherent to either lifestyle. due to their perceived ‘lack’ in cohesion and magic, some ponies call bicorns “the beggar’s alicorn” (or if I wanna be rly mean and up the age rating on this au, “the bastard alicorn”)

now past all that nonsense abt the classes, I want to detail some universal traits among pony anatomy.

for one, ponies have dexterous lips that they use to hold and handle delicate objects, much like manatees. this is basically reused from my past suggestion for Jayrockin’s own pony designs, but retrofit for my take on pony faces. since my faces have more pointed, upturned noses, I figure that the lips could hold an object in place, while rabbit-like nose-twitching could direct the angle of the object (like for writing). the bottom lip may still be able to help in angling, but the nose is the more directive force, in this design. this also makes it so the tip of a pencil is up in a pony’s direct line of sight, even if the pencil is a simple straight-line stick rather than more ergonomically-designed. this is important to me b/c I don’t know if more complex writing structures would necessarily be available in early pony society, so if ponies only have simple sticks to write with, I still want them to see what they’re writing lmao

this also directly influences ponies’ long, flexible necks. since pony heads are treated as an extra limb for dexterity (especially in those ponies without horns), the head needs to comfortably reach different parts of the body

pony “hooves” are essentially meaty mitts covering three inner toes. the thick padding and leathery skin usually obscures the internal anatomy, though sometimes indentations are visible (especially in earth ponies). the middle toe is the main anchor of support, with the side toes providing extra support. they also allow for some dexterity, as the side toes can pinch together well enough to even hold thin objects like pencils. while the overall construction of the legs makes dexterous use of the "hooves” a bit difficult, it’s not uncommon to see certain professions gravitate towards hoof use over lip use. many earth pony artists, for example, tend to use their hooves so they can keep their faces an appropriate distance away from their pieces to view the “big picture”, and painters in particular prefer the wide strokes they can get with their hooves

UNICORN

unicorn horns have a keratin shell with an inner base of bone. the center of the bone houses a thick bundle of neurons which extends back into the base of the brain. the keratin covering is composed of overlapping layers that grow into place as the unicorn ages (the tip is the oldest, while the base is the youngest). most newborn unicorns are born without a horn, but the first layer of the horn quickly breaks skin and grows into place within a few weeks of birth. a groove runs up the dorsal side of the horn, acting as a funnel for magic, which then spills into and out of the lips between keratin layers

unicorn spines tend to be rather long, consequently leading to long necks, torsos, and tails. their skulls are also usually a bit long compared to others. this overall length usually isn’t obvious when looking at a unicorn on their own, but next to any other class, they look a bit stretched

additionally, unicorns tend to style their hair long as well, coveting flowing tresses. hair appears in several different places on the body besides the head/neck and tail, such as the chin/jaw, throat, ear tips, and fetlocks. while individuals from other classes can sometimes grow hair in these extra places, it’s a rather rare trait, and seems to be associated more with bicorns than full-blood pegasi or earth ponies. interestingly, hair only seems to sprout from the end-half of unicorn tails rather than the full length as seen in other classes-- some ponies joke that unicorns’ first ancestors stole hair from their tails to fill out the rest of their bodies

PEGASUS

so this is where I more heavily reference Jayrockin’s designs, and where I apologize if I didn’t make my wing designs unique enough from Jay’s... I just LOVE the look of cartilage-lobe wings, and it makes so much more sense than *suddenly feathers* in pony anatomy, imo (unless I were to just make all ponies’ fur/hair highly-specialized feathers, which is.... I mean it’s not a bad idea, but I’m not super into it)

anyways, pegasus wings vary across individuals, with different shapes and sizes leading to different flight styles. all wings are too small to support a pony without magic, but there is still a sense of relative loading and wingspan that leads different modes of movement. all wings have four fingers, with the first digit usually serving as a kind of alula. the cartilage of the lobes can reach as far as halfway up the length of the fingers, though they can be smaller. due to the lobes, the fingers only have one joint about halfway down the finger, near the start of the cartilage. the cartilage spines near the elbow also have one joint, and can range from 2-4 on a wing. pegasus tails are much stiffer and straighter than those of other classes in order to support tail spines and webbing for flight. 2-4 pairs of spines sprout from the base of the tail and are constructed similarly to the spines on the wings. sometimes the webbing of the back edge of the wings and the front edge of the tail connect, but this is uncommon

pegasi are generally the tallest of the classes, with long, thin legs and necks providing ample height. to handle the forces of powered flight, pegasi torsos are much stiffer than those of other classes. while pegasus wings aren’t especially muscular due to the reliance on wind magic, they still bulk up the torso with thick pectorals (still on the fence over whether they need a shallow keel tho..)

pegasi usually don’t have upturned snouts, but rather a straight slope with a small snout tip, giving the overall skull an aerodynamic wedge shape. their ears are also smaller to cut back on wind disturbance

pegasi hair tends to grow rather short, and even then individuals will usually keep it cropped short so it’s less of a hassle while flying. tail hair generally only sprouts from the very tip of the tail, sometimes extending down some of the underside of the tail. unlike the mysterious short range of tail hair in unicorns, this growth pattern is a direct result of the tail spines/webbing. while pegasus hair is sparse, pegasus fur tends to be thick and fluffy, especially around the torso and neck. this helps insulate pegasi when flying high in the chilly skies

EARTH

since earth pony magic seems to be driven by tactile connection to the earth via their hooves, I gave them hoof-nails as a more distinct conduit for their magic. they’re designed after elephant toenails, so they’re thick and blunt

besides that, earth ponies have bulky, thick physiques to match their typically labor-heavy lifestyles. not much more to say since that’s a p universal hc for earth ponies so ¯|_(ツ)_/¯

#mlp #mlp:fim #My Little Pony #my little pony friendship is magic #this is like half my own personal drive for specevo half love-letter to jayrockin's designs asdfgfgh I'm sorry..#I have some Thoughts abt social dynamics/communication but I only rly have a handle on it for earth ponies so far so maybe later..#notes #specevo

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peepingtoad · 5 years ago

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@kyugens said: What are Jiraiya's true thoughts on love? Has he ever considered giving up on his pining for Tsunade and settle down with someone else? He watched very closely Minato and Kushina's relationship, being his mentor and even naming Naruto, do you think he's ever wished to have a relationship like that? | headcanon asks | always accepting! |

I think it’s pretty clear that Jiraiya, from a very young age, was always very preoccupied with romance as a whole. He met Tsunade and immediately flirted with her, over-confident little man that he was, and even possessed very little motivation to improve as a shinobi at first because he just wanted to get girls. I believe as well that he was always one of those kids who’d just casually say things like ‘when I’m married’ or ‘when I have a kid’... you know those type of kids (I was never, ever one myself pff).

So I think there was a general idea his young brain had formulated, even while it was still so tender and stupid, that he’d likely end up having a wife and a kid at some point.

Of course, life had different plans for him!

By his early teens he was finding his feet as a shinobi and apprentice of the toads, but there was still nothing that could prevent his desire to get out there and score smooches. He even got a girlfriend pretty young, although it ended as young romances tend to do, only to be followed by a few more scattered dates and little flames. At some point (possibly in his late teens) I think he even made a 100% serious confession of love to Tsunade, promising to be very faithful and everything, which of course didn’t end well.

But he wasn’t too dismayed, and ended up very enthusiastically sowing his wild oats wherever he possibly could, and generally being scornful of commitment and marriage... possibly performatively, or even just to play up his rebellious, ~dangerous~ side. We see from that one filler arc that he claims his heart will always belong to Tsunade—which I believe is true, in the deepest sense—but his big polyamorous heart always was capable of feeling love for more than one person. Perhaps, in the end (and this applies to Orochimaru too, because he was seriously in love with both of them), he simply had it in mind that while he could love others, it would never be That Love. That it couldn’t ever develop into That Love... and, well, I suppose there was never enough time spent in any given place or with any given person for him to really be proven wrong. So the specific love he has for those two ended up being put on a pedastal and sort of glorified in his head as being the loftiest and most unattainable love, and the rest is chasing affection and pleasure while having this Thing in the back of his mind/heart that keeps him self-sabotaging wherever other opportunities may lie.

Basically, he hinders himself a lot by being hung up and pining over those two, while treating love as something of a game to be played, to be won at times and lost at others.

I do think there is more to it, however. When we take Sakumo, whose wife died when Kakashi was tiny, and Tsunade, who lost Dan... it puts a chilling fear in him, of having that truly sublime love, only to have it ripped away. This again comes to haunt him with Minato and Kushina, with the fact they died together making it no less tragic, and having seen the makings of the wonderful family they would have been. Of course, observing them (especially throughout Kushina’s pregnancy) is a heavy reminder of those things he innocently wanted—and honestly expected—to eventually have as a kid. Things that now, he isn’t sure he ever can have, and not only because his biggest loves have always been unrequited (Tsunade) or riddled with too many complications (Orochimaru). So he turns to writing, which is really where he escapes and puts into words the light and idealised romance he always prized. The type that always had ups and downs, drama and joy, while still ending on an uplifting note.

As for ceasing his Tsunade-pining and attempting to settle down... There’s a headcanon I’ve had lurking around in my head for... whew, a good while now, which I don’t recall ever being certain enough on to write down. But since I’ve thought about it for so long, I’ll make it official.

At some point in the blank period between the Kyūbi attack and his return to Konoha during the Chūnin Exams, Jiraiya was finding more and more leads as to where Orochimaru had holed up. The leads took him to the Land of Rice Paddies (which had yet to be renamed to Land of Sound at this point), and since they were such strong leads he ended up staying in this country for around two years, putting his all into finding the Hidden Village itself—although he was gradually beginning to lose hope. Anyway, in one of the larger towns he stayed in there was a performer and prostitute named Okuni with whom he became rather taken, and eventually ended up practically living at her house for the duration of his investigations under the pretense of it saving a few pennies on constant hotel stays. Needless to say, this was a transparent excuse at best given how close they became and, for a time, how Jiraiya seemed to forget just about everything outside of this life he’d accidentally fallen into.

Sadly, this would end when someone he’d interrogated and shown mercy to blabbed to an Otogakure spy, who took his sweetheart hostage. He was able to save Okuni and help her relocate, get set up with a new life somewhere else, but it was a close enough call to remind him what so often befell shinobi in love.

But that was probably the closest he ever got in his lifetime to truly settling down with someone.

From there, of course, he ended up eventually becoming involved in Konoha’s affairs once more, and had to seek out Tsunade when Hiruzen was killed. And when they were reunited, it was undeniable just how in love he still was with her. But he kept it quiet, knowing that even if she did feel differently about him than she used to, it was just asking for more hurt on both sides to pursue anything. Which, as we know, culminates a final conversation between the two that is laden with implications that maybe, just maybe, if they both made it through all this alive they could finally give it a go.

Because really? That is what he always wanted to have with someone—a real, true romance. He may have slept around a lot, been a thoughtless bastard and left numerous broken hearts in his wake, but he really was always chasing love in his own unorthodox way, in whatever capacity his lifestyle would allow. He even rediscovers his hope in bringing Orochimaru around, through Naruto, because the love he has for him is still so strong (a tidbit from the databook that my shipper heart took a Certain Way).

(For an extra bit of throwback flavour, please see this old as hell headcanon on the topic of saying ‘I love you’ that I found, which I think still perfectly sums him up in all his messiness!)

#kyugens #hopefully this will make sense when i reread it tomorrow dsfsjdfk #{fanmail}#{memoirs(headcanons)}#{pursuits | romance}#{headcanons | all things sannin}

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lies · 6 years ago

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Oy. Tumblr.

@echojar, I started answering your ask about what I’m using for bird photography, saved it as a draft, and now Tumblr has seen fit to send it... somewhere. Not sure where. Anyway, it’s gone.

So this is your response, unfortunately no longer including your actual ask. After a cut to spare dashboards b/c tl;dr.

Back in September 2018 I bought a camera to use for birdwatching. It was a Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80 (link is to Amazon, which is where I bought it). It looks like this:

It’s a “bridge” camera, in the sense that it’s meant to fill the market niche between camera phones (which have mostly replaced compact digital cameras) and high-end DSLRs with detachable lenses, which take better pictures but are also much more expensive.

