#is a pretty untapped subject

[hannahmanderr]

I haven't seen anyone else talk about this yet so I'm going to assume no one has (and if this is the millionth post about this I am so sorry), but apparently there was a leak at Viacom last month, and one of the things that got leaked was the original Danny Phantom pitch bible, and let me tell y'all, there is some interesting lore to be had. I've taken the liberty of summing up a few notable points, but feel free to read for yourself - it's pretty short.

Jack was originally written as an ex-spy, test pilot... basically if it was a daring job, he probably had it. His IQ was supposedly only one point off from Maddie's, and his bumbling was more of a result of him being more "brave than smart."

Maddie was originally written as "one of the world's most respected theoretical physicists" and the brains between her and Jack. Get this: her full name was supposed to be Madison!

Sam and Danny's psychic connection was actually a result of the accident. When he was in the hospital and still very much saturated with ectoplasm, she gave him a "get better" kiss on the forehead, which sparked the connection. The connection would've manifested in a number of ways, including a perpetual ability to "sense" the other, see visions, and hear each other's thoughts, though it was supposed to be somewhat unpredictable.

Jazz hid her brains from her cheerleader friends because she wanted to fit in with them.

Danny was supposed to be the only person able to see, hear, and interact with ghosts.

On the subject of Danny, his reputation for being a scaredy-cat was much more well-known, even to the point where Sam and Tucker gave him the nickname Danny Phantom before he even had his accident. This kid was scared of his own shadow, frogs, you name it.

Overshadowing was originally called "ghosting," and the more intelligent a person, the more difficult it would be to control them.

Jack and Maddie were hoping to break the barrier between the "Real World" (our world) and the "Unreal World" (the ghost world). They wanted to get through to the spirit realm to be able to communicate with the dead in order to help make the world a better place (think picking Einstein's brain a little more, seeing what other music Mozart has cooking, etc.). That dimensional barrier was damaged when they first tried out their experiment, and Danny - who was hiding out from Dash in the lab - would be caught in the middle.

Much like how fans have interpreted things and how the show tried to imply, Danny felt responsible for unleashing the ghosts into our world and decided to adopt the name Sam and Tucker had teased him with to help put a stop to their reign of terror.

Seriously, y'all should read this. There's a lot of interesting info in here, and really it sounds like such a cool concept?? Like I'll probably add my personal thoughts in a reblog, but there's a lot of potential for untapped creativity from the phandom here. Plus it's always nice to see what's technically official content almost 20 years after the show's premiere.

[mithrandirl]

i always get questions when i do a split gifset, and it's a deceptively simple process so i thought i'd try to show how i do it! i don't know if these types of gifsets have a more universally recognized name, but that's what i call them so that's what i'm going with.

i'm going to write this assuming you have a solid familiarity with photoshop and making gifs, but please feel free to send me an ask if anything is unclear. i use video timeline/smart objects so will be showing that (here's a great general tutorial on giffing with timeline). i will also be talking A LOT about gif dimensions, so first let's briefly go over the limits and theory a little bit.

a 1 column gifset can accommodate gifs 540 pixels wide

2 columns = 268 pixels each with a 4 pixel gutter between

3 columns = 177, 178, 177 pixels with 4 pixel gutters

i'm mostly going to talk about 2 column split gifs here (what i will refer to as 2x1 from now on - 2 across and 1 high), but the process is the same for 3 column (3x1) and so on (1x2, 2x2, etc).

so, why would you even want to make a gifset like this? i mean, let’s face it, generally, bigger is better for gifs on tumblr, and there are obvious incentives to 540 width gifs over 268 or 177/8 width, especially since the upload limit went to 10MB. but even 10MB isn’t much when you’re talking about high quality footage. gif making is a constant balance between quality (whatever that means to you: frame dimensions, sharpening, coloring, etc) and file size. split gifs are a cheat to that limitation >:)

i personally believe an untapped frontier of tumblr gifmaking is playing with dimensions and time. that sentence makes me sound like an old-timey sci-fi villain, but you get the idea: gifmaking is an art and there are many fun and interesting ways of exploring the medium. you can do a lot with 268 pixels! longer frame loops to gif longer scenes unbroken, bolder coloring on a wide shot you don’t want to pare down. and, a shorter x axis means the y axis’s bang goes a lot further on a buck. also just if you have a 2 column set but only 5 gifs so you need to make one take up 2 slots. there's a lot of reasons but the most important one is it's fun :) here are some examples of other split gifs i've made: x, x, x

this isn't so much a limitation, more of a shift in how you think about gifs, but it's important to remember that each gif should ideally be doing something still. when making split gifs, it’s easy to pick a wide scene without thinking about how it’ll be split down the middle, and then you’re left with a lot of something on one side and a lot of incongruous nothing on the other - or you're left with a person cut in half awkwardly in the middle. so while a split gif can still be a whole scene, you shouldn’t ignore the break and what it means to the bigger picture. now this is personal preference, but i like to play with the break and make it a part of the gifset. mirrored movement, subjects trapped on either side but still talking to each other, a bird flying from one side to the other. fun with frames! it can be another way of drawing attention to specific images/moments/feelings happening within the same shot.

SIMPLE SPLIT GIFS

to more narrowly define what i’m calling “simple split gifs,” it’s one set of frames split down the middle into two separate gifs that are meant to play concurrently, side by side.

first thing's first, crop your gif and uncheck delete cropped pixels if it is not already (very important). i'm cropping it to the 1x1 size, in this case 268x350. if you need to see how the full size will look, you can try it out with 536 first. but this one is pretty easy, this is the exact center of the frame (the left boundary of this crop is the center line) and both their heads fit within their respective 1x1 crop.

then color as you normally would. if your scene is very different one side to the other, it might be easier for you to color on a wider crop and then either crop again or copy paste your coloring to the smaller crop version. i do that with the 2x6s, but it's usually not that big a deal to color the 2x1s with just the small crop on your canvas at the time. this scene is very symmetrical, both in movement and colors, so i'm good.

now the fun part! once you've got one side how you want it, save/export as you normally would. at this point i also like to make a mental note of how many frames there are.

so i have 49 frames and it's still only ~3MB! this is just an example that i picked from my rotk fancy set, otherwise i probably would have made this gif longer.

then onto the other side, so i ctrl + z my way back to my smart object video timeline. to get to theoden i just drag and drop the smart object 268 pixels over. since this one is in the exact center of the image, it even helpfully guides me (this can get annoying if you are NOT giffing the center of the image fyi, but you can always manually go pixel by pixel too if you need to with your <- -> keyboard buttons. just always remember where you started and count accurately). i can never move around my smart object without hiding the adjustment layers on top of it, so you'll see me do that in this screen recording.

see how it corrected me when i dragged it a few pixels down by accident, and with all those pink guidelines? sometimes photoshop is good 😌

then make sure you still like the coloring, adjust whatever needs to be adjusted, but watch out! don't make any major changes because it still has to match the other side. and export again.

what we perceive as 1 series of frames chopped down the middle is just 2 separate gifs with the same frame rate. when tumblr loads the images, it will run concurrently in the post (even though it never does in the draft post 🙄). and that's it!

COMPLEX SPLIT GIFS

again i'm making up terms, but i call anything with more than 2 components a complex split gifset. i've tweaked some things in the process as i went along, but this is generally how i did the lotr series. these sets are basically just many split gifs with transitions. and here's where endurance becomes a factor :) there's a lot of prep done blind. but if set up well, it will be fairly easy to pull together by the end.

first i decide on my dimensions, using my upper bounds to determine how big i'm going to go. since lotr has very nice large file sizes, i can go pretty big without sacrificing much in quality. i decided on 3 rows of 350 pixel height gifs and it's worked well for me. that means my biggest gif will have a total height of 1050 pixels - fun! you could also do 8 rows, with two 2x2s or just a series of 2x1s that transition to 1x1s. there really is no limit to this except your imagination and source material.

i cap everything i'm going to use before i even open photoshop, then do all of them at once. uncheck delete cropped pixels, then i make my gifs! this is where i spend 90% of the time on this set. every gif should be the size of the smallest 1x1 gif (268x350 for me). i make all 10 into a fully colored, separate psd. (and then i usually go back through all of them a few times to get the colors to match better 😅) for the bigger ones (2x1: 536x350 and 2x6: 536x1050), i just crop them as if they were 1x1 but always thinking about how they will look when big. this gets tricky when i do the big one :) my lazy workaround for that is to basically make it twice: one cropped as it will be and one full size for me to color. then i copy and paste all the coloring layers onto the small one and voila, i know that the coloring in the upper right slice will also look good on the bottom left slice 1050 pixels away because i saw it on the full size version.

coloring is probably the biggest thing i'm thinking about with this kind of set. the whole idea is that these gifs are using the same colors, more or less, throughout each phase. even with the 1x1s, they're still part of a larger color concept, and they should (🤞) work with each other.

in a pinch, i like to eyedrop a color from one gif and add it as an accent to another. one of my 1x1s had a much more muted color palette originally, but i wanted it to have deeper blues and yellows to complement the 1x1 that would go next to it, so i added some gradients on lower opacity over it, color picked from other gifs i already colored.

