#it always annoys me so much because every time i check the original literal translation of the titles of asian dramas

[scarefox]

I feel like these two information will be relevant

... who's going to get poisoned by who? 👀

EDIT: WAIT IT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE WHEN YOU KNOW THE ORIGINAL THAI TITLE

Reasons why I hate when they change the meaning of the title for it to sound cooler for interfans????? I don't even know! Isn't it also super confusing when interfans talk to thai fans / creators and then use the english title?

Like that flower is such an important connecting element between the mains obviously, to the point it is even hinted at in the title. But the english title is way too vague......

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

A Guide to the Best Editions and Translations of Some Classic Literature

TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA BY JULES VERNE

IMPORTANT: Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY the edition translated by Lewis Mercier. In fact, NEVER buy any translation of ANYTHING by Lewis Mercier. Mercier’s translation is unfortunately the most “standard” and popular translation. This translation is said to have removed about 20-25% of the original novel, and also removes a lot of Verne’s original meaning. In short, it was a botched translation that somehow became very popular and accessible up until the 1970′s, but always still check for before buying. Barnes and Noble still has his translation lying around for sale.

If the name of the translator isn’t on the cover or back cover of the book, you can check the first few pages where they write the publication history. It might be in fine print.  Frankly, any translation that is NOT by Lewis Mercier is good. The pictures I have attached here are of the edition I bought published by The Franklin Library. It was translated by Mendor T. Brunetti. It also includes the original illustrations, which is cool.

THE HOLY BIBLE

Oof. This one can get really dicey. But I’ll explain it the best I can.  There have been dozens of translations of the Bible, if not hundreds. Not everyone uses the same one, especially evangelical groups like Pentecostals and Jehovah’s Witnesses. These more radical groups have willingly altered the Bible to further their views. So, a Bible that a Jehovah’s Witness holds is not the same Bible that a Roman Catholic priest holds.  The King James Bible (KJV, or King James Version) has often been considered the most popular version of The Bible throughout modern history. Many of the Bible’s most memorable quotes are directly taken from the King James Bible. It’s considered dignified, poetic, and beautiful. It’s also wrong. So very, very wrong. It’s quite possibly the worst translation of the Bible ever made. I grew up in Catholic school and even there we never once touched the King James Bible. The problems with the King James Bible include certain “theological biases” (i.e. implying Jesus appeared somewhere when he didn’t) and all-around bad translations (i.e. it says there were unicorns but the real meaning is supposed to say “horned beasts”) (see ReligionForBreakfast). The other annoying thing about the King James Bible is that quotation marks are not used. This can be very confusing for readers as it becomes unclear who is speaking.  If you’re curious to see how an exact literal translation of the Bible into English goes, check out the Interlinear Bible. It has the original Hebrew and Greek text with the English words underneath (or besides). You will quickly realize just how complicated translating the Bible is, as Hebrew does not have many words. The English prose in the Interlinear Bible therefore can read like gibberish.

If you want to read the Bible with as close to the original intent and meaning as possible while also being readable, then go for the New American Standard Bible. It can still be a bit difficult to read though. The current popular edition is the New Revised Standard Version. This newer edition from 1989 is considered the most neutral of all translations, as it does not hold any denominational bias. The translators even placed gender-neutral words, such as “people” instead of “mankind”. 

FRANKENSTEIN BY MARY SHELLEY

The original 1818 text by Mary Shelley has been given more spotlight as of late. The text that we are most commonly familiar with from 1831 had the story toned down because of course it would be scandalous for a woman to write about such things at the time. Mary Shelley had suffered critical outrage and pressure for editorial changes from her husband Percy for her original vision. For the 1831 edition, she was forced to edit the novel so that Dr. Frankenstein would be a more moral character, whereas the original Dr. Frankenstein in the 1818 text did not go through much moralizing. 

Penguin Books recently released an affordable edition of the 1818 text.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS

There are numerous translations but I want to highlight the one I read by Richard Pevear. This made the story very readable while also remaining faithful to the story. Pevear didn’t censor Dumas’s original meanings at all like previous translations did for their time. I thoroughly enjoyed his translation and was lucky enough to get the hardcover of his first edition back in the day. My mom completely surprised me by buying that book for me, and it ended up happening to be the best translation. The best thing about Pevear’s edition is that it includes footnotes for archaic terms. The original hardcover of Pevear’s edition is difficult to find by now, but his translation has been re-released by other publishers. As of a few years ago, a new translation by Lawrence Ellsworth has been released. I have not read that one but have heard good things. The publishers of the Ellsworth translation have also been republishing ALL of the Musketeer stories to provide a series of consistent editions, which has always been rare for the Musketeer saga. 

HOMER’S ODYSSEY, ILIAD, and VIRGIL’S AENEID

First off, read these epics in verse form. I cannot believe there are editions out that written in prose form. I’m sorry but that should be illegal. I grew up reading Robert Fagles’ translation, which is pretty damn good and is the standard in schools. However, also look for Richmond Lattimore’s translation. Lattimore translated The Odyssey and The Iliad in the original rhythm that Homer intended. Fagles wrote in freeform for the sake of being easier to read. Both translations retain the original meaning, so it’s up to you really what you prefer. As for The Aeneid (Lattimore only translated Greek classics), go with Fagles.

DON QUIXOTE BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Read the translation by Edith Grossman. That’s all I can say. I devoured that book in days. Grossman did to Don Quixote what Pevear did to The Three Musketeers. It’s just that good and readable. Ormsby is the second-best, being the most scholarly of all translations. The translation is the most accurate but the humor can be dry and doesn’t pack the same punch as Cervantes probably intended. The translations to avoid like the plague are by Motteux, Smollett, and John Phillips. SHERLOCK HOLMES BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Surely, most people reading this have a copy of the Sherlock Holmes tales in one form or another. But which is the best?  Every text out there is the same no matter the publication, but I prefer to read the way it was originally formatted with all the illustrations. The automatic assumption people might have is that all the original Sherlock Holmes stories were published in The Strand Magazine. This wasn’t the case. There were several stories published in other magazines at the time, such as A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, to name a few. Therefore, if you find an edition boasting to have “all The Strand illustrations” it probably only has the stories that were published in The Strand Magazine. More confusing yet, some editions do say “All the Strand illustrations” but also include A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four.  Keep in mind this magical number: 60 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a total of 56 short stories and 4 novels with Sherlock Holmes. If the copy you are holding does not add up to 60 stories, don’t bother. You might get a copy that comes in two or three volumes. 

[shinonometrash]

💕🍄The 12 Days of Ayumu 🍄💕

July 16th, Day 11 of Ayumu’s Birthday Celebration Countdown!!

On the 11th day of Ayumu my mushroom gave to me~🎶 One ruby ring~🎶 (no I totally didn’t choose the title of this celebration to make that joke why would I do that 😅) Ahhhhhhhh, okay this is one of the things I’ve been most excited to post!! I started working on this weeks ago, it’s what gave me the idea of doing the countdown for his birthday. I was rereading it after it’d been A While since I last read it and I was like “omg now I can actually understand what it’s sayi-AHHHH ITS SO CUTE!!!” so I had planned on just releasing this on his birthday, but then I decided to do way way more work for some reason by translating wayyy more than just this story...😓 But please enjoy this super super cute special story!!!

Ayumu Shinonome: Necklace Story

“Giving this kind of gift...it’s cause you’re the first person I’ve ever done this for.” You can preorder Ayumu Shinonome’s, the first place winner in the 2019 100Koi+ election, original ring necklace in the shop (until 11/22/2020)! Read Shinonome’s special story about him selecting the necklace for free♡ Check out the necklace in the Voltage shop!

TV announcer: Buy a ring for your lovely girlfriend! Today’s feature is on popular rings for women~!!

Ayumu: …

I hear the bright cheery voice of the female announcer coming from the TV.

(…so dumb.)

(Ahh, but that does seem like something my girl would like, though)

(Not that I have any plans of getting her a gift right now.)

TV Announcer: Yes, I’m talking to you, the one over there who can’t be honest about their feelings!

Ayumu: ?!?!

TV announcer: If you don’t express your love for her once in a while, she might just run right into the arms of another man~! There’s a lot of people out there, especially men, who automatically assume that they’ll have their girlfriend’s unconditional love forever, no matter what! But that’s just not true, haha!

Ayumu: …

(I’m offended.)

The person on the TV managed to hit me right where it hurts.

Despite my usual confidence, I feel a little bit of uncertainty starting to creep in.

(Ugh, this sucks.)

The old me never would’ve even considered doing something like this.

Getting caught up in something like that? Totally not like me.

And yet…for some reason, I find myself actually considering it.

If I gave her a present, I wonder what kind of expressions she would make?

Would she laugh? Cry? Either way, it’d definitely be a face she only shows me.

…Seeing her face like that? Well, it doesn’t sound too bad.

Ayumu: Haa…

After doing way too much worrying, doubt, and questioning, I find myself at a jewelry shop.

Honestly, it’s a little uncomfortable. This place is full of women.

(They didn’t mention this part in the special feature.)

(But I just thought it’d be a little nice to surprise my over excitable girl and make her speechless, that’s all.)

Convincing myself that’s really all it is, I make my way up to the counter where all the rings are displayed.

Ayumu: …

Rows of rings with sophisticated, elegant designs sparkle under the display lighting, as if to say “pick me!”

(There’s so many…this…might take longer than I expected.)

The aesthetic sense within me won’t allow me to compromise on this decision.

I peer at the different rings and scrutinize each design as carefully as if I was looking at code on my computer.

(My girl would probably be happy no matter what I give her, though.)

(Surely she doesn’t know the difference between the different rings.)

Salesperson: Welcome! Are you perhaps looking for a gift for your girlfriend?

Ayumu: …!

Ayumu: Uh, something like that

Salesperson: Ahh, that’s wonderful~!

Salesperson: If you’d like, I can help you pick something out~!

This person is a professional. It’s always important to take a professional’s opinion into consideration.

Ayumu: Yes, please.

Salesperson: You got it, leave it up to me!

Salesperson: Your girlfriend, what kind of person is she?

Ayumu: Ah, yes…

Ayumu: She’s a stubborn snapping turtle, stupid, noisy

Salesperson: Hm, I see

Ayumu: Stupidly honest and straightforward, obstinate…

Ayumu: Oh, and stupid

Salesperson: Hehe, you said “stupid” three times already~

Salesperson: Sounds like somebody’s completely smitten~

(Not really…I wouldn’t go that far…)

Salesperson: Well then, how about choosing based on gemstone symbolism?

Ayumu: Gemstone symbolism…?

Salesperson: Yes! You see, each ring here is decorated with different gemstones

Salesperson: And, just like how flowers symbolize different meanings, so do gemstones!

Ayumu: …interesting.

Salesperson: For example, the ever-so-famous diamond represents a vow or commitment

Salesperson: Sapphires represent trust and faithfulness 

Pointing at various rings in the display cabinet, the salesperson lists off the meanings for each and every gemstone.

(Hmm…symbolic meaning, huh)

Honestly, I’m sure my girl has no idea about the meanings between different gemstones.

I would feel dumb explaining it to her.

(But…it might be good, choosing based on symbolism rather than choosing based solely on design.)

I scan over the different options while listening to the salesperson’s explanations.

A simple ring with a sparkling red jewel catches my eye.

(Ah, isn’t this…?)

(It’s my birthstone.)

I remember, my girl told me about it once.

Ayumu: A ruby…

Salesperson: Ahh, yes, I think that’d be perfect, haha~

Ayumu: Huh?

Salesperson: Yes, you see, so a ruby symbolizes …..

Salesperson: Thank you for your purchase!

Salesperson: I hope it makes your girlfriend very happy!

Ayumu: Yeah…

Ayumu: Thank you.

After making my purchase I walk out of the store.

The ring I ended up choosing was the ruby ring that had caught my eye.

Since she wouldn’t be able to wear it openly at work, I also bought her a necklace chain to go with it.

(I had hoped the ring would work as a pest repellant, but…)

(Ah, I suppose it can’t be helped with the office dating ban and all)

The image of how all the others act around her comes to mind.

If she came in wearing a ring, they definitely wouldn’t be able to stay silent.

(…Ah, well, shall I head home now?)

She had contacted me today to say that she was coming over.

By now, she’s probably waiting eagerly for me.

“Gross” and “annoying” are the only things that ever come out of my mouth.

It can’t be helped if things actually are annoying, though.

But...maybe it’d be good to try and be more honest sometimes.

(I still plan on giving her the ring first, though…)

Imagining how she’ll react when I give her the ring, I head home to my beloved with an extra spring in my step.

Oh yeah. The sparking red ruby.

It symbolizes “passion”, “life”, and “love”.

Why does this suit her so perfectly?

“Passion” represents all the passion she has for, more than anything else, her job.

“Life” represents how she works to protect the life of all the citizens in this country.

And then…”Love” represents all the love she has for me.

-The End-

I’m honestly literally so sad I couldn’t buy that necklace ring TT it was really good quality and cost $120, but they only shipped to Japan, boooo...at the time though I think I would’ve hesitated regardless because it was $120, but now...uh...yeah. I think the Japanese fandom has been a bad influence on me 😓 They’ll drop a hundred or hundreds of dollars on otome stuff without even blinking...