The FZ80 cost just under $300. I also bought a faster, larger-capacity memory card ($14), and an extra battery with an external charger ($24). I’m very happy with all of them.

The FZ80 has a good reputation among birdwatchers; I’ve run into several other local obsessives who use one. Among bridge cameras it’s optimized for telephoto work, with a zoom lens that goes to the equivalent of about 60X and image stabilization that does a decent job of keeping things steady even though I’m taking pictures handheld.

These days when I go birdwatching I always bring binoculars, phone (for eBird and field guide apps), and the camera. It’s light enough that I don’t mind bringing it along all the time. I usually keep it in a fanny pack, but when I’m in-progress on picture-taking I’ll hang it from my neck and lace it through the right side of the binoculars’ shoulder harness, such that the camera ends up hanging next to the binoculars but (mostly) doesn’t bump into them, and I can raise either one as needed. It looks super goofy, but I crossed that bridge a while ago and these days I just tell myself to try not to think about it.

I carry the spotting scope and tripod less frequently now that I have the camera. The camera isn’t a complete replacement for the spotting scope; the hierarchy of how well I can see details on a distant bird probably goes like this, from low to high:

naked eye

camera, zoomed, looking through the viewfinder (I almost never take pictures looking at the camera’s larger LCD screen)

binoculars

camera, zoomed, reviewing a photo on the LCD screen after taking it

looking through the spotting scope

camera, zoomed, looking at the photo on my computer screen at home

But the spotting scope with tripod is a lot heavier and more cumbersome. I don’t mind carrying it so much, but I really dislike the extra lag time it adds when I see a bird and want to look at it through binoculars, but I can’t get on the bird quickly because I have to set the spotting scope down first. So these days I bring the spotting scope for things like wetlands, sea watches, or stationary hawk watches, but otherwise I leave it at home. If I see a distant bird that’s too small to identify in the binoculars I can take a quick photo and check it out on the back of the camera.

(Oh, and I also bring the spotting scope when I’m docenting or leading a bird walk, because I can point the scope at a bird and let people take turns looking through it.)

But back to the camera. I’m not very experienced (at all) at photography, so there's been a steep learning curve. I’ve ended up with the following approaches that I use most of the time:

If I’m shooting in poor light, or trying to get as pretty a shot as I can, or just generally futzing around I’ll usually shoot in “P” (Program) mode where the camera picks the shutter speed and ISO setting.

If I’m trying to shoot birds in flight (like at a hawk watch), or just generally when I’m being more serious, I’ll switch to S (”Shutter Speed”) mode and set the speed to to around 1/800, or sometimes faster, because I find that I have better odds of getting a sharp, identifiable image if I crank up the speed, even though that tends to give me higher ISO settings and correspondingly noisier/grainier images.

There’s been a lot of trial and error involved. For example, in the first week I had the camera I took this photo of a Blackpoll Warbler (PJH represent):

I shot that in S mode with the speed set to 1/500, because I figured that’s what I’d need to do to freeze the motion of a fast-moving warbler. Helpful birder and experienced photographer Dika, though, pointed out to me that in the early-morning light I was shooting in, that caused the camera to crank the ISO up to 3200, resulting in a grainy image. If I’d just shot in P mode I would have had a slower shutter speed, but it turns out that probably would have been fine for freezing motion and I would have benefited from the lower ISO setting.

In good light (e.g., a sunny day with the sun behind me and the bird well-illuminated) that’s pretty much all I worry about. But usually the light is poor, or the bird is backlit or in shadow, or something else is making things difficult. If I were just taking pretty pictures I’d write those situations off. But since I’m more interested in documenting what I’m seeing I’ll often try to make those situations work by setting the f-stop up or down to get the exposure on the bird as good as I can. Again, a lot of trial and error. I can’t imagine what it was like to try to do this back in the day when each shot wasn’t essentially free and you couldn’t see the result right away.

Oh: speaking of: I almost always shoot in “burst” mode, where I hold the shutter button down and just go snap-snap-snap-snap-snap as fast as the camera can write to the card. Later I throw away 99% of the shots for the few where the bird is looking the right way and the light is glinting on its eyeball just right and all that. With the 32G replacement memory card I bought I can store several thousand pictures; there’s only been a few times when I’ve been out so long that I’ve needed to take a break to purge rejects to make more room.

And focus. More than any other technical aspect of getting the shot, I worry about focus. Especially in the early days I had a lot of otherwise-decent shots that were fuzzy. Grr.

For birds in foliage or on the ground I use the autofocus mode where the AF sensor is just a tiny little box in the center of the screen, then do my best to keep that dot on the bird’s eye. Or, if the bird is big and/or close such that it fills a lot of the frame and I want to actually compose the shot as I’m shooting it rather than later while cropping, I’ll use the separate button on the camera back that lets me set and lock the focus while I’ve got the little AF spot on the bird’s eye, then hold the focus while I pan to whatever I want the actual shot to look like before shooting.

For birds in flight, like at a hawk watch, I can’t keep that little AF spot on the bird, so I switch to the mode where the AF area is a big diamond shape that takes up about half the field of view. When I see the bird in the air I’ll usually go first to binoculars to try to ID it, and then switch to the camera. I’ll point the lens in the general direction of the bird with just a moderate amount of zoom, then gradually zoom in trying to pick out the bird in the viewfinder as I magnify. Hopefully I eventually pick up the bird, then do my best to keep the bird centered, or at least in the frame somewhere, as I crank up the zoom all the way and start shooting. In the early days I’d practice on anything (clouds, airplanes, crows, red-tails); now I’ve got the technique down to where I can save it for when I see something I really want to get a shot of.

One technique that’s definitely helped is learning to adjust the camera controls without looking. When I’ve only got a second or two to try to get an identifiable shot I really don’t want to have to look at the camera.

My usual workflow when I get home is to sit down with the camera in my lap and go through the whole set, punching the button to mark the good ones as “Favorites”. Then I delete all except for those favorites and transfer them to my computer. After that I wipe the rest of the photos from the camera, swap out the battery and put the depleted one in the charger, and I’m ready to take more photos.

On the computer I’ll go through the photos and pick the best one of each bird (or multiple photos for a tricky ID or a rarity), and upload them to eBird. It’s been super-helpful for learning; there’s nothing like posting a misidentified bird to eBird with an accompanying photo to get a lesson not only on birds, but also on cognitive bias and hubris.

I take fewer shots these days than I did when I first got the camera, but I still take a lot.

Whew. Nothing like a brain dump of something I’ve been obsessing about to generate a shocking amount of verbal spew.

#birds #photography #echojar

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tradishradish · 6 years ago

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So this post I just reblogged got me thinking about the difference between definitions and descriptors, but that wasn’t really on topic, so off to my own post, I guess. This got... very long, and is really just me rambling about how I like to discuss the language I use to describe my relationships.

I tend to refer to this with language like “top-down” and “bottom-up” processing, but that’s just me lifting concepts from a psych class because they made sense to me. I’ve also described it as “external” or “internal” ways of defining things, but at least in the context of my relationships, I’ve been more and more often referring to it as the difference between a definition of or a descriptor for my relationships.

In practice, because I like words that people have already coined and used in these discussions, I tend to use a lot of language that already comes with a definition. And, to further complicate matters, except when trying to examine the theory behind my relationships, I don’t really .... differentiate my use of those words from being definitions of my relationships.

So before I settled on framing it as “defining/describing,” I thought of it as the difference between a top-down or a bottom-up understanding of my relationships. In both, the relationships just... is. But how it’s framed, and thus how it’s understood, changes from how you approach it.

So, in the grand tradition of using myself as an example, this is what my relationships “is”:

I am engaged to a woman, S

I am dating a man, N

We ultimately plan on the three of us living and raising our children together

We don’t have any rules about not dating other people

None of us have sought out or started any relationships outside what we already have

S has her own partners; they don’t live with us and are not planning to

In a top-down approach, I start out with labels with set definitions. Words like “vee” or “polyamorous” or “non-monogamous” and “open” or “closed.” And then I apply them to my relationships, and if they fit, if they seem to describe what’s happening there, I use it. In another way of putting it, I define my relationship with these words. Pros: consistent language. Cons: the age old dilemma when no existing language seems to encapsulate what you’re doing or experiencing.

In the bottom-up approach, I start with my relationship. And I take words (with relevant pre-existing definitions) and I define them based on my relationship. Pros: feels authentic, feels organic. Cons: what do words mean???

I really don’t like this binary! I didn’t like the failure mode in top-down - words and their definitions were a grab bag of things that seemed to fit no problem (vee) and things that looked like they should fit, but felt like trying to stuff myself into a too-small shoe (non-monogamous). But the bottom-up failure mode honestly felt worse, because, great, I’ve got all these words to define my experiences, but either people are already using them, but defining them slightly differently (polyamory), or people have never heard of them, and in any event, it made having meaningful discussion nigh impossible.

Okay, and now to jump tracks (I swear it comes together): When I first started out reading about polyamory, it seemed like again and again the “polyamory failure mode” I came across was Rules. Rules are bad, advice blogs and experienced polyamorists told me. Rules do not protect you - they can even make you more vulnerable. Instead, they said, you should have Boundaries.

I’ll be honest, the distinction made like, absolutely zero sense to me at first. Rules and Boundaries were like... literally the same thing? You could have a Rule around “no unprotected sex with outsiders” or a Boundary around “I don’t have unprotected sex with outsiders or partner’s who have unprotected sex with outsiders.” But they both described how you felt about X, here, unprotected sex, so....?

But it’s all in the framing, isn’t it? A Rule frames your feelings about unprotected sex as something your partner is required to do (or not do); a Boundary frames your feelings as how you’ll handle that situation. And once I thought about it like that, Boundaries do seem healthier because ... relationships based on forcing compliance from your partner don’t work. Like, really, all you get is resentment, on both sides.

Another way to look at it is that rules are dogmatic, while boundaries are flexible. Rules are based in How It Should Be - and their failure mode is what happens when things don’t fit in that neat little box. Boundaries are, well, I think it’s more than a bit generous to define them as How Things Are, but they certainly flex and mold to the relationship, rather than demanding the relationship conform to them. (I’ll be honest tho, I don’t really have a “failure mode” for boundaries, because imo every failure mode I’ve seen is people treating boundaries as The Correct Way To Phrase A Rule. anyway.)

So, to tie this back together, while thinking about these, it suddenly seemed obvious that the failure modes of a top-down relationship frame and Rules were basically the same. Conceptually, they were both about defining something in the relationship but the relationship not conforming to that definition, right?

Well, whew, that means bottom-up frameworks are the Boundaries here! ... Except that still totally failed to address the failure mode I felt existed in bottom-up framing.

And then I was like... but... the failure mode of Boundaries is making Rules but calling them Boundaries. Or, another step removed, treating boundaries as the absolute inverse of rules. Was I treating bottom-up framing as an absolute inverse of top-down?

Well, yeah. And tbh that’s why I don’t really use this language much anymore, because .... it’s still the definition that makes Total Sense. Basically, if top-down is “words define relationships” than bottom-up was “relationships define words.”

And that was when I started thinking about “defining” relationships. Why do we define them? Who benefits? What happens if we don’t?

In my galaxy-brained fever, “defining” seemed analogous to “rulesing.” When I “defined” a relationship using pre-existing words, I was making demands on that relationship (ie placing a rule). And when a relationship behaved outside of it’s pre-set definition, it broke that “rule.” Suddenly, anarchy.

Defining the word by the relationship still sucked tho. But if “defining was rulesing,” then maybe words and relationships were supposed to interact without either defining the other at all.

Which looped me back all the way to the beginning. “The relationship just ... is.”

Tbh I’m not sure exactly how I made this next leap, and I suspect the fact the describing starts with “de” and I think “defining/describing” make an aesthetically pleasing foil to each other was a big one. However I made it, I was now thinking about “what if [word] described a relationship, but wasn’t how the relationship was defined?”

So, like, uh, what’s that even supposed to mean?

Okay, so, back to my relationships. I have at various points, sometimes simultaneously, described both as “open” and “closed.” Why?