i keep my coloring and the smart object in separate folders to help me in the final step of combining everything, and then i trim everything down to my lowest common denominator of frames. you might think you need to keep frames pretty minimal if you're doing 3 phases with transitions like this, but there's more room to work with on a small gif, in terms of file size. i usually do 30-50 frames for each phase, with the assumption that i'll be adding a transition on each side of each gif that will eat up some frames (i usually do 4-6 frame fade transitions). for the rotk set my final frame count was 129 and i never went over 8MB on a gif, so there's plenty of space play around with things :)

and then, combine! whatever order you start with, you are stuck with (unless you're getting even more complicated, but we won't go into that lol). for these sets i go small 1x1 -> medium 2x1 -> big 2x6. i like to think of it in phases from this point on. small is the first phase, then medium, then big. then i put in the fade transitions, chopping up the first phase gif so the last one will fade into it, restarting the whole cycle seamlessly. i'm just doing a quick and dirty fade here, but here's a tutorial if you want more explanation on transitions.

at this point i save this psd as its position, "top left" or whatever (usually it's a psb by this point too 🥲), just in case i need to go back to it. then i export this first gif and move on to the rest.

it's the same concept as a simple split gif: drag and drop the smart object to the new position, but now there are multiple phases to keep track of. folder organization has been key for me to keep everything straight. i move through the gifs in a backwards S, starting with the top left. but you could go any direction, just gotta stick with it and remember your counts. in my case, i'm always thinking of 268 pixels over and, for the 2x6, 350 up/down. it's a tedious process, but it goes quick (apart from waiting for photoshop to load each time you export).

i did this series as a color concept aesthetic kind of thing, so my theory was by using the same-ish colors throughout, that would save me in the end when it came time to export. there's only 256 colors max to work with on a gif, and that's usually what gets me over the 10MB limit. but as i said, i have never even gotten close to the size limit on this series. it's pretty hard to reach the limit on 268 pixels, but not impossible. (i did run into that on the emma set i did, and that was hell. but also not an impossible fix in the end.)

and that's it! if you try any of this and have trouble, i'm happy to help if i can but mostly this is a "click around and see what works for you" kind of process. and feel free to tag me on your split gifsets :) i love seeing them <3

[bonefall]

My birthday was a couple days ago, and I got to see my bio dad for the first time in a while. He surprised me with the fact that I have a little half-sister, whom I've never met and who was adopted about two years back. So, I wondered if any situations in BB mimic this or have a theme of "secret siblings" or "secret family"? Sorry if this is a weird ask; this blog is honestly just such a cool little place and I love the way you approach the subject matter and take the flawed misogynistic foundation of the WC books and make them so much better (JUSTICE FOR BUMBLE!!!). I've also learned a lot about healthy and unhealthy relationships here and am really glad for your deep dives on Squilf and Bramble. Thanks, Bones!

Not weird at all! I really like exploring all the little nooks and crannies of complicated familial dynamics. I think one of the untapped strengths of WC (that the writers seem to be unaware of) is how their MASSIVE cast allows them to present all sorts of unique dynamics. So I like to pick up on it, since they don't.

For secret siblings...

I'm pretty heavily leaning towards Ambermoon being adopted by Wildfur, as a surrogacy. Something feels correct about it. Especially since Icecloud is getting retooled into a post-Battle of the True Eclipse birth, and a major supporting character in AVoS-era stories as a friend of Alderheart.

Thinking about it, I should zoom in and expand this. Maybe have Icecloud, somehow, acquire forbidden knowledge that would invalidate the Queen’s Rights and he (transman) struggles with if he's going to use it to expose his parents as an excuse to help Ambermoon.

(Especially since Ambermoon and Icecloud are basically nothing alike. Amber is independent, bold, and vain. Ice is jessie pinkman big-hearted, disorganized, and deceptively meek if you look past his "chill" demeanor)

But that's wip-- there's also Breezepelt and the Three, who are going to have an actual friendship. In particular I can't unsee Breeze and Lion having a deep one. I know I commit the Cardinal Sin of borderline himbo-ifying Lionblaze in BB, but I can't help it.

Hollyleaf ended up nabbing a bunch of his most violent roles to make her villainous descent smoother narratively, so BB!Lionblaze's story ends up being more focused on Ashfur's abuse, comic relief with cats in other Clans (something that the very serious Jay and Holly have a hard time providing), and the emotional fallout of the big reveal and Bramblestar's turn on them. Breezepelt slots neatly into that.

They were friends. Lionblaze's whole life came down around the reveal, everyone looking at him and his siblings differently, like they're suddenly something terrible. Why can't we find a silver lining, Breezepelt? Why can't we call ourselves brothers if the whole world is going to do it anyway? So much is changing, but THIS doesn't have to, we will take their weapon and turn it to armor, my ally, my friend, my brother.

(and when Breezepelt is lashing out at the three because of the Dark Forest's influence, Lionblaze is there, taking the blows and trying not to give in to the impulse to send him flying with a single paw)

There's also Harespring and Kestrelflight of WindClan and Owlclaw of ShadowClan. All of them are from a single litter between Whitewater and Mudclaw. She was going to raise the three of them alone as ShadowClan cats, but when the sire was smote, Whitewater felt they were cursed.

She was able to give the oldest two to their bio-uncle, Torear, but the weather was so bad that day and the runt was so sickly and small that it surely would have killed him. I don't think Owlclaw ever finds out why his mother always treated him with suspicion, but it did mess him up horribly.

Over in BB!DOTC, Thunder Storm is getting more half-siblings earlier. Clear Sky and Falling Feather had two daughters-- Pale Sky and Tiger Sky.

I want to explore the way that the various stages of Clear Sky's life acted on his kids. How any little curiosity Thunder Storm had about the life he might have had if he wasn't abandoned is crushed by seeing kittens who weren't. How Clear's favoritism of his oldest child set the trio against each other from the start. How this idea of "love" is toxic yet intoxicating.

It feels good to be the golden child. The power it gives you over his sycophants is satisfying. To know you, and you alone, have what someone else craves. Problem is, that's conditional, and it's cruel.

What Thunder Storm learns from his time with his biodad is that Clear Sky is not his father at all. He's taught him exactly what he DOESN'T want to be. There may be similarities-- in temperament, in physical prowess (though BB!Thunder is three-legged, he's still ripped), in taste and senses. But Thunder Storm's father is Shaded Flower.

(BB!Gray Wing died in the first book, rescuing Shaded Flower from being trampled by a horse. Xey're a patron of wisdom, Shaded Moss is taking the role of fatherhood to Thunder)

His sister is Rainswept Flower. His mom is Bright Storm. If there was a bond he could have had with Tiger Sky and Pale Sky, it dies simply and cruelly on the knife they used to cut each other out.

Pale might have wanted to mend it, she was the gentler one. But she dies in the First Battle along with her mother. Tiger Sky is too stubborn to accept any help, should Thunderstar offer it, and Thunderstar isn't in the business of begging for others to like him.

Naturally I'm lowkey obsessed with them lmao. I need to make a BB!DOTC overviewww

[jacquesthepigeon]

Thinking again about parental relationships in ML and how much they leave to be desired

Luka and Juleka had the deadbeat dada drama and it concluded with the father/son relationship being the only one that mattered and Juleka, who canonically was insecure about her relationship with Mr. Deadbeat, being not so much as a bullet note; not to mention having other characters ignore Anarka’s influence in their musical upbringing (ignoring moms becomes a running theme 🤪)

Chloé. Complete and total daddy’s girl except when she’s evil, in which case she’s her absentee mother’s daughter. Daddy’s responsible for the good, mommy for the bad. Excellent non sexist writing /s. Don’t wanna dwell on her.

With Marinette, I get the impression that she’s closer to her father than she is her mother, which by itself isn’t a problem, but then we compare the amount of individual characterization Tom and Sabine get (as in, when they’re not a monolith) and like. Tom gets all the personality while Sabine gets all the foreign mysticism and also is the emotionally stable/responsible one and apparently had 0 influence on Marinette’s upbringing whatsoever and I’m just tired of it. It’s a tired trope. Other salters can speak about the subject better. TL;DR: Tom is a character whereas Sabine is a caricaturistic space filler. Moving on.

That brings us to the most important parent/child relationship: Gabriel and Adrien. I’m gonna skip over most of the analysis for this one cuz it’s all been said already. Gabriel abuses Adrien. Adrien loves his father unconditionally. Emilie is somehow a nonfactor in all of this (see what I meant about a running theme?). Gabriel drops dead. Adrien still loves his father unconditionally and also is super chill with him being dead. Oh wait, did I say their relationship is the most important? My bad, I meant to say their relationship is completely inconsequential to the plot and that Gabriel’s motivations for pretty much everything could be explained through his obsession for his fridged wife and his perceived Ideal. These two could go the entire series without speaking to each other and nothing would change. In the grand scheme of things, these two don’t matter to each other’s alleged “arcs”; Gabriel is a selfish prick who supposedly redeemed himself… by being a selfish prick, and Adrien makes friends and allegedly grieves fantastically (if at all).

And it’s such a shame because each of these dynamics have so much to offer narratively but miss the mark by leagues. Dad = Good. Mom = inconsequential unless it’s Bad in which case it’s her fault entirely. It’s disappointing on its own for all the untapped potential and sexist as hell if you think about it for more than two seconds.

@ the men writing this show: text ur mom an apology and do better

[bonearenaofmyskull]

This will be my one and only post on the subject of post-s3 canon-compliant Hannigram...

...unless ofc the show gets renewed, which, at this point--it won't, lbr. Martha de Laurentiis was the show's champion and navigator of the rights issues, and she has literally died. If anyone else is championing it, I don't know about it. Maybe something can come through eventually as the new company leadership gets shit figured out, idk. But I'm not holding my breath.