But we’re almost at the end!!! How is everyone feeling so far? I hope you’ve been enjoying everything!! Tomorrow is the big day!!!!!!!! This was originally supposed to be the content I was going to post on his birthday, but I was able to get something even better for tomorrow. So excited for everyone to see!!!

Stay tuned for more Ayumu content in the upcoming days! You’ll find links to all the posted content here!

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

✨Q

Your thoughts on Mel Brooks movies? Any of them-

The Producers (1967):

Genuinely one of my favorite movies of all time.  I’ve watched it more times then I’d like to admit.  Gene Wilder is seriously so good in this and remake is a shame by comparison.  (Yes, I know the live show on Broadways is suppose to be better, but I’ve never seen it so, there’s that). My jaw literally hit the floor the first time I watched “Spring Time for Hitler”.  The closest equivalent I can name is the montage at the start of JoJo Rabbit (2019) when they edit images from Triumph of the Will to a German translation to the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.  It was breath taking.

Blazing Saddles (1974):

I literally fell out of my chair and rolled on the floor laughing when I first saw this movie.  (If you’re curious, it was right when the Waco Kid said, “little bastard shot me in the ass”.)  It’s seriously one of the most biting satires on race ever written and still holds up today.  That being said, I get really, really annoyed with people when they say that “nobody can make a movie like Blazing Saddles anymore”.  These people clearly don’t understand that comedy is the quickest to age and just because you label your bad jokes as “satire” it doesn’t make it good.

Please watch this video by Lindsay Ellis explaining my thoughts in a much or articulate way then I ever could.

https://youtu.be/62cPPSyoQkE

Young Frankenstein (1974):

I watch it every year around Halloween.  The best films Mel Brooks made was when he worked with Gene Wilder and especially when Wilder did most if not all of the writing.  Mel Brooks’ approach to comedy is throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, Wilder’s is more character based and when combined they are a forced to be reckoned with. Wilder gives one of my favorite performances from him, besides Willy Wonka.  Madaline Kahn is a delight and the use of the original sets its such a treat.  I cannot emphasis how much I love this movie.  (Also check out all the behind the scenes special features of the DVD, they’re great).

Silent Movie (1976):

Admittedly, I’ve only seen this once.  It was funny, but nothing to write home about.  Now that I’ve seen more silent films, I might get more out of it, but I think there’s a reason why it’s not really talked about anymore.

High Anxiety (1977):

Again, only saw this once.  Fine as a parody of Hitchcock, but not much going on behind the eyes.  The only gag I can remember is when they keep blowing up and enhancing the photograph.

Spaceballs (1987):

My favorite of Brooks’ post Young Frankenstein work.  Everybody has theirs and this is mine.  I think I appreciate this one more because there was an actually story to follow, and I just got more of the gags since I’ve always been a sci-fi nerd.  Plus, it has the effortlessly funny Rick Moranis and John Candy.  They seriously steal the show whenever they’re on screen.  More of the jokes just land for me, and while it’s still just a straight parody, I do end up caring at least a little about Lone Starr. This is old school poking fun at the new school with no ill will in either direction.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993):

Still fun, but if giving the choice to watch Men in Tights or Spaceballs, I’ll choose Spaceballs. I do appreciate Cary Elwis and after seeing Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, I get more of the gags, but not as many land for me. This a purely an, I just don’t find it funny thing as there is nothing wrong with the story or acting or anything else.  I just didn’t laugh as often as I had with his others.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995):

Just not good.  I don’t think he understand the horror genre as much as he does Westerns or even Sci-Fi.  Watch What We Do in the Shadows, and you’ll have a better time.

The rest I haven’t seen.

[birlcholtz]

Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

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

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

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

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

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

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

[tipsydipsydo]

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Please respect that. I’ll fight any illegal use of my work!

Thank you.

「Information: Only the unique combination of pictures, the colour schemata and editing of the moodboards is my intellectual work! I don’t own the pictures themselves and all credits are going to the rightful owners!」

➸ Blog Navigation

A post where you'll find all my other themed Masterlists of my writings, my personal sideblog, my fic-recs blogs and so much more!

➸ My Networks

This is a list of all the networks where I got accepted as a writer in their community. Please check them out! 

➙ Information!

All the showed (anonymized) persons on my Moodboards should only symbolizes specific scenes, situations, outfits, jewelry or cosmetics! Nothing of this should make you feel excluded when you have a different skin color, hair color/structure, body shape or gender!

My scenarios and fics should be open for everyone to read, that’s why I try my best to write gender neutral and male scenarios/fanfics as well!

(Some scenarios or fics could still be personalized for specific groups of people or communities where I think they deserve some more attention and love! For example because there is a lack of writings for them etc.)

What I want to say:

We all are the same equal in our own unique existence!💓

I love all of you guys!🤗💓

» Gender «

↬ Female: ♔ [♔-Reader]

↬ Male: ♚  [♚-Reader]

↬ Gender neutral: ♕  [♕-Reader]

» Genre Key «

↬ Fluff: 🌸 

↬ Angst: 🌧 

↬ Hurt and Comfort: ☔

↬ Serious Themes: ⚠️🚫                                                                                

 (For example sexual assault, (mental) illnesses, traumatic experiences, rascism, antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia etc.) 

➙ We can’t take those things easy and I’ll not accept that someone “joke” about it!                                                                                                 

↬ Comedy/Crack: 🌞 

↬ Soft Smut [sweet vanilla~]: 💋 

↬ Hard Smut [kinky stuff~]: 😈 

   ┃ ➙ [💋😈]: kinky smut with feelings ;)             

[Information]

I made a list where I explain what kind of sexual content I’d write, how I interpret different kinks (especially how the Dom-/Sub-Dynamic in my fics work) and with what kind of Smut I’m not comfortable.

 ┃➙ My sexual content Rules!                      

» Other useful symbols «

↬ Scenarios: 💭

↬ “Connected to” (connected to an other scenario/fic/series): 🖇 

 ► Kink-Scenario 😈💋  [♔- Reader] 

[What kind of dirty secret(s) could the boys have?]

 ► Halloween Costume-Scenario  🌸💋😈 [♔- Reader]

[You’re wearing a scandalous Halloween Costume for a Halloweenparty...]

 ► Their favourite Make out-/Sex-Songs: Hyung Line Maknae Line  💋😈   [♔- Reader] 

[Which songs would bring the boys right into the mood?] 

 ► Honeymoon-Destinations: Hyung Line Maknae Line 🌸 [♔- Reader]

[What cities/countries would they choose for their honeymoon-trip?] 

 ► When the boys have a crush on you!

     ▸  Their feelings for you! 🌸  

        ▪ here [♕- Reader]

     ▸  Their dirty thoughts about you! 💋😈 

        ▪ About him  [♚- Reader]

        ▪ About her   [♔- Reader]

► Easter Special 🌸💋😈

[You’re wearing a sexy bunny outfit for them on Easter Sunday!]

    ▪  Easter with her! [♔- Reader]

    ▪  Easter with him!  [♚- Reader]

» Series Key «

↬ Finished: 💯

↬ Ongoing: 💬

↬ Long Term Project: 📅

↬ Paused: ⁉️

↬ Uncompleted: 🗑

(the last one will hopefully never happen...)

 ▲ ▼ ▲▼▲

► Naughty Days ‘til Christmas 💋😈 [♔|♚|♕-Reader]

This is a spicy Advent Calendar for Christmas: The Boys bought an Erotic Advent-Calendar and every day they unpack another sexy Accessory with the Reader. Of course they try all the products! 💬

(24 Smut-Drabbles with female/male/gender neutral Readers) 

► BTS Dog Hybrid-Series   🌸🌧💋😈  mostly [♔-Reader] BUT [♚/♕-Reader] possible!

Seven different stories about the boys in a world where humans and hybrids exists, an unique ethnicity of humans they’re able to shift their shape into a dog.    ⁉️| 📅

► BTS “We’re all the same equal!”- Series 🌸💋🌧⚠️🚫 [♔|♚|♕-Reader]

 We all deserve the same love, no matter if we’re are chubby, thin, tall, short, have white or colored skin, are a female, male or an other gender. It simply doesn’t matter. And the boys would still love us. And they would teach us to love ourselves.  ⁉️| 📅

 ► Disobedience [Hoseok x Reader x Namjoon] 😈 [♔- Reader]

Summary: You are sexually frustrated, annoyed and bored, which is why you started to mastubate without the permission of you boyfriends, Namjoon and Hoseok. Even if they promised to take care of your needs tonight. But you don’t feel like waiting anymore. But you also didn’t expect that Hobi will catch you with your pastel blue dildo deep into your pussy...  

► l’innocence indécente [Jimin x Reader x Jungkook] 💋 [♔- Reader] 

Synopsis: Jungkook and Jimin want to try something new with you... and you have to admit that you like it. A lot... 

► Prey  [Jimin x Reader x Taehyung] 😈💋 [♔- Reader]

Synopsis:

► Birthday Princess [Yoongi x Reader x Taehyung feat. Jungkook] 😈 [♔- Reader] 

Synopsis: You have Birthday today and your two boyfriends make sure that you will be sexually pleased to the ultimate maximum...

► Birthday Gift [Seokjin x Reader x Jimin] 😈 [♔- Reader]

Synopsis: Your Boyfriend Jimin bought you something very specific as your birthday present. You should use it as a preparation tool before you’ll get the real birthday gift tonight... 

 ► Halloween Special 💋😈  [♔- Reader]

 ► Easter Special 🌸💋😈

     ▪  Easter with her!  [♔- Reader]

     ▪  Easter with him!  [♚- Reader]

► My Fake-Texts Masterlist  [Semi-active/inactive] [♔- Reader]

Note: At the beginning of my blog I was more focused on making fake texts (simply it was easier and more comfortable for me back then because I was a bit insecure about my language struggles) but now it’s not my main thing anymore. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to make fake texts in general anymore but right now I like the “real” writing much more! So I don’t know when I’ll make new fake texts. 

► Improvisation 🌸💋😈 [♚-Reader]

Summary: This wasn't planned. Well, the whole world didn't planned to deal with a damn pandemic in 2020! If everything would have gone "normally", you would be in Seoul with Jin right in this moment and just enjoy that you're finally able to be close to Jin again. But now you two are stucked at home, Jin in his dorm in Seoul and you in your apartement in your town, far away from him. So you have to improvise for now on, how you want to deal with longing emotions and urging sexual desires... 

► Strawberry Kiss  🌸💋 [♕-Reader]

Summary: It's Friday Afternoon and when Jin comes home from work, the freshly baked strawberry cake smells deliciously. But he decided that a taste of you is even sweeter, especially when you're not wearing any underwear underneath your thin summer dress...

► Birthday Gift [Seokjin x Reader x Jimin] 😈 [♔- Reader]

►  Home  🌸🌧  [♕-Reader]

Summary: You finally managed to spend your two semesters abroad studying in Korea! However, after some unfortunate circumstances, you want nothing more than finally be able to fly home again. But your Roommate Namjoon has some ideas to make your year abroad still wonderful...  

► Precious  🌸💋 [♔- Reader]

Summary: Today is your birthday and because your last few weeks have been terribly stressful, you want nothing more than to be able to sleep in in your day off. However, Namjoon has to go to practice all day long, that’s why he has found a very gentle method of waking you up to unpack your presents together...   

► Disobedience ft. Hoseok 😈 [♔- Reader]

► Business Trip 💋😈 [♔- Reader] 

Summary: It's a stressful life to be the CEO of a big and international known company. Always hopping onto the next flight to a new investor or business partner, all around the globus. But sometimes he can't fix his little problem alone, so you need to help him out with some naughty stuff through these rough times of his job~   ► Jar of Kinks 💋😈 [♔- Reader] 

This Two-Shot is based on my own Jars of Kinks. 

I identify myself as a Switch. That's the reason why I decided to write a Two-Shot to my "Jar of Kinks". So I'd be able to write both Dynamics, with Dom! Yoongi and Sub! Yoongi as well. In this Index you'll find the links to the Oneshots, combinded with their summary and their individual warnings. 

► Touched 💋😈 [♔- Reader]

Summary: This week was just so awful and shitty, every muscle in your body hurts and you're absolutely exhausted from this horror week. But Yoongi has an Idea to relax you and make you feel so loved in a way, that couldn't make thousands of compliments.

► ��Netflix and Chill  🌸🌞 [♕-Reader]

Summary: Hoseok and you are best friends, especially because you two share an unique passion for which you get sometimes quizzycally looks from others. Like every friday night you meet up to watch some series on Netflix together and massage and fondle the hair of each other. All the same, all innocent as ever. Until it comes to an certain situation and you realize the true meaning behind “Netflix and Chill” faster than you expected.   

► Disobedience ft. Namjoon 😈 [♔- Reader]  

► Little Swan  😈 [♔- Reader]

Sneak Peak: Laying open, completely helpless and so vulnerable in front of him. Presented like a meal on a silver tablet. His meal, his prey. Your wolf is starving, licking his lips with an animalistic and devilish smile at the sight of your parted pussy lips. Revealing his most desired things, this swollen and sensitive clit and this pretty tiny pussyhole. Clenching around nothing, literally begging to get filled with his fat cock and stuffed up with his cum until it’s leaking out of his little sweet swan...

► Mustang v8 💋🌞 [♔- Reader]  

Summary:  You kinda have a thing for the sound of the engine of a Mustang. How bad that Hoseok’s new car is a Mustang and that your Boyfriend looks super hot while driving!