Well, technically, they’re both open - we are each free to go out and seek additional partners in whatever capacity makes us happy. And that’s a useful word, to be able to sum up the idea of “exclusivity is not a requirement of my relationship.” But (and maybe this is just, we don’t hang out in the right poly circles) “open” always seemed to come with a second definition: “we are interested in having other partners.” And that is definitely not us, at least right now.

I’ve seen closed used two ways, in parallel with open, as well. Sometimes it gets used to mean that a relationship is exclusive (most commonly I’ve seen this in reference to monogamous relationships, especially when talking about when a couple “opens up” their relationship); other times, it’s defined as “we are disinterested in having other partners.” So we tend to use closed a lot, too, because it’s an easy way of signalling that we aren’t interested in other relationships, even if exclusive isn’t really accurate. I honestly prefer closed, because we’re all pretty actively disinterested in other relationships.

Anyway, the of/for distinction matters to me too. “The definition of my relationship” is supposed to sound and feel immutable - or breakable, if something changes. “A description for my relationship” is meant to be rooted in how my relationships are experienced, and focused on using the available language to explain to other people the inner workings of it, so that we can all have productive conversations about polyamory.

I really do feel that, when I focus on using words as tools to describe the experience rather than facts about “what my relationship is”, I get to spend more time focusing on what my relationship is. I can be flexible in what words I use and when, because sometimes what matters is the context that my relationship is existing in. And personally I think it gives me greater freedom to frame something as how I see myself respective to my relationship, versus how I see my relationship.

#j rambles #polyamory #was there a major point to this?#i dont really think so #i like dissecting the theory behind my relationships #its a perennial fave hobby #long post #orz im sorry this got so long #may #14 #2019 #20190514

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acehotel · 6 years ago

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Interview: Michael Arceneaux

Michael Arceneaux is a writer who contains multitudes. A gifted essayist whose work navigates religion, intimacy, doubt, fear and self-actualization, he makes the tightrope walk between levity and vulnerability look easy. His debut essay collection I Can’t Date Jesus landed him on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and his essays — which have been published in Essence, Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times and more — breathe a renewed sense of possibility in prose, dressed by his signature wit and flair.

In the latest installment Dear Reader, Tin House invited Michael to spend a night at Ace Hotel New York and, while there, pen a letter to an imagined audience. The contents of his letter have been kept secret until today, revealing themselves to the light in each room of the hotel.

If you could correspond with any fictional character or literary figure via letters, who would it be? And why?

Michael Arceneaux: I would love to write back and forth with Zora Neale Hurston. I tend to read mainly nonfiction, which I know is like "whew chile, the ghetto" to a lot of the more refined writers and what not, but I am a fan of hers, especially a lot of her short fiction as I do enjoy a lot of short story collections. I have always appreciated her use of Black dialect 'cause I'm country. Also, I think the way she used it made for a much better understanding of her characters. The obvious character would be Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God, but it's true of much of her fiction.

However, I know that some were critical of that at the time (along with other matters related to her work), so while I know this may make me sound like the Andy Cohen or Nina Parker of The Real Housewives of The Harlem Renaissance: Reunion, but if I could write, "Sis, Richard Wright needs to have a sip and shut up about this book," I'd be totally into it. I apologize to the ancestors and living elders in advance if I'm already offending y'all. But seriously, I do value her work and I hated that she died poor. It's honestly been one of my fears in trying to have a career as a writer that I would die poor and only be truly appreciated until long after I was gone.

Do you map out your writing, or do you discover your path as you go? How often does your work go in directions you never expected?

As a working writer, particularly one who writes heavily for various outlets across Al Gore's internet, a lot of my writing assignments are time sensitive so generally I have an idea of what I want to say when I pitch or am pitched to. When it comes to my book writing, I have a general outline, too, because one, you already sold your book on proposal so the template is already there, and two, I've just become wired that way after having done largely digital media work for nearly a decade. I apologize to fans of spontaneity and the rush of unforeseen creative inspirations that transforms prose. However, there were instances on I Can't Date Jesus in which two chapters ended up a lot differently than I anticipated. One chapter in particular about my father wasn't trashed per se, but had to be changed after I had a talk with my sister. In learning more about my dad's relationship with my uncle before he died, I didn't have to put aside my feelings and experiences, but she added so much more context. So I had to sit with it. I mean really sit with it; not to just react to new intel, but table it, process it, and then go back and pour myself out all over again. It made everything for the better.

I have more recently been making much better use of the Notes app. I like to hand write a lot of things, but I've come to realize doing it on the phone is better for me because I can jot down some idea, and while traveling—particularly on that awful MTA in NY — I build little by little on it. A lot of my second book ideas came out from toying with the Notes app and handwriting an outline while eating brunch solo and casually talking to a beautiful bartender that isn't into men, but what the hell, he's still cute so I'm going to chat anyway.

Dear Reader tasks you with writing for an imagined audience of strangers. How much do you think about your audience when you write? Have you ever been surprised by who is drawn to your work?

My main intentions with my work are to make people laugh and to make people think. I try not to think too heavily about anything else because it can become distracting. Like, I'm aware and conscious of the things I say and how I say them, but I try not to overthink because if I do, God, it's just going to take me so much longer to get anything done. I want everyone to read me so I do the best I can and hope it reaches as many as possible.

I still think of myself as a bit under the radar (to the boos and hisses of select friends and colleagues), so I am always pleasantly surprised when anyone reads my work, but I am actually never surprised at having a diverse readership. One of my very good friends and former editors once told me "You write for Black people." What he meant was I don't focus on the white gaze nor do I concern myself with worries that if I sound too uh, colloquial, that I will alienate non-Black readers. I Can't Date Jesus is a book I wish I had growing up as a working class, southern Black gay boy. I wrote it from that perspective and knew people like me would be the first to gravitate towards it. I'm so proud of that, but there are also a lot of white people in their 70s reading it. I know because they email me all the time. Others — namely in publishing — felt I would be "niche," but I write about religion, intimacy, doubt, fear and learning to love myself and enjoy pleasure. Those are universal themes, so while I may be not surprised the book is connecting with a wide readership, I'm glad they are surprising the people in publishing who often fail to give non-white writers the benefit of the doubt.

What's a book that you wish more people knew about?

Bitch Is The New Black by Helena Andrews. She is probably tired of me saying this, but I adore her as a writer, I love her book, I love her voice, and I think she was, in hindsight, somewhat ahead of her time because she definitely paved the way for a new generation of Black memoirists and deserves her flowers. This is also just another good way to publicly push and get more books out of her. If I can get a bonus, Bulletproof Diva by Lisa Jones.

Do you have any rituals, ceremonies or requirements that accompany your writing process?

I shoot up at 6:00 a.m. pretending that I'm going to immediately get to writing, but in reality, I'm just going to turn on Morning Joe because my body literally now wakes up to its schedule. How long I watch depends on how quickly someone on the panel says something that annoys me so then I go freshen up. Next up: my morning jig, a thing I do every morning in which I dance to some song in order to have a little joy before someone tries to ruin it. Eventually, I decide to write a little on my phone because I'm not ready to sit at that desk yet. I'll have some caffeine — ideally something I already have in the fridge or I'll convince myself that paying $5 for an oak milk latte will really get me going when I know this is just me wasting time and I have private student loans — meaning I shouldn't be in that coffee shop anyway. Obviously, hours have passed and then I finally settle down to write after Wendy Williams finishes “Hot Topics,” of course.

I don't really get to writing until I end up using the Freedom app to block me from the internet so I can spend hours writing. I don't recommend this, but in my defense, my discipline has waned because I have yet to take that vacation that's probably seven years overdue now.

Dear Reader is a collaboration of Tin House and Ace Hotel New York.

#dear reader #tin house #michael arceneaux #ace hotel new york #ace hotel #ace hotel nyc #new york #writing #i can't date jesus #interview #yes

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forumsblog858 · 3 years ago

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Homeworld 2 For Mac

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Publisher:Aspyr MediaGenre: ActionMin OS X: 10.2.6 CPU: G4 @ 800 MHz RAM: 256 MB Hard Disk: 1600 MB 8x CD-ROM Graphics: 32 MB VRAM

Nov 24, 2004 Hi folks, So I picked up homeworld 2 for mac having played it on a friend's PC, but really missed the ability to add mods for multiplayer games when i played it on mac. I even emailed Aspyr, but they were no help. Then the other day i came across a an explanation for how to do it, at least.

Homeworld 2 November 1, 2004 | Michael Yanovich

Pages:123Gallery

Secondly Homeworld 2 was written and ported to the Mac in such a way that you can take advantage of many of the great game mods out there. I've run the version of the game wherein all the ships are Legos, for example.

The Homeworld Remastered Collection introduces Relic's acclaimed space strategy games Homeworld and Homeworld 2 to modern players and operating systems using the newest sophisticated graphics rendering technology, plus a fully remastered score and new, high fidelity voice recordings by the original actors.

Click to enlarge

I never played the original Homeworld – it didn’t make it over to the Mac and I don’t own a PC – so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got this game. I’d just heard lots of positive buzz, and something about a real time strategy game set in outer space. So I wasn’t surprised when that’s exactly what I got. What did surprise me is how exceedingly cool this game is.

But first, a few words about most RTS games in general. In my experience, single player campaigns start off fairly slow and easy and gradually introduce new units as the storyline progresses. Many players finish up the single player campaign and then move on to multiplayer battles over the internet, where experience levels really matter. That is to say, most of us can beat a single player game with enough save points and a couple of tries. You just don’t have to be an especially good player. But multiplayer games tend to fall into two categories. The first, games with a few friends, all of whom know the game basics but aren’t particularly amazing. Then there are those players you frequently run into in online ladder games, opponents who are really great players. They know the ultimate build sequences, unit locations, rush strategies, resource gathering patterns… they have the entire battle plan in their head before they even start a game.

Well, maybe it’s just me but Homeworld 2 seems to require you be the second kind of player – the highly skilled one – to really get into this game. This is clearly not meant for casual gamers, and frankly I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. But even in the midst of a heavy battle where I was getting my butt kicked, I loved this game!

There seems to be a decent story here, which is told in stylized animated cutscenes with top notch voice acting. I confess to not fully understanding the major plot points, mainly because the “Here’s what happened in the last game” intro wasn’t particularly clear. But whatever. Seems like humanity’s survival is in jeopardy and you must lead a ragtag fleet of ships through space on a lonely quest for a planet known as Earth. Oops, that’s Battlestar Galactica. Sorry! Anyway, change the word Earth to Homeland and you’ll be relatively close to this game’s plot.

I know I’m in the minority when I say stories aren’t that important in many games. If I wanted a plot I’d watch a movie or read a book. Gamewise, the only story points I care about are the ones I need to know in order to play the game. But I will admit that these cutscenes were entertaining enough that I actually paid attention to what was going on, which seemed like a lot of “we’re getting our butts handed to us, let’s run before we lose more ships,” followed by a brief, “Whew, we’re safe! Let’s rest. What? Drat! They found us! Quick, fight them so we can run again!”

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And that’s fine by me. It kept me focused on the end goal of saving our species from the alien hoards. But in all seriousness, there does seem to be enough of a plot to keep story fans satisfied in between epic battles. And that’s what this game is all about. Epic. Freakin’. Battles!

Pages:123Gallery

In 1999, Relic Entertainmentâ€™s groundbreaking Homeworld took the gaming world by surprise. Still widely regarded as the gold standard of space real-time strategy games, it successfully coupled lush graphics with a sleek interface that made manipulating camera angles and toggling between build and formation menus in 3D space incredibly easy. Homeworld 2 takes the original and upgrades it. With a new game engine, especially during massive battles of all ship classes, you canâ€™t help but admire its finer points, from its lovely dynamic lighting to its chilly â€œrealism.â€

The Homeworld universe is â€œhardâ€ science fiction, as opposed to, say, StarCraft. The large, complex battles it depicts have an austere, clinical feel thatâ€™s more admirable than immersive, regardless of the camera angle. But itâ€™s great hard sci-fi, and the visuals really suck you in â€”literallyâ€”as you zoom in closer like a jeweler with a loupe, and the distant flashes gradually coalesce into thousands of stories unfolding. For a game totally devoid of visible living organisms, Homeworld 2 compensates by making you care about simulated husks of flying machinery. Your people live inside those fragile husks, fly them, die in themâ€”the exhaust trails become their souls. As in Homeworld, you feel for these poor trusting bastards scrounging for asteroids out in the middle of genuine nowhere.

