#it’s really fun working at huge resolutions

[thedawner]

A large Dragonborn Tav x Emperor WIP that I might not finish anytime soon

[thethingything]

getting other alters to vote in our new year's resolutions polls and a huge portion of them have all independently decided that voting to make me spend at least 104 hours on one drawing over the course of the year is a hilarious idea

[medlarmeadows]

a close streamer friend gaming with charlie or doing a ylyl stream with him?? but secretly in love with him? and the chat picks up on it and they end up trending on twitter with their ship name???? which kinda forces the two of them to confront and talk about their feelings???

only if you want to write this, of course <3 i love charlie i cannot get enough of your writing

Thank you for the request and your kind words anon! This was so fun to write and really is a feel good fluffy fic. I hope this piece is up to your expectations :)

-

you smile you snooze (i do, when i’m with you)

cc!Charlie Slimecicle x streamer!reader

Synopsis: You Laugh You Lose turns out to be a lot harder when Charlie lights up your life with every smile.

Warning(s): light swearing.

Word count: 1.4k

masterlist || requests are open!

“Okay, enough! We need to up the stakes.”

You raise an eyebrow at your good friend, Charlie, who sits by your side in his own office chair. The both of you have headphones on, the sound of a submitted funny video streaming through them.

“What do you mean?” you feign confidence, switching your gaze between Charlie and the camera. “The stakes are pretty high at the moment, I mean, we both have one heart left.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the one heart on each of your corners of the OBS scene.

“Yeah, for the past thirty minutes,” he argues. “We need to up the ante! More viewership! Mo-ney.”

He throws out the last parts jokingly, making you roll your eyes and bite your lips to keep yourself from laughing.

Giving in, because you always do, you ask, “So, what do you suggest?”

Charlie snaps his fingers towards the audience.

“Instead of You Laugh You Lose, we’re now playing,” he pauses dramatically, “You Smile You Snooze!”

True to your job as a streamer, you insert your own flavour of entertainment by slumping down in your chair exasperatedly.

“Charlie,” you whine, “that’s going to be so hard.”

“Exactly why we’re going to do it,” he insists, staring back at you for your confirmation.

You grumble and glare at him briefly before glancing at chat, curious to see what their opinions were:

yes, up the stakes! it was getting boring anyways we’ll see who’s the best at not smiling i bet y/n’s gonna lose y/n can’t keep her smiles to herself! mods run a poll? have you seen how y/n looks at charlie? she’ll lose immediately she’s a goner, she smiles whenever she looks at Charlie

You blink hard. Certain chat messages sear into your corneas.

Were you that obvious?

Glancing back at Charlie, you realise that he’s still staring at you, patiently waiting for your response. You feel your cheeks warm, even though you’re certain that he hasn’t read the chat yet.

Not being able to smile at your good friend turned crush was going to be a huge struggle for you.

You sigh.

Goddamnit, you were going to lose, but anything for the views, right?

“Fine,” you answer resolutely. “You Smile You Snooze it is!”

And so, the two of you resume the media playlist with the new challenge of not smiling. The submitted videos turned out to not be that challenging to stay poker-faced at, but Charlie’s quips would often tickle your funny bone in a way that had you breathing in slowly to keep your poker face.

Curse Charlie and his good humour.

The two of you made it through a good fifteen minutes without anything crazy happening, until someone submits an edit of the YLYL stream.

“What’s this? You guys are fast,” comments Charlie.

“This better not be an embarrassing one,” you add, biting your lower lip to prepare yourself for the worse.

The edit gets straight to the point, compiling all the moments from the stream thus far of you smiling at Charlie. Heartwarming music floods your ears, barely piercing through the sudden blood rushing through your eardrums.

Panicked, your eyes glance at chat before you can stop yourself:

whoever made that is doing the Lord’s work isn’t that a little against their boundaries? what’s their duo name? no shipping guys! aw they’re actually really cute wish someone would look at me the way y/n looks at charlie

Charlie’s voice interrupts your reading, jolting you slightly:

“Dude, we should’ve done You Smile You Snooze earlier,” he snorts. “You would’ve lost so bad from the beginning.”

You turn your head to look at Charlie with wide eyes, thoughts reeling about whether he was teasing for the sake of teasing or if he was beginning to catch on to you, when you notice the expression on his face.

The way his eyes crinkle a little. The way the corners of his mouth are lifted.

He’s smiling.

“YOU’RE SMILING!” you yell at him, pointing a finger at him.

His expression turns shocked at your outburst, before he leans back in his chair in defeat.

“Damnit,” he says, although he doesn’t sound all that upset about the loss.

Meanwhile, you get out of your chair and start a victory dance for yourself, losing yourself in the euphoria of winning the YLYL stream.

You miss the fond smile that rises back on Charlie’s face as he gazes at you.

-

“Yo, we’re trending on Twitter,” Charlie says in between bites.

It’s been two hours since the YLYL stream. You’re still at Charlie’s place because he insisted that the two of you should just have dinner and hang out together while you’re there. You didn't object.

“We are?” you ask curiously, scooting closer to Charlie to look at his phone screen.

“Mm,” he replies nonchalantly, clicking on a post and passing the phone to you. “We even have a ship name now.”

“What?”

Your eyes bulge from your sockets and you stare at Charlie. He shrugs, too calm and collected for your racing heart, and gestures for you to have a look at the tweet he pulled up.

It begins with a hashtag of your ship name, followed by “get you a duo that smiles at each other the way charlie and y/n smile at each other”. Below that was a side-by-side comparison of two screenshots from the YLYL stream, one of you smiling at Charlie while he wasn’t looking, and vice versa.