► Study Break  🌸💋 [♔- Reader]

Summary: College wants to kill you right now. Exam Phase and then you have to write a 20 page long scientific work! Jimin and you barely see each other, you gave yourself completely to your studies. Until some specific needs some attention again...   

 ► Poolside Kisses 🌸💋😈 [♔- Reader]

Summary: Jimin said, you should pack a swimsuit into your suitcase when you're going to visit him in Korea. You thought, you'll go bathing somewhere privately, maybe just with the boys or so... and not going to a pool party of one of Jimin's Idol friends where you'll not know anybody! Since then you hate yourself that you only brought your new bikini to Korea that reveals more of your bare skin that you're used to... 

► Mousse au Chocolat 💋 [♔- Reader]

Synopsis: You are Jimin’s favourite dessert...

► l’innocence indécente ft. Jungkook 💋 [♔- Reader]

► Birthday Gift [Seokjin x Reader x Jimin] 😈 [♔- Reader]

► Dirty little Secret  

Summary: Whenever you leave your apartement for work, you're carrying a dirty little secret to your workplace as well. To be more specific, you wear inconspicuous sex-toys underneath your business attire to keep your sex-craving libido under control. Nobody noticed something and everything went well... until now. Until your Boss and secret crush, Park Jimin, bursts into your office unannounced and hears something buzzing which definitely doesn't come from your phone. Even worse, he sees a certain remote-control laying on your desk that seems to be surprisingly familiar to him... 😈 [♔- Reader]

► The Definition of Art  🌸💋 [♚-Reader]

Summary: You’re under Taehyung’s total mercy. Tied up, bare and trembling you lay spread out in front of your boyfriend who loves to turn you into his personal piece of art... 

► Deflowered 🌸💋🌧  [♔-Reader]

Summary: You're getting married tomorrow and you want to say goodbye to your mare. There you met the stable boy Taehyung for the last time, who's your best friend and childhood crush at the same time. You will experience a stormy night full of love and passion and you'll give the biggest proof of love to him...

► The hands of a sinner 💋😈

(The Idea of this Fanfiction has two versions: for female and male readers!)

For her! [♔- Reader]

For him! [♚-Reader]

Summary: Since Jungkook got his hand tattoos, you’ve found out that they have a stronger effect on you than you would like it. You also have good reasons not to tell him that you are developing a kink for this tattoos. And these reasons getting confirmed... 

►  Goddess of the sun 💋 [♔- Reader]

Synopsis: Jungkook is the best servant for his Queen and Goddess 

► The walls 💋😈  [♔- Reader]

Synopsis: You don’t know why but today was the first Day you realized how buff and bulky Jungkook’s Biceps are. And the fact that they look delicious when they’re tensed up…

► l’innocence indécente ft. Jimin 💋 [♔- Reader]

► Der Geliebte  🌸 💋 [♔- Reader]

Summary: You and Jungkook met right at the first day you opened your own atelier in Seoul after you had to leave your old home behind you. You love paint canvas with landscape motives, other people just roll with their eyes when they hear that you choose such usual, almost boring things to paint. Not so Jungkook, he seems to be different than most of visitors. It’s almost like he can read your feelings through your paintings... 

 ► The laundry hamper  🌸 🌞 💋 😈 [♔- Reader] Summary: Jungkook has a crush on you since you moved together for college but the poor boy is way too shy to confess his feelings to you... rather he would search through your laundry hamper to get a shirt which smells after your very personal scent and tries to calm his racing heart... and other nerves. He didn’t thought to get catched by the person who already stole his whole heart in the most embarrassing situation...

This is probably the most important information on this blog 💌  

Don't be shy around me!  

You can feel absolutely free to talk to me, to stuff my inbox (even when you just want to ramble or to fangirl etc.) and my PMs are always open too! So don't hesitate to get in contact with me, you're not awkward or weird, okay?💕💕  

I'm pretty curious about you guys too and Im always up to become mutuals or even friends, okay? 🤗  

Love you, Tipsy 💜

 [Dates]

Published: 27th December 2019

Last Update: 10th August 2021

[bluerosesonata]

A Window to the Soul: Game Mechanics and Characters in Ai: the Somnium Files

Spoiler-free!

Ai: The Somnium Files is an adventure game/visual novel for PC, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch by Spike Chunsoft in September 2019. Written and directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, known for his Zero Escape Trilogy (999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors (DS), Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (DS), and Zero Time Dilemma (DS, PS Vita, PC), also available as the Zero Escape Trilogy on Steam and PS4), this game once again displays Uchikoshi’s signature combination of suspense, humor, and ludonarrative harmony that fans of his previous games are familiar with, alongside a cast of complex, compelling characters you’ll absolutely fall in love with.

For all my fellow Zero Escape fans, you probably remember the issues the series faced with financing, which ultimately lead to Uchikoshi helping to establish Spike Chunsoft and the eventual release of Zero Time Dilemma. In AitSF, more than ever, the fruits of that partnership are apparent. It feels we finally get to see a complete picture of Uchikoshi’s vision; Featuring fully animated 3d models, fully voiced dialogue, and some incredibly goofy and self-indulgent dance sequences, this murder mystery (and yes, it is a murder mystery) is absolutely worth it’s full price and your time.

The game has multiple endings (About 5, without checking), all leading up to and feeding into the true ending. One notable feature is that the timeline allows you to jump into previous played sections at any point of the chapter, and even provides summaries of the events that happened in each “node,” so unlike in the original 999,  you don’t need to replay through every scene of dialogue to get to each ending.

Rather than spend time analyzing the story itself- something that can’t be done to a satisfying level without spoiling the whole thing- I’ll just say that the way Uchikoshi literally has us get inside the heads of characters by “syncing” with them is a great story device, and is realized extremely well in the gameplay. For me, the Sync was used in all the right places to push me into genuinely caring about some characters, that, without the sync, I would be sympathetic to, but not feel a real sense of attachment towards.

What follows is a breakdown and analysis of how well the gameplay is designed, and some non-spoilery discussion of characterization and character design:

Mechanics:

The core gameplay loop can be broken into two parts: dialogue and investigation, and “syncing.”

The investigation portion of the game is similar to most adventure visual novels- investigating crime scenes, talking to NPCs to advance the story, examining your surroundings, and in my case, clicking on scenery over and over again to get funny flavor dialogue.

The flavor dialogue does not disappoint- and for me, the best minor feature included in the game ties to this. When you click on an object, you get an initial string of dialogue- but the indicator with the name of the object will only get grayed out once you’ve seen all the text related to that object. For some people, this might ruin the “fun” of clicking over and over again- like in 999, where some bits of dialogue would only display on the 9th time examining an object- but for me, it was a godsend, because I didn’t spend any time wondering if I missed anything funny.

The Sync gameplay loop is also mechanically brilliant. Part of the in-universe rules, which are emphasized over and over, is that the main character, Date, can only spend 6 minutes within the subject’s “Somnium”- the internal dreamscape of their mind- and that staying any longer could result in disastrous consequences. As such, each Somnium loop attempt can (hypothetically) be experienced in chunks of about 8-10 minutes. This set time frame makes it a breeze to play the game in small sections at a time and let your mind breathe a bit. The time limitation is challenging, but never infuriating; even when I messed up horribly and knew I had to restart a sync from the beginning, I would just use the time I had remaining to try out the goofier actions available to try out as puzzle solutions.

Somnium Files’ adaptability to being played in long sittings or in short bursts, while still maintaining an engaging, tense narrative is an incredible strength that not all games can boast of. Not a single part of the game felt like a slog or a chore to me, unlike a few puzzles in Zero Time Dilemma, where I ran into the perennial adventure game issue of  “okay, so I have this item, but where do I use it?”, “how the hell do I even solve this puzzle without a guide” (I didn’t), and “what do I need to do to unlock the next sequence?”

Characters

So let’s talk about these good characters. Some of you probably recognized the art style for the game’s key visual as the work of Yusuke Kozaki, best known by many as the head artist and character designer for Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: Fates. Even in his work for the Fire Emblem franchise, you can tell he doesn’t care much for drawing armor- which puts him in the same club as literally every artist I know who draws Fire Emblem fan art. His designs really shine in a contemporary setting, with modern clothing, and really give the cast a unified, unique aesthetic. Moreover, the designs are beautifully translated into 3D as well.

For a game that was most likely well underway in development several years prior to the boom of the subgenre, the design for A-set, (AKA Iris), an in-game internet idol and streamer, is incredibly in line with those of many successful “Virtual Youtubers”- for that alone it deserves some accolades. Fittingly, as part of online promotion for the game, Chunsoft posted a series of video blogs starring  A-set, as if she were posting to her own channel. (I missed all of these, and that’s a real shame, because I think they would have gotten me excited for the game if I had been paying attention.)

Despite Iris’ obvious and engineered marketability, I think my favorite design of the game is Aiba, the AI partner of the main character, whose human form only appears in Somnium and in the realm world as an AR projection imposed in Date’s cybernetic eye. The way her arms fade into glowing, electronic “nerves” at her arms is a subtle reminder of her artificiality, but her design also doesn’t make her more playful and goofy behaviors jarring in the least.

As far as personalities go, I would say that Date, our protagonist, manages to hit the perfect median- maybe even fusion- between the past male protagonists in the Zero Escape trilogy. Junpei, Sigma, and Carlos were all likable in their own ways, as the narrative character, but all had a level of blandness to them. To me, they served more as vehicles for us to participate in the Nonary Games.

In contrast, Date feels very much like his own, established person, and that’s not only a huge strength, but central to the overall narrative. (For all non-ZE fans reading this review- I apologize for the heavy use of ZE comparisons here.) Like Sigma, Date is a bit of a perv, but unlike Sigma in Virtue’s Last Reward, I didn’t feel squicked out by his behavior; Like Carlos, he cares immensely for the people important to him, and puts their wellbeing first; Like Junpei, he’s, also, a loveable moron.

There are other characters- Mizuki in particular- whom I can’t speak too much about without spoiling some of the enjoyment of their character arcs, but all of them have incredibly good and complicated interpersonal relationships both with and outside of Date.

Lastly, there’s Aiba. A good companion character is worth their weight in gold. After all, most of the time, they’re who you spend most of your time with, and for that reason, the more “annoying” ones always catch more flac for being so. For me, Aiba easily slides into my top 10 favorite companion characters of all time, along such members as Maya Fey in the original Ace Attorney trilogy and Midna from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Most of the goofiest sequences in the game are instigated by her, and every time she’s on screen there’s bound to be something fun to do, not to mention the fact she’s our avatar used within Somnium. Combine that and her telepathic banter with Date, and you got a recipe for a dynamic duo.

In closing, every aspect of AitSF is absolutely delightful; It has tightly woven narrative gameplay, wonderful and complex characters, a storyline that, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t unravel the details of before they were revealed- and I didn’t even get into how great the voice acting is. If you’re looking for an enjoyable, self-contained game that you can beat in under 35 hours, Ai: The Somnium Files can’t be beat.

[yoimeta]

Hi everyone! I noticed recently that the "KAZAKHSTAN 101 OR HOW TO OTABEK" post seems to have been taken off of tumblr? The author's whole blog seems to have been wiped. Do you know if this is archived anywhere? Is there a mirror, say, on Ao3?

Hello!

Thankfully, I managed to find what I believe is the original post. Here it is! The post is archived in plain text under the cut.

Hope this helps!

- Ji

Source: @sawyer-aik

KAZAKHSTAN 101 OR HOW TO OTABEK

THERE YOU GO YURI ON ICE FANDOM.

Disclaimer: this is in no way a fully comprehensive guide. This is just me trying to put together basics for people who are unfamiliar with Kazakhstan/Kazakhs to start their writing/research.

I am an ethnic Kazakh female, citizen of Kazakhstan, Almaty, bisexual, upper middle class, currently in college in the US. My experience is in no way representative of all kazakhs and Kazakhstan citizens. However, I think it’s pretty close to Otabek’s.

This is really, really long and kinda convoluted, but if you can bear it –– welcome!

Name: Many people have talked about Otabek’s name. This is how you shorten it –– “Bek”, “Beka”, or “Beks” if you wanna be really familiar and laid back.

Kazakhs don’t have middle names, we have patronymics. They are formed like this: the father’s name + ‘uly’ if the child is a boy or ‘kyzy’ is the child is a girl. For example, Otabek’s childrens’ patronymics would be Otabekuly and Otabekkyzy.

About Almaty and almatinians: Ok I’m so happy Otabek is from Almaty, I really don’t know much about life in other cities or rural areas. Almatinians rarely do. Comparing Almaty lifestyle to the rest of Kazakhstan is the same as comparing NYC to the rest of America –– it’s not representative of the quality of life in the country, like, at all.

Almaty has 2.5+ million population, and it grows every year. It’s a cultural and economic centre of the country. Apples originate from Almaty (!!!), hence the name from “Alma” –– apple. Almatinians are usually stereotyped as fast, brash and snobby –– kinda like New Yorkers, right? Almaty is much more tolerant and progressive, and also more ‘Western’ than the rest of the country in terms of mindset. Almatinians kinda look down on non-Almatinians, and really dislike the capital Astana because of all the funding and attention it gets.

Almaty has a great ethnic diversity –– main groups are Kazakhs, Russians, Uygur, Koreans, Germans, Jews, Uzbek, and many more. Though stereotypical jokes are generally acceptable, outright hate and discrimination against an ethnic group is not tolerated. Many foreigners visit here for business –– mostly Americans, Western Europeans and Chinese.