That's the key point here which most of these asks don't seem to recognize: they want me to give an opinion on the state of the relationship, and whether or not Hannibal and Will can be together for a long term and maintain contentment in their relationship with each other: the Happy Ever After Question. But what these asks are most notably NOT doing--even though the askers always frame it as if they are--is asking me about the kind of storytelling would be likely in a continuation of the show: the Plot? What Plot? question. They want to have their plot cake and happily eat it ever after too. And it just doesn't work that way.

These are really very, very different questions. And what would happen if the show actually did come back has as much to do with what would have to happen to resurrect the show out of rights oblivion and then negotiate endless contracts AND how the creatives own lives and circumstances may have changed them and their points of view over the years, as well as the years themselves.

And because the show is very likely never coming back it's really a moot point now. Fantasize however you want. Write fic however you want. It's your damn story now, not the creatives. So in answer to the first, Happy Ever After Question, yeah, sure, why the fuck not. Let Hannigram have forever. But wait--you like plot with your porn? Then by all means give them some conflict. Tear them from the seams, their skin, their bones. Does that make you happy now?

But stop pulling down other people who are doing it in a different way than you're doing it, even if you can't understand it. Yeah, you know who you are....

As for the ~cANoN~ question, let's also be real for a second. If the show were renewed TODAY, it will have been more than a decade between seasons three and four, and Bryan Fuller has been pretty clear that Hannibal and Will are together during that time. So CAN they stay together for a period of years? Yeah, sure, why the fuck not. Obviously they HAVE.

But also--if the show were to come back, would they be destined for angsty shit and conflict and, yanno, PLOT? Again, obviously. It's a ridiculous notion that the show would continue without it. Flip side of that, though, is the equally ridiculous notion that seems to be floating around that if they can't be Disney princesses in their happily-ever-after together, then they can't be together at all, or at least, not for long. That's also absurd.

So let's touch base with what we know, and not what we each individually prefer.

Let's pretend--perhaps ambitiously--for a minute that if the show did ever come back it would be following the plan that we were left off with. It would stretch into 3 more seasons, with Cuban, Korean, and Cajun dishes iirc for episode titles. Bryan Fuller was pretty clear that season four would dive into an untapped portion of the books, revisit season one in a "really interesting way," and be pitched as Angel Heart meets Inception. Will might achieve happiness but not till the ending of the whole thing. That's what we know. Sorry I can't cite any of this; I haven't looked up a Hannibal article in half a decade.

So, leaving aside specifics and just getting to the question at hand, what we do know from season 1 is that Hannibal and Will were together. So, logically, they're probably together in any theoretical season 4. And OF COURSE they would be--they just spent all of S3 apart. You gotta vary this shit up. And they have to have internal and external conflicts, because writing 101. And the internal conflicts are meaningless--as would be all the rest of the preceding show--unless they're deeply and passionately invested in and love each other. That was the whole frickin' point of S3.

I don't honestly even understand how any of this is a question or a debate. Why are y'all even arguing in this the year of our lord almost 2024, and making me grumpy by sending me endless asks about stuff that's been answered for years and years. Why did I have to read with my OWN TWO EYES that someone who joined the fandom in 2016 (!!!) is so #FandomOld that people are afraid to argue with them????

...

So, y'all, this is all I'm willing to say about a potential continuation and ending of the show:

In a simple sense, the pattern the show was setting up is S1 & S4 Hannigram is together and solving crimes (at least in some weird Angel Heart way), S2 & S5 is semi-together, semi-apart Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane thing (with other stuff), and S3 & S6 on-the-run culminating in Something Big (probably at least partially apart). That doesn't mean this is the way the show would go, but it'd be very easy to write Clarice or an expy coming into the story to chase them down and end up mentored by them (either one or both) with this format.

As for the very final ending of the whole thing, the ending *I* would write may not be the same as what Bryan Fuller would write, but to me it seems both obvious where the show should go and that it would be completely and utterly satisfying to shippers and non-shippers alike. And I have run my theoretical ending by devout Hannigram shippers, and it met their approval. So if I can come up with something that both works for them and works for my sense of completionism in storytelling, then I'm sure Bryan Fuller could. He's way more practiced than me.

I have consistently said that I do not relate to the notion that it'd be better to have them together in one's imagination than it would be to actually see Mads and Hugh acting together in the ACTUAL SHOW, regardless of how that ends. Because here's the thing: my imagination is boundless and endless, and I can get an unlimited amount of Hannigram doing whatever the fuck I please whenever the fuck I please. More show, on the other hand, is rare as hen's teeth. I would take that miracle if I could get it.

The End.

[thecreaturecabin]

How did you go from art school to vet tech? Was there just like a 💡 moment? Or did it take a lot of thinking? Or maybe it was an accident?

Ah I realize I never gave much context! This is quite a long post, and covers some heavy subject matter like substance abuse and mental health struggles, so be warned <3 I tried to make it more digestible but truthfully, there is no easy way for me to describe what this was like to experience.

It was a long journey- I never had any goals outside of animation so when that didn’t work out I was pretty crushed. College was pretty traumatic for me, and it had a huge impact on how long it took me to move forward in life.

I sustained a wrist injury in autumn of 2021 when I started school for animation and it only got worse until i finished year 1 in April of 2022. It never got better during that time and I was in constant pain. By the end of the year, it was excruciating. I couldn’t even hold a plate.

Along with the pain, I was also very unhappy. I didn’t like animation nearly as much as I thought I would. I was failing most of my classes, and I was SO homesick. All I wanted to do was crawl into my mom’s arms and cry my heart out, but I was a five hour drive away- so I couldn’t. We were still in the midst of a pandemic too, so all my classes were online, which left me working, eating, and sleeping in the same room every single day. I barely left my dorm and almost every time I did, the only “friends” I had wanted to get drunk- So I did too.

They weren’t good friends, and encouraged me and each other to continue this behaviour. The only good friend that I still talk to was the first person I met on the day I moved in, and I’m so grateful for her. If it weren’t for her, I’m not sure what that point in my life would have looked like.

I can genuinely say I have never been so unhealthy in all my life. I was extremely depressed, i stopped caring about my health and stopped taking my meds, i was getting drunk or high every weekend, and would go hours and hours without eating anything. I started skipping class and sleeping all day only to stay up all night to try and catch up on work that was extremely overdue.

I just didn’t care anymore, and that was unlike me. It really scared me. I was alone on my birthday, and the first decision I had to make as a 20 year old was whether or not I was going to stay in school. I decided to drop out.

My injury was due to overuse of my hands, as I was drawing every day, five to seven hours a day. I spent a good while trying to recover both physically and mentally. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and trying to think about it sent me to very dark places. I was in physiotherapy for a year and it worked wonders for me.

In 2023 I tried going to school for film, but discovered while that IS an interest of mine, it’s not something I want to do long term. It was a lot of self reflection and self care- my family was more than amazing in their support of me trying to find my way in life.

Eventually I realized I wanted to do something to help. I wanted to take care of things- but I realized I didn’t want to take care of people.

I’ve always had a soft spot for animals, and the more I let myself indulge in this untapped interest, the more passionate I got about not only animal life; but also nature in general. I started getting out more, hiking, taking in the little details- and then I signed up for academic upgrading for chemistry, biology, and math so I could qualify for the vet tech program at the school I wanted to go to :)

I got a 96% in math 11 and an 81% in chem! And now I’m in bio and math 12 and I’m loving it a lot.

Now I only draw for me, I’m pain free, and rediscovering my love for science!

[cloud-somersault]

I agree with your point on wukong having other priorities that aren't just all Maacque. (as much as I love shadowpeach) I want to see wukong just like...fucking gardening, or building a fence, or shit going to his favorite spot off mountain to have a picnic and oversee a town getting sacked by raiders and just steps in cuz they are gonna ruin his lunch! Yeah I agree, they need to also live their life!

aw, that would be cute! Wukong gardening 🥺💕 Like, actually putting in the work instead of relying on magic. But yeah, he should have hobbies outside of his relationships. Aside from just watching television.

And I think he does in the show, though mostly he is just lazing around, we haven't gotten to see a lot of Wukong just vibing aside from in season 1. I think him having picnics and seeing scenic views and vistas is totally something he would do. Wukong has always liked traveling.

Also, just him going to the Celestial Realm more?? He ofc has his reservations, but the Jade Emperor and the gods aren't the only things up there. Wukong likes to just laze about a lot, let him laze about up there.

In Constellations specifically, since he's refocused on bonds, Wukong spends a lot more time with people in comparison to before. Also with his subjects in comparison to before. SWK was pretty social in JTTW, lots of parties and feasts, having over 70 people that he considered to be close friends. I think he'd return to that a bit, not to the extent as before, but he'd remember how fun it is hanging out with others and having a good time.

Because he also has a lot to learn. After being isolated, the world has changed in large ways. The internet??? Also, one hobby I love for Wukong to have is knitting. He's always been picky about his appearance and put together his own outfits or whatever (tiger skins, etc) so I like him making some of his own accessories or whatever.

Combining that with the internet is also just fun. Wukong just seeing all kinds of patterns and yarn and wanting to make new things for people? Let's go, MK has plenty of sweaters now.