Your eyes glance back and forth between the phone screen and Charlie’s expression. While your brain is working a hundred miles an hour to come up with some sort of damage control, Charlie looks relaxed, almost satisfied or relieved.

“I – We – ” your words stutter as you struggle to focus on a topic. When you look back at Charlie, you scoot yourself a little away from him, nerves suddenly taking over from the proximity and the tweet.

Finally, you settle on accusation:

“Why are you so calm?”

“I mean,” Charlie reaches for another piece of fried chicken, “it’s no big deal. We’re friends. Let the chat think what they want to think. Unless… ”

He trails off, taking a bite of his chicken and chewing too slowly for it not to be deliberate.

“Unless what?” you push. You’re sure you look a little frazzled, still embarrassed and shocked by the post and the emergence of a ship name.

Charlie swallows before leaning closer, closing the gap that you created, saying:

“Unless you actually like me.”

You stare at him. It feels as though something in your brain has short circuited as you register his statement. As you juggle around the possible answers you could give and the potential situations they could create.

You know your face is turning red, what with how your cheeks are warming and how fast your heart is racing, so you shove Charlie’s shoulder a little first, unable to give an actual answer yet.

Letting you push him, he leans back, away from you, a smile lifting on his face.

“It’s okay if you do. I like you too.”

You stare again, your mouth opening and closing like a goldfish as you try to come up with something intelligible to say.

“Huh?”

Charlie is laughing now, full-bellied, head thrown back. At his response, you bristle a little, overthinking his words.

“Wait,” you say nervously. “Do you actually like me?”

You fiddle with his phone, dropping your eyes to the screen to examine the tweet again. Studying the screenshots, you can’t help but think that the kind of smile Charlie wore was the same one you had whenever you looked at him.

The phone is gently pried from your grip and placed face down on the table, forcing you to look at its owner. Instead of the humour that filled his eyes, Charlie now looks at you with utmost sincerity.

“I’m being serious. I like you.”

Staring into Charlie’s eyes, taking in the face of the man that made you smile in every situation, you find yourself being honest:

“I like you too.”

His eyes brighten, and the smile appears on his face again. The same smile that he wore in the screenshot, you realise. His smile is infectious, causing your lips to lift into a wide smile that reaches your eyes.

“Guess we’re both snoozing and losing today,” you quip, sending Charlie into a fit of chuckles before he’s pulling you close to him.

When Charlie retweets the aforementioned tweet, Twitter goes nuts for days.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Cute Spider Society Headcanons:

[a long post of random headcanons about the fun stuff at Spider Society HQ - all cool things for your Spidersona to do]

There's absolutely regular talent shows and battles of the band every quarter or so.

Spider-people usually aren't the most popular back home on their Earth's, so Miguel permits having shows and activities like this so Spider-people can bond and relieve stress between Canon Events

Hobie has won multiple times - His and Gwen's band won last quarter, BUT they don't always win. MetroSpider is another past winner.

The rule is Spider-members only. But if your powers help your music, you can use them (ie, Hobie can play guitar without an amp-)

Training is a HUGE thing.

And it's mandatory even between missions. Time trails, Web strength testing, problem resolution training, weekly classes - It's a lot.

Your training schedule isn't always the same, and your classes are determined by your skill, specific powers, and universe

Money isn't used on campus. It's banned actually, and mostly useless when everyone is from a universe with a different exchange rate, political climate, tender etc.

Instead, The main currency is based on a points system connected to training/missions.

The more missions you do, or the more you train (therefore making you a better hero to your universe), the more points you earn

Things like the cafeteria and dorms are completely free. But points can be used to earn perks like suit upgrades, or things from the commissary

The Commissary is a store on campus where you can buy authorized items from other Earth's.

They have everything from training materials like mechanical webbing - with different properties/effects - to leisure things like cool video games from Margo's world or music from other time eras, vintage things from old universes, etc

Points can also be used for a number of other stuff such as:

Extra jumps on your watch. The more missions you do, the more jumps you can buy, allowing you to go to other universes on your off time (to hang with friends)

Suit Upgrades. Your suit is surveyed and upgraded for free at joining, and it gets upgraded with every class you gain (C Class -> B Class -> A Class -> etc.)

However, you can use points to upgrade or even just redesign your suit. There is a Suit Center where fashionable and genius Spider-people will help you design and adjust your suit based on your universe and villains

There's support groups, a lot centered around Canon Events.

For teens and young Spider-people there's an Educational Program

It can be done part-time with active mission work or full-time on campus

You train in multiversal research, Spider genetics, and other technology such as Doc Ock technology and Green Goblin biology

You can be offered a job on campus after completion - Margo is a graduate of this

If your participate in Educational Program, Lyla will be your mentor and you'll report to her

Educational students live in separate dorms, and the program is kinda intense, but VERY fun

There are different focuses in the program

Spider-Geneticists have a short residency after, they help take Spider vitals and oversee Training

You can also specialise in Spider-medicine - in which you work in the Infirmary

There are some CRAZY (secret) Parties all over the Spider-verse.

Disco-Spider loves a good party. Her and Pavi through insane ragers, a new one in a different universe everytime

Miguel has no idea

But partying on the walls and ceiling while Spider-people play super-human live shows in the world's craziest mosh-pit -

Spider-parties hit different.

It's one of the only time everyone is unmasked around each other

There's a really loose dress code

You DO NOT have to wear your suit 24/7. What is someone gonna do, rat you out in your universe?