Almatinians love: coffeeshops, mall sales, cool cars (Hello Otabek’s motorcycle), smoking hukkah and vaping. They are usually concerned with status and try to show off their wealth. You can see people of all kind of different style and background in Almaty, fashion shows are held there, contemporary art and indie-music congregates there, along with all kinds of fancy ass crowd. It is a really interesting and kinda exhausting scene, especially if you are young and wanna have fun.

Language, culture, food, etc.

As an Almatinian Kazakh, Otabek is definitely fluent in both Russian and Kazakh, and probably has a very good grasp on English. He is a master of shala kazakh. Shala kazakh is a magic language that only city Kazakhs are privy to. It’s basically a wild mix of kazakh, russian and some fashionable english slang thrown in there. It’s usual for me to start a conversation with “OMG bro” and then kinda pull my speech together, substituting kazakh and russian words with each other and pepper it with “cool”, “ok” and other english exclamations. It’s not grammatically correct and is kinda lowbrow, but we all do it. Yes, even our parents. This is how Otabek sounds when he is talking to someone from home. Terrifying.

Nuclear family: City Kazakhs usually have two or three kids. That’s less than people have in rural areas. Children are important in Kazakh culture because they carry the family’s bloodline and history, especially boys. If you headcanon Otabek as having brothers and sisters, you are probably right! His family should be at least sort of wealthy to afford all the expenses of having a professional athlete for a child. Otabek has an expensive bike and his clothes look high-end –– he is definitely not poor.

Family in general. Kazakhs are close, VERY CLOSE to their family. Mind you, family is not just parents and siblings but also your grandparents, aunts and uncles and like all 173 cousins and nieces and nephews. Everyone is ridiculously involved in your life, always there with advice and complaints. You stay connected to your parents when you move out, when you get married, when you have kids, when you DIE. When Otabek misses the weekly skype dates or check-in phone calls, HE IS SHAMED SO HARD. Do you know grandma is worried about you, think about how old she is! Otabek’s relatives brag about his achievements like they moved him up the career ladder personally, with their own two hands. There’s nothing Otabek can really do about it tho he gets annoyed

Food: city Kazakhs have a very diverse cuisine. Traditional kazakh food is like 50% batter and 50% meat and takes long ass time to prepare so we reserve it for the holidays. My family loves fish, russian dishes such as borsht and blini, Uzbek lagman, Korean kimchi tho we try to avoid pork. And it’s not like we choose one day as a “Russian cuisine day”, we just kinda??? Deside to have some borsht today?? Almaty has lots of different restaurants, almatinians love sushi, pizza and pasta, shashlyk, all kinds of experimental foods and trying new things. Kumys –– mare’s milk –– is one of the things you should try in Kazakhstan as a turist, but I know many kazakhs who have never had it or don’t like it. They say it’s really good for you tho.

Holidays: ethnic Kazakhs in Kazakhstan celebrate: birthdays, New Years, Eid al-Adha which we call Kurban Bairam, Independence Day on December 16th and Nauryz on March 22nd. Young people kinda have get togethers on Halloween because it’s fun and a reason to hang out. Nauryz is one of my faves, it’s a pagan holiday of coming of spring and new life. On Nauryz, Almaty is adorned with flowers, yurts and giant swings are set on the city square, people wear traditional clothing and dance and play and eat a lot. My family also ended up celebrating Eastern Orthdox Christmas and Easter because each year our Russian friends invite us to hang out and celebrate with them, lol.

LGBTQIA+

Main principle is “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. General conflict avoidance protocols are in place. I personally know like 3 LGBT friendly hubs/clubs in Almaty. Nobody explicitly says “gay clubs” but people just kinda know what and where those are. There are get togethers and meetings you can attend to meet people, you can hang out with your significant other in public, hug, hold hands and no one would probably say anything. Colleges and universities are generally safe places, many of my friends are out in their college and don’t face any trouble. PDA will be frowned upon, but all PDA is generally frowned upon in Kazakhstan, even hetero. Feminist and sex-positive initiatives try to educate the populace and break the status quo, and are doing really well but the government’s disposition is homophobic. If your family is religious or traditional, they probably wouldn’t go as far as disowning you, but will probably pressure and guilt-trip you. LGBT+ youth generally plan to move somewhere else or just not settle. All of this is Almaty situation tho. Being LGBT in rural area is much more dangerous.

THE BEST PART: VOCABULARY

Ok this is what I find to be the easiest way to explain Kazakh to English speakers: think Turkish but written in cyrillic, with words borrowed from Arabic and Russian.

Endearments:

zhanym, жаным: my soul. Zhanym is everything to a Kazakh. You can use it for your family, friends, SO, I called my laptop zhanym today. It can be flirty, it can be serious. If you need Otabek to be affectionate with someone, use zhanym.

ainalaiyn, айналайын: really hard to translate but something like my precious?? Usually used towards small kids, but also if a Kazakh finds something really cute.

altynym, my golden baby. I love this one for obvious reasons, lol, hi, Otabek.

Mahabbatym, махаббатым, my love +

Suiktim, сүйіктім. my love, my dear. Kinda old fashioned but really romantic. I can see Otabek using this, but he will be teased and called an old sap if he does.

Kazakh have a lot more endearments, but most of them are for children.

Basic interaction and exclamations:

Iya. Ия. Yes.

Zhok. Жоқ. No

Rakhmet. Рахмет. Thank you.

Keshir. Кешір. Sorry.

Salem, Сәлем. Hello. A familiar greeting.

Sau bol, Сау бол. Literally “Be well” but actually means goodbye. Pretty familiar too.

O Kudai, О Құдай/O Allah, О Алла! Oh my god, obviously. Used in all kinds of different situations.

Oibai, Ойбай! How does one explain oibai. When a friend jump scares you, when you receive bad news, when you check your bank account –– oibai!

Abai bol, Абай бол. Be careful, is what your mom tells you when you go out.

Expletives and Swear Words. Yeeaaah the juicy stuff.

Zhyndy, Жынды. Crazy. If someone is being stupid or inappropriate, you call them zhyndy. When you tell a dumb joke at the familty table, mom smacks you upside the head and hisses “Ooooi, zhyndy!” When Jean-Jaques is acting a fool and makes out with his reflection, Otabek rolls his eyes and mutters “Zhyndy”.

Akymak. Ақымақ. Idiot. When someone is just dumb and not worth your time.

Ittin balasy. Иттің баласы. Child of a dog. It can be as harmless as “you pup” and as offensive as “son of a bitch” depending on the situation.

Kotindy kys. Көтіңді қыс. Squeeze you ass. God I love this one. When someone being an obnoxious wannabe, tell them they should squeeze their ass and check themselves.

Jean-Jaques: I am gonna be the King of the Grand Prix!

Otabek: Kotindy kys.

Shygasyn ba?! Шығасың ба?! You wanna go bro?! Ohh, someone is gonna catch these Kazakh fists.

Sigil. Сігіл. Basically go fuck yourself.

Sheshen ahmy/Sheshen sigem. Шешең амы/Шешең сігем. Your mother’s c*nt/Imma fuck your mother. REALLY FUCKING OFFENSIVE. Say this to a Kazakh if you have a death wish.

——————————————————————————————-

AND THEEEEEEERE YOU GO.

Again, this is just the basics. Do more research and talk to as many Kazakhs and Kazakhstani people as you can. We are a different but usually an interesting bunch. Thanks for your attention, Sawyer out!

[butterflydm]

2020 (what a weird year)

I did not get very much done this year at all. The business I work for got us all classified as essential workers which... tbh, I did not agree with as a categorization. It’s meant that hours per week stayed the same, but my anxiety levels at work skyrocketed. And most of the time, after getting home, I basically had enough energy to check some stuff online but I mostly needed to decompress by doing something familiar, which I’ve been doing by replaying FFX and FFX2, and my brain mostly hasn’t had room for anything new. Which is a shame for all the plans I had to watch tons of new media! I had a long list of things I wanted to check out and I haven’t really watched any of it.

I did get a chance to watch a few new things (as always, tbh, any recs of mine are basically ‘you will like this thing, if this is the kind of thing you like’):

The Old Guard: Really enjoyed this movie. It’s been out for a while now, but if you haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was a fun, easy watch that also made me think some interesting philosophical questions about life. A good time! It’s honestly the only movie I watched during the 2020 pandemic period, unless I get around to watching anything else in the next couple of days.

MXTX’s Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: I love love this story. I’ve watched the donghua (looking forward to S2!) and read the translation by BC Novels, and the story just has so many things that make my heart go ‘yes!’: it’s funny, with a charming PoV character who both doesn’t take himself too seriously and also seriously misunderstands himself in a lot of ways -- very relatable. It’s dramatic AF, with romantic lead Luo Binghe at the heart of a lot of that drama. It’s clever and I love the way the premise is used for both humor and pathos.

Tone-wise, it reminds me of works like Galaxy Quest or Northanger Abbey. Honestly, that light tone helps in some of the later chapters, which have content that is actually very dark and very heartbreaking if taken seriously, but because of the momentum of the story and the tone of the narrative, I didn’t feel like I got lost or bogged down in the darkness.

And I love the relationship between Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe a whole heck of a lot. I think the way it’s structured is clever and sweet and sad and makes for an interesting story. There is an element of an unintentional romantic obsession that SQQ created by the way he flipped between kind and cruel (against his will, which is what makes it forgivable for the audience, imo, because SQQ wanted to always be kind, though not always for the most selfless of reasons) and how LBH had to try to mentally justify/rationalize how the same man could act in such completely opposing ways. And the narrative symmetry between how SQQ thinks of LBH as the center of the universe because he’s the OP Protagonist (!) but LBH thinks of SQQ as the one that everything revolves around and how that’s narratively true because, of course, in the story that we’re reading, SQQ is the protagonist and LBH is his love interest.

I also actually really appreciated the bad sex near the end of the novel -- sex-to-save-the-world is a trope that can easily get romanticized but here it’s (literally) painful and ugly instead, as all of LBH’s trauma pairs with the influence of Xin Mo on his mind. Even through the translation, it definitely feels like bad sex written well, rather than badly-written sex that is supposed to be good, if you know what I mean. Sex can be an important narrative tool in stories and I feel like MXTX uses it very effectively here.

I think I burnt through the entire translation in just a few days. I’ve been reading a lot of fanfic afterwards and I think my favorite so far is I Wish You Were My Husband by Feynite. It’s an AU but it keeps the same kind of vibe as the original story.

Bridgerton: Goodness, so enjoyable! Julia Quinn is not My Most Favorite of the various romance writers that I read but she was one of the first writers that really got me back into reading romance and it was delightful to see her world on screen. I don’t picture people when I’m reading novels; I have to have a visual first and then I can carry that into the reading, so it was nice to be able to assign faces to some of these characters that I’m already very fond of. Simon and Daphne had a nice amount of chemistry and I loved the Bridgerton family relationships.

I hope they get to cover all the romances in the series and continue to do some updating as well -- I generally liked the changes they made to Simon and Daphne’s romance (a few I wasn’t as into but could see why they’d done it -- mostly For The Drama). And I really loved what they did with Simon and Lady Danbury’s relationship. It took me some time to tell the three older Bridgerton brothers apart but that’s pretty much canon, lol. Anyway, I was invested enough in it all that I stayed up all night on Christmas eve to watch it all and I had no regrets afterward.

I started watching S2 of TharnType but then my work schedule changed and I was working on Fridays and (see above) I just didn’t have the energy to watch anything after work. I might wait and binge the rest of the series once it’s all out, now that it’s gone this long without me being caught up.

I do think I’ll take a break from Critical Role for a while, after it comes back. I’ve just come to an unfortunate place where the show literally cannot win with me re: the romances, as I’m annoyed when they happen but also, perversely, annoyed when they get ignored because my brain goes “they gutted beaujester for this limited amount of inferior romance? At least commit to giving an adequate amount of the romances that I dislike!”. And so it becomes a vicious circle. Good sign that it’s time to take a break. My unhappiness with one part of the show is overshadowing everything else and maybe some time away will change that. Or maybe I just need to pick it up again with campaign 3. I guess I’ll see how it goes. I also admit that I’d hate to pick up the show again only to have Lucien get killed off in a few episodes.

I want to try to watch some more shows in 2021, and maybe I’ll have time, if I’m freeing up several hours every Thursday.

I want to watch Heaven Official’s Blessing and I’ve had a translation of the novel on my phone for the entire year and I really do want to read it as well. I’d like to watch Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo’s new shows (The Wolf & The Legend of Fei) as the gifsets I’ve seen have been interesting and enjoyable, and there are a bunch of shows that I’d gotten recommendations about after watching TharnType that I still want to check out too. Plus, I have the new Stormlight Archives book and I want to read that as well. So, there’s quite a list.

It’s still probably gonna be quite stressful at work for a while, at least until I’ve had a chance to get the vaccine, but at least I am going back to Thursdays & Fridays as my days off at the start of the year, so I’m looking forward to that. I’m also hoping to get back to my detailed rewatch of The Untamed, because that was so much fun but I did not have enough brain this year to do any more of it.

[benisasoftboi]

Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse. 

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’  

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.  

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.  

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned,  Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol 

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret. 

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect. 