Which is partly what makes much of the martinet story campaign such a bummer. Homeworldâ€™s poignant air of cosmic mystery is largely absent; here everythingâ€™s all grueling puzzle and puzzling grind. Instead of offerings like Homeworldâ€™s wonderfully eerie Garden of Kadesh, the sequel gives you exhausting debacles like the fourth mission, in which doing things in sequence directly opposite from whatâ€™s suggested is not only possible but proves a tenth as ulcerous, and the outright sadistic red herring of the tenth one. Thereâ€™s no let-up, just an overriding sense of attrition and hopelessness as you watch your entire â€œpersistentâ€ fleet get persistently pulverized many times over.

Itâ€™s not just the difficulty either, but the logic. The third mission introduces marine frigates, which â€œcaptureâ€ enemy ships in multiplayer, but in single-player only give the misleading impression of being able to do so (including attaching to the ship and displaying a steadily increasing â€œcapture barâ€). Also annoying is the automatic collection of resources. The lack of such an option was, ironically, one of the few valid criticisms leveled at Homeworld. Here, automatic collection occurs the second youâ€™ve completed your mission goals, which entails starting the next level short-handed.

The storyline has its moments, but after Cataclysmâ€™s strange, daring waters, Homeworld 2â€™s scavenger-hunt plotline feels for most of its length like an almost spitefully conventional rehash, top-heavy with extra-galactic ancient races that no longer exist except as convenient plot devices. (The whole thingâ€™s an anthropomorphized riff on David Brinâ€™s Uplift novels, which take space combat imagery to heights Homeworld 2 can only dream of). Your new enemies, the Vaygr, have swanky vertical missile launchers but donâ€™t seem inherently distinct as a culture from your own Hiigarans; they are supposed to represent a â€œconglomeration of races.â€

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Homeworldâ€™s interface involved toggling to separate screens for building ships and researching technologies, but there were few options, it never seemed cumbersome. Here the menu takes up a third of the screen, obscuring your view of the luscious space graphics, and you canâ€™t move or shrink it. Hitting R minimizes the research menu, but B doesnâ€™t minimize the build menu. For all their bigness, the menus donâ€™t seem to use their space wisely; it makes you long for the minimalist simplicity of the sensors manager.

Many basics feel harder, although you get used to them. You now build the smaller ships in complete squadrons, presumably to make the battles bigger and more spectacular, but clicking on an individual ship gives you the relative health of the entire squadron at the bottom of the screen, which is less precise. Why not an AI setting to have ships auto-dock when theyâ€™re near death? Why canâ€™t collectors auto-repair? Why no patrol? How about being able to assign docked craft to groups? Alt-bandboxing a group of ships that includes hostiles doesnâ€™t show a list of all those selected, as it did in the original and Cataclysm

The beloved formations such as sphere and claw have been abandoned for new, more efficient â€œstrike groups,â€ fleets that can include multiple ship types but move at the speed of their slowest unit. Familiarity with these is a major factor in combat, but the rock-paper-scissors consequences of using each type are barely touched on in the slender manual, itself a mockery of the original gameâ€™s thick, detailed documentation.

For all its clumsy new baggage and rushed feel, Homeworld 2 takes itself seriously, designed from the ground up as a reward to the faithful rather than an olive branch to the casual newcomer. The lucky few up to its Sisyphean challenges will find themselves rewarded for their loyalty.

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madomadotsuki · 8 years ago

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Smol Yume Nikki theory: It takes place in the 80′s

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has thought about this, and it’s probably not as unpopular. Maybe it’s just not talked about much, or people don’t really give it much thought. Which is cool, honestly. More fun for me here!

For starters, let’s look in the most obvious pace of interest here in the game: Madotsuki’s bedroom:

�� AND NO FOR ONCE WE’RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT LOVABLY TACKY CARPET WITH WHAT ALL YN FANS CLAIM TO BE INSPIRED BY EITHER AZTEC OR PARACAS ART, LMAO. Let’s point out to something even more obvious but at the same time more shunned into a corner:

Her gaming console.

The Yume Nikki Wikia site says her console happens to be a Famicom, the Japanese counterpart to the NES. I’m no gaming history expert and for me video games were quite absent from childhood with cable TV with shows like Cartoon Network (Back when it was good...), Nicklodeon, Fox Kids (Does anyone else remember Fox Kids before they became Jetix today? Any of you out there???), and so on. I did and do still have a CCE Turbo Game old console packed away somewhere but it was always more played by my dad than me. So my first firmer dive into gaming was the Nintendo64, when my family recovered contact with some relatives, mostly cousins, and when we visited them, for the first time ever I saw them playing Mario Party 1 and Mario Kart 64. I think I was like 13?

ANYWAY, I’m no gaming history expert, but that in Madotsuki’s room... doesn’t really resemble a Famicom, especially the controller. It’s depicted as being round, while the Famicom’s were more rectangular... And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in such a bright, vibrant pink color (Although that wouldv’e been pretty cool!) Or at least that’s what I would tell myself at first when I looked more into the console.

Yes, it is technically the NES many know, though Famicom was how it was more known in Japan. And yes it did have a more rectangular-shaped controller (Specifically, an oblong brick-like design) initially.

The original model Famicom featured two game controllers, both of which were hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacked the START and SELECT buttons, but featured a small microphone. Relatively few games made use of this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units initially had square A and B buttons. This was changed to the circular designs because of the square buttons being caught in the controller casing when pressed down and glitches within the hardware causing the system to freeze occasionally while playing a game (Probably the 80′s version of that dreaded noise when you have a BSOD.)

Two game controllers, both of which were hardwired to the back of the console. That is obviously not what we see in Madotsuki’s console. For once there is only one controller in view implying they can be unplugged, and it’s linked to the console at the front, which quite rules out the original model Famicom.

I mean, it is very difficult to accurately point out what console that bunch of simple pixels is supposed to be. But aside from the Wiki itself claiming it’s a Famicom, let’s look at another detail in Yume Nikki that points to that: The parts of Madotsuki’s dream-world where everything (Including the frickin’ menu!) take a retro 8-bit design and aesthetic.

In RPG Maker, many files of the game that are responsible for these parts of the dreamscape share something in their filename. Annnnnd yeah, since they’re names in Japanese, extracting or whatever you do to them has a big chance of turning their names into that bunch of random gibberish. BUT! They tend to share two letters actually in English, which also lead to fans’ names to these respective dream-worlds: FC. FC World (Yeah some of the dream-worlds have pretty on-the-nose names but honestly that’s actually fitting for Yume Nikki somehow.) Most likely dreams that Madotsuki has, influenced by her gaming experience.

FC, is a shortening of “Famicom”. And these dreams are both sonorous and graphically similar to the only game you can play on Madotsuki’s console (Yep, a game inside a game, bro.): NASU.

The graphics and sound highly resemble authentic Famicom/NES hardware capabilities, although the game itself is fictional.

And according to the wiki, there is a Famicom menu in the game, which could indicate that maybe there were more games supposed to be included along with NASU for Madotsuki/the player to play.

So yeah that bunch of pixels might not exactly resemble a Famicom much, but I guess Kikiyama just wanted to make it simplistic and generic-looking to a certain degree instead of pixelating it exactly into an existing console model, despite apparently there being hints within the game files that it’s in fact a Famicom. And yeah the vibrant pinkish hue is kind out of place for this console in reality, especially back in a time where video-games were more seen as a boy-thing, so why would it be pink of all colors? I’m not sure if it happened to this console in particular, but there has been several cases of different-looking versions of a same game console usually as limited editions. Usually they were like colored differently, or like I remember in the N64 case, even had its shell semi-transparent so you could actually see its inner mechanics! Not to mention I have a yellow N64 controller as well. So a pink limited edition Famicom maybe isn’t too far-fetched. Especially if this ties with another theory that Madotsuki lives in Japan. If it was there it probably would be kind of exclusive to there, or at the very least be nearly impossible to see traces of those limited editions here, especially in a time like the 80′s (No EBay or anything like that, man.)

Since the Famicom being the Japanese NES isn’t completely untrue, and considering it did have a couple redesigns since its first release on 1983, while I still say Madotsuki’s controller looks round and smooth, almost like a Super NES controller.

BUT HOLD ON A SECOND. Look at her console again, look closely. It does look like it has two slots, doesn’t it? Well, what other game console was known for having two slots (So it could take cartridges of two different sizes) AND round controllers that were linked by the front and could be unplugged?

The CCE Turbo Game.

BOOM. Well, not really boom, it was just really interesting to point out. There most likely have been other consoles with this double-slot feature. But like I said before, it’s hard to determine what console it is merely by looking at its pixels, so I’d say take the clues in Yume Nikki’s gamefiles, and NASU’s similarity to Famicom/NES games.

So, taking into account of it being a Famicom, but with still a round controller, I can’t say it was one of the first released models, square-like, much less hardwired to its back. But since I’m not here to cover whether Madotsuki lives in Japan or in America (Like, the creator is Japanese yeah, but Madotsuki’s room is very western-like too) which would be important to help definite which set of time she’s at, I will have to fluctuate that Yume Nikki takes places around from 1985 to maybe 1988, where this console was very popular.

BUT. Moving on from her console, whew. Let’s look at another thing in her room: Her TV used to play her Famicom game in the first place.

That is obviously not one of those thin HD TVs, ohohohoh oh no sir. That is quite clearly a box-like, heavy bastard of a retro tube TV (And you probably there thinking that your 2 pound laptop’s a deal, try working on a moving company back in a time where nearly every moving family at least had one of these heavy turds.) And believe me, I STILL HAVE THOSE IN MY HOUSE, AND THE MOST MODERN MODEL OF THEM HERE ACTUALLY COMES WITH A GAME OF TETRIS TO PLAY WITH THE REMOTE.

Now I’m not gonna try to point out the TV’s side or model because that would be even more impossible than trying to determine what’s Madotsuki’s console, as the TV looks even more generic and simplistic than the former.

But, it’s clearly not thin like those plasma or LED or HD or whatever the heck the cool kids have of latest model nowadays, and aside from being obviously a tube TV, look how it seems kind of rounded, slightly “inflated” like, rather than sharply square-like. While yes, there were sharp-looking square/rectangular tube TVs, these rounder, smoother models were more common in the 70′s and 80′s than they were in the 90′s, as even as still tube TVs they were slowly evolving to the sharp straight ones we have currently.

And obviously point out how there’s no visible modern item in Madotsuki’s room. No computers, mobile phones, her desk apparently has only a diary that she writes on (Which is how you save your game progress) even though you don’t see it there because it’s probably too small to even bother pixeling, or she keeps it inside that little drawer and only takes it out when she’s gonna write on it.

Next, I’m going to move to some aspects of Madotsuki’s dream.

I’ll start with the one place called The Pink Sea (Or Charcoal Sea, or Pastel Sea, or Pastel Shoal, or Pink Lemonade Ocean because that’s literally what it is and you know it’s true,) more specifically, Poniko’s room.

Aside from it lacking any sort of visible modern-looking item just like Madotsuki’s room, just look at the colors used there. Pastels but still “firm” colors (In fact all the Pink Sea is colored in that aesthetic.)

Know what these hues remind me of? 80′s Saturday morning cartoons.

I get reminded of cartoons like My Little Poney (The old version, not the modern one you all know), The CareBears, the 80′s TMNT series, just to name a few. Their palettes often seemed soft, almost pastel-like, not to mention, the place does give a sort of 80′s aesthetic vibe too.

Sure, Poniko’s room, and the Pink Sea altogether are only seen in Madotsuki’s dream in the game, like around 99% of everything else there, which maybe could discredit it being any clue to the time of the events of the game. But the room, despite being a dream, looks so well-shaped and un-abstract, Madotsuki must have seen it in real life, and recently, too. Otherwise her memory of it would have been a little fuzzy in the dream.