Everyone is in their suit for ATSV cause Miguel asked them to be completely professional that day (as an intimidation tactic)

That's why Jess, Gwen, Peter, and Hobie are all fine showing their faces as soon as they get to campus.

If anything it's usually seen as weird to be wearing your mask all the time

Casual clothing is allowed. Skirts and dresses without anything underneath aren't allowed (you'll be upsidedown.)

You're expected to have two suits (one main, one spare - you get these at joining) for missions and a separate training outfit for your classes

There's super sports teams

Spidey Football (European not American) expands the rules to all four walls with a ball engineered to stick like Spidey-people do

Track & Swing Team - which Pavitr is a star member of

A small swim-and-dive team for the swimmers, and a small Roller Derby league for the skaters

Pavitr is also a star on the gymnastics team

There's also things like ballet groups, though Gwen doesn't take part

There's a REALLY GOOD Glee club. Spider-strength gives some crazy lung-capacity.

Disco is on the Glee club, and they take it very seriously

Living on campus doesn't threaten your home verse - you'll still be on call!

Lyla monitors all universes for anamolies - sending Anamoly Teams of 2-6

However if your universe experiences a non-anamoly, your watch will be pinged for a mandatory report, and you'll be sent to your universe to handle it

As such, your watch is like a doctor's pager. You can be called for anamolies or your universe at any time (If you're an active member in your universe, living on Society Campus, or have a contact negotiated for that. Class S members like Hobie can negotiate to be Selective Active members)

There's a little underground Spider-market

If you ask Hobie, he can definitely hack your watch for you.

If your Electro has been beating your ass, you can get your hands on electro-resistant webbing without spending points.

The Society has a small group of people willing to trade you for anything you've got, or even just help you out for the hell of it.

You just have to know where and who to ask

There's a couple Spideys that don't pay electric because someone hooked them up with a super clean Futuristic generator

MJ's, Black Cats, Osborns, and Deadpools are allowed on campus with clearance, a daypass, and a chaperone (their Spidey)

Only for short periods, or if they're super injured. An MJ might pop in when Peter forgets his lunch.

Aunt Mays are not.

It's considered very rude to call them by their 'base names' - ie. calling MJs 'Mary-Janes' or calling Black Cats 'Felicias'

Not all MJs are Mary-Janes

Though, using the term 'a Parker' is common on campus to refer to large Peter Parker population

Roughly 45-50% of the people on campus are named Peter.

There's other 'groups' - such as 'Not-Parkers' (Non-Peter iterations like Pavitr), and 'Duplicates' (Hobie Brown, Gwen Stacy, MJs, Felicia Hardy NightSpider etc)

Though calling them these things are way less common or accepted than calling someone a Parker ('Not-Parker'is neutral. 'Duplicate' is offensive)

[the-boy-meets-evil]

today of all days | vernon

(the lull of the new year never really comes for you, which is fine. it's better to be busy. this year, you're a little too busy planning something else to worry much about valentine's day. It's never been your favorite holiday anyway. but, could your boyfriend have forgotten in entirely?)

pairing: vernon x afab!reader genre: est. relationship, non-idol!au | smut, slight angst, fluff rating: explicit, minors DNI word count: ~4.6k warnings: mentions of food, there's a little angst, but it's mostly miscommunication, kissing, oral sex (m & f receiving), fingering, marking, unprotected sex (don't do this without talking about it), multiple orgasms, slight overstimulation, i think that's it

a/n: happy valentine's day to the always wonderful, absolutely amazing @wonwussy 💕 it's been so much fun to get to write this for you. i hope you enjoy it! this is part of @svthub's cupid for you valentine's exchange organized by my bby @wongyuseokie (who is very amazing and also made the banner & divider). happy valentine's (and carat day)!

There’s usually kind of a lull at the beginning of the new year. Like everyone decides that after the holidays, you’re due for a break. People try to work on their resolutions, businesses expect to see the drop off in their sales. Everything just feels more peaceful. It’s that calm before the storm when everything picks up again. 

Not for you, though. At least not this year. February brings Valentine’s Day and your boyfriend’s birthday. You don’t really care that much about the former. It’s nice to have someone to celebrate with, and you’re sure the two of you will do something, but it’s nothing crazy. As long as you have him and a quiet night in, you’re good. It’s the latter of the two things that’s keeping an otherwise peaceful time from being peaceful. 

Here’s the thing. Vernon isn’t one to make a big deal of his birthday, never has been. He feels similar to the way you feel about Valentine’s Day. He likes to do something to mark the passing of time, definitely enjoys the presents, but doesn’t feel the need for it to be some huge thing. It’s a little difficult, too, because he’s got another friend with the same birthday. For the years that they’ve been friends, they’ve always tried to work it around each other. Seokmin is a year older and feels a little more strongly about birthdays as something that should be celebrated. Somehow, that led to this year. A coordinated birthday for the two of them with all their friends there to celebrate the both of them. Two different cakes, two different contributions to the menu, and twice as many people to coordinate with. 

To say it’s been a bit of a headache is an understatement.

You love Vernon. He’s been your person for over two years and you wouldn’t trade him for the world. You also love to plan things for other people as a way to show them how much you care. This has just been a bigger undertaking than you imagined. Especially when you have to keep the party under wraps. Vernon knows you’re doing something with a group of friends. He thinks it’s only a small group. But, he’ll appreciate it all the same. Just like he seems to appreciate everything that you do. 

“Babe,” Vernon calls from the living room. He’s in the middle of gaming with Wonwoo, connected by their headsets.

“Yeah?” you answer.

“Wonwoo says that I’m gonna get in trouble for not planning some big thing for Valentine’s,” Vernon tells you.