And Macaque! He desperately needs more attention and hobbies. Hello, he loves new information! He'd love to see how the world's changed, how things got from point A to point B. I HC he's into musicals, especially historic musicals. I also think he'd be a bit of a film critic. He'd be particular about what movies he watches, often liking those by certain directors whose style he likes or finds intriguing or interesting premises.

Macaque, loving magic and, while getting caught up in what's changed, gets inspired to make his own spells again.

And Macaque has his own bonds to make and friendships to pursue. I'm here for him being friends with Mei and Tang for sure. And lately, I've been thinking of Nezha and Macaque friendship? I think that'd be interesting. And also Princess Iron Fan and Macaque.

Like there's so much untapped potential, and instead of running away from that or thinking that it doesn't serve shadowpeach, can I emphasize that it absolutely does? In developing Wukong and Macaque outside of each other, they can bring those new perspectives, hobbies, insights back into their relationship.

They've changed, so now their relationship can change. It only gives both the characters, and the way they interact with each other, more depth.

[robotnik-mun]

You know what’s something I wish that had come up in Archie Sonic?

A Guardian Gone Bad.

Knuckles turning into Enerjak doesn’t count given that he was tricked into that and essentially possessed by an outside force. I mean that somewhere in the Guardian line, there was a Guardian who was straight up evil- someone who became corrupted by the power and prestige of their position, or one who came to sympathize with the viewpoint of the Legion over his own family.

It’s a thought that fascinates me, though I am forced to acknowledge it basically could not happen in the book. Penders very thoroughly documented the entire Guardian line up to the time of Knuckles, and doesn’t offer anything to suggest that any of the past Guardians were anything but heroic, nor was there any kind of wiggle room to insert a Guardian Gone Bad by the time Flynn came on board. Likewise, while we can see how terrible and flawed the whole Guardian thing was, Penders himself could never bring himself to see them as anything but ultimately heroic.

I wonder about it not just because it’s an interesting, untapped source of story potential within the book, but because of Penders himself. See, Penders is pretty blatantly a Superman fan, and I honestly think one of the things that influenced his hyper emphasis on the story of Knuckles’ family history is because there were a series of stories covering Superman’s own family history and how they influenced the development of Krypton before it’s destruction, before Crisis on Infinite Earth’s rewrote everything. 

Of course, Penders being Penders, he seemingly missed the parts that emphasized that while Clark was certainly a noble individual, as was his biological father Jor-El, that didn’t mean he came from an unbroken line of heroic people. Many of his ancestors, such as the ones who founded the House of El, were warlords and conquerors, and even by the time of his father the family had malcontents (Jor-El had an evil cousin named Kru-El who was banished to the Phantom Zone. Gotta love comics).

It’s one of those many weird, dissonant things about the guy and the things that influenced his work on Knuckles, especially given his rather blatant desperation to be seen as a ‘mature’ writer who wasn’t afraid to write about complicated subjects in a kid’s book. Yet somehow this very obvious potential plot point, one that was brought up in his own beloved Superman, escaped him utterly.

Ah well. I still like to imagine it, all the same, the notion of an Evil Guardian. What could have been, eh?

[fideidefenswhore]

There's a tendency in modern fandom to rob Henry of his agency, like saying Anne "lured" or "stole" him as if he isn't responsible for his actions. What I find weird is that seems to have, to an extent, been the idea at the time. A hell of a lot of the Catholic/Imperial faction seemed to get the thought that well, all we do is get rid of Anne and everything goes back to normal. Like Mary and Chapuys act like they expect her to be princess and heir again as if nothing happened and the English Reformation will just stop there and turn back. I just can't get my head round how much people then revered Henry as king but then think he's some weak puppet Anne manipulated and who they can manipulate when she's gone.

Yeah, the thing is that...A) We haven't changed as much as we like to believe that we have, B) Obviously modern analysis of contemporary reports of this period is reliant on these reports, but has the benefit of hindsight (and yet when hobbyists without any background in history simply read these reports absent of any contextualization or expert analysis, they tend to take them pretty...literally? which dovetails into these fandom interpretations), C) That very double negative is the cornerstone of misogyny. Women are ultimately, even supernaturally, powerful but also ultimately powerless/weak, and/or exploit men's weakness, world's tiniest violin.

Misogyny alone is not enough to explain, there's also the political and religious at play with the psychological:

"Anne became [...] 'the evil counsellor.' In spite of Chapuys, the Emperor needed to maintain a civil relationship with Henry for his own purposes. He therefore chose to believe that Anne was bullying Mary (and Catherine) behind her husband's back. In a similar way Mary deceived herself into believing that it was not really her father who was subjecting her to such remorseless pressure, but the wicked woman who had acquired such an ascendancy over him." +

"Her actual contribution to the 'scourge' of Lutheranism [...] was inflated to unbelievable proportions. Chapuys [went as] far as to blame 'the heretical doctrines and practices of the concubine' as 'the principal cause of the spread of Lutheranism in this country.' [This] created [...] a political/religious 'wing' of sentiment [against Anne Boleyn] that was [later] exploited by Cromwell [...] and it was a powerful obstacle in the way of Anne's acceptance by the (still largely Catholic) English people."

For me, what separates is that this subject (although more specifically on the mistreatment of Princess Mary, riffed on that here) is discussed as if it was an untapped timeline, and it's ...not? The events immediately preceding May 1536 do not vindicate or absolve any cruelty on Anne's part; by any means, but what they do prove is that Chapuys was wrong about her being the 'X factor' here, as it were. Once she's subtracted is when Mary's disbarred from succession in much firmer legal language by Parliament. Moreover, the Boleyn downfall was a watershed in court division and factionalism, its aftermath was not a period of 'relative' (or otherwise) tranquility but rather continuance, even amplification, of religious suppression for those that did not adhere to the tenets of the new Henrician 'supremacy'.

Also, let's not underrate the ambition of the 'Marian faction'. They wanted a return to the status quo, yes, we shouldn't discredit religious motivations either, but they also wanted to regain the status and favour they felt they had lost. They were bargaining on the future favour of Mary once she was heiress again, bargaining on the future of Henry having no other children by marriage (so, even Mary as Queen), that's generally forgotten because most of them did not survive to reap (and, arguably, Mary becoming Queen later had very little to do with her faction of the 1530s that had failed upwards, considering especially that Mary was not reinstated into the succession--conditionally, but still--until several years after the Exeter Conspiracy).

[ask-teamplayer]

Other than Ronin who already answered this, what’s everyone’s favorite subject?

FATE: You're looking at mostly ELA kids, here. Me, Enzo, Seth, Cora, Vera- I think I can speak for all of those assholes, but yeah. We were always the best in English. Though Cora also really likes history. You can probably tell.

SETH: i mean im not really all that interested in anything!! i like cooking and playing keyboard, i get options for stuff like that in the future but right now its just,,, eh?

SETH: but if it were anything i guess it would be english! i dont get the kids who hate reading books to be honest, i actually like reading classics! gotta broaden my mind :B

ENZO: pretty on the mark yeah but i used to prefer gym for a while cause like physical dude

ENZO: but i dont think my actual swordfighting skills account for anything when im playing volleyball with annoying mean girls who keep giggling instead of playing the game

ENZO: or when i get hit in the face with a rubber ball which has actually happened a LOT

ENZO: to be honest i think im the only kid that hasnt died during the mile except nahla cause former track kid

SETH: I HATE THE MILE.

FATE: Can't imagine how the mile would be with people with boobs. I am so sorry. I'm lucky I didn't evolve.

FATE: It is horrible though. It should be considered actual torture - dammit, I know excessive amounts of cardio isn't actually healthy for kids who don't do it all the time! I don't want to break my muscles.

FATE: I'm not looking forward to gym next semester.

LILY: i loooove biology! math and ela, too, but bio is my favorite

LILY: or general science! i love taking care of plants, i actually have like fourty at home! they all have names!

LILY: like why do you think i evolved into a leafeon? honestly i think growing plants in third grade awoke something in me.

LILY: its really fun, but i do have trouble focusing on stuff sometimes. im kinda daydreamy hehe. i really need to get my grades up :( maybe ill see if i can join one of vera and fates study sessions. working next to other people i actually like and commentating in a funny way helps me do it faster.

FATE: You're always welcome. I wouldn't invite someone like Darin or Nahla, but I know you're actually smart and like working and aren't going to piss me off.

DARIN: i hate school :(((

DARIN: i dont like anything :((

DARIN: maybe i should get into sports thatd get me into college no problem itd be so much fuckin easier than this

CORA: You do have it in you, Darin. I believe there's untapped potential in academics.

CORA: I've seen the way you talk about anime and shows you like. There's an actual brain up there, as much as you work to prove otherwise. I'm very proud.

DARIN: AY WHAT THE FUCK CHIEF

NAHLA: WOOOOW, You're allll nerds, huh?

NAHLA: Yeah, I'm in the camp with the traitor, sorry! I don't really like anything, but gym's cool! I like track and stuff, and I do like hitting annoying girls in the face with balls! Coolkid's just a coward and cant bring himself to hurt anyone. Pffft.

NAHLA: No worry! I'll do all the hitting for you guys. Someone has to!

CORA: Oh, Nahla, baby dear, may you hit Wade first? He's been getting on my nerves in second period lately...

NAHLA: Anything for you, honey sugar sweetie baby crystal dreamy dear! <3

NAHLA: Regardless of our totally real romance I just need an excuse to punch him anyway. Or throw balls at him in general.