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously 

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

[heizerux]

Battle of the Miraculous (Love Eater and Miracle Queen) Analysis (Few Translations included)

“Some people may have their problems, but at the end everything will be okay.”

—Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Miracle Queen Monologue)

(Disclaimer: Budgets and animation production play a huge part in how episodes are made and released . . . but this time it was straight up the network’s choice and a bad one :| Also I’m fully aware Chat Blanc and Felix may answer a few extra things, but for now I’ll just talk about what I’ve seen.)

I’ll be going over the finale in the Topics: 

Hesitations

Relationships

Beginning of the End

The Future? (Season 4 Talk)

I rewatched the episode with subs I could fully read and understand so I’m ready to talk about it now. Let's go. . .

FYI: I’m gonna be mainly dissecting Miracle Queen because A LOT happened here that I HAVE TO let out.

Hesitations

In Heart Hunter/ Love Eater we got a good consensus of how every character is doing. To summarize, we know Luka has deeply fallen for Marinette and constantly thinks about the song that is her. Kagami is much closer to Adrien and is open about her feelings to him. Luka and Kagami are also now officially good friends with their supposed love rival. Really everyone is getting along PERFECTLY. . . . But then Kagami and Adrien get much closer and all Marinette can do is just let the one she loves go. 

In Miracle Queen, Marinette cries to Luka and admits in her monologue that nothing is going and if anything things are painful. . . but that it’s nice to have someone that’s there for her when she need it. . .  this someone being Luka. Before the bees attack, Marinette makes a move to move on by wanting to hear his finalized song, but Luka questions an important question:

“You’re still thinking about Adrien?”

Meanwhile, Adrien breaks away from the kiss with an “Oh! Uh, it’s my first time, I’m not ready!” excuse even though it’s clear he’s unsure about advancing things with Kagami. But then her version of the important question is:

“But when will you be ready, Adrien? . .  Your hesitation hurts.”

*queue the bees* So as of this point, Adrien and Marinette have finally faced their actual obstacle in terms of romance: Their HESITATIONS.

This entire season, we’ve had instances in which Adrienette has had the thought of wanting to be something more (either through a crush or Plagg’s perseuations), but there was always the thought of “But there’s Luka/Kagami. . .” Ikari Gozen shed this for Marinette, Stormy Weather 2.0 shed this for Adrien. . .

Anyways Chloe calls forward people who have held a miraculous and exposes them (both in identity and diss lol) btw she did say Luka looked “kinda cute”

Ladybug and Chat Noir find each other confused as to how things went south so fast and Chat just asks “What did Fu tell you?”, to which Ladybug basically answers “Nothing” and has break down admitting she accidentally lead Hawkmoth to Fu.

Relationships

This moment right here. . . it's IMPORTANT. 

Chat sees Ladybug vulnerable and consoles her letting her know to focus on saving Fu and not to worry more on the rest mistakes. Ladybug thanks him and the two hug. . . but like ACTUALLY hug. 

I’m not talking someone hugging the other in attempt to save the other from harm, but an actual genuine friendly hug. Chat Noir isn’t being flirty or making advances, and Ladybug isn't annoyed or pushing Chat away. Their relationship as heroes is no longer just partners. . . but officially CLOSE FRIENDS.

Moving on, they kick ass, get the likely to be former wielders’ miraculous back and face off with Chloe. To summarize, she tells Ladybug that she’s the real enemy because she doesn’t trust her and goes on to equip all the miraculous. She tries to use them all but all the kwamis basically told her to go fuck herself in the form of “You don’t even know our commands.” 

Oh, but what’s this? ANOTHER advancement in the Ladynoir relationship. Ladybug turns to Chat all vulnerable once more, and he picks her back up. This is the first time in a WHILE (since Origins) that Ladybug had confided in Chat with her vulnerability and fears of failure TWICE in ONE day. Don’t forget about this for next season.

The Beginning of the End

After telling Ladybug that she now has all the keys and knowledge about the miraculous, Fu then decides its time. No not the grim kind of time, but the time to finally pass on the torch to Ladybug. He officially denounces his role as guardian, which renders all inactive miraculous useless. (I’m actually not certain but it IS what I noticed considering the active miraculous were still working but the inactive ones became empty jewelry shells as the kwamis got transferred into a brand new box for Ladybug. I’m sure S4 will have the answers here.) Hawkmoth is literally disappointed and leaves with a weaker Mayura.

Chloe angrily tells Ladybug she just wants to be Queen Bee and be the REAL MAIN HERO, to which Ladybug simply answers “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that, Chloe.” Chloe then throws a tantrum saying “FINE! I am not your fan anymore. I will go live with my mom because you don’t even deserve to breath the same air as ME.” and runs away.

Oh yeah, Chat lost Hawkmoth and Mayura :D. . . . *high five*

ANYWAYS, Ladybug and Chat Noir go to vibe check on Fu while Gabriel vibe checks Nathalie. One is alive and well and the other is alive and. . . yeah. 

KEEP IN MIND, NATHALIE NOW HAS ACQUIRED THE INFO SHE NEEDED FROM FU’S BELONGINGS TO REPAIR THE PEACOCK MIRACULOUS. DO NOT FORGET THIS FOR NEXT SEASON.

Back to Fu, he wakes up but. . . ya GUESSED IT (or didn't)  . . . lost his memory along with his duties as guardian and this marks the END of an era. . .

ML LORE: THE GUARDIAN RULE IS THAT YOU ERASE YOUR MEMORIES OF KNOWING ABOUT THE TRUE POWER OF THE MIRACULOUS ONCE YOU DENOUNCE YOUR ROLE IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE IDENTITY OF THE current? WIELDERS. EVEN THE USE “MIRACULOUS LADYBUG” DOES NOT UNDO THIS.

DEFINITELY DO NOT FORGET THIS MOVING FORWARD IN THE SERIES (but mainly if you really like lore or just want to use this as a fic tool :3)

Techincally, someone did die this episode, but it was the person we all once knew as Master Fu. Now it is just Wang Fu. He returns Ladybug’s “lost key” thinking she dropped it? and then marks the a new beginning. 

Chloe returns to expect her mom to be getting ready to leave, but finds her parents finally happy and in love. . . I’m actually really happy this happened. Chloe needs a loving home and if this helps her in anyways, ABOUT TIME. 

“As you start to get older, you start to understand that life doesn’t always give you what you thought it would. I wanted to tell you this in person, Marinette, but if you are reading this it is because I’ve already lost all my memories. Do not be afraid, you haven’t lost all of me completely. Like I told you in the beginning of the letter, losses are a part of life, but this isn’t important. The only thing that’s important is if you’ve won (?) or not. That is the key to be able to accept changes as they come on your own. To be able to accept everything as a whole even when you feel life hasn’t given you enough. The real gift, is life itself.” —Fu

no I’m not crying, you are

After retrieving Master Fu’s leftover gifts for Marinette, she takes him to see Marianne to their new home (assuming), to whom Wang Fu has met for the first time but is already fully in love with. Marinette gives them a final parting gift, to where his last words to her are:

“Thank you, young lady. I’ll never forget you.”

okay, okay, maybe a TINY tear has left my eye. . .

Now to our final scene of the season. Adrien and Marinette are closer friends and nothing is distant between the two, They’re even so comfortable small talk is like second nature to them . . . they’ve also both finally faced their own hesitations and decided to give the person in front of them a shot for and for all: Luka and Kagami.

“The real gift, is life itself.”

okay okay I’m SOBBING aghhhHHHHHHHH--

Oh and Gabriel seems to have repaired the peacock miraculous 👀

The Future (?)

Okay, so THAT’S how Season 3 ended. It feels bittersweet, I cried about it when I got home and watched it with real subtitles, but now lets talk about what we can expect to come in Season 4. It’s all guess and theories but I guess here’s mine:

Marinette now fully changed and matured with her new role as guardian, will probably be a lot more calmer with her approaches. The relationships will likely be that Lukanette and Adrigami will try to flourish further as both Adrien and Marinette decided to stop hesitating and going for what’s in front of them. . . but so will Ladynoir. 

I’m, for the time being, jumping ship on the theory that Ladybug will fall more in love with Chat, and Chat still being loyal to his lady will equally return the feelings as this happens further. . . but of course their civilian relationships will interfere. . . and idk about you guys but that department looks like it’s going to be interesting. 

I may add more later on, but I just needed to get all this out in one post for the finale. I’ll still watch Felix and Chat Blanc cause I’m in denial that yes, this was basically it already . . . But the wounds are still fresh in my soul for this show and it still hurts. . . 

. 

.

.

.

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So yeah . . . Lila Rossi who?

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Don’t know her. . . 

.

and neither did Hawkmoth in that finale 👀 *sips tea*

[meta-squash]

i’ve been so fucking restless all day, nowt to do with xmas since i really haven’t celebrated it or any other holiday really in years it probably has more to do with quarantine and generally pnw induced depression and also my adhd and stuff and i don’t know. but i’ve been super restless and i’ve already rambled about it in my notebook but my brain won’t shut up and i type faster than i write (or at least when i type fast it’s still legible and the same cannot be said for my shite handwriting). i took a walk today for an hour and a half and when i got home after i’d sat around for like an hour i just wanted to be out walking but like in the summer before i got top surgery i would walk the same 2.5 mile walk every day and now i just can’t it’s so boring but i don’t really know where to go. i’ve just been wandering but i’m sick of staring at my bedroom walls and getting no inspiration. i don’t know i’m so restless and it’s so annoying because basically i get this thing that’s like the desire to create, the desire to make things but no ideas or inspirations for what to actually do. it’s been like this for years. every so often i get flashes of solid inspiration but mostly it’s like a “i want to create” feeling but then i sit there in front of the paper or the collage stuff or the canvas or whatever and nothing comes. i don’t know if it’s a block due to my own i don’t know like need for control or whatever or if it’s a depression and/or adhd based plastered up wall. maybe it’s both. i don’t know. but just get this scribble in my stomach and this scratching like in my muscles or something i don’t know but it’s like this weird restlessness but there’s nothing to put out there. and i don’t know maybe if it wasn’t the middle of winter i could like drive down to oregon and sleep in my car and then drive back just for a change of scenery but it’s literally the middle of winter and also there’s a fucking pandemic and i’m trying to quarantine as best as possible because i’m paranoid as fuck. but i don’t know it’s just frustrating. first of all it’s bizarre because i found a notebook of mine from 6 years ago and i was having the same fucking blank-brain-can’t-think problems then as i’m having now. so yeah it’s probably unmedicated adhd but like ugh. but also it’s frustrating because all my favorite things, all my hyperfixations and points of inspiration are so intellectual and creative. like the les mis fandom or the manics or libertines bands themselves and fandoms as well and things like that and it’s frustrating to have so much inspiring shit right in front of me and desiring to make as well but nothing comes out because of whatever this stupid block is. and yeah i think a big part of it is adhd but also i just wonder if part of it is my brain desperately wanting control or something i don’t know. but i’m just so restless and i just want to create but i don’t have any ideas and i don’t know i should probably do some doodles or something. i used have this doodle system my friend and i came up with where you close your eyes and make marks on paper with a pencil and then you connect them with cross-hatch marks into whatever rough weird images you might see and it was always really interesting i should do that again. but even more than that i wish i could write. i don’t know i think the most truly creative and original thing i’ve written in a long time is (amusingly, ironically) a fucking manics fanfiction thing because the ending of that stupid richard book pissed me off so much. and that was like 3 years ago or something. 4 years i just checked. i don’t know, i miss writing creatively in ways that aren’t tv show/book fanfiction because yes that’s fun but that’s different. but my brain won’t cooperate even when i want to write. i mean i wrote a poem last night for the first time in like 2 years but then i look at it and it’s terrible. and i know it’s probably because i’m rusty and i need to get the hell over myself but idk. it’s like i want to express myself in my head in one way but then it never comes out that way on paper. collage is easier, less thought or at least less intense thought more aesthetic thought but i miss intellectual thought and i miss making words do cool things. but it’s this fucking adhd brain fog this inability to get my brain to have more than half a second of sharp focus even if i want to do something. and again getting properly into the libertines is pulling this out and hell even getting back into the les mis fandom is as well. with the les mis fandom it’s more about my rusty critical thinking and analysis skills because i haven’t been in university for like 5 years and i feel like everyone has much better observational skills and analytical writing skills than me. and then with the libs and manics fandom it’s more about the creative writing and creating in general because it’s like my room is covered in inspiration i’ve got pictures and things on all the walls and i have materials for pretty much any type of artistic creation so i could very easily be incredibly prolific and make a lot and have lots of ideas but there’s just nothing there. the urge is there but not the content. and it’s a problem i’ve had for so long. and it’s goddamn frustrating. i don’t know maybe if i was medicated i could make stuff better? but even then i have no idea. i have no idea. it’s so funny like i’m so fucking restless it’s 5 am and i have so much thrumming in my stomach and i could get up and go for a walk even though it’s like 33 degrees outside and i want to make stuff my skin wants to make stuff but like that shit’s not translating into actually making anything because nothing fucking comes forward. urge without content is empty and stupid and mute.

[characteroulette]

Hey PQ was pretty good!

so I’m having trouble getting into PQ2 because of several factors, so I thought I’d write a half-think piece, half-essay on why I think the first PQ gets more flak than it deserves. So here’s that.