You can hear the protests from Vernon even through the headset, which makes you chuckle. “As long as we get to cook something together and have a night in, I’m good.” 

“See?” Vernon says triumphantly. There’s a pause where Wonwoo must be asking something. “Oh, yeah, I’m definitely getting a gift.” 

“What?” you ask with clear surprise. Gifts were not part of the plan for this year.

“It’s nothing big, but I’ve got the perfect idea,” Vernon says with a familiar look of mischief. 

“Oh no, no you are not,” you counter. He bursts out in a cackle. “Vernon, you are not getting strawberry flavored condoms for Valentine’s Day. We don’t even use condoms.” 

The laugh through Vernon’s headset is just as loud. You would probably be embarrassed if it was anyone else, but Wonwoo has been in both of your lives long enough that most barriers have been erased. 

“No, don’t worry, that wasn’t actually it. I have a plan,” Vernon says and you watch him suspiciously. “Promise!”

You decide to let it lie for the time being. At least partly, because you don’t want to keep standing there while he’s playing video games. Partly because you knew it meant he would be distracted enough that you could sneak off to the bedroom to make a call about the party. 

Jeonghan had not been your first choice for a party planning committee because sometimes it’s hard to get an actual thought out of him. You’re not always sure what he’s thinking. But, he’s Seokmin’s best friend and one of the best schemers you know. Thankfully, these days he really only uses his talents for good. Well, it would be thankfully if you didn’t harbor a grudge over a prank he played when you first met. 

Miraculously, Jeonghan is also free and willing to do some final planning. It’s that stage where the final group of friends get clued in. Some friends, who shall remain nameless, had to find out much closer to the day. They just couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret. You’re actually impressed that you’ve managed to keep it from Vernon and Seokmin. You confirm that Vernon doesn’t know. He would have absolutely told you. Jeonghan also confirms that Seokmin doesn’t know because he can’t keep a secret either. 

When you wander back out into the living room, Vernon is still very engrossed in his game. You kiss the top of his head, watch the small smile with his eyes trained on the screen, and plop down at the other end of the couch. You prop your computer on your lap and reach for your headphones when Vernon turns to you between matches.

“Wanna order in for dinner?” he asks and you smile.

“Oh from that place around the corner?” you suggest. Vernon rolls his eyes without any real annoyance. It’s your favorite place.

“Whatever you want, babe,” he says and turns back to the game.

It’s easy, not only because you like it, but also since you know what he orders there. He’s kind of a creature of habit. Maybe you are too, since you always want to order from the same place. It’ll give you a chance to watch a few things while waiting as well as giving Vernon the chance to keep playing with Wonwoo. The gaming is always seamless for them after years of working together. 

When the food arrives, Vernon finishes his last game so that he can eat with you. It’s one of the things you love about him. He’s so thoughtful with things like that. When you first moved in with him, you were a little worried. You had never lived with a partner and weren’t sure how to navigate it. As it turns out, with the right person, it’s pretty easy. You leave each other to do your own things and then come together after.

“You’re sure you’re okay with a quiet Valentine’s Day?” he asks when you curl into him after dinner.

“It’s a little late if I’m not considering it’s in two days,” you say with a light laugh.

“I’m being serious,” he says. 

“I’m good, Vernon. I’ve got you and we’re going to make something together,” you say.

“I promise not to burn down the kitchen,” he assures you.

“You’ve been getting a lot better,” you say. “Plus, we also have dinner this weekend for your birthday.” 

“We don’t really have to do anything crazy for my birthday, you know. It’s so close to Valentine’s Day and…” Vernon trails off before you press a kiss to his lips.

“I love to celebrate your birthday. It’s another year of you and everyone should be thankful for that,” you say. 

Valentine’s morning comes bright and early. Sun streams through the cracks in your shades. Not quite enough to wake you up, but enough for you to know that it’s morning. You smile and stretch out, thinking it’s probably earlier than you need to be up. As you’re considering waking Vernon up to celebrate the day when you register an emptiness.

You’re the only one in the bed. 

You open your eyes and confirm what you already knew. Vernon isn’t in bed with you. The door to the bathroom is open and the light is off, so he’s not in there either. Although you prefer to lay in bed to wake up, curiosity gets the better of you and propels you out of bed to the living room. The entire apartment is quiet, still. Well, still apart from your cat that’s weaving between your legs. He doesn’t seem hungry, so you think he’s just wondering what you’re doing. It’s odd that he would have left the apartment so early in the morning. 

Padding back to the bedroom, you find your phone on the nightstand, plugged in like it always is. When you unlock it, you have a myriad of messages and notifications. Conspicuously absent, though, is a message from your boyfriend. There’s nothing to tell you where he is or went or could be. Which is odd, yes, but mostly it just makes you a little irritated. Sure, you don’t ever want to make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. It’s plenty to spend the day with someone you love that loves you back. 

Vernon can be a little spacy at times. It’s not his best quality, but it’s also impossibly endearing. Maybe it’s because you know how much he’s thinking about when he’s got that look like he’s never had a thought in his life. It also makes him really chill, which matches you well. He doesn’t always have to be going or doing something. But, he’ll just as happily go out and be your shield because he’s much more of a people person than you are. 

All this to say, there’s part of you that wonders if the holiday just slipped his mind. It’s not like it’s a big deal, you said as much to him. But, you still expect something. Even if it’s just to know where he is so early in the morning. You hate that you wonder if he forgot because you trust Vernon with your life. He can get distracted sometimes. One time, he got so caught up in a project that he entirely forgot dinner plans with his friends. 