ENZO: BALLS you say

RONIN: okay posts over before enzo makes another dick joke and cora and nahla start gay fucking on the table. im a little oversensitive right now, fate screaming is just going to make me kill someone. maybe in like an hour guys, wrap it up.

VERA: I also take a lot of art classes

VERA: I would like to get better at traditional because I would like have to have less reliance on stabilizer use

VERA: And doing things like ceramics is fun

RONIN: see? when i need someone to be normal on a stupidly derailed ask, i ALWAYS know youve got me.

RONIN: thanks, v.

VERA: The sentiment is appreciated but when have I not "got you" in your words

RONIN: never, v. never.

[eclipsecrowned]

🗒 — what is/are your favorite genre(s)/theme(s) to write? //@griefbringers

One of the things I genuinely compensate for as a writer is that I rely very heavily on tropes. Not played straight, mind you, but I have recurring character concepts/themes/threads that I revisit over and over again, whether pigeonholing them, subverting them, or amplifying them. I have to keep diversifying those that I rely on so I don't become a one trick pony, while still satisfying the itch in my brain that has me coming back to these themes.

That said...

Let's start with genres. I'll list my top three.

I keep returning to a lot of urban fantasy/fantastical themes in my work, something probably apparent in the fandoms I venture into on this blog. Even my fandomless muses are pretty stacked towards historical-to-modern fantasy, from Roman immortals to early 20th century werewolves.

I'm also into a good spy/modern conflict setting. I have a real love for spy fiction, and love the actual methodical, cunning tradecraft, not the big guns blazing spectacle of film. It gives me and my partners a lot of opportunity to explore problem solving IC and build layered narratives, I feel. It probably helps I wrote a spy character for over five years in the past, across a variety of espionage-based fandoms.

No matter what genre I write in, I'm a big fan of horror elements. If there's fridge horror to be found in a setting, I will suss it out and bring it to supertext. It might be a bit edgy of me, but a good horror genre or flavoring will get me obsessed like nothing else -- especially if there's untapped potential for me to delve in fleshing it out.

A few favorite themes are as follows. Top Ten.

Themes of morality. There are acts that are unequivocally good. There are acts that are unequivocally evil. And any character I write lives between the two poles, some dancing closer to one end than the other, but always able to change -- for better or for worse. With the right character development, a victim can become a villain, and a monster can claw his way into Heaven. I like exploring what makes characters do what they do, what built their world view, and how they express it. We're built by our experiences and our perceptions. Our behavior is as much innate as it is learned. What makes someone balk at their base instincts? What makes someone forego being the better person? I love finding that out, and how to find the good in a devil and the evil in a saint.

Build Your Own Family. And I don't mean in the way 'found family' has been co-opted to foster traditional nuclear family dynamics among those who do not share blood or upbringing. I mean the traditional queer lens of 'family is what you make it.' Friends, companions, those who survived trial by fire, those who are just trying to survive a shit situation, anything goes for me. I love seeing bonds develop naturally and fiercely independently of traditional definition and without being devalued by the idea all important bonds must be romantic or those of blood.

By that card, I'm also a fool for an adoption/blood isn't the end all be all of family narrative. Most of my mother's family is pieced together from odd kids out who got taken into families that were made whole for their inclusion, and so it's a subject that is very dear to me. A lot of my muses are either adopted, have or are step-parents, or have sibling bonds that are built on love and responsibility rather than shared bloodline.

Othering, outsiders, the child who is not embraced by the village. Many of my muses fit this mold, but no two react the same to their isolation and rejection. Some are made villainous by it, some rise above it, some lashed out and are now trying to make amends, and try to convince themselves they are happier in what they know. This is probably a theme where I project heavily and turn it over and over trying to g lean some insight about myself.

I have a tendency towards examining ships that... IDK? The best way I can sum it up is 'we met in a difficult place as mutual outsiders and fell in love despite our shared struggle, but the journey ended, and I followed you home, and now I'm the stranger in a strange land while you are the newly returned and revered prodigal child, and now I'm not sure about any of this without calamity and commonality overhead.' I don't consciously go in saying 'that's how this is going to go,' but it's recurred with enough frequency in my writing that I must be fond of it for some reason.

Horror, especially the gothic or psychological. I'm a big enby. I can admit it. I was raised on 19th century literature and more cerebral horror movies, and that's not just a statement to build credibility. I said before if such a thread does not exist outright in a narrative, I will find the first place I can shove it in. Several OCs are really thinly veiled attempts to explore fridge or glossed over horrific implications in a canon -- and what characters do when confronted with these truths.

Parental relationships. How parents shape their children, how no one ever really leaves their childhood home behind no matter how far they are from it. Did muses have good parents? Did they have bad parents? Is their parents touch mere fingerprints on pristine glass, or the hole left where a bomb detonated? What sort of parents do my muses who are so inclined become? Were they loved? Did it save them? Did it matter in the end? Did it make it worse if they were? Again, not something I mean to insert into my ouevre, but it keeps happening.

Doomed love. There was love. There is also grief. Is it easier if they die, or is the real burden knowing they are out there without you? Or are you still there, two splintering pieces of wood holding up the shell of what was once a beautiful home? Was it inevitable, or was it circumstantial? Did they think they could change? Were they too soft, or too rough? Is there closure, or is it the wound that will not heal? Did you love them more in the moment, or in their absence? What's the aftershock of it on those around you?

Duty and tradition as a chain used to beat everyone. I play several rulers or nobles who would rather be anywhere else, but who due to pride, loyalty, or being so broken by the system, are unable to move on. Characters of any class who would be a thousand times happier as anything other than what their society tells them to be. Those hurt by the system and those who enforce it into pure villainy. Those who fight the system and those who manipulate it to their own aims. It really revs my engines.

Prophecy and predestination as bullshit. Your choices are your own, so long as you have the autonomy to make them. Like duty and tradition, prophecy is a flawed system that destroys everyone involved. Your choices are your own. The future does not absolve your present. It's an excuse to do worse in pursuit of a tomorrow you might not even see.

[nero-draco]

Since there probably won't be any more FGO JP events for this year I figure I'll try to rate + give opinions of them. Its entirely subjective though.

Reines case files collab

Normally I won't put rerun but since it does have decent amount of new contents this one is an exception.

+My opinion of Hephaestion is favorable. Amidst the fanservices (I'm neutral to them) galore of designs on FGO, that she has modest design and cool armor feels refreshing to me.

+Characterwise is ok too I guess. I do like her reasoning of not joining Iskandar before this. Her grudge toward Iskandar's follower is understandable. That said she doesn't have strong character gimmick that makes her memorable.

+Her IOIOIOIOI-ing with Iskandar was a great moment. So is the battle on top of the train with cool CG.

+The expanding lore is great. The master of the train being a Dead Apostle was cool. The lore of nasuverse os pretty cool with a lot of untapped potential.

-I feel like Hephaestion close bond with Guda feels a bit forced. I don't think even a day has passed with them, and I feel like the game could fleshes out a bit more to make it more relatable. Granted Hephaestion's stort is limited to extra content so I guess they can't make it too long.

+Hephaestion gameplay wise is pretty good imo. She is still the only Single Target NP Pretender so that gives her great value on that alone. Her 100% charge gives her great utility when it comes to farming, particularly lv90+ ones since that's where the enemy comp is no longer 3/3/3.

Didn't read the story so no comment on that.

+I like the buddy system. You're forced to think more about your farming comp since the bonus bond point a servant get is relative to how close they are to the frontline. So its up to you to prioritize which, or if you want to think extra to try to reap the most benefits.

+Them giving special extra screen announcing which of your servant get the most bond point is a nice touch. Regarding they keeping this a secret until the event is over is something I'm 50/50 about.

+Bazzett is uh an interesting servant. She has special counter gimmick on her NP. I don't have her so I can't speak much but I've seen her minturn a really difficult fight in this game such as Cernunnos or the recent EQ on Morgan event. Of course its uses whale setup but its still impressive imo.

+Story wise its pretty interesting. Midway they just played a quiz + game to resolve a singularity is something I didn't expect. I also find it funny that a freak accident somehow created a situation / monster that the likes of CuTer, ArjuTer, and Enkidu can't resolve/ beat. It took like 11+ servants united to combat the whole situation which is impressive I guess, from something that practically a work from a random mage.

+They give glasses look for like 11+ servants, which is cool (I wish Nero Bride got one too. Really loves her glasses look from Extella x Eyemirror collab which gives her "Intelligent Wife" vibe.

+No new servant released but they did introduce Michael (aka Constantine), which eh, really gives interesting contrast to how he is at Lostbelt 6.5 Traum.

+Honestly not sure I'm a fan of Servant universe just randomly waltz into Chaldea. Like they are way too powerful (tech wise) and break the immersion of the setting. What prevents Chaldea to allies with them to combat Alien God?

+Ody finally got his Kamen "Cool as fuck" Rider suit. So that's a big plus (even though I failed to get him...).

+Nikola also got rad animation update, and story relevance that finally is not about his rivalry with Edison.

- I'm kinda sad that they basicallly have Nero say that Nerofest is no longer a thing. I wonder why the writer put that, it makes me think that there are demands for Nerofes to happen again but Lasagna doesn't want to (meanwhile Liz event has Nasu excitedly says that her event will run forever. Fair world amiright.)

+ Nero teamup with G.Romulus and seems like Nero is more at ease in interacting with him warms my heart tho.

+ Not as good as previous April Fools mixmatch servants sprite, but its still pretty fun.