------

I genuinely don't understand why, when talking about Persona Q, people are always saying things along the lines of, "The gameplay was good, but the characters were trite and the story wasn't that great." Like, as a fan of the Persona series, I genuinely don't understand that assessment.

Not saying PQ is flawless, oh no. There are PLENTY of things in PQ that I have an axe to grind with (the small door scene with the P4 gang, for one), but the overall story? The characters? They're both fine. Good, even, dare I say. And here's my argument as to why:

The returning Persona series characters (from 3 and 4) in PQ do a good job of representing their games and their own personalities, even if a little more light-hearted than their source material,

AND

The story is genuinely in-line with the rest of the Persona/SMT series, even if it ultimately doesn't matter due to time shenanigans (and I'm okay with that).

These are my two points. Just those two. Because these are the two most contested parts of PQ, as far as I can hear, since we all agree that the gameplay is the real breadwinner here hahaha

Anyway.

First, let's talk about the returning characters, since they seem to be the ones who matter most. The P4 cast are generally less griped about (save Chie and Teddie) and I believe this is largely due to the brighter, more hopeful tone of P4 as a whole. (Aaand, in my opinion, they're done a MUCH BIGGER disservice in the Arena games, but no one ever talks about that so let's not bother with those right now.)

P4 was a game about making friends, the hijinx that come from that, and finding the truth about a string of murders and confronting the worst parts of yourself in a harsher world in the process! And it executes this with the appropriate amount of balance between serious moments and comedic relief. The theme colour for the whole game is bright yellow/gold, a happier and more friendly colour which helps remind you that this game is all in good fun.

(Side note here: I honestly think that P5 really failed in this respect, despite my liking its tone slightly more. I just personally like darker-themed games, but P5 was a little too dark and oppressive right out the gate, with hardly a friendly face, which helps make your gradually growing group of friends much more appreciated but also a harder atmosphere for jokes to really land well. Most of the 'funny' sequences felt very undeserved and really dragged because uh guys we literally just fought a rapist, an abusive father figure, and some other fucked-up shit. Can we please acknowledge that a bit more instead of pretending it never happened by laughing at the expense of Ann's autonomy of her body? Especially when she was a target of said rapist??) But that's its own discussion for later.

Really, the fact that most of the P4 gang get out of this with little criticism shows how accepted their caricatures have become. I guess? At least, except for Teddie and Chie.

Teddie being a wannabe Casanova must've been a huge hit with the Japanese audience, because it's just the hill he's going to die on for the writers. There was more to Teddie than his hitting on the girls in P4, believe it or not! (And there's a whole thing about it being brought on by him mimicking the type of behaviour he saw Yukiko's shadow exhibiting, which has a lot of really interesting undertones, but it makes him more swappable with Junpei, so whatever, I guess.) Meanwhile, Chie's not as meat-crazy, either, but I guess it's a better trait for them to roll with than her (cut in the translation) glossed-over sexism.

Both work fine, however, and aren't really too annoying enough to be that egregious. (Though they both go right up to the line sometimes. Teddie more so, but none of the girls playing along really helps show how gross his actions are. Most of the time.)

No, the real complaints I see directed at the characters being 'too cartoonish' are usually reserved for the P3 gang.

P3 is, really, such a bizarre game to go back to now when compared to its two successors. It's dark and hopeless, like P5, but formulaic and mystery, like P4. It's actually a natural progression when looking at its two/three older siblings (both P2s are bleak. As. Hell!), but, at least to me, it's the odd duck of the bunch, being the first to implement this winning formula of being caught in a time limit of a school year and managing spending time exploring this other world. It adds Social Links and social stats with this new time limit and this idea that the Persona and Shadows you fight don't just happen out on the streets in 'normal' circumstances for everyone to see. It pretty much went from an RPG to a management game with RPG elements.

And its emotional, impactful story, like P5, had a lot of tonal whiplash due to the attempts at comedy!

I feel like a lot of people forget this about P3 (and maybe I think more about it because I haven't actually beaten the whole game yet myself), but the story is actually a goddamn mess of tonal confusion. You got kids shooting themselves in the heads and a Social Link dealing with a classmate's crush on his teacher. You got wacky foreign exchange student and kids taking experimental drugs to suppress their Persona and slowly poisoning themselves to death as a side effect. The protagonist is an orphan who lost his parents in a huge, plot-relevant accident... But he's able to date every single girl at the same time and be the most wish fulfillment charming guy if the player so desires.

P3 being messy isn't a bad thing. P4, P5, and even P2 and PQ are all a little messy in their own rights, too. But because P3 was a lot of fans' first in the series, and PQ is just a spin-off, it gets way more flak for this than I feel it deserves.

(I mean, hey. Both P3 and P4 have those classic anime scenes of the boys walking in on the girls while at a hot springs. All PQ's got is an awkward group date scene and the implication that Yosuke and Kanji kissed each other while getting knocked out.) (They all. Have. Problems.)

And I know a lot of this comes down to personal preference. I'm not saying you're wrong for liking P3 or P4 more than PQ. I'm just saying I feel like PQ is often wrongly accused of being worse and less well-written when, really, they're all pretty much on par with each other. (And someone on the team really doesn't understand how to handle large casts of characters sharing the same space...)

But, personally, from everything I've seen from P3, I don't like the way most of the characters get presented to me in the source material. Junpei is way more insufferable in P3 than in PQ and Yukari is way more uninteresting in P3 than in PQ. Really, PQ helped me appreciate these characters more than P3 itself did. And, yes, they're more funny when they're trying to be, too. Because PQ is set up better for comedy than the 'remember you are mortal' tone of P3.

(Which makes dramatic moments hit all the harder when they happen) HEY check that segue! It's time to talk about the story and the two original characters of the game!

So, second point: people say the story isn't very good. To which I wanna ask... "Did you stop playing before defeating the fourth Boss?" Because it really sounds like, to me, everyone who says that didn't actually finish the game and reach all that juicy character development that happens for both sides around the fourth dungeon, where all the issues they've been building up (like Yukari's issue with Mitsuru for the P3 side and Kanji and Ken's awkwardness in the P4 side) start getting resolved in a satisfying way. And it comes with a reveal for the two characters we've been getting to know, Zen and Rei, as well.

(And, from here on in, there be spoilers. You've been warned.)

The two new characters to this game are Zen and Rei, who were in this place before the P3 or P4 gangs were called to the scene. Zen is quiet and a bit unsettlingly dense, but devoted to Rei, who is bubbly and full of life, but terrified of the dungeons you have to traverse. The two have been in this place for (what's implied to be) a very long time and enlist the help of the P3 and P4 teams in order to find a way out through defeating the bosses of each Labyrinth/dungeon. Simple enough, as it also helps the P3 and P4 team's goal of getting out. With each new dungeon, it feels more and more like something about Zen and Rei aren't quite right, but the length of the dungeon and all the team chats help you put it out of your mind each time. Rei can even get kinda annoying with her loudness and big appetite if you don't find her cute (which: how dare you. But yeah, I get it).

And then, at the end of a fiery festival fourth dungeon, you find yourself in a dark tomb at the bottom level. The boss awaiting you is Rei's shadow (a nice callback to the way P4 works) whom she still doesn't accept after you defeat it.

All the locks are gone and the P3 and P4 teams can return to their worlds if they wanted. Except Rei gets kidnapped after Zen reveals that Rei has been dead all along and it was him who trapped them here. It was he who created this place and even he who called both teams here.

And this was a plot twist that I friggin' loved.

It definitely had more impact on me because Zen and Rei easily became my favourites out of the whole cast, to the point of having them on my team for the whole game, but to find out such a fucked up twist is wild! (Seriously! Go watch the cutscene and tell me it isn't super fucked up!) You can say the P3 and P4 twists were shocking (or P5s I guess), but for my money, this is the best reversal of expectations I'd ever seen in a Persona game. In any game, really!

Zen was, in effect, the villain the whole time. His true identity as Chronos, God of time, makes sense with displacing the teams from their own times and the time here being erased once you reach the end. His own power that he sealed away growing impatient and taking matters into its own hands by drawing the teams to this haven displaced from time also makes perfect sense! And the entire climb through the last dungeon is his redemption arc and it makes for a super emotionally investing final dungeon all the way. (Which is great, because I hate every single one of the enemies that appear in this god-forsaken place.) (Even P4 and P5 can't really boast that, I felt very little investment through Izanami's dungeon and Baldabaoth's distortion.)

Of course, if you found Zen and Rei to be annoying and pointless, I can see how this would fall flat for you. The fact that they hinged such an emotional climax on these new characters, characters that don't even matter outside of this game!, was such a risky move. Especially when you consider this is just a fanservice game made basically under the promise of seeing the P3 team interact with the P4 team. But, for me, it really paid off.

And whatever complaints you had with the P3 or P4 characters, I feel like the resolutions to those character moments I mentioned earlier get explored even further during the climb through the final dungeon. From the P3 gang coming together to finally communicate with one another to the P4 gang reconfirming their bonds with one another, it's a really investing and emotional journey. I do wish the writing had been this tight and impactful through more of the game, but I believe it's worth it in the end.

Perhaps this moment comes too late in the game, though. I can definitely see others giving up before reaching this point due to the repetitive nature of the dungeons and the tidbits of character development that are meant to build up to this moment that can be too sparsely placed. (But, really, it's the same from P3 to P5, Social Links don't really add much variety when they can be just as repetitive and boring, just saying. Especially when you get caught in waiting to rank up hell, ugh.) For me, however, this really sealed the deal on this game being an incredible experience that I adored from start to finish. 7/10. Final score.

....

....

(7 outta 10?? Not perfect??) Well, it's not perfect. Japan's blatant homophobia and sexism really ruins a lot of scenes for me. I'm super salty especially about how the fake marriage scenes are handled so differently from the girl choices to the boy choices. (But you just argued in its favour for 2000 words!) Listen. ALL the Persona games wouldn't receive perfect scores for me for this aspect alone. There are a lot of other factors as well, but they vary from title to title and PQ in particular is guilty of spending too much time focusing on Teddie and Junpei being girl-crazy. And Marie is in this game more than she really should be. UGH.

But I digress.

In conclusion, this game's story and characters are better than most give it credit for. Hopefully, my argument helped you see why I believe this and why I think claiming that both aspects are just 'bad' is lazy.

[makeste]

KHR 068: Literal Food Wars

Stay tuned guys, because this chapter features Bianchi’s one and only fight scene, and it’s about six pages long but it’s one of the strangest things that’s ever gone down in this manga.

But before we get to that, this thing opens with one of my all-time favorite KHR jokes! Let’s appreciate it together.

YOU BET YOUR ASS HE HAD A SPARE. And he just WHIPS IT OUT like an RPG character dumping his massive inventory. And Yamamoto is just like, “oh, thank you!” because PAPAMOTO DONE RAISED HIM RIGHT. And his face. Oh my god just look at it it’s perfect.

All in all, a 10 out of 10. Really, we can go ahead and end the arc right here.

Just kidding, obviously we need to continue. At the very least until we find out just what exactly Mukuro is planning on doing with all those teeth!

So anyway, I skipped over it, but it’s important to note that yet again Tsuna is having feelings of guilt over his freezing up and having to be saved by his friends who then end up getting hurt protecting him.

This is beautiful slow-burn character development, so let’s keep track of it as it continues.

It almost seems too easy, doesn’t it? [counts the number of chapters left in this arc] Something fishy going on here.

At this point, poor Ken, who has now been relegated to comic relief status, severely misapprehends the position he’s currently in, and decides to start some shit.

Honestly, he almost even gave the whole game away with that “you’ll die before you see his face” remark. Mukuro really needs to have a talk with him.

An annoyed Gokudera belligerently sprinkles some sand on him (because making his face very slightly dirty, THAT’LL SHOW HIM). An equally annoyed Bianchi tsks at Hayato’s childishness. Clearly, what this situation calls for instead is some light murder in the first degree.

This chapter is off to an excellent fucking start so far.

Reborn then starts hyping Mukuro up again and to be honest he does a pretty good job. But more importantly, he hands the photograph over to Tsuna, so that we, the audience, can get this next page, and presumably scratch our heads in confusion.

“These two Mukuros who look nothing alike… does a trap lie behind its secret?”

Well, let me think. We know that the person that Tsuna and co. think is Mukuro is not actually Mukuro. We also know that Reborn has only one Dying Will bullet left. One trump card; two Mukuros.

Nah, I think it’s going to be fine.

Anyway. Look who’s awake!

Hey, Mukuro actually bandaged him up! And put him in bed. And was just sitting there watching him. Mukuro, could it be you’re actually a nice guy?!?!?!

The answer is no, not quite, since there’s still all that teeth-harvesting and attempted murder and actual murder and kidnapping and wanting to cleanse the world with darkness (we haven’t even gotten to that yet but yeah) and stuff. But watch this space!

Chikusa and Mukuro catch each other up on recent events. Take a gander there at Chikusa’s little exclamation mark speech bubble when he finds out Ken’s been defeated, which is almost identical to Mukuro’s little exclamation mark when Chikusa fell on his face after stumbling back wounded a few chapters ago! The emotionally challenged apple doesn’t fall far from the emotionally challenged tree.

And then Mukuro introduces some ~reinforcements~, and lo and behold:

It’s a two-page spread of antagonists! Which means it’s time for a round of let’s-analyze-the-two-page-spread-using-bullet-points! Man, I love this. It’s been a while.