The mature thing to do would be to send him a text and ask where he is or even to wish him a happy Valentine’s Day. You’re not feeling especially mature, though. And you feel very justified in that annoyance because he’s the one that left early. He should be the one to let you know where he is. It should not be on you.

Trying to push the thoughts of Vernon out of your mind, you get ready for the day. Opt to leave earlier so you can buy yourself something to eat and some coffee on the way. By the time you reach work, you’re even more irritated rather than calmer. Every radio station was playing love songs that fit the genre. Every host seems to want to know what people’s plans are for the day. The coffee shop by your office was decorated in red, white, and pink hearts with all sorts of specials for the day. When you head into the office, it only gets worse. People have flowers on their desks, are exchanging happy wishes, talking about how they can’t wait to get out of work for their plans. Some people are spending it with partners, others are spending it with friends. Either way, everyone seems to have plans that are better than whatever will be waiting when you get home. Why did Vernon have to pick today of all days to be forgetful? 

Your work best friend stops by your desk with the typical cup of coffee mid morning and stops in his tracks when he senses your mood.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Minho asks. 

“Wow, hello to you too,” you respond when you take the coffee from him.

“You seem like you’re in a bad mood,” he says. 

“Maybe I am,” you answer. 

“But, it’s Valentine’s Day and you have, like, the most perfect boyfriend. What’s there to be mad about?” he asks. 

“Can’t be the most perfect boyfriend if he was gone before I woke up and didn’t even text me to say anything,” you say with all the irritation you feel.

That catches Minho’s attention. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“I woke up and the bed was empty. No note. No text. Just empty,” you say. 

“And you haven’t heard from him?” Minho presses.

“No,” you say, only to be distracted by your phone lighting up.

“Looks like a message from him,” he observes.

You quickly glance at your phone, hating how eager you feel just to hear something from him. It’s disappointing, though.

Vernon: sorry that i wasn’t there when you woke up, i had a last minute errand Vernon: when do you think you’ll be home from work? 

Instead of telling Minho what happened, you just hand your phone over to him. His grimace says all you need to know. It’s not an overreaction. 

“That’s…all he’s said to you today?” he asks.

“You can scroll to see,” you say because he still has your phone.

“No thanks,” Minho says with a laugh. “I don’t wanna accidentally see something.”

“It was one time,” you say, snatching your phone back with an eye roll. 

“And I’m still scarred,” he says. “What are you going to say back?”

“Nothing,” you say.

“But…” he starts.

“No, I’m not saying anything. I know I’m chill about this holiday, but to not even say anything? And what errand does he have to do at 7 in the morning?” you ask, more irritated that you had been.

“If you want to hold onto a grudge, who am I to stop you?” he asks when he stands. “Let me know if he manages to get out of the dog house.” 

With that comment, he’s off to his own desk. It usually goes something like this every day anyway. Minho shows up with coffee for you, looking to see what you have to say. Even though he’s the one that has the best gossip. Sometimes, he just wants someone to share it with. It’s a nice reprieve from your irritation. One that he repeats in the afternoon, which is a break from the norm. Unfortunately, the irritation that settles in his wake is worse than before he stops by. 

You consider staying at work late when the end of the day comes. It’s not like you’re in a rush to head home. There’s also a part of you that wants to punish Vernon for forgetting a holiday that you don’t even care that much about. (Okay, maybe you care, but that’s the whole point of having someone you love that also loves you to spend it with.) Staying late by yourself feels even worse when nobody else from the office is. Everyone seems to be out the door as soon as the day ends. And, despite not answering any of Vernon’s messages, you know he’s home. At least it’ll give you the chance to figure out how to approach this.

The drive home gives you a chance to run through all sorts of conversations in your head. You’re still stewing, a bit, because you’re upset at how the day went. But, you’re also preparing yourself to have a potentially difficult conversation with Vernon. Of course, he’ll be receptive to your feelings. He always is. It’s more that you’re frustrated it happened in the first place and don’t want your feelings to seem invalid. 

All of that goes out the window the second you step into your apartment. The lights are low, so it takes your eyes a second to adjust. When they do, however, you see that Vernon has transformed your living room into a scene from your favorite video game. It’s like stepping into another world. Every little detail is so carefully thought out that you can’t even appreciate it all in one look. Your feet carry you forward to examine the small things. The ones that very obviously took extra effort. You’re so busy appreciating it all that you don’t even notice Vernon coming in from the kitchen.

“I know we said no presents, but I wanted to do this anyway. Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says, pulling you out of your head.

“How did you…” you ask, unable to even finish the question.

“I found someone who had this whole set for their ex and wanted to get rid of it. He was practically giving it away, but I had to go pick it up like 2 hours away,” he says.

You look around and can tell the level of care that went into creating this. “That’s why you were gone when I woke up?” 

“Yeah, I left you notes on breakfast in the fridge and coffee in the microwave, but I guess you didn’t see those,” he says. 

“I’m so sorry,” you say and don’t even realize that tears started to fall until Vernon’s pulling you into his arms.

“It’s fine, what are you sorry for?” he asks, holding you tightly.

“I spent the whole day thinking you forgot Valentine’s Day and being mad. That’s why I didn’t answer your texts,” you say.

“I just figured it was a busy day and you were excited to get home,” Vernon says.

“I’m so sorry,” you repeat.

He pulls back so that he can look down at you. Wipes the tears gently away from under your eyes. “It’s fine, babe. I’m not upset at you when I can be forgetful.” 