Though, the Neon World also reminds me of the Neon 90′s which was like between 1990-1994 I think? Take Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon as an example of a Neon 90′s cartoon.

Lastly, a small touch to Madotsuki’s behavior (This might get triggering a bit, but if you’re a Yume Nikki fan, you likely know very well where this is going.)

She doesn’t seem willing to leave her room, or to even as much open her door. The closest she lets herself gain from the outside is going to her balcony, and yet we don’t see any other sign of civilization in the background, not to mention there seems to have some fog, which points out she’s in a tall apartment complex.

That, isn’t as uncommon as we think, especially in Japan (Though again I’m not going to point out where she lives, so I’ll keep my view on that non-biased.) These people, are known there as hikkikomori, or shut-ins, people who withdraw themselves away from society, confining themselves to only inside their house or even more so only inside their room. While people have been trying to be more understanding of those shut-ins and trying to help them, back then, these people were a lot more seen as a shame to their families and rather than seek out help, they would simply not speak of their shut-in’s situation because it would embarrass their family. And as to help cover up that, they supply their shut-in with food and whatnot without seeing how that sheltering would affect them in the future rather than help them face and overcome the issue and encourage them to try being part of society again. I’m sure it may still happen nowadays but most likely not as much as back then. That may explain why nobody seems to come check on Madotsuki during the game (Unless they do while she’s sleeping, who knows?) and probably only come in to supply her with breakfast/lunch/dinner etc. This could imply that her family is ashamed of her choices, and probably see her and are snarky about her being a “failure” to their family name. This could have fed onto Madotsuki’s negative behaviors even furthers, striking her with feelings of guilt and depressions for being a shame to her family, but at the same time feeling even more unable to come out of her shut-in tendencies and choices. Like she was cornered with both hands tied. That, alongside her rather gloomy dreams, may have led her to her tragic end at the game’s ending (Which breaks my heart to this day, man.) She would have had bigger chances of getting help than getting to that point in a more current time, than a time like the 80′s, as people have been trying to improve life quality in many aspects at such a strong pace since around the 90′s to today.

Sure, there are many other theories to why Madotsuki won’t leave her room, but most of them does involve her being a shut-in, while fewer ones with other reasons like she being grounded by her caretakers, kidnapped then locked, actually trying to keep herself safe from something right outside her door, etc.

And not only her behavior, Madotsuki’s fashion does resemble that of like a 80′s little girl, or perhaps early 90′s. Aside from the braids, her clothes are very up to speculation only by these sprites. That’s why fans depict her with all sorts of red shoes. Maryjanes, sneakers, converses, slippers, or even just red socks.

So my final guess: Yume Nikki takes place somewhere between 1985 and 1989.

However, it’s not uncommon for people to still own and enjoy a Famicom today despite being considered an outdated console now, though the old tube TV is a bit of odd nowadays (Unless you’re in my family, we only have those lol) but hey, it’s just a theory, A GAME TH-- Uh. Yeah I’ve been watching a lot of The Game Theorists video yesterday and today, whoops.

#yume nikki #game theory #outofpillows #not really a headcanon but if you wanna take it as one just make yourself at home darlin'#headcanon #it's past 9am and instead of sleep i wrote this #dont be like me guys

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nyalapeno · 5 years ago

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Fic: Unbalanced Heart, ch.1

It’s already on my Ao3, but reposting it here to celebrate February 29.

Warnings: mentions of child abuse, vomiting and serious injury. Also, one of the main characters has DID/OSDD; it’s an artistic interpretation and I mean no offence.

Let’s go! *:･ﾟ✧(=✪ ᆺ ✪=)*:･ﾟ✧

Chapter 1 : I’m a fighter, now let me prove it

Hitoshi trudged forward on autopilot, not registering anything around him. The voices of other candidates turned into a dull buzz and the world seemed distant, separated from him by a barrier which blocked out everything but the thoughts in his head.

It was his own fault. He'd let the ease with which he'd solved the written test go to his head. Academics were his strength; he was capable of doing very well even with minimal preparation and this time he'd prepared thoroughly, studied ahead and solved a ton of mock exams, knowing that U.A. would have a more challenging written test than anything he'd ever taken. And he was right; a lot of the questions were advanced and the sheer number was enough to overwhelm even those who knew the answers. It didn't matter; Hitoshi had practiced speed-solving too and after putting the pen down he could tell his score would be above 90%, which according to the data from previous years would be enough to net him a place in U.A.'s General Education course. And then he'd stupidly let this fill him with confidence and optimism, started thinking that maybe he'd do well on the practical too and be able to get into Heroics straight away instead of being promoted from the GenEd track as he’d planned. Idiocy. It was like he'd forgotten who he was, what quirk he had, and allowed himself to float away on a cloud made of hopes and dreams like a naive, idealistic fool. Then he paid for it when the proctor explained the practical exam, reality hit and he fell down and crashed on the ground. The naive hope left him, replaced by an all-consuming numbness. He should’ve known better. Of course the teachers wanted to see students with powerful, damage-dealing, stereotypically heroic quirks in the Hero course. Of course they’d prepare the practical exam in such a way that it allowed only those students who fit this profile to shine. Of course.

Robots. It could be argued that robots had a type of “brain”, namely AI and programming, and some robots were capable of speech, but while he never got to try using Brainwashing on one to see if it’d take, he was pretty sure it wouldn't. Besides the ones in the exam were of a different type. These were designed to attack people, not talk to them.

In short, he was screwed. Not that it was unusual. Everyone who had a quirk that wasn’t typically associated with hero work was screwed to an extent. Most of the time the world of heroics refused to give them a chance, and Hitoshi got a double dose because not only was his quirk atypical, it also had an unfortunate enough nature that people automatically discriminated against him and assumed he was going to become a villain with no evidence. He hated it – the discrimination, the assumptions, the comparative ease with which people blessed with more heroic quirks could reach their goals. Goals such as getting enough points in the practical exam to be accepted anywhere other than the GenEd track. Feeling defeated, he couldn’t think of anything that could let him fight a robot. If the exam was set up in a way which allowed only students with a certain type of quirk to do well then that was that.

If only a good strategy for someone with his quirk would just fall down from the sky… Again, naive hope and wishful thinking. Still, it’d be nice.

For now he walked on, staring blankly ahead. The throng of students was moving briskly, people heading to their designated areas. Hitoshi wondered if there’ll be enough space to fit everyone. Probably. U.A. was a school with a reputation, after all. He also wondered how many students were blessed with quirks perfectly suited for this kind of exam. How many of them were now cockily thinking that they had the exam in the bag and busy coming up with ways to best show off their quirk, instead of wondering why they were even trying.

Up ahead someone yelped, then more someones yelped in unison, then there was a noise like a herd of stampeding elephants. It rapidly drew closer, chasing away the gloomy fog that had settled over Hitoshi and he blinked, coming back to himself and turning his head just in time to see a… unique-looking guy skid to a halt next to him.

The guy fell into step beside Hitoshi as though he did it everyday. “Whew, what a crowd. Hey there! You looking forward to the exam? I’m just glad I’m taking it at all,” he barreled onward, sparing Hitoshi the effort of coming up with a tactful reply. “I was supposed to be taking this other one but then I was like no, if I’m gonna get into U.A. then I’ma do it myself, not some sorta privilege thing ‘cause what the hell? I’m not Bastard, I don’t need privileges. And get this--” Hitoshi ducked to avoid a flailing hand as the other boy gestured wildly. “I somehow got the whole plot past Bastard! Didn’t notice or whatever, still don’t know how. Must be karma. And now I’m already here so he can suck it. And this is something he can spin in his favor if he bothers to think so he prolly won’t do anymore shit than he usually does. And then I’m off to school and he’ll have less time to do shit to me so all the better!” The guy gave Hitoshi a thumbs-up. Oddly enough, his face remained mostly blank the whole time but he was smiling with his eyes. “Ah, but here I am going on... I’m not used to talking to people my age, not like that anyway, the last time I did was uhhhh, actually I think never? Eh, whatever. So what’s your name?” The question was so unexpected after the rapid-fire monologue that it actually took Hitoshi a few seconds to remember what the answer was.

“Shinsou Hitoshi,” he said, internally debating the pros and cons of using Brainwashing on the guy to stop the verbal equivalent of a machine gun.

“Hi Hitoshi!” the guy casually first-named him, causing Hitoshi to choke on air. “And I’m uhhh, you can call me Shouto. Because that’s my name, I mean not only mine, it’s his name too, but there’s prolly a bunch of people named Shouto so it wouldn’t be weird for us both to be called that even if it wasn’t us.” Hitoshi blinked, having understood literally nothing from the last sentence. And the guy – Shouto – maintained a poker face so he couldn’t even tell if he was messing with him. “So. Robots! Whatcha gonna do? You got a plan?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?” Hitoshi couldn’t believe it. What sort of person asked a fellow competitor to reveal their strategy? Not that Hitoshi had one, but it was the principle of the thing.

Shouto tilted his head like a cat. “How do you ask something unseriously? I’m just curious. Not like I can use what you tell me, we’re two different people.” Which... actually made sense. Strategies were usually tailored to a person’s quirk and therefore individual. Figuring out another person’s strategy could only really be used to sabotage them, but that would be counterproductive in this exam – someone who tried messing with another person may not have enough time left to gain points, and then they both would fail. Not that Hitoshi suspected the guy of attempting sabotage; he seemed too straightforward for that.

“So. Your plan?” Shouto asked once again. Straightforward and persistent.

“Don’t have one,” Hitoshi admitted, seeing no harm in it. Not replying could actually be more harmful, as the guy seemed to be the type to pester him endlessly if his question went ignored.

“Ohh. So you’re gonna wing it? Instinct and spontaneity and all that. Is that it? ‘Cause you don’t look like the wing-it type to me, with those eye bags you look more like the type to plot and plan for ages.” Hitoshi stared at Shouto, wondering if he realized how tactless he was being. It didn’t seem like he did. He could recall him saying something about never having talked to people his own age, something believable going by his behavior, but strange and disturbing. Hitoshi could also recall vague insinuations of the guy being mistreated in some way, which was even more disturbing especially when paired with the scar on his face, but he wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-meter pole. It was entirely possible that he misunderstood due to pre-exam nerves, or that Shouto was prattling nonsense for the same reason, or maybe he was just making assumptions because of his own unfortunate past experiences.

Besides the guy was his age. If there really was something wrong with his family situation surely someone would’ve noticed by now? Especially since Shouto was so open about it.

“I don’t have a plan, but I’m not going to wing it either,” he said, trying to put the whole thing out of his mind. His companion stared at him, allowing Hitoshi to see that his eyes were two different colors. Much like his hair.

“Seriously? What’re you gonna do then? What else is there?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I mean, not much I can do. My quirk is… not suited for this type of thing.” True, to the point, and something Shouto would realize by himself if he stuck around during the exam.

“What d’ya mean, not suited? What’s your quirk anyway?” Of course he’d ask. Hitoshi sighed and shifted uncomfortably. Revealing his quirk to people who didn’t already know about it tended to end badly. Not to mention the exam was about to start and Shouto was possible competition. But he made his bed and now he had to lie in it. The guy was too persistent to let him escape. Already he was waving his hand in front of Hitoshi’s face, his eyes full of a guileless kind of curiosity with sparks of concern mixed in.

“You okay?” Hitoshi met the earnest stare. All the bad precedents and insecurities floating around his brain warred with the desire to respond to that earnestness, take a chance. Today seemed to be the day of foolish hopes. Then again this could be their first and last meeting ever, so maybe he could tell him with minimal damage? Or maybe Shouto would surprise him and take it well? No, an absurd idea, this revelation never ended well. There were rare cases of people accepting his quirk, but most would grow scared, or suspicious, or…

But this weirdo wasn’t most people, was he?

Oh, to hell with it.

“It’s called Brainwashing,” he said quietly, not wanting anyone else to overhear. “It lets me control people who talk to me.” Muscles tensing, he kept a careful eye on Shouto, looking for microexpressions which heralded a negative reaction. He might have an impressive and persisting poker face, but his eyes betrayed him.