+Only read the summary storywise and I even forget what the latter half is all about so I guess nothing mind-blowing.

+They introducing a SEA servant is a cool move. Not big on the whole "representation matters" thing but I thought its still pretty rad regardless, and I'm not opposed to it. I like Trung design too, very refreshing.

+Event gimmick is basically just reusing Summer 1 gimmick. Still pretty fun though. I had fun doing Roma build up, and building Nero's theater.

- The whole keeping up the welfare a secret is kinda a letdown though. It just build up unnecessary expectations and ended up not filling it.

+Trung is okay I guess. Don't have her but I remember reading the review where she is rated as decent. Taisui is also not bad, his buff removal resist is useful in case you missed Santa Nightingale.

- I wish we kept Adult Taisui design instead of his child one.

+ I only read little part of the story but from what I know the reception seems to be mid. Nothing special I guess. A shame.

- Event itself feels kinda lacking for a collab. Feels like just your run of the mill event. Previous events have more flare with them.

+ Super Bunyan is ok. I like her design especially her first ascension. Really cute. As for her personality, well, I can see people being disappointed with her more "manipulative" personality, which in contrast to OG Bunyan innocent personality. But I guess that's just how you grow up?

+ Not much opinion on Mary and Daikokuten. I can see people liking Mary though due to her, err, for the lack of word, "tsundere ish" personality.

+ Gameplay wise the new servants are just ok I guess. Mary is rated highly as good low star servants, while S.Bunyan and Daikokuten seems to be mid to okeyish. I do like S.Bunyan NP and gimmick which referencing Social Media trend.

Didn't read the story.

+ I have plenty fun with HGW battle in this event. They improved it a lot and makes it more fun. They also put interesting gimmick on later stages which makes it decently challenging.

+ Basically I have fun making Nero shines in this event.

- I only read the summary. The latter half of the event and the antagonist motive is rather forgettable to me. The cast involved also didn't have a strong chemistry. Feels like they just there for mission and they probably forgot about it in the next week.

+ The first half, however, is much memorable due to how ballsy the premise is. An archer servant powered by three holy grail shoots an arrow that the entire archer class servants of Chaldea (except Gilgamesh) has pool their force together to stop it. The sense of tension as you advance the story is very real. I also like the split focus and the forced archer team fights throughout the story.

+ Bakin has a lovely design. And Tametomo is a badass and cool mecha. I would roll them just for their design alone.

+ The gimmick of this event is nothing special, but still pretty cute though sending the dogs into a fetch quest.

+ Gameplay wise for the new servant I don't have much to say. From what I know they're pretty good but not top tier.

I wrote about this event in notepad, and when I was about to copy it here I accidentally deleted it so fuck that. I'm not in the mood anymore. Luckily only regarding this event got deleted so I'll just write it again in other post tomorrow. I also reached image limit in this post anyway.

Continuation here

[the-kipsabian]

is there a fic idea that you would love to write/read, but can't write it due to whatever reason (not enough knowledge in the subject matter, not sure how to write the characters in that situation, not enough time/energy, etc)?

also, which AU(s) need more love in fic?

and also also, i saw the tag about you missing alien kris and i do too :c i might write my penelope/kris fics with alien kris because i can lol

i mean i barely have energy for a lot of things honestly so that rules out many things i might be excited or brainstorming about if im being honest lol (ive had vampire!oc on my list since april. its been four and a half months with nothing to show for that thought lmao) but honestly like. a lot of spicier stuff that doesnt dip into explicit territory that i know even tho if it doesnt i cant write, cause putting my brain into that as a writer just doesnt work for me. cause honestly theres a few headcanons/kinkier stuff i have for kip and would like to see him in Situations™ but. yeah. the chances of it happening is like none lmao he needs his hair pulled for example. im just saying

hooonestly i feel like aus are pretty universally loved, really my only thought rn is crossover stuff? like not necessarily characters from two pieces of media interacting, but putting characters from one to another. feels like theres a lot of untapped potential over there honestly ..also ngl i need a resurgence of high school au fics dont even @ me those were HILARIOUS

alien kris best kris honestly. need more of her and her cooky non-human shenanigans. communicating/signaling friendship with noseboops was so freaking cute. also her facepaint was always so epic gosh

[junithys]

Passing Thoughts 1

This blog is pretty much an op-ed piece where I talk about random things that I have thought and/or written about in my diary — may make a PART 2 in the future if I decide to talk about miscellaneous topics again. Mostly involving anime, because as most of you know — I'm a really big nerd. Though I am less into review-writing as I used to be, partially due to the fact that I have dabbled in art and animation, so it is harder for me to be impartially critical when I know how difficult the work is.

I heard an episode of the Anime World Order podcast a long time ago, where Mr. Surat said that if you love anime enough, you'll eventually want to contribute creatively in some way or make your own. I fought against this idea for many years, I kept telling myself that I would just be satisfied with just writing a novel and that would be the extent of my narrative-making skills, that I would dedicate the rest of my time to music.

But then, I picked up the pen (stylus) again and started drawing again, and then I starting imagining my stories in visual novel format, as I once did when I first discovered them as a teenager (as a choose-your-own-adventure game). I then realized that I could not escape the impulse to want to create something with an anime art style. It was like the figurative Mephistopheles clawing cloyingly at my back.

Detective Conan

It is hard to get other people into Detective Conan, there's a common misconception in my native country — if there is a main character that looks like a kid, then the show is for children. In the case of Detective Conan, this simply isn't true; there are elements of it that seem written in to appeal to younger people, like the word game (shiratori) riddles in the films, but the series is actually very cerebral and something that I would mostly suggest to teens and adults.

The murder mysteries are so well thought-out that they are hard for me to predict at times, and they are often very elaborate… there are some episodes that will leave you thinking, how would you even think to kill someone in that way? The characters are very lovable and wholesome, like you would expect in a family film, but the narrative devices are employed in a very complex way.

Thoughts on Fanservice in Anime

I was thinking about this after listening to the recent Otaku Spirit podcast episode called "Is Anime Problematic?" where the hosts vent their worries about the growing concern of censorship in anime, and they discuss the moral dilemma of "if an anime is problematic, should it be erased?" Obviously, I don't think so — I think aspects of media that are troublesome can often reinforce a sense of right and wrong in people.

I know that there are, of course, mentally ill people out there but the complication with writing to avoid stimulating a psychopath is that if someone is sick, I think censorship will only make the person feel more oppressed and radicalize them even further? I. am sure that someone so unhinged would see secret messages in a show about a baby wallaby, the course of action for creators is often hard to take when there are so many expectations and culpability on how it will affect the public. 

I used to wonder why more fictional series didn't push the envelope to explore untapped subjects more openly, but as I've grown older — it makes more sense, although I can't say that I like it. Media-enforced morality is a difficult subject to broach, but I have never been a strong proponent of any kind of censorship, particularly in literature and comics. 

I do not think it should be up to the government or people in power to decide what us common-folk read — I know there are dangerous ideas, certainly, but if you spoon-feed the population then critical thinking will become raw and premature as a result. If the public blindly follows whatever is told through the news and publications without thinking things through, history has shown that that kind of mindless thinking can lead to many tragedies and terrors.

Note: I do believe in trigger warnings and content filters though, people should be allowed to put up boundaries with what they intake. Particularly those with traumatic pasts.

This circles back around to my view on fanservice (ecchi) in anime. There has always been arguments about whether fanservice with younger-looking characters should be allowed, and I personally do not see a problem with it as long as it is tasteful and does not become pornographic. In school shows, there's an innocence and element of comic mischief to it, it feels like reliving your youth in a sense because it encapsulates the feeling of hanging out with old friends or falling in love for the first time. There's a feeling of purity with most ecchi and moe series, though I do admit that some can be excessively dirty, too.

A lot of people from my generation originally fell in love with anime as a medium because the animation and art is not only top-notch, but the ideas are fresh and for the most part, it is unrestrained. Anime felt like an expression of freedom that sees its viewship as competent and not infantile, there was a lot of experimentation and intellectualism in the writing. I think that anime creators should try their hardest to retain that sense of artistic integrity.

Vtubing VS Blogging

Sometimes I don't write blogs as often because I talk about a lot of my opinions on stream or the blurbs about anime become verbal, and then I am too tired to repeat them via text… it feels like blogging is kind archiving my opinions or setting them in stone, and sometimes the thought of that can be daunting. Especially when I have changed a lot over the years, I guess it is still good to have a record of who I used to be — like a journal entry.

Unconditional Love

It's a given that pets, for the most part, express their unconditional love to you. Of course they do, you feed them — clean their litter — give them a warm place to sleep during the winter, but I realized recently how grateful I was for that. With our cats, while they love both of us, Kenma is closer to me and Karna is the closest to SakihataLily. I realized how grateful I was for that innocent intimacy recently, I have been waking up with Kenma curled up to me every morning! I am so happy that we decided to adopt cats!

Saber Route

So — Saber is my favorite heroine in the original Fate/stay night story, ufotable has announced that they will adapt Artoria's route. Though the date remains unannounced, I am still eagerly awaiting that version of the narrative!

Note: I was reminded of this because yesterday, ufotable uploaded all of the Réalta Nua OPs to their YouTube account and Twitter, and there were a lot of Saber fans asking for the adaptation. I can't blame them, Saber is wildly popular for a reason!