Nobody has ever done something like this for you. You can’t imagine how long it took to transform the living room this way. There aren’t any words you can think of to express how much it all means to you, so you just press your lips against his. Throw your hands around his neck to keep him close to you. He’s surprised, at least for a second, before he pulls you in tighter against him and kisses you back. It’s not the time to talk, at least not right now. How could you have thought this man would ever forget? 

“Can I show you what I was thinking about before I realized you were already gone this morning?” you ask when you break the kiss.

“Should I be concerned?” he asks.

“Just trust me,” you say and pull him into the bedroom with you. 

Any hesitations that he may have had disappear when you resume kissing him. Your fingers nimbly undo his pants so that you can slide them down his legs. The clothes come flying off in a flurry from there, far quicker than usual for the two of you. There’s just an urgency given the way the day went. Neither of you seems to want to let your lips leave the other. As Vernon kisses down your neck, you take the opportunity to push him back onto the bed.

It’s the first time you take a second and you appreciate how beautiful he is laying on the bed. The lean lines of his muscle, his eyes hungry as they drink your body in, the way his cock rests heavily on his stomach. You need to do something, though. You nudge his legs apart as you settle yourself onto the bed between them. 

“You don’t have to…” he starts and you’re quick to cut him off.

“I want to,” you insist. 

And you do. You take his cock into your hand and lick a stripe up it. It’s not enough, though, so you spit into your hand so you can run it along his length. He shudders under your touch. Once you wrap your lips around his tip, you pull a groan out of him. For just a second, his eyes close and his head lolls back on the pillow. It’s so pretty to watch him from this angle. To know that this man, usually so relaxed and chill, is so wound up under your power. It’s not long before he’s watching you, though. Letting out a stream of praise for how good you look with his cock in your mouth. How it turns him on, how you know just how to use your tongue. You hollow out your cheeks and it’s more than he can take.

Vernon pulls you up so that he can kiss you, so hard that you lose your breath. You’re a little off balance, which makes it easier for him to flip your positions. Now he’s the one between your legs. That same fervor is back when he spreads your lips so he can lick up your entrance. He’s always been insanely good with his mouth. It’s actually unfair. When his thumb circles your clit, you see stars for a second and arch your back into his mouth. All you can do is watch as he works his tongue in and out of your cunt. The thumb on your clit is bordering on too much sensation. Makes it hard for you to watch him even though you love the sight of him between your legs. 

“Fuck, Vernon, I need more,” you whine. 

“I should make you draw it out,” he says, still so close to your pussy that you can feel his breath.

“Please, Vernon, please,” you beg. You know it’ll make him cave.

“Since you asked so nicely,” he answers.

He runs his fingers through your folds before sliding one into your pussy. The moment his mouth finds your clit, he inserts a second finger and pumps into you at a punishing pace. It’s everything you can do not to squirm under his efforts. As it is, the words coming out of your mouth are entirely incoherent. What you want to say is that he’s a god with both his mouth and his fingers. That he knows just how to fit you where you need him most. That nobody has ever felt as good as him.

What you manage to yell out: “Oh my fucking god, I’m gonna come.” 

Vernon hums against your clit and it’s all too much. Your release is nearly instant. You don’t even notice how he guides you through your high or that he doesn’t remove his fingers until your body stops shaking. Miss the way he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before kissing you. Not that you would mind. His lips wander down your neck to your chest, kissing all the way. He loves your breasts, loves the soft skin there. Loves to nip and watch the way you react. Most of all, he loves to leave marks there. Even if you won’t let him mark you where other people can see (at least, not often), you’ll always let him mark up your chest. He roughly sucks a mark into your sensitive skin and you squirm. 

Any other time, you would let him enjoy it. Let him take his time. Not today. You need to feel him. Need to have that connection with him. He seems to realize it too.

“Roll over on your side,” he directs. 

You hasten to do exactly what he asks. He slides right in behind you and you bring your leg forward a little so that it’ll be easier on him. One of his arms slides under your neck. The other lines his cock up at your entrance. He presses lightly, at least at first, giving you time before he’s fully inside you. No matter how many times you and Vernon fuck, you’ll never be fully prepared for the way he feels. It’s the most perfect type of full. Just enough of a stretch without it being overwhelming. 

It’s only a second before he starts moving, with his hand on your stomach. Not too fast. Just enough to give you the relief that you need. Not enough that it’s going to push you over the edge again. You’re still sensitive, though. The connectedness of your bodies is exactly what you need. It’s intimate in all the ways that you couldn’t tell him that you needed. But, he knows. Of course, he knows. This man knows you better than anyone else, a fact clear in how he thrusts into you.

Vernon’s free hand moves from your stomach up to your breast. He rolls your nipple between his fingers and you groan out. That’s the other best part about your relationship with Vernon. There isn’t a need for constant communication during sex. He knows what you like and you know what he likes. He knows how to interrupt your moans and your pleas. Knows when to pick up the pace. 

It’s entirely too soon when you feel your second orgasm coming on. “I’m close, oh my god.” 

“I know, baby, just come for me,” Vernon urges as he continues to thrust hard into you.

Despite that, you try to hold out because you know that he’s not there yet, can feel it in the way he fucks into you. It’s a losing battle, though, and you end up coming even harder than the first time. Vernon fucks through your high before slowing down to give you a minute to breath. Always so considerate of what you need.

“It’s okay, keep going,” you urge.

He doesn’t have to ask if you’re sure, he can feel it in the way you clench around him. Makes him groan as he moves again. You’re still a little out of it from the two orgasms, so it doesn’t register just how sensitive you are. You tilt your head so that you can kiss him. Catch all his groans with your lips. Partly since you know how much the intimacy of it all means to him. Know that it’ll send him over the edge. 