“Oh. Cool! I knew you were a brainy type.” Hitoshi stared. That sounded almost… approving. Or rather, Shouto had all but shrugged and moved on, as if a quirk was a quirk to him. He felt the corners of his lips curl up, unbidden. Maybe some hopes were not so foolish after all. “Hmmm, so it only works on people huh? Can’t take down robots with it. But, wait… Who says you gotta take down robots, you just gotta get points. What if you like, tail someone and wait until they almost down a robot then use your quirk to freeze them? Then you finish the job and hey presto: clean, efficient and creative!” He gave Hitoshi a thumbs-up, mismatched eyes sparkling happily, apparently happy with himself.

For his part, Hitoshi could only stare in astonishment. It had not occurred to him to use his quirk in such a manner. From the moment he first heard about the robots he’d assumed that it was over, that his quirk was useless for taking down robots, that there was no way he could succeed. And it was partly true – his quirk couldn’t take down a robot. But that didn’t mean there was no way to use it in the exam. You just had to stay focused, to not give up, to think outside the box and come up with a way to use your quirk which will allow you to get enough points to pass. As demonstrated by Shouto, who’d known about his quirk for all of thirty seconds and not only accepted it, but was able to form a workable strategy.

Wait. Hadn’t he wished that a strategy would just drop down from the sky?

...Impossible.

“Hmm, but just punching these things with your bare hands? Not safe at all. I’m sure they have a weak spot or two ‘cause it’s an exam but still, defensive wounds-- wait. On the drawings the robots had limbs, right? So you can detach a leg or arm or some other part from a dead robot and use it as a blunt weapon. Efficient use of resources! And I doubt the robots are resistant to whatever material they’re made of so even if you whack one at random it’ll prolly cause more damage than a fist,” Shouto elaborated on his idea, then tilted his head again. “So. You interested?”

“What?” Hitoshi said blankly, still processing. Shouto huffed.

“The strategy. You wanna use it or not?” Hitoshi shook his head to clear it. Today he’d had more surprises and revelations that he normally did in a week, and he was only halfway through the exam. It’d left him off-balance, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. If anything it-- no, no. He’d learned his lesson about feeling hopeful after the written exam.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “But, is this even allowed? Present Mic said no attacking other competitors...”

“Actually, using your quirk on someone if the quirk isn’t a damage-dealing kind doesn’t count as attacking that person. Says so in hero laws, it’s just unauthorized quirk usage, and in the exam every usage is authorized. Two people fighting the same robot doesn’t count either as long as they don’t hit each other. So it's all fine! And you’ll be approaching the challenge creatively, if anything you should get extra credit for that.” Shouto, for his part, should get extra credit for enthusiasm. Even though he was only coming up with a strategy for a person he’d met like a minute ago he was really fired up about it, for all that it didn’t show on his face. The left side of his head was smoking a bit, leaving Hitoshi to wonder what his quirk was.

Shouto's idea... it exploited a loophole in the rules, and discovering said loophole required outside-the-box thinking and knowledge of hero laws. Perhaps Hitoshi had been wrong about the exam being designed to eliminate students with non-damaging quirks. Perhaps this was a test within a test, U.A.'s way of checking who had enough brains and determination to persevere. After all, the world of heroics put people like Hitoshi at a disadvantage, and it wouldn't do to pass someone who couldn't deal with it. Maybe this was a taste of what being in the Hero course, among students with powerful quirks, would be like.

Maybe he was overthinking this. When something seemed too good to be true it usually was. It was equally likely that Shouto's interpretation, however logical, wouldn't be accepted by the examiners because it went against some kind of unspoken moral code governing the exam, breaking which would see you receive negative points for lack of moral fiber. Or something.

Maybe he was overthinking again. But until the exam was over he wouldn't know the truth. It was probably somewhere between the two extremes, but Hitoshi preferred to err on the negative side. It wouldn't do to get too comfortable like he had after the written exam. On the other hand, it wouldn't do to just ignore Shouto's plan on the off chance that it might get him in trouble and do nothing at all during the exam. Doing nothing was literally the only thing which resulted in a 0% chance of passing, while doing something, anything, meant he'd still have a chance, no matter how small. The choice was obvious, yet he couldn't help but hesitate...

"Hitoshi?" A hand waving in front of his eyes caused him to return to the present. "You okay? Are you plotting?"

Plotting? No, Shouto had already done all the plotting for him. He was just... waffling, really. Despite his doubts, he knew that taking action was better than not doing anything. To regret failing the exam due to making a bad choice, and to regret failing the exam because you've given up and done nothing... Both options were unpleasant, but the first one would at least allow you to look people in the eye and say ‘I tried my best’. The second was just... pitiful. The kind of thing which years later would cause you to wallow in regrets and what-ifs. Hitoshi wanted nothing to do with it. Plus, it would be rude to just ignore Shouto's efforts.

"I'm fine," he said just before the silence crossed the magical line between long and awkward. "I'm just... being paranoid, I guess," he tried to make light of his doubts in order to get rid of them. They wouldn't help him any. “I was worried that they might dock points for lack of moral fiber.” Shouto stared, looking thrown, and then his mouth twitched.

“Pfft--” he covered his mouth, then glanced at Hitoshi and lost it. “Ahahaha!” Shaking with laughter, he leaned forward, staggering a bit, poker face completely gone. Hitoshi watched him and felt his own lips curl up involuntarily. Shouto looked ridiculous, face turning as red as his hair. Well, half of his hair. Eventually his laughter died down and he straightened himself up, wiping at his eyes.

“Points for moral fiber,” he snorted again. “Yanno, this really sound like something U.A. might be shelling out. But docking? Don’t think so. How would they even justify it? Or quantify it? And there's no way they dock points for immorality or Bastard would've never been admitted in his time. But there you go, U.A. alumni and a licensed hero. Bleh! Worse than a villain, so I know they don't screen for it or someone would've caught on and put him in jail. Oh well, that's life," Shouto shrugged, but the angry glint in his eyes belied the attempt at nonchalance. "Not that you need to worry about that, you're not villainy in the least. I mean you're actually worrying about this stuff! Someone like Bastard wouldn't give two shits. You can't help that you gotta use loopholes 'cause you're disadvantaged. Your aim is to pass the exam in the cleanest way you can, not stomp all over people's faces. Nothing to feel guilty about."

"...You're right," Hitoshi nodded slowly, choosing to focus on the part of Shouto's tirade which related to him and the current events. On the inside he was reeling from the new information Shouto had casually mixed in with encouragement. For once he hadn't been overthinking things: there really was an abusive man in Shouto's life – his father? – and said abuser apparently pretended to be a hero when out in public, well enough that he had a license. Stories like this really pissed him off. A lot of people who had the heart of a hero but a weaker quirk were forced to give up their dreams, while unsuitable people entered the Hero industry just because they happened to be born with a suitable quirk. He bet this particular bastard had a flashy, powerful quirk too. Oh, bastard... now he could see where the 'nickname' came from.

“So,” Shouto clapped, bringing Hitoshi down to earth. “Strategy. Yay or nay?”

“Yay,” Hitoshi replied automatically and then almost facepalmed. Not because he’d agreed, the plan was good, but because he was copying Shouto’s speech patterns. Totally Shouto's fault, the guy kept catching him mid-thought.

“Great!” Shouto sent him a thumbs-up again. Didn’t he know any other gestures? “Looks like we’re almost there.” Indeed, a few more meters and they’d be right before the entrance to a giant complex that could only be an examination area.

“That’s really Plus Ultra,” Hitoshi was impressed.

“That’s U.A. for you, I guess.” He and Shouto walked towards the gate, sticking together automatically. Once inside they settled in for a wait, taking the time to look around. The arena looked like a city district and Hitoshi wondered what the reason was.

“Are they trying to make it more realistic?” he wondered out loud.

Shouto shrugged. “Or maybe checking how much collateral damage we’ll cause.” He had a point, heroes were supposed to be able to keep such things to a minimum. “Oh well. Just gotta be careful out there!” He punched his open palm with a fist and there was a brief flash. Hitoshi stared.

“Shouto?” It felt odd to use his first name, but he had no other choice – Shouto never revealed his surname. Besides, the guy was first-naming him too so they were even.

“Yeah?”

“What is your quirk, anyway?”

“Right, I never told you.” Shouto held out his left hand, palm up. “It’s this.” With a quiet whoosh, a tiny fireball appeared over his hand, then disappeared in less than a second.

“Fire, huh?” Hitoshi studied Shouto, thinking about all the privileged kids he’d ever met, with their flashy, powerful quirks. Fire manipulation undoubtedly made Shouto a part of that group. Usually he ended up disliking kids with such quirks, but was self-aware enough to admit that part of it was prejudice born out of resentment, and part was just a reaction to those kids’ prior dismissive treatment of him, or in some cases downright bullying. But Shouto hadn’t dismissed him and wasn’t discriminating or tooting his own horn. Not to mention the Bastard issue… Hitoshi just couldn’t dislike him. Mostly, he thought of how energetic and vibrant and free-spirited the guy was, and that fire suited him.

“It explains why your head started smoking before,” he said, for lack of a better and non-cheesy response.

“It did?” Shouto patted his head, belatedly. “I didn’t notice! Good think it didn’t set off the fire alarm.”

“We’re outside,” Hitoshi reminded him. Shouto tilted his head.

“Fire alarms don’t work outside?”

“...never mind.”

Soon enough, Present Mic spoke to the gathered students, giving some additional information about the exam. Most of it was just recap of the stuff already said after the written exam and the rest was fancily phrased encouragement with a side of taunting, but everyone listened intently. Hitoshi noted that Shouto’s eyes were sparkling happily throughout the speech. Was he that excited?

“And GO!” the pro hero finished. Hitoshi barely managed to blink in confusion at the abrupt ending when his wrist was seized in an iron grip and pulled, dragging his body sideways.

“Oof!” he tripped on his own feet, but was able to right himself quickly thanks to the force puling on his arm. It was Shouto, running full tilt towards one of the fake alleys between the fake buildings and pulling Hitoshi with him. “What the--”

“You heard him, go!” They ran into the alley. “No time to waste!”

“I know how to run without you holding my hand!” Hitoshi complained.

“I know, but-- Oh, I heard something!” Letting go of Hitoshi’s wrist Shouto pivoted on his heel, dashed into a side alley and disappeared from view. Due to the momentum Hitoshi ran forward a few more steps before skidding to a halt. Feeling off balance in more ways than one, Hitoshi ran back towards the side alley.

“Oi, wait up!” He was answered by a distant whooshing sound, followed by a screeching of metal and a loud crash which echoed off the walls. Hitoshi shook his head and ran forward. In the back of his mind he wondered what he was doing. This wasn’t how he imagined his exam going. Not that he’d had a clear idea, but the reality was like a roller coaster. Losing hope at finding out what the task was, meeting Shouto and getting a bit of that hope back, reaching the stage of the exam and being dragged along at his companion’s pace… A day ago, even an hour ago, if you told him he’d be teaming up with another student who knew his quirk and accepted it, Hitoshi would laugh. Inconceivable. But it was happening, and it was making his heart beat faster and a warm, bubbly feeling he couldn’t name rush through his blood.

He could hear noise from all sides, shouts of other students echoing from adjacent alleys and loud, metallic booming from the direction where Shouto had been headed. The alley veered left so he turned the corner, ran forward a few more meters then skidded to a stop with a stifled curse when the image in front of him registered. The exit of the alley was blocked by a robot! He tensed, preparing to – what, fight it? Bare-handed? Absurd – but then he realized that the robot couldn't attack him. It couldn't do much of anything because, as a second look at it revealed, it no longer had limbs. It was large, one of the ones which looked like a mountain with legs... or without, as it was. Cautiously, he approached the robot. It was twitching, visibly trying to move but unable to, so it just sort of shifted in place like a giant metal spider with its legs cut off. When he got almost close enough to touch the robot there was yelling from behind him and he glanced back to see a guy who'd taken the same path Hitoshi had, running full tilt towards the robot, apparently unable to see it from behind him.

"Stop!" Hitoshi called out, preparing to use his quirk if necessary. The guy snorted.