BIRDS - A.k.a. the literal worst character in the entire series! 100% no hyperbole or exaggeration! That is the correct use of “literal.” There is in fact no one worse than Birds.

CREEPY TWINS - I kind of love them tbh. They’re SO FUCKING DISTURBING and I feel like we never get anything even close to that kind of creepy again afterwards. Except for the Vindice maybe. Fun fact, this chapter came out roughly around 2005, so these guys predate Slenderman. Godfathers of creepypasta right here.

LANCIA IN A HAT - Hey it’s Lancia wearing a funny hat

M.M. - Pretty much the only one of these guys who actually sticks around in the long run. (Not counting Lancia, since as far as I can recall he only makes the one cameo at the end of the Varia Arc and then disappears from our lives forever.) She actually makes it into Tsuna’s nostalgic montage in the very last chapter of the series! But the rest of this chapter is about her, so I’ll hold off on additional comments for now.

BONUS ROUND:

Well, I guess Birds did manage to do one good thing during his fortunately-brief tenure in KHR! Somehow I always manage to forget the origins of this little guy.

Does he really? Somehow I don’t exactly associate the Kokuyou gang with piles of cash (something to do with them squatting in an abandoned mall and constantly seeming to be on the verge of starving to death). Maybe it’s illusionary money. This would have been funny to see if it had actually worked out.

I hope the other Kokuyous get Mukuro a “World’s Best Grandma” trophy for his next birthday.

We then cut over to the small child that Mukuro kidnapped! I’m gonna get whiplash from going back and forth on how evil he actually is in this arc, goddamn it.

Whatever, Mukuro!!!

Okay, so after all of these villain introductions, we finally return to our intrepid group of heroes.

This little hobbit’s feet are tired and he wants to stop and have second breakfast.

So they sit down at some picnic tables and Bianchi once again recalls how much she fucking despises Yamamoto!

“MOVE OR YOU WILL BE MOVED!!”

He makes the greatest fucking faces every time she does this shit, I swear.

There are some comedic bits involving Bianchi just straight up offering Tsuna literal bug soup to eat (like, not even any sort of pretense this time around as to whether it’s actually edible or not). But then, suddenly…!

Yikes.

And of course, Tsuna naturally just assumes Bianchi’s food did that on its own, which. Yeah, that would normally check out. But Bianchi says it wasn’t her!

I don’t have any of the Viz-translated volumes but I wonder what they turned this “oh shi—” into. I’m feeling like they would have gone with a good old-fashioned, nonsensical “Cowabunga!”

Okay but apparently M.M., just like Ken before her, for whatever reason has decided it’s better to just dick around and not actually go for the kill. Because I have to assume that if she could do that to a lunch box, she could do it to a person instead. So I guess everyone should be thankful that their opponent isn’t quite fucked up enough to be the type of person who just explodes all of her enemies from off-screen before they ever have the chance to mount any kind of defense.

Gokudera hears music coming from somewhere and tries to blow it up! This is notable because of how he somehow then manages to forget, less than two pages later, that he actually has bombs. It’s kind of amazing, actually.

Because Gokudera used the power of forced perspective, and Ken literally just hyaahoed around and did absolutely nothing!

Tsuna, Yamamoto, and Gokudera immediately exchange confused looks.

“How many does this make? [counting on fingers] OH SHIT.”

M.M. then proceeds to mercilessly ridicule the Vongola boys who apparently are not up to her mafia standards. Being a bunch of self-conscious eighth graders, they have absolutely no defense against this kind of shade and are blown the fuck away.

“SHABBY LOOKING??”

M.M. then again inexplicably refers to Mukuro as though he’s some sort of Rich Uncle Pennybags type figure, just making it rain everywhere he goes, and in all seriousness this is really starting to confuse the shit out of me.

Either Mukuro has some stash hidden away that the others never knew about, or he was lying through his teeth. Personally, I absolutely believe it’s some sort of leprechaun situation, and M.M. was going to receive a mountain of cash that then mysteriously vanished two days later, by which time Mukuro was conveniently on the other side of the planet probably.

Anyways, having tired of this conversation, M.M. decides it’s time to take them out, so she aggressively plays her clarinet at them.

Because it’s KHR, this is actually a really effective attack.

Okay, and this is the shit I was talking about earlier. If only one of you lunkheads had a ranged attack that you could use in a situation like this, Gokudera! That would sure help the others out a lot, Gokudera “SMOKING BOMB” Hayato, it’s you, I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU’RE THE LUNKHEAD.

I DON’T KNOW, MAYBE YOU CAN GO BACK TO WHEREVER KEN IS AND SEE IF HE HAS A FUCKING BRAIN CHANNEL YOU CAN BORROW

So finally Bianchi steps up to bat, because no one else has seemed to register the fact that they’re hiding from a fucking clarinet, and the most intimidating thing it’s done so far is heat up some sushi and a few water bottles.

[WONDER WOMAN THEME MUSIC PLAYS!!]

CAN’T BUY ME LOOOOOOVE

Bianchi then proceeds to lay out a detailed analysis of M.M.’s mysterious clarinet weapon after seeing it in action a grand total of once, and holy shit, I’m starting to think she may actually be even more of a nerd than her so-called genius younger brother (especially given the severe dive his intelligence has apparently taken in this chapter).

M.M. then breaks it down in even more gratuitous detail, and I’m starting to fall asleep here christ

BLAH BLAH TL;DR THIS DEADLY WOODWIND INSTRUMENT MAKES THINGS HEAT UP AND EXPLODE

That’s what I was saying before! Then why didn’t you fucking do that??

So the boys absolutely FREAK THE FUCK OUT, which, I would too if someone could nuke my fucking body just by playing “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Bianchi, however, isn’t fazed in the slightest, and whips up a couple trays of weaponized P.F. Chang’s to counterattack.

Look at poor Gokudera’s face. [p-pats]

M.M. isn’t having it and slings some smooth jazz Bianchi’s way!

Very impressive that she can shout the attack name and still play the instrument at the same time.

I never made it more than one episode into Shokugeki no Soma because I couldn’t get past the foodgasms, but basically this is what I always imagined that show should be like.

Somehow Bianchi manages to fully dodge the microwave music attack using the power of PLATES, and takes a dive toward M.M.!

M.M. is all like “AAAAAHHH” but then suddenly she’s like “JUST KIDDING”

She then announces that close-quarters combat is her specialty, and proves it by CONVERTING THE CLARINET INTO A PAIR OF NUNCHUCKS AND WHAPPING BIANCHI ON THE HEAD.

OKAY

On the surface, this looks bad—but Gokudera Hayato knows better.

That is the face of a kid who has seen some shit.

Holy shit this arc had some fucked up moments didn’t it.

Quick refresher, so this is referring to chapter 51, “June Bride”, during which Bianchi almost married Reborn but then didn’t! Because it wasn’t really Reborn at all, but a robot. Haha this manga is weird.

Anyway. So M.M. falls over dead and this horrifically weird battle comes to an end!

Yes. Actually yes. It’s completely impossible. But that’s KHR for you.

And it turns out the reason Bianchi was fighting so passionately was in order to protect Reborn’s nap time!

Hibari Kyoya should look into hiring this one.

But before anyone has a chance to celebrate, they’re interrupted by a horrible old man holding up a laptop because tablets weren’t a thing yet!

I know I should be properly horrified, but all I can think is how absurd this looks now. Here he is, introducing himself and then holding up his unwieldy Macbook with two open QuickTime windows and what I’m just going to assume is Winamp running down there in the corner. Like, this guy is in the fucking stone age still.

So yeah, next chapter is the CREEPY TWINS chapter where Tsuna almost fucking stabs himself to death! Gonna be wild.

[07-02-2017-blog]

My experience with FFS. Part 1

I remember waking up that morning feeling like I had moved some great mountain. My surgery was scheduled for 11:30, meaning I had to be there at 9 to check in and get settled and ready for surgery. It was 7am. I finally cleared all obstacles getting me to this day, and I had nothing in front of me but this life-changing, affirming surgery.

I hurriedly got ready in comfy clothing, not bothering to put on any makeup or fuss with my hair which, by itself, made that day unlike others. I took whatever pills I could dry swallow, since I could not drink or eat anything for 12 hours prior to surgery. I was mostly grumpy due to not having eaten breakfast, and seeing my mom drink her coffee made me deeply envious.

To anyone who is reading this that hasn’t had an amazing trans related body surgery, I woke up that day with the feeling like I was going to some tropical getaway. Everyone is excited to go away somewhere exotic and tropical; and waking up on the day of travel, you feel very very antsy to get there, and you can’t believe the day has come. But you must make the day through the treacherous airport lines. I was so close to the end of that line.

My analogy of going somewhere foreign and exotic mirrors why I decided to go through with this surgery. I was finally leaving behind the harsh conditions of having my face; it was hard to be out in public and I was always cooped up inside, to then go to a place where my face could look inviting, exotic, warm, new. Once I had the new face, I would get to make all these new amazing memories that would enrich my life forever. I just had to face (no pun intended) a day of waiting; waiting to be called, waiting to be put out, waiting to go home, waiting for that amazing recovery.

My mom, as brave as she is, was nervous all morning. At the end of the day, one of her babies was going to be put under a anesthetic and undergo a five hour procedure. I think every person can relate to having a mother being nervous on the day of surgery. We went down to her rental car, and I left my apartment for the last time with my old face.

—-

During the 30 minute drive, I thought about of all the endings that were being dumped on me. My family was never going to see my face as it was ever again. I was not getting changes to the point of looking unrecognizable, but still, the next time I would be sleeping in my bed, my face would be changed forever.

We arrived early and I excitedly hopped out of the car while my mom parked. I went up to registration and told them what I was getting done, and showed them my health card. While the kind volunteer made my wristband, I said in a pleading tone “Please don’t let the sex say male—I am a girl!” I’d been to a hospital recently since then, and the nurse there had put it upon herself to assume I was a male. I could go on and on about that, but that’s for another time. I was there to get my face feminized and my wristband was NOT going to say male. Not allowed.

I then went over to the corresponding pre-op room, with my correctly female gendered wrist band thank you VERY much, and the volunteer there took me to the makeshift changing rooms, along with a key to a locker. I was instructed to strip down behind the dressing curtain, change into the hospital gowns, and store my personal belongings in the locker.

Now, as a transgender female, whenever I hear the words ‘dressing room, bathroom, strip down, or take all your clothes off’, I go into hyper defensive mode. I needed to take off everything?! Even the delicate article of clothing that hides my biggest shame? (Cis translation: my underwear. Panties. Whatever ya call em). I was completely naked; the only thing separating me from showing the whole pre op room my genital situation was a heavy linen curtain. I called my mom in to tie up the back of my dress (god bless her), finished putting on the dress, put slippers on, put on a hairnet, and bam! I was one girl lookin’ great for surgery. I was escorted into the sitting room. I waited until a nurse came to get my final vitals and ask me about my weight, height, and last foods/meds consumed. I was sitting in a chair in an unflattering, frumpy mint hospital gown, wearing nothing underneath. My junk hadn’t been free like that since 2015. On top of all of this, that this was when I started the Holy-Shit-I’m-Getting-Surgery thought process.

Between not being able to cover my body parts properly and waiting in a poorly lit room to be cut open, needless to say the panic was mounting. For a time I looked around at all the people being wheeled off to surgery and having their blood checked; then I thought holy shit, that’s gonna be me soon! And, because my insecurities always come out at the most perfect times, I was looking around wondering what gender people thought I was. I was wearing a gender neutral frumpy dress and my long brown hair was sloppily tucked into the hairnet. In my mind, every person that looked at me saw a boy. Don’t get me wrong, I know I am a woman; but pre surgery, when I couldn’t wear makeup or hair or femme outfits, I was mistaken for a male.

Uhhh, that’s wrong.

My insecurities were confirmed when a nurse called me for a final pre-surgery questioning, and she continually referred to me as he-she. No, not in the offensive way that you are thinking, what I mean is that when talking to other nurses, she would say things like "Oh yeah—I’m almost done with hi—uh her, he—she is just about to go into pre-op procedures.”

Yeah. I got that for the past two years. Well meaning people who do correct themselves and respect my identity, but nonetheless, through no fault of their own, subconsciously assign me as male. And it kills me all the same.

I was then ushered into the outside of my surgery room. There I met with the anesthesiologist, my surgeon, the main nurse helping in the surgery, etc. They all reassured me and told me the surgery is going to go amazing, and that I’d be okay. My surgeon assured me that he preforms a lot of these surgeries, and everything would be alright. Well, so much for reassuring me. I was a nervous, fidgety mess. I was about to be cut open for god sakes! My brow bone was literally about to be shaved! I consulted with my anesthesiologist about how panicked I was, and he assured me that he was gonna give me the good stuff to really make me loopy.

One of the nurses participating in my surgery came into the room, and told my mom and I that they were all ready and set up for me to go in. I tearfully hugged my mom goodbye, and told her to busy herself with her various friends while I was in surgery so she wouldn’t panic. I kissed her and she told me how brave she thought I was as I walked away with the nurse. The first thing the nurse mentioned to me is how tall I am (hey, short people: saying I’m tall is neither a compliment nor an insult. It’s just a fucking statement. You don’t have to acknowledge it. I promise you’ll be fine.) Obviously this annoyed me, and distracted me from my nervousness for a split second. Then, I was ushered into a Grey’s Anatomy-esque Operating Room (yes, I know that reference makes me basic) which shocked me back into nervousness. Holy shit. I’m getting operated on. What did I get myself into?