A minute later it does just that. Even though you feel spent, he manages to pull a third orgasm out of you with his own. There’s a moment when you’re both catching your breath that neither of you move or even say anything. It gives you a moment to remember just how much you love him. Vernon slides out of you carefully and you roll over so that you can face him.

“I love you,” he says with a soft smile, fingers gently moving a few strands of hair away from your face.

“I love you, too,” you say. 

“Do we have to get up right now?” he asks.

You shake your head and let him pull you into his body. His arms feel strong and safe around you. Like home, which is what he’s always been for you. From entirely too early into the relationship. A feeling that’s only grown in the time you’ve been together.

“I’m sorry,” you say again. 

“You don’t need to be, “ Vernon assures you. “I’m forgetful sometimes and you’ve been busy lately. I figured this was a good way to say thank you for everything you do.”

“What? The sex?” you joke. 

He huffs into your hair. “I take it all back.”

You pull back to look at him. “It was perfect. Almost as perfect as you.” 

A light blush creeps up. “I don’t know about that.” 

“I do,” you whisper into his skin when you cuddle back against his chest.

“We still have to cook dinner,” he says.

“Let’s just order something. I don’t want to move from this spot right now,” you say.

“We can stay as long as you want,” he says.

Forever, you think. That’s how long you want to stay with him. It’s never felt more real than it does right now. You think, by the way he holds you, that maybe he wants to be with you forever too. It may have gotten out to a rocky start, but it ends up being the most perfect Valentine’s Day of your life. 

[seafoamreadings]

week of may 19th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: the increasing gemini vibes are a little more flirtatious and flippant than the preceding taurean vibes and this probably suits you well. just be careful that, with mars also in your sign, you're not getting too impulsive or wild.

taurus: that's about it for taurus season. the planets start to shuffle into neighboring gemini. but don't despair; the party is over but the material blessings continue to rain upon you, or they start if you haven't had them yet. it's like extra birthday gifts. jupiter there for the next long while blesses your finances too - assuming you're spending only responsibly. try not to overindulge.

gemini: the sun and the benefics light up your sign starting this week, in a parade of good vibes and good fortune. many wonderful things will come to you in the coming days and weeks, especially with jolly jupiter in the mix. just be advised that anything you've outgrown will leave forcefully if you don't part ways willingly.

cancerians: before a mass ingress into your 12th house there is a highly psychic, very dreamy jupiter-venus-neptune interaction at critical degrees. this can bless any travel you are planning, any long distance relationships, and your friendships overall. although neptune can be deceitful or at least illusive at times, the presence of the benefics make this a sort of magic that you can access easily and with mostly just good results. then prepare yourself to do some good shadow work once the 12th-house party starts!

leo: for everyone, the influx of gemini-ness is increased sociability and informational flow. for you especially, this is great for your networking and friendships. if you've been feeling a bit drab or lonely lately, this week brightens things up and puts you in places to be fawned over, if that's your thing, or at least appreciated if it's not so much.

virgo: a huge boost to your reputation can be intentionally kicked off from this week and then can coast on the momentum of jupiter in gemini for the next year or so. update your public image, get some nice photos done, shake the right people's hands... even if that makes your inner germophobe a bit squeamish. you can bring hand sanitizer.

libra: gemini season should be a blast for you and the social butterfly that you (at least sometimes) are. and jupiter in gemini for the next year-ish blesses any academic pursuits you wish to embark on, any long distance travel you've been dreaming of, and your spiritual life, if that's your cup of tea.

scorpio: a benevolent pileup in gemini is certainly one thing, possibly enhancing your intimate life or enriching any magical practice. but the overall tone of the week is underwritten by a pulsating, watery, psychic power. and you don't even have to really try to benefit from that. your natural charisma is just off the charts.

sagittarius: gemini season is always nice for you if you are the sort who can stand to be partnered up long-ish term. but starting from this week you have a good long jupiter transit of your 7th house as well. and this will bless such partnerships in really big ways. more temporary, venus there helps out too!

capricorn: if you're the type to do new year's resolutions it's a good time to take stock of how you've been doing regarding your routines, habits, and day-to-day life. honestly, even if you ignore the new year, this is a good time for it. and at any rate it's also a great time to rescue a pet !

aquarius: gemini season plus venus and jupiter in gemini is fun season for aquarians. jupiter in particular gives big fun, creative vibes to you for months to come. however, jupiter (and venus) in your 5th house can be *highly* fertile - you will be reaping what you sow, so it's a time to be a little bit careful what you wish for and also to have fun with some caution - otherwise it might go overboard in some way.

pisces: gemini season has most people feeling social and talky. for you it may be more of a homebody vibe. this is all well and good as long as you have made your home a sanctuary to rest and recharge in, and a place that you truly love.

[flibbertygigget]

Ok so I'm fiddling around with a version of Company in my head that's like,,, still set in the 70s (at the very least implicitly, a la 2006 Company), but one of the girlfriends is a boyfriend. Like, I think it could work.

There's a huge amount of emotional distance between Bobby and the couples in the text - so much of Bobby's arc is wrapped up in his desire for the intimacy that a committed relationship would bring while at the same time he doesn't want the risk that that level of emotional intimacy would bring. "Being Alive" is the resolution of this, obviously - "too close" and "too deep" goes from something to fear to something to want (while still fearing, always fearing, but the fear doesn't overwhelm the want). His friendships and romantic relationships are all surface level - he keeps himself at a distance, an amused observer in his own life to keep from risking the potential hurt that intimacy could bring.