Tumblr: Then VS Now

The last time that I used Tumblr before now was in 2015. I eventually switched to Twitter because back then, Tumblr seemed pointless — there was a sub-sect of active artists, but most of the blogs that I saw were a collection of reposted fan art from Pixiv and quirky GIFs. I am okay with people posting official art, but when people repost fan art, I do not like it — the dignified part of myself thinks that it should be up to the artist themselves to share their art on whichever sites they want to. 

It feels pointless because the reason why I share pretty fan works to begin with is to directly support the artist in some way, but if I am reblogging reposted art, it does not feel like I'm directly showing support to the artist and thus, feels like a waste of time. Tumblr seems to be much better with that now, but since I am older, if I don't want to see an art-reposting blog, I just block them. 

That may sound rude, but it saves me the confusion of having to figure out whether they are the actual artist or not, and since I am working on my own projects — I do not have time for that. I like some of the newer features of Tumblr, like the option of hiding followers, it makes it feel more cozy and less competitive. Overall, I am glad that I made Tumblr a secondary blog, I have never used blogging sights like Blog Spot, other than to lurk on pages of musicians that I used to like back in the day, but if I need to… I feel more comfortable with the idea of branching out now.

As an aside — if you are an artist in any medium (illustration, prose, game dev, musician, animation, etc.) or Vtuber, please hit me up — I like to support other artists and network whenever I am able to!

[angeldcgs]

lou seemed more and more miserable the longer the conversation continued, but lux couldn't allow him to abandon the topic now that they were so close to making a breakthrough. everything she did was for his own good, even if it seemed counterintuitive at the time. eventually, if things played out how she expected they would, he'd be better off for it, having explored his desire for griffyn in a safe space so that he could finally begin to come to terms with it. "no?" her lips pursed, still continuing to stroke his hair. "frustrated, maybe?" she looked to griffyn briefly as he spoke, attempting to soothe lou's nerves in his own, overly nonchalant way, before turning back to her precious little pet. the way she doted on him could be seen as infantilizing, constantly cooing over him and cradling him in her arms when he needed comfort, but she happened to know that that sort of treatment was exactly what he needed when he got overwhelmed. "it's nothing to be ashamed of, loulou. you can't help how you feel. can you?" this time she directed the question to griffyn, taking a break from playful teasing to try and genuinely reason with him. no matter what he was taught to believe, there was nothing wrong with the way lou was. in fact, it was his biggest insecurities that lux loved the most about him— his submissiveness, his malleable psyche, his desperate need to be controlled. he was her perfect compliment, and now she had the chance to help him unlock yet another side of himself he'd been too afraid to explore. "i must just be lucky then, huh?" though she'd ended up choosing lou over griffyn in the end, he was never too far from her mind. the boys had come to her as a package deal, but she saw untapped potential in lou from the very first night, and she knew that she needed to separate him from his security blanket if he were to ever reach that potential. now that she'd made such progress in shaping him into the man he was always meant to be, it was the perfect time to bring them back together and further explore that deep connection she'd witnessed between them from the start. she could feel the tension rising between the two, matching lou's gaze and locking eyes with griffyn as her lips twitched up in a brief smirk of fascination.

"we're just talking, lou. no need to get so upset over it," griffyn shrugged. of course, he knew full well why lou was so affected by the memory being brought up, as it was exactly why he'd never brought it up on his own. it was a touchy subject, for whatever reason, and normally griff would respect that, but with the combination of the alcohol in his system, and the added prize of lux's approval on the line, he found himself falling too deep into the rabbit hole to pull either one of them back out. "you can't. can't fight it, either." in some ways, griffyn was lucky. he hadn't been born into money, like lux, and his parents were too busy reckoning with the collapse of their marriage to really give a shit about him, so he had a great deal of freedom in how he chose to live his life. there was no one looking over his shoulder every step of the way, no one dictating what he should do or who he should be. it wasn't the easiest, trying to find himself without any real role models in his life he could look to for guidance, but he liked to think he'd done pretty well for himself. at least he was free of the repression lou was still shackled by, and now, it felt almost poetic that he be the one to help him work through that. "y'know what, lou?" he narrowed his eyes slightly as he leaned in towards the pair, gaze flickering over to lux momentarily just to make sure he still had her approval. "i don't believe you. i think that kiss was the best thing that happened to you all summer. maybe even all year. how are you gonna prove me wrong?"

did they have some secret plan? the more they pushed him, urging him to spill some kind of deep lust for griffyn he must have kept secret for all those years, the more lou felt like hiding. lux wouldn't stop pushing, usually that was a quality of hers he enjoyed but at that moment it was slowly becoming irritating. why was it so important? it was all in the past, if there were feelings he wanted to act on then he would've said already but the ganging up to try and pry something out of him like he was a dog who had something stolen between his teeth wasn't going to work. "i'm not flustered." lou argued, gentler than he would've been if it were griffyn who had suggested such a thing. "i don't- i just don't understand why we're still discussing this." it was obvious lux and griffyn were enjoying making him embarrassed, though at least he could understand why she would find the whole thing fun. his cheeks grew even darker at griffyn's suggestion to jog his memory and his lips tightened, as though he were afraid of what he might say if he let himself speak- afraid that he might give in and say yes. "it wasn't because of you." lou's voice grew higher as he became more desperate to try and defend himself. it wouldn't matter if he confessed to having liked kissing griffyn, in fact, it would make things a hell of a lot easier for him under both of their intense gazes but they weren't the problem. he cared that he'd liked kissing a guy, he cared that he'd gotten hard and let his mind wander back to his best friend later that night while he was fucking that girl. his entire life had been about ideals, he had to be the perfect son, had to win his father's affection in competition with his siblings because he only had enough love to give to one child and he wasn't afraid to pick favourites. he was already softer than a man should've been, more effeminate, and tough when he needed to be but only when threatened, the last thing he needed was to add another reason onto the list of things that made it impossible for him to ever be good enough. "we haven't always had the same type..." he argued weakly. lux was everyone's type, he'd gotten lucky that he'd picked him over griffyn but that insecurity had never truly gone away. there was an attraction there, she hadn't outright blown him off and that meant as convinced as he was that she loved him, she was also a lot looser with the rules she gave herself in competition to his. it was all meant to be a bit of fun, yet with each seemingly meaningless comment thrown in his direction lou felt the strings keeping him together grow more and more taut. it wouldn't be long before they snapped. "it is pretty fucking weird we're still talking about a kiss that happened years ago." lou brought his beer up to his mouth, not breaking eye contact with griffyn as he took a couple of slow gulps. once finished, he shrugged away the touch of bitterness he'd let come through and leaned further into lux's touch, still focusing his attention across him to his friend. "you make it sound like it was the only exciting thing that's ever happened to you...but i can't say i feel the same."

[withthebreezesblown]

Too Dark to Read, Part One

Or read it on AO3.

Despite all Eamon’s warnings, despite the righteous anger Alistair has already endured from the man and the verbal thrashing (well, let’s be honest, thrashings) he will surely endure when the Chancellor returns, the Satinalia feast that he was told was suicide turns out to be the least unpleasant thing he thinks that he has had to endure since the weight of that damned crown settled on his head.

All along the row of mismatched tables dragged from nearby houses out into the cold under the leafless vhenadahl, people are smiling at him. And not those blasted, Blighted, flaming, fucking simpering leers that would have been directed at him by the mass of arls, arlessas, and banns if this feast had been held in the customary way, with the customary company.

Sure, there are a few open glares, and there are plenty of appraising eyes still tinged with suspicion, but there are also happy mothers feeding the children in their laps and whispering in their ears as they point toward him at the end of the table, glancing at him with eyes full of an appreciation that hits him far harder than all of the not inconsiderable venom directed at him combined.

When the food dwindles, five elves bring instruments and begin playing music that isn’t quite like anything he thinks he’s ever heard before. The redheaded elf who had sat on his right hand side during the meal, conversing as freely with him as with the elves on her other side, the one who still treats him much the same as she treated him when he was just a Warden rumored to be a King’s bastard during the Blight (well, the same as she treated him once she had determined the Grey Wardens weren’t exactly the kind of shem she was used to), sidles up to him with a decidedly wayward grin. “So, do you think you’ve given the proper gentlefolk of Ferelden enough fodder for one lifetime, or would you like to dig your hole a little deeper?” she asks, holding a hand out to him.

The slight smile that has been on his face for a while now fades as he gives her a look of earnest regret. “Unfortunately that will require you to make a choice of rather dire importance. Either we can jab at the hornet’s nest, unwise and satisfying as it will surely be, or you can keep your toes in tact and functional. It wouldn’t be right not to give you fair warning.”

He can’t help the laugh of relief when she rolls her eyes and pulls him toward the growing crowd of dancers. The irony does not escape him that here, among only servants, guards, and elves, is the first time he’s felt human in months.

The verbal thrashings he expects don’t come. He isn’t even aware that Eamon has returned to the Palace until a servant informs him that the Chancellor has already taken his dinner in his rooms and will not be joining the King.

For days the only conversations between them are the ones that can’t be avoided, and the cold, clipped nature of them makes Eamon’s point as clearly his silence. He isn’t sure he truly realized the extent to which, most days, Eamon is the only person who speaks to him without the entire exchange being framed as master to servant, king to subject. He is the only one who reacts to Alistair’s quips and sarcasm, and while his displeasure doesn’t exactly give the satisfaction that appreciation does, there’s a gratification in it, far more so than in the stoic silence of the servants, who seem to view his humor as some sort of test in which any reaction at all is failure, or in the forced chuckles of the nobles before they quickly change the subject without comment.