"Like hellaaAAAH!!" The initial protest gave way to fear in a blink of an eye, the guy’s face blanching in horror as he turned on his heel and ran back the way he came. Hitoshi blinked. He must've seen the robot but failed to realize it was incapacitated--

Boom!

Years later he would still maintain that no, he did not shriek when the robot suddenly landed in front of him with a huge crash, thank you very much. It didn’t matter what Shouto said he’d heard, obviously all the noise from collapsing robots caused some auditory hallucinations. Anyway. After his heart attack had passed he realized that was what had freaked the guy out; he must've seen the robot flying through the air. From where it landed it wouldn't have hit either of them, but panic could mess with perception. And who threw robots anyway? Rhetorical question, he knew exactly who.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he yelled in the direction the robot flew in from. There was no doubt Shouto was behind this. There was no response apart from more crashing and banging and screeching of metal. "Hello?" A dull boom and the ground shook as though something large fell over. He could feel irritation giving way to concern. "Shouto?"

"What?" Never mind, the irritation was back. Took him long enough!

“You alright?” he shouted back.

“Yeah! But the robots aren't!” Which was kind of the point, so it sounded like Shouto was doing well. And he was wasting time. He glanced at the remains of the second robot, in pieces after the crash. Hitoshi walked over and picked up one of the parts which looked like a cross between a giant claw and a baseball bat. It was lighter than it looked and covered in soot on one side. Weapon acquired, he returned to the still-alive robot. What could its weak spots be? Most likely joints, bare wires and any gaps in the plating through which you could get at the internal wiring. And the red, glass-like hemisphere could be a weak point too. It would be realistic, most creatures died after being skewered through the eye and this was clearly the robot’s equivalent thereof.

He experimentally swung the robot leg around like he would a baseball bat, took a deep breath and let it out. Then, before he could overthink it he hefted the bat – er, robot leg – over his shoulder and let it swing, hitting the eye dead on. He expected to maybe crack the eye; instead, with a sound like breaking glass, it shattered into a million pieces. Hitoshi blinked. A weak point indeed. With an electric whine, the robot fell still – apparently destroying the eye meant an automatic shutdown.

The robot was down.

He’d taken down a robot.

A part of him couldn’t believe it was real, even with the evidence in front of him. It felt like he was dreaming... but he quickly woke up at the sound of something large whizzing through the air, followed by a deafening clangor which made him wince, a shiver running down his spine. Shaking off the feeling, he studied the KO’ed robot. It was only partially blocking the exit of the alley, there was a fair bit of space on the right. Hitoshi squeezed through it and was faced with four more twitching, limbless robots, two scorpions and two mountains, stacked like a misshapen pyramid and blocking the view. He shook his head. He should probably be annoyed but instead the image made him think of his cats, who’d sometimes slip away and bring back small rodents or birds as offerings, some of them still alive. Trying valiantly not to imagine a cat-eared Shouto carrying robot scorpions in his mouth, he attempted to distract himself from his own brain by smashing more robot eyes. That done, he circled around the corpses to find Shouto and entered a disaster zone.

The moderately-sized square area bordered by buildings on all sides was covered in downed robots. They were in varying states of dismemberment, some of them half buried in the ground, and quite a few were smoking. The air was gray from the billowing smoke and he could see fire in some places, though what was burning was anyone’s guess. Surely not metal? Hitoshi stared at the scrap heap in disbelief. The place looked like a fire tornado had rampaged through. How had Shouto managed to wreak such destruction in… actually, how much time had passed? He wasn’t sure.

"Hitoshi!" Shouto accosted him, jumping out from behind the closest robot corpse and nearly giving him a heart attack. "You done?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. He was beginning to realize that interacting with Shouto required chill and nerves of steel. "I see you're done too," he added, eyeing the piles upon piles of metal which were once robots. How many, he couldn't say.

"To be fair, a bunch of them just fell into traps when they tried to rush me and then they were sitting ducks," Shouto explained and shepherded him towards one of the side alleys. All three of them seemed to be blocked off by conveniently placed robot corpses. "Traps! They're really testing us here."

"It is an exam."

Shouto ignored the snark and jabbered on. “And then a guy swung in on some tape that grew out of his arm and snagged one robot and threw it! It fell somewhere near you.” Hitoshi blinked, rapidly reevaluating his initial idea of the robot being thrown by Shouto via a bastardized version of a rocket launch. So it was some Tarzan wannabe instead? “Then he swung away, didn’t want to inhale all the smoke I guess. Still, it was smart, I didn’t think of moving over the buildings. Here, there’s space to squeeze through.” Having reached the alley by now, Shouto threw out this non sequitur and promptly crawled through the gap between the robot and the wall. Deciding to just go with it, Hitoshi quickly followed.

"Now let's go look for others!" Once again, Shouto grabbed his wrist and began to drag him off. They ran through the alley, which was fortunately free of robots.

“Others?"

“Sure! You still haven’t tried your strategy,” Shouto reminded him as they reached a square, much larger that the one they’d just left, with wider side alleys and much more chaotic. A wild crowd of contestants was moving around frantically, people shooting off blasts from their quirks, arguing over who saw which robot first, almost coming to blows before recalling that fighting other contestants was forbidden and running off, bumping into already downed robots… Pandemonium.

“Strategy,” Hitoshi muttered, trying to focus. The idea was sound, but challenging to put into practice in the chaos that was the examination site. He needed to find a good target, someone focused enough to realize he was speaking to them and to respond-- wait, he could see someone. A girl with poofy brown hair was tapping robots, causing them to rise and float in midair at a moderate height. There were already a few robots floating on each side of her, and she was adding more. He ran towards the girl, aware of Shouto following behind. The second she noticed him, he struck.

"Is that a gravity quirk?"

"What?" she blurted, then her eyes glazed over in a familiar manner.

"Don’t move," Hitoshi said and eyed the closest robot. They weren't floating that high up and his climbing was better than his aim. He had extensive experience in scaling jungle gyms, trees and the like to escape from other kids. From higher ground he could still hear what they were saying about him if they stood close enough, but they usually left him alone quickly. Maybe they disliked having to look up at him in order to insult him. Anyway, he eventually became a pro at hoisting himself up on jungle gyms and branches, a special skill acquired through necessity. The girl, or maybe someone else, had already defeated some robots, and the metallic bodies lying on the ground could serve well as a cross between a ladder and a platform. So Hitoshi placed his makeshift weapon on the ground, swiftly climbed onto one of the robots, then jumped up, getting a hold of the closest floating one and hoisting himself up on it. The whole thing barely took a few seconds. A good result, but less so when taking into account that he likely didn’t have much time.

"Catch!" Shouto had thrown the robot part up in such a way that it was easy to catch it in midair. Hitoshi didn't even have to ask him to do it. He was beginning to understand why some heroes worked in teams. He quickly found weak spots to aim at. From atop the robot the angle was a bit awkward, but he was able to attack successfully after adjusting his stance a little and KO the scorpion. There was no time to waste, so without thinking much about it, which could cause him to over-analyze and start freaking out, he jumped from one robot to the next. Considering that the robots were hovering in mid-air and held up by a quirk it seemed like it would be a challenge, but actually wasn't that much different than jumping from rock to rock to get across a river. If anything it was easier – robots were much larger than rocks and they weren't treacherously slippery due to water and erosion. The height was a problem, but only a mental one – on a technical level there was no difference between jumping from robot to robot on ground level and in the air, as long as one didn't freak out and fall.

Hitoshi killed the second scorpion and was still standing on it when it began to shake. Not in the twitchy manner typical of legless robots tottering on the ground, but in a way which indicated that the poofy-haired girl was losing control of her quirk. Deciding not to risk it, Hitoshi looked down the side of the robot. The distance to the ground wasn’t that big, but just to be safe he slid down the scorpion-like robot’s tail like he would a tree branch, hanging down from it before letting go. He dropped to the ground, then quickly ran a few steps forward to avoid getting squashed by a falling robot. And not a moment too soon – they were beginning to really wobble.

"Whoo, congrats!" Shouto materialized next to him. "That was great! You're more athletic than you look," he continued. Hitoshi stared at him. Nope, still didn't look like he realized how he sounded. Oh well, if Shouto meant it as a genuine compliment Hitoshi would take it as one.

"Thanks," Hitoshi raised his hand for a high-five. It was silly, but he'd always wanted to exchange this gesture with someone other than his dad, who didn't really count. The floating robots chose that moment to fall down, crashing loudly against the pavement and shaking the ground a bit. It paralleled the state of Hitoshi's mind as he took in his companion's reaction. Shouto did not quite flinch; it was more like a sudden tenseness, all his muscles locking in the initial stages of fight-or-flight reaction. He seemed to have stopped breathing and his alert eyes were glued to Hitoshi's hand watching it cautiously, unblinking and with dilated pupils. Feeling ill, Hitoshi lowered his hand. Did Shouto really think--

"Hey!" the poofy-haired girl's shout broke him from his stupor. "What did you do? The proctor said no fighting!"

"That's why I didn't fight you," Hitoshi replied automatically, half of his mind stuck on what just happened. "I just used my quirk on you. Which wasn't forbidden."

"Wha-- but--" the girl spluttered faced with this bit of logic. "Argh!" She rushed off, apparently abandoning the argument in favor of getting more points. The girl had one of those round, friendly faces, and while Hitoshi knew appearances can be deceptive he really would have preferred to target someone who was obviously an unscrupulous asshole. Because, all logic aside, targeting the round-faced girl made him feel like an unscrupulous asshole. Especially after the high five fiasco.

"So,” Shouto distracted him. “What was that earlier? With the hand?" He no longer looked so wary. So he knew Hitoshi wouldn't… Good. It must've been a reflex, Hitoshi understood those. He tried not to contemplate why Shouto would have this reflex, not wanting to feel anymore sick than he already did.

"Raise your hand like this," he chose to explain instead, demonstrating with his own. Once Shouto complied, he firmly clapped his palm against Shouto's. "It's called a high five. Ever heard of it?"

"Once or twice," Shouto slapped his palm against Hitoshi's in a double high five. Atmosphere cleared, they both winced as a loud, static screech took that time to reverberate across the training ground.

"Two minutes left on the clock!", Present Mic informed them through the speakers. Hitoshi noticed that Shouto's eyes began to sparkle happily in response.

"You sure look happy to be done with the exam," he pointed out. Shouto blinked.

"Huh? No, I just--"

Boom. Alarms began to howl and the ground shook.

"What the hell?"

"Hasn’t been two minutes.”

"Wait. Didn't he say that there's a fourth type of robot and that right before the exam ends--"

Boom. The ground shook again, and something metal appeared in the distance over the top of one of the buildings.

It moved.

People started screaming and running in the opposite direction, which just happened to be where Hitoshi and Shouto were standing. Thinking fast, they ran towards one of the downed robots and jumped on it to not get swept away by the crowd.

"That's the fourth type? It's taller than the buildings, I thought it'd be smaller."

Hitoshi shrugged. "It is what it is." The thing was humongous, but also slow from what he could see. There was no need to run around like headless chickens. At this point he was more likely to get trampled by a fellow competitor than by the robot.

"Didn't look that big on paper," Shouto complained.

"Of course it didn't-- oh shit," now that he was standing in an elevated spot Hitoshi could see the whole area. "Look!" There was rubble everywhere and on the ground, pinned by what seemed to be the largest piece, was the round-faced girl from before. Hitoshi clenched his fists. "Why won't she float it?"

"Maybe she can't twist around enough to touch it."

"Damn it." A weight settled in Hitoshi’s chest. Was it his fault? Did his mind control cause her to be unable to use her quirk to save herself now? Was she injured? Would she even have gone that way if they hadn’t met?

"Hitoshi?" Shouto poked him in the arm. Hitoshi flinched and stared helplessly at the crowd in between them and the girl.

"How am I supposed to get there?" He'd get trampled two steps in, and then the girl would get trampled by the giant robot and they'd both be turned into paste. He could feel the onset of panic but couldn't help it. This was an exam! Why wasn't someone helping her? Stopping the robot? Where were the proctors?