In retrospect, what happens next was a healthy distraction from my mind automatically thinking the worst results of my surgery. And it also realigned why I needed this surgery for MY own peace of mind. All of the operators in the room were calling me “he,” and then hastily (or not so hastily, I remember you bitches) correct themselves. I went immediately into self deprecation mode. Well yeah they misgender me because I’m not wearing anything indicating I’m female. I combatted that thought with a sense of defeat and pure frustration; even operators that are operating on someone who is getting FACIAL FEMINIZATION SURGERY wouldn’t put in the effort to try and be respectful of my identity. And then I had one final thought: with this surgery, I can go outside without trying so hard to preform ‘female’ and I can still be respected and identified naturally as a girl! That was my original goal! Let’s fucking do this!

My anesthesiologist put the IV in, and remarked that I was going to be drowsy in about five seconds. I didn’t even have time to think, and then bam. All the tension left my body. I was suddenly floating on a cloud and everything was beautiful. The assistant anesthesiologist put my oxygen mask on and said “Okay, let’s start putting him out.”

Suddenly my frustration of being misgendered there of all places was mixed with my razor sharp focus to get into this surgery and complete it. Amidst the effects of an inhibition-lowering drug, I took off my mask and yelled to the room: “She, Her, HERS! She, her herrrrrrrr-“

—-

I woke up in what felt like two minutes after being put out. I was still tremendously high from the weaning anesthesia. I felt blissful and absolutely at peace. I did it! And no pain! (just wait, Sami). The nurse said a bunch of soothing shit that went over my head. I toned her out and basked in the accomplishment. I had booked this surgery all the way back in October, and waited for it to be preformed on April 9th, 2018. I moved away from my family in the states so I could work my ass off and save for this surgery.

I’m on the other side. I can now be free! And be more Samantha than ever!

-Samantha Kru 🤠👽💀

(P.S… I will post my post ffs experience, from waking up to a month later, as soon as I can! This is long enough on its own! Haha)

[even-losers-can-win]

I know this will sound annoying and much like whining, but please bear with me for a while cause I need to vent this out my chest and this is the only social media in which no one in my family is in here or interested so they won’t come to judge me or anything.

This is my dog: Tufão.

He’s a Lhasa Apso that grew more than what’s supposed to and weigh almost the double of the normal because of that (don’t be mistaken, he’s fat, his fur covers it).

Before you go whining or thinking “Oh no, this one of those posts to save a dog’s life cause he’s sick or something” or “Omg he died or it’s about to die, isn’t he?”, it’s none of that. This is a final post to him, but it’s complicated matter, so please just read if you do like to understand.

He wasn’t ours in the beginning. My older aunt’s dog just had given birth and she wanted for each sister of her to have one puppy. My mother didn’t want any of them cause they were all white and white get’s dirty easily (yes, that was my mother logic) and also because our house is small, so she thought there wouldn’t be space for them. So my family didn’t get a puppy, but my younger aunt did, she got him that was the only one completely brown with the white paws.

When she choose him, she posted a picture which was read “my little big fur!”. “Fur” can be translated to “Tufo”, so you probably guessed right, his name literally means “big fur”, but the origin was because there was a novela (you guys have no word for it, so I’m leaving like this, but it’s a type of tv show) at the time that just had ended that the main character was nicknamed “Tufão” and everyone thought she meant that was his name. My aunt decided to go with it and let the name be.fur”, but the origin was because there was a novela (you guys have no word for it, so I’m leaving like this, but it’s a type of tv show) at the time that just had ended that the main character was nicknamed “Tufão” and everyone thought she meant that was his name. My aunt decided to go with it and let the name be.novela (you guys have no word for it, so I’m leaving like this, but it’s a type of tv show) at the time that just had ended that the main character was nicknamed “Tufão” and everyone thought she meant that was his name. My aunt decided to go with it and let the name be.

Jumping a few years later, we found out he absolutely hated to be alone. My sister was in the recovery of an operation and I wasn’t handing to study, take care of the house and her, so mom called grandma to be there. At the time my aunt wasn’t going home every day, but I don’t remember why, which resulted in him being alone for two days before grandma went back to check on him.

And then she found out he made a hell of a mess honoring his name that can also be translated as “hurricane”. After that, we managed to make grandma go home every day so he wouldn’t destroy anything else or be alone for more than a few hours.

My aunt got married. She went to live away from the city for the sake of my newly-uncle work and their marriage (her work had a bus that coincidentally left the town to go there, so it wasn’t a problem major because of that… Except for one.

Tufão couldn’t go. He gets sick in cars and it’s a long trip, they couldn’t take him, or bring him to visit. And since grandma would live alone and she was used to having my aunt with her, it was also a way to prevent her to getting ill. So he stayed at his house with grandma that loved him like a son (which he called him “my little boy!”).

And things were fine, sometimes (when grandma was on a trip or treatment of anything) he would stay at home and go back. it was hard for the first times to not let him not get sad for her absence and to know where to relief himself.

Until the day he couldn’t.

Grandma fell. There was no one at her home at the time, so no one is sure if was Tufão that made her fall by staying too close (he does that when he wants attention) and she tripped on him, or if she really fall while bathing like she says she did. Either way, grandma got sick and hurt her back, she had to completely rest (grandma does not stop doing things unless it’s to watch novela or the church programs), which resulted in him going at our home so we could take care of him until she recovered.fall while bathing like she says she did. Either way, grandma got sick and hurt her back, she had to completely rest (grandma does not stop doing things unless it’s to watch novela or the church programs), which resulted in him going at our home so we could take care of him until she recovered.

Grandma’s recovery was slow (she’s 100% better and going around like always thankfully), so he had to adapt to our home. We got stairs, we got more places to walk, explore and for him to hide when he did something wrong. He didn’t know how to ask he wanted to take a walk to relief himself, he still doesn’t know how to open doors and just like a cat he hates doors closed (sometimes he scratches the door until we open just to leave it open and leave), it took a while from him to understand that the neighbors wasn’t invading our home when they were in their garage, to understand that the kids wanted to play with him (to be fair, he doesn’t get very well that to this day), but eventually we managed it all. We found out his habit to lick himself was actually allergies. He’s an allergic dog. Crap, Tufão you belong to common people who doesn’t have much money, you were not supposed to have allergies, that’s for fancy rich dogs. But ok, he have allergy to dog shampoos, perfumes, lotions, his own food- yeah, he have allergy to his own food, but it was fine because we got him the anti-allergic ones (made with fish, not meat), got you the medicine so you would stop licking and scratch yourself until it hurt (you didn’t stop, but hey, we tried).

After almost a year, he was ready to go back to grandmas. She was well and he loves her very much.

Then my cousin got pregnant. At 18. Of twins. Then their routine changed all again, grandma was the one helping her to go to the appointments, to keep her in check and giving psychologic support since I live far to give properly as a daily basis. And the moment grandma were more away than at home, we knew Tufão was to stay with us.

Not that he minded. We are a family of 6 (+1, My brother girlfriend is already part of the family even if they were to break up), so means lots of pats, walks, scratches, and also someone around him (and when wasn’t us, our neighbor would do, his youngest son grew up with Tufão there so he loves him too… Oh God, I just thought about that, crap… no… ugh, i should just go on before I started crying yet again). So he likes being at home, and he loves when aunt, grandma and whoever comes to visit (unless you come with the twins, then he gets jealous that they steal the attention)

And here is the major problem.

My older sister has a mental illness just like I do, but aside depression and anxiety in common, she also has OCD, and a few others she never opened it to us. We fight a lot and try to make even a lot cause my way to deal it’s opposite to hers and that ends up in she hurting me most of the times. But that’s not about me, this is about her need for attention and lack of social links because she’s both introvert and anti-social, which means that aside from family, she have no friends. So when we are busy and doing our things, she went to the dog.

You may think “but that’s ok, it’s therapy!” but it wasn’t. At all.

She forces him to stay with her, she holds him wrong and don’t let people correct her, she keeps trying to make him stay around her even when he wants to do something else, if he get’s too annoyed and tries to bite her, she would scream and hit him once to tell he’s wrong, and of course, because of her insistence, Tufão doesn’t like her.

So she forces him to like her.

Which doesn’t work? When she gets those moments it goes hell, she simply doesn’t stop, even if I and my brothers ask her to stop, she doesn’t, she doesn’t listen to me, or my parents, to anyone but herself. She tries to justify herself and put blame on others, saying he just dislike her because the way we act when she goes after him and maybe she’s right at some points, but she needs to listen…

The last months with him there and she acting like that resulted in stress to him and us, he already had attacked us in defense thinking it was her, she would wake us in the middle of the night to mess with him, so we put him to sleep in our beds, which was good for both, he likes to be close and she left him alone… for a few months. I didn’t believe the first time I woke up to him barking at her to leave him alone while she was under the bed to get him cause he went to the other side or the time I let him sleep on the bed and she woke me up to try to get him…

Things were not going well, instead, she was getting more annoying by days, my mother already had told she would give him back if she didn’t stop. She didn’t. So last Sunday she took her decision.

Until Monday I didn’t know, and at first it was fine, he was going back to his home how it was planned, it was sad he had to leave for something that wasn’t his fault, but he would still be with family and someone he loves…

Then night came.

At night mother told me he would be leaving, but not to grandma. With the twins still so young (they are 1 y/o and 5 months)and my aunt with back troubles (she’s waiting for the operation), grandma is helping my cousin to look after them and also to get a job, while the twins are in school they get sick easily because of the contact with other children, so they need almost constant care. When grandma isn’t there, she’s after her own health, she’s almost 80, so she needs to look after it. My younger aunt (the original and first owner) still lives out town, and as much he would help her with the depression, she goes to work early and get back late, he would be alone for too long…

The result? he’s going to be given away to a friend of Grandma.

And that broke me apart. because he gonna need to adapt it all again, he needs to learn and understand the new owners, he gonna need to understand that no, he’s not going back to his other house. My grandma’s friends live near her, but I can’t just go and be like “Hey there, I came to visit your dog”. Mom tries to comfort me saying we can get Tufão on weekends once in awhile, but I don’t really think that’s going to happen… Besides, it would be harder for him, cause he would believe he was back and then to leave again…

I’ve been crying from the moment I woke up top the moment I went to sleep while looking you sleep under the bed, having no idea those were your last days with us. Today is the day I’m going home and you won’t be there to greet me. I’m trying to finish writing this, but I have to stop almost all the time to cry.

I would have been fine by any other reason if you left by going back to grandma, to aunt, or even that you were going to leave for something like if you didn’t adapted to us… but the truth is that you’re suffering the consequences for someone else and it hurts to know how much you’ll be sad… It hurts to know there’s no shit I can do about it...

For now, all I wish it’s that your new owner loves you as much as we did.

I hope they walk you around and let people pet you. I hope they understand that you don’t know how to play with other dogs cause you didn’t understand how to do that. I hope they remember you’re allergic and that they can’t give you the chicken you love even if you bark at them non-stop, that they give you apples and carrots you love. I hope they soon learn you like but scratches, and that you’ll scratch yourself in any place you find if no one does. I hope they understand that your game it’s about us trying to get your toy and that you’ll most likely destroy it by the first opportunity. That you like to sleep on hoodies and coats not because it’s warm, but because there’s our smell. I want them to wake up when you cry or whine while sleeping cause you have a nightmare. that you like to sleep with us because you like company way too much, but you need to learn when you’re starting to smell so you sleep on your blankets again. I hope they get that you’ll bark at any sound at the door or if anyone starts screaming, that he’s still under stress so if you try to get him while he’s sleeping he's mostly likely to try to give a warning bite. That he’s fat so he can’t go on bed and couch easily and you need to keep asking him to go on or he gives up. I hope they understand you hate closed doors and never figured out how to open them using your head when they are open.I hope they remember to keep you always with your clothes because you don’t understand that scratching and licking don't help your allergies. I hope they get that you’ll suffer a lot in the first moment because you’ll probably feel like you’re being abandoned when the truth is that this is the last thing I wish we had to do was to give you away.

Thank you for being the great dog you are with all your flaws, they were fun too despite everything. Thank you for helping me to deal with depression and anxiety when they come for me just by letting me caress you, it will be a lot harder without you there, but hopefully, your new family will be loving and give you just as much love… for coming to my arms when I got home even if you complained I was holding you up 5 seconds later. Thank you fro giving me laughs despite the void I felt inside at times...

Obrigado por ser meu bichinho por esses dois anos Tufão.

PS: all the pictures were taken from the last 3 months, I couldn’t bring myself to look out for more.

UPDATE:

After two days my father went back home from his business trip and he noticed how down and depressed I was for him leaving and was able to convince my mother that is wasn’t right to send him away (and that it was hurting more than helpign) and talk out with my sister.

The rule is “when he gets any more stressed than he already is, he leaves for his own good.” Aunt is trying to see if there’s any ways he could go back at grandma’s since due to work she’s been living there for a while.

So he’s back at home. My older sister had been working on get to his liking and trying to not trouble or stress him anymore...

And for some odd reason, now he’s fond of my bed and took as his own.

In any ways, for now he get’s to stay, and even if the rule it’sn’t about “ifs” but “when”, it’s good to have our big fur ball at home <3