Eamon even forgoes their nightly chess match, started because he thought his King ought to get some practice strategizing. That first time, he’d even offered a wager to tempt Alistair–the King’s presence at the following day’s session of court: if Eamon won, he would attend as usual. If Alistair won, Eamon would judge in his place. Alistair had allowed the man to explain all the rules in detail, had questioned how every piece should move, had deliberated during each turn before taking it with a blithe uncertainty. And when, to Eamon’s stunned disbelief, he’d won, he’d raised his brows high. “No! Did I really? Beginner’s luck, I suppose. Well, do enjoy your day in court.”

The look of disbelief on Eamon’s face cleared with comprehension, and when he swallowed the last of his whiskey and set the glass back down, the expression left behind was either vaguely amused irritation or irritated amusement. In it there had been a touch of pride. “You little shit; you didn’t mention they’d taught you chess in the Chantry.”

Without the chess, without anyone who ever speaks to Alistair and not just the King, he feels like he’s disappearing. He feels more invisible than he felt in the dark and silent cell they locked him in for screaming in the Chantry’s halls. If he could find someone to enchant his clothes to walk around without him, he wonders if anyone would even notice he wasn’t inside.

After two weeks of this, a note comes from Teagan, requesting his presence in Redcliffe. He’s riding out of Denerim less than an hour after its receipt, well before the note he’s left for Eamon is delivered.

There’s a kitchen boy with hair tolerably like mine. I’ve left my usual outfit laid out. Give the boy a wash, and tell him not to speak. If he just smiles like a bit of an idiot and nods, I’m sure no one will notice he isn’t me.

“Alistair!”

When his sort-of uncle claps his arms around him in an embrace full of sincere enthusiasm, there’s a moment where he wants to cry. Being back here, in this stable, reminds him how as a child he’d thought there could surely be no fate lonelier  than being a bastard, disdained by the gentle-born, avoided or mocked by everyone else.  He couldn’t have guessed then how much more isolating it would be if the only people who dared to look at him at all saw nothing but the title and trappings and power of a King.

Beside them, a horse twitches its tail and drops a pile of excrement, and Maker is he grateful for it. Instead of dropping his head on Teagan’s shoulder and crying, he snorts as he steps away. “Ah, the fresh, sweet smell of my childhood home!”

Though Teagan is one of the only people he can rely on to be entertained by his always irreverent–and these days, more often than not, rather bitter–humor, the man’s smile is marred by a wince, and it’s only after that Alistair thinks perhaps it was a sensitive topic to joke about, given what the man had told him shortly after his coronation: “I should not have let my brother send you–either to the stables or the Chantry. He kept Maric’s secret well. I thought you were his. I thought it not my place.”

The arl shakes it off quickly, gesturing welcomingly toward the castle. “You arrived before I’d even expected Eamon to have let you make your evasion.”

“Ah. Well…” Rubbing at the back of his neck, an unpenitent yet vaguely guilty grin is all the explanation he offers, and it says enough.

Teagan’s smile is bemused. “He’ll blame me, you know. Not to say he won’t still blame you. But he’ll blame me too.”

Inside, he directs their steps toward the upper floor where the bed chambers are. “I have a bit of a dilemma, you see, that I was rather hoping you might be able to help me out with.”

When they pause outside the largest chamber, the one that had been Eamon’s, Alistair can’t help a cheeky smirk. “You know, fond of you though I am, I’m not sure I’m the person to help you out with a bedroom dilemma…”

Teagan just chuckles quietly before dropping his hand to the doorknob. “It sounds like they’re sleeping, but you’d likely still do well to brace yourself.”

The door has hardly moved a fraction of an inch before the first squeaky, high pitched bark rings out, and before it dies, there is a cacophony of yips, barks, growls, and scrabbling feet and claws against the stone floor. As soon as the door is out of the way, it’s like being rushed by a knee-high tempest. The writhing, wriggling brown bodies are so crushed together in their enthusiastic attempt to shove each other out of the way and get to the two men in the door that it takes a moment for Alistair to determine just how many mabari puppies make up the mob. Seven. Or possibly eight; there may be one underneath that one. Then again, that one there may have just swallowed the one beside it whole, so it could be seven.

Teagan sighs. “The servants have threatened to quit if I don’t either get rid of them or move them out to the stables.” The mother steps lazily over the little hoard to rub herself against Teagan’s side, and he squats down, scratching her ears and pulling her face close to his.

Alistair can’t help an amused acknowledgement of the fact that any Orlesian would be horrified that not only does this man, one of the most powerful in the country, let his dog sleep in his bed, he keeps her puppies in his room. It’s so very Fereldan, he can’t help finding it strangely touching. If he must be King, there are certainly worse peoples to be King of.

“But they’re Neve’s puppies. I can’t put Neve’s puppies in the stable.” He glances up at Alistair, then, and there it is again, that hint of guilt, before he continues. “So I am left either finding suitable homes for them or finding new servants. And I’ve been politely informed that if they all quit because of the dogs, I’m going to be blacklisted, and I’ll end up having to deal with all the chewed up rugs and broken porcelain myself. So I’ve had to come up with a list of those I would trust with my Neve’s pups. You are at the top, so I thought I’d give you first pick.”

Alistair can’t keep the surprise from his face. It’s not that he’s never been trusted–well, if he hadn’t been trusted entirely too damn much to do things he isn’t even capable of, then he’d never have ended up King to begin with, but she was raised in the Circle, and who could blame her for being half mad and, at least on the subject of himself, wholly foolish? Even now, even as King, no one but her has ever given trust to him so freely, and it catches him off guard. All he can manage is, “You want me to take one of these monsters?” but he’s sure Teagan must hear the thing he can’t keep out of his voice. It’s something like wonder.

If he hadn’t been squatting to get a better look at the puppies, all of them excited to the point of quivering like sausages in a frying pan, he would not have caught the words Teagan murmurs so quietly against the grown mabari’s ear, but he is, and he does. “He is a good and kind and lonely man. You tell them that.”

If he wasn’t positive before, he is certain then. He isn’t the one doing Teagan a favor. This is Teagan looking out for him, as he has so often tried to do since Alistair found himself being thrust down onto a throne he’d never wanted.

He ends up sitting on the floor with puppies crawling all over him, and for a while they are just soft, warm, and indistinguishable, until they begin to make their personalities known. There’s one that keeps biting the puppies beside her whenever they get between her and Alistair’s petting fingers, and occasionally biting his fingers if he seems to occupied with the puppy his other hand is petting. There’s one that, despite the nips from his sister, rather insistently keeps stepping on her head with his oversized paws in an attempt to get his turn with Alistair, though he tends to topple over as soon as his head is stroked. And there’s one that’s gone to sleep, despite the furious commotion all around it, with it’s head on his thigh, positioned just so that the patch of drool trickling slowly from its mouth is going to leave a spot that looks like he’s peed himself when he stands.

Eventually Teagan beckons him, and he rises, moving the sleeping puppy gently so as not to wake him, uncertain what he’s expected to do and a little reluctant to leave off being licked and cuddled against, which he was enjoying more than he should admit. “I’m… not sure how this works? Do you… do you think one of them imprinted?”

He just smiles and waves Alistair through the door. “Come on and we’ll see.” The moment he takes a step, the nippy one latches onto his pants and plants her feet. One day, this will be an effective method of stopping a grown man. For now, Alistair just chuckles as he carefully tugs, dragging the puppy across the floor rather than freeing himself.

“Well, then, it would appear–” Before Teagan can finish his sentence, one of the puppies launches itself toward the one attached to his pants, goes tumbling past both her and Alistair, and then scrambles to correct the overshoot, finally closing his jaw on Alistair’s other pant leg with a stubborn whimper.

Teagan’s expression is genuinely pleased. “It looks like you’ll be taking two puppies back to Denerim with you.”

He’s surprised by just how relieved he is as he bends to scoop them both up, one in each arm (Maker, he won’t be able to do this for long; they are already heavy). He supposes there is a part of him that will always be the boy who, before Duncan, was never chosen for anything. He can’t help grinning at Teagan. “Well, on the bright side, I’ve weeded out the defective ones for you. There’s obviously something wrong with them if they’ve imprinted on me.”

Teagan just shakes his head seriously. “Oh, no. That one there, she’s the brains of the litter, clever even for a mabari. Bossy, too. You’ll have your hands full with that one.”

They’re halfway down the hall when there’s a shriek from Teagan’s bedroom and frantic scratching at the door accompanied by increasingly distraught yips.

Teagan’s expression is amused. “Perhaps not two.”

He heads back down the hall and hardly has the door cracked when one of the puppies comes bounding out of it, making a beeline for Alistair and jumping up to put his front paws on his knee as he whimpers accusingly. He's certain it's the one that was sleeping on him.

It’s a struggle to get all three in his arms at once, but he’s determined if only on principle. After all, he’s already hurt the sleepy one’s feelings by nearly leaving him behind. The least he can do is carry them all downstairs despite the fact that they are entirely capable of doing it themselves.

Read Part Two here.

Full disclaimer, for purposes of fairness: @celeritassagittae​ came up with pretty much the entire plot of this. She also had to title it for me because I am Bad At Titling Things. If it wasn’t set in my universe, I really wouldn’t have had enough claim to write it at all, and I am incredibly grateful for her generosity.