“Not a problem, follow me," Shouto tugged his sleeve and crouched down. "Okay people, OUTTA THE WAY!" the bellow was followed by a blast of fire cutting through the air above the contestants’ heads. People screamed and jumped to the sides, some patting their hair and glaring even though no one was hit. "Come on!" They jumped down and ran through the space which had cleared in the wake of Shouto’s flamethrower-like move.

"Nice one." The method was questionable, but it had worked.

"Somebody has to save our skins!" They reached the girl in a few seconds. She was struggling, trying to get out from underneath the boulder but was immobilized almost completely and all she could do was wiggle around. Something knocked into Hitoshi's shoulder.

"Oof!" gasped the something, which was actually a green-haired guy.

"Ow," Hitoshi muttered.

"Oh!” the girl gasped, gaze zeroing in on Hitoshi's face. Apparently she remembered him.

"Hi. Rescue team to the res...cue, oh shit," Shouto pointed towards the robot. "It's heading this way." They all stared at it in mute horror.

"Run!" the girl snapped out of it first. "It's an exam, I'm sure-- I'm sure--"

"No!" the new guy yelled, determination shining in his eyes. "A true hero doesn't leave anyone behind!" Then he grabbed the edge of the boulder and began to push it up. Or trying to, it didn't even move a millimeter.

"Okay, all together," Hitoshi heard his own voice say. He was pretty sure he was operating on pure adrenaline at this point. His heartbeat was echoing in his ears and in his throat and the edge of his field of vision was oddly blurry. He and Shouto also took hold of the boulder and heaved, but even with the three of them it wasn't enough.

"It's getting closer!" New guy parroted after Shouto. The robot was slow due to its size, but they were immobile. It would reach them soon.

"I can stall it," Shouto said. "It's just... Hitoshi!" He moved closer, speaking quietly. "If you wanna talk to me again force me to use fire!"

What?

"What?" Hitoshi stared. What was he going on about? Was it really the time? Shouto didn't answer, his eyes were closed and he appeared to be concentrating. And then there was a subtle change coming over him. His posture, the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head... and his aura, which suddenly seemed different, colder.

Then Shouto moved his right hand.

Krrrr!

Hitoshi felt his jaw drop. A sheet of ice spread across the ground, starting at Shouto’s right foot and instantly covering the distance between them and the robot. Without stopping, the ice climbed up its legs, then up its torso, thickening as it went and eventually encasing the robot in a makeshift glacier up to its neck.

Ice. Shouto used ice. But his quirk was fire manipulation! So it wasn’t possible. Was it?

Shouto turned towards the girl. “Are you injured? Any broken bones?”

“No, I’m only pinned--”

“Good, because we’ll have to run,” Shouto turned to Hitoshi and Hitoshi’s breath caught. His eyes... they were cold and dark. Emotionless. Nothing like before. “I will use ice to lift the boulder, prepare yourselves.” Quickly, Hitoshi grabbed the girl’s wrists and she grabbed his. Everyone was very aware of the crackling sounds coming from the giant robot’s direction as it tried to free itself. It was slow but strong, and the ice was cracking steadily, more and more pieces falling on the ground and breaking with a sound like shards of glass. Shouto placed his right hand against the debris under the boulder. With a creaking sound, it iced over and thick columns of ice began to form, lifting the boulder as they grew. “I can freeze the robot again if needed, but I’d rather not have to,” Shouto spoke over the tense silence, reassuring them. He had a point, Hitoshi would rather just get out of here too. The ice spread quickly and the second there was enough slack Hitoshi pulled, the girl helping as much as she could, and then she was free. They both stumbled, but righted themselves quickly by leaning on each other.

“Let’s go-- oh!” the girl gasped and pointed at the giant robot. Filled with dread, Hitoshi turned, expecting to see the robot ice-free and already upon them. In truth, while it had shaken off a lot of the ice it wasn’t free yet, and in the worst case Shouto could just re-freeze it like he said. On the other hand, the sight of the new guy (who, he now realized, had disappeared somewhere around the time Shouto lifted the boulder) flying through the air like a cannonball, heading for the robot’s face, was completely unexpected. The three of them froze, staring at the impeding train wreck.

Boom!

The boy and the robot collided, the thing’s head bursting open, and the whole robot started collapsing like a house of cards. Hitoshi briefly remembered that eyes were the robots’ weak point, but had no time to analyze with the shower of metal debris falling towards them. Along with the boy, who seemed to be unconscious going by his limp stature. The girl let out an anxious gasp and Shouto frowned.

“I can’t stop his fall with ice, it might--”

“I’ll do it!” the girl said, already running forward, heedless of the falling debris. She skidded to a halt and looked up, then bit her lip. Hitoshi half expected her to float up towards the guy, but maybe she couldn't use her quirk on herself?

“Here,” Shouto moved his right hand and a narrow strip of ice whooshed across the ground, reaching the girl’s feet and extending upwards, not freezing her but fluidly turning into a wide, icy platform which carried her up. It rose quickly like a dangerous, open elevator. The girl was able to keep her balance and kept looking towards the falling boy. When he was almost next to her she jumped off, grabbing him with one hand and slapping her own cheek with the other, activating her quirk. They began floating slowly downwards, Shouto using the time to transform the platform into a makeshift umbrella, spreading icicles outwards from the top to catch or push away the pieces of debris which could hit the duo. Hitoshi kept his eyes on the girl’s face which was turning pale, then a pale green, then just green. He ran towards the pair and jumped up, grabbing the girl’s shoe and pulling them both downwards. It barely took a second and was easy because they weighted as much as a feather. The moment they were on the ground the girl canceled her quirk, leaned away from them and retched. Hitoshi felt like joining her when he saw the state the green-haired guy was in. He was… a mess was putting it mildly. Three of his limbs were so damaged that they were shapeless, like bags of meat. How many breaks did it take to end up in such a state? Hitoshi had no idea what the guy’s injuries looked like on the inside, and didn’t want to know.

And, despite what they'd assumed before, he was still conscious.

How.

Shouto knelt down next to the green-haired guy. He placed his right hand on his shoulder and a thin layer of ice-frost formed over the damaged limbs, a mixture of a cast and coolant. The girl was turning towards them, wiping her mouth. It seemed she was felling better.

"Once the exam is over, a medical team should be dispatched. When they make the announcement I will--" there was a crackling sound. Shouto paused. They all looked down at the green-haired guy who was trying to move the limbs Shouto had iced, causing the noise. The broken limbs. In which the bones were probably in pieces the size of a button.

"What're you doing?" the girl panicked. "You shouldn't move!" He shouldn't be able to!

"One point... just one point..." the guy mumbled and tried to move again. Something in Hitoshi snapped. After the fighting and the guilt and the rescuing and magic quirk switches and personality switches and giant robots exploding and determined green-haired guys injuring themselves to the point where their limbs turned into paste, he was on his last nerve and it was just too fucking much.

"Are points more important than your health?!" he yelled.

"I..." the guy tried to respond and his eyes glazed over.

"Shut up! Don't move!" Hitoshi ordered and watched him fall still. "Fuck." He wiped his forehead. It was covered with cold sweat.

"Good thinking," Shouto commended. Then he tried to say something else, but it was drowned out by a piercing screech from the sound system.

"Ladies and gentleman, the entrance exam is henceforth OVER!" Present Mic’s voice rang out over the square. "Our medical staff will now--"

"There you go," Shouto nodded. "As I was saying, injuries this severe should be prioritized. Stay here while I alert them,” he ordered and promptly ran off. Hitoshi took a deep breath. Damn it all. He was here to take an exam, not play paramedic! He glanced at the girl who was staring at the green-haired guy, aghast. He did look pretty horrible.

"You okay? No lasting damage?" The girl blinked and stared at him.

"...he didn't even get one point?" she asked incredulously. Hitoshi stared at her with equal incredulity. Was insanity contagious? Or were they both in shock? He could hear footsteps and glanced up to see Shouto, along with... yes, that was Recovery Girl. Wow. The girl seemed similarly awed despite her worry while the guy, still under the influence of Hitoshi's quirk, could only glance from one of them to the other, eyes being the only body part he could move. The icy casts over his limbs were still intact. Hitoshi wondered if the cold was helping with the pain.

Ice. Besides the initial shock he'd felt when he first saw Shouto wield the element, he hadn't wondered about that – there just wasn't time with all that was going on. But now his mind got hung up on it. Shouto's quirk was fire! He'd seen him use it several times. What was with the ice? With the personality switch that happened at the same time? There was also Shouto’s vague forewarning...

Shouto and Recovery Girl reached them quickly. Hitoshi was pretty sure the examiners who'd been watching did basic triage and sent help where it was needed the most, and the healing hero had simply bumped into Shouto on her way towards her designed patient. It didn't really matter, he was just glad that help was there. He stared at Shouto who knelt down next to him, at his dual-colored hair – red like fire and white like ice. He recalled how his head only smoked on the left side – the red side, how he only used his left hand to create fire and used his right to create ice.

"--you to cancel your quirks?" he heard Recovery Girl say. Apparently he'd missed something.

"Of course," Shouto placed his hand – left hand, Hitoshi noted – on the green-haired guy's shoulder. With a hiss the makeshift ice casts disappeared without a trace, turning directly to water vapor. Despite his earlier inattention Hitoshi got with the program quickly and canceled his quirk as well. Unlike Shouto he didn't have to do or say anything, the deactivation was purely mental and required him to 'abandon' the connection. That done, both boys stepped away to make room for the professional, while the poofy-haired girl watched the treatment, concern mingling with curiosity on her face.

"He'll be fine now," Hitoshi said, partly to reassure himself, partly because he honestly thought so. Recovery Girl's quirk was legendary.

"Course he will. At least physically, dunno about his ego," Shouto said. Hitoshi turned his head so fast he almost got whiplash. "Then again lives matter more than egos, yeah? Anyway Recovery Girl’s awesome, look, his limbs’re already looking bett—erk ! Hitoshi, your face looks scary!” Yeah, the post-exam adrenaline crash mixed with the Shouto situation left him wired and angry and entirely done and he felt more than a little crazy and it was probably showing on his face. A lot.

"You don’t say?!" he hissed at Shouto. The one he'd initially met, with lively eyes set in a blank face. With a fire quirk and machine-gun-style prattling and casual speech patterns.

"Uh... heh," Shouto muttered nonsensically. “Hello again!”

Hitoshi goggled. “Again? What the hell happened here?”

“Ah, yeah. I should explain, huh?”

“No shit!”

“I can do that,” he agreed easily. “The question is, if I told you the truth would you believe me?”

Hitoshi heaved a sigh. This was the ‘to try or not to try’ thing all over again. If he left without hearing Shouto’s explanation and seeing this strange story to its conclusion he would end up forever wondering what would’ve happened. “Shouto.” He ended up sounding more like ‘you dumbass.’ “I saw you do something that should be impossible. So if your explanation also sounds impossible I can accept that.”

Shouto studied him for a moment, then eye-smiled. “You’re something else, you know?”

“Don’t call me a thing.” Shouto seemed about to protest, but then realized he was just sassing and settled down. Nearby the green-haired boy, who seemed to be doing a lot better thanks to Recovery Girl, was slowly standing up. Recovery Girl had moved on and could be seen passing out candy farther away. The girl was still hanging around, looking relieved at the boy’s recovery but unwilling to approach. Maybe she felt too awkward. The students who didn’t need medical attention were slowly heading back to U.A. to get their phones and bags and all the stuff they’d been told to leave behind before the exam started. It didn’t happen that long ago, but to Hitoshi it seemed like a lifetime had passed. As for Shouto, they’ve only known each other for… a little more than ten minutes. Hitoshi was surprised when he realized this. The brief time was eventful so it felt longer. He shook his head to clear it. What a crazy day. Shouto, the source of the craziness, stood next to him, waiting for him to gather his thoughts.

“So,” Hitoshi caught his attention. “Everyone’s leaving… Walk and talk?”

“Sure.”

"Then let's go."

Together, they headed towards the main building. They didn’t know it at the time, but that day was the first chapter in the story of how they became great heroes, and the best of friends.

#fic:unbalancedheart #shinsou hitoshi #todoroki shouto #bnhafic

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