Which, if he's closeted to varying degrees with different friends (and this could easily be shown just through giving a fake name for the boyfriend in some circumstances and not in others), really works well with his arc. Of course he keeps himself at an implicit distance - he's always on the knife's edge of being rejected, both by his friends for his queerness or his partners for his bisexuality. Just watching and asking questions and never talking about himself beyond quips and safe anecdotes is easier and safer, even though it's killing him emotionally.

The boyfriend being Marta or April would work in different ways with the text. Marta because it would be an easy switch - Marty to Marta - that could have him slip with the fake name in ways that the audience would catch but the couples realistically wouldn't. Plus the idea of the one boyfriend being this fun younger twink really Tracks - he finds partners who allow him to put a wall up between him and the idea of commitment: Kathy because what they want out of life is so fundamentally different, April because of her job, and Marta/Marty because they're at fundamentally different stages of life.

April would be a good switch-to-boyfriend because a) the scene where he questions her/him about the roommate would get instantly funnier and more serious all at the same time and b) April is the most serious potential partner during the "present" of Company, which would be an interesting wrinkle considering the time period and Bobby's arc.

And, obviously, the various degrees of closetedness would make act 2 really hit. First with the "homosexual experience scene" - in my head Bobby would be implied to be the most closeted with Peter and Susan, so the fact that Peter's implied to have discussed his gayness with Susan and stayed partners-in-some-respects after the divorce would be wild in terms of Bobby's perception of his friendships with not just them but all the couples. The idea that he might be able to be more emotionally open with all his friends due to the rapidly changing attitudes of the time period and his own misreading of his friends is both devastating, because maybe he didn't have to feel so "alone, not alive" this whole time, but also liberating. Bobby admitting that he has Had A Homosexual Experience goes from kind of a gag to one of the linchpins of his arc.

In my head the Joanne scene after "Ladies Who Lunch" would combine both the OG (better) version of that scene and the 2020 Cuck Me version of that scene. Like,,, if he's been implied to be the most out to Joanne and Larry, combining the two would work - hell, rejig it to be a "hey, want to be poly with us?" kind of thing if that suits your vibe. If the Homosexual Experience scene is a breakthrough in regards to platonic intimacy in this version, the Taking Care scene can be a breakthrough in regards to romantic intimacy, where Bobby finally discovers what he wants in a committed romantic relationship, finally less afraid of what opening up would mean in all aspects of his life. And then he sings "Being Alive".

Idk, I'd have to really work on it irl to figure out exactly how it would work, but I think it would be interesting.

[ms-scarletwings]

Irken senses, and other ponderings

You know, every time I start to wonder if I’ve finally run out of things to coherently say on the whole “speculating about irken biology” matter, a whole something more is induced to hatch out of the dehydrated floam inside my skull. Between you and me, I think the eggs are triggered by ironic timing.

Anywho, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the world hypothetically through Irken eyes, and other sensory organs. Think I’ll go down them piece by piece, and to follow the pattern I’ve kept through my other Irken brain dumps, I will be drawing a huge amount of inspiration from real life arthropods. Yes, I’m very aware that realistically, any resemblance to earth insects would be coincidental from an alien species, and there’s plenty of room to make up whatever somewhat plausible explanation you can for any faucet of their anatomy. Personally, I like to run from the convergent evolution angle, since I find it no less grounded, full of potential connections the show itself all but begs me to draw, and just plain fun. Let’s get into it.

Also like towards the end there’s a whole section on the hypothetical edibility of Irkens because why not

Prelude: If you want to hear a little more behind my theory about the Irken diet revolving around sugar and a small portion of minerals, you can zip onto this analysis I did, in which I touch on some ideas of mine regarding the composition of Irken skin, their reaction to meat, etc. that works from the assumption that Irkens evolved out of an arthropod-like ancestor. Not necessary to get the gist of this one, but it is background context behind my thought process.

Sight

The Irken oculus is perhaps the most striking feature of the species, very much resembling those tiny crawling things they have been inspired by; however, it’s tougher to say exactly how far the similarity of their insides go. The eyes of most arthropods are in fact along the more simple branches of the evolutionary tree. We know that Irkens are not likely to possess compound eyes, like those found in flies and most other insects, because compound eyes are specialized for wide FOV ranges at the sacrifice of visual resolution quality. Instead, I see a much closer match to a fascinating exception or two found in Earth’s arachnids.

While most of them have utterly piss-poor vision, the hunting styles of jumping spiders necessitated a great deal of further specialization of the organs for depth perception, color differentiation, and sharp images. These are the purpose of those two huge shiners at the front (the other 6 boosting their range for detecting blurry peripheral movement and threats), and these are what bring their effective vision on a level much closer to that of familiar binocular mammals than their own six legged prey. Now I really think we are working with the base of what Irken peepers likely developed out of. One of the ways they have really diverged off is in the fact that while jumping spiders can only move their retinas, irkens seem as though they are able to move the lens of the eye themselves- or at the very least, Zim does, else the false pupils in his disguise contacts would not behave quite so convincingly. To speak about the lenses themselves, their eyes are not dry and exposed like most arthropods, speaking to a vulnerable sensitivity. They clearly have blinking eyelids, shed tears, and Zim even complains about the “scratchy” feeling of getting used to that part of his kid disguise.

(Funny sidenote: I’m like 90% sure that Zim did not have those contact lenses designed correctly for himself. Usually, if contacts feel that uncomfortable and keep falling off of the eye as easily as his do, it’s a sign of them being poorly fitted. This could be another symptom of his outdated/lower quality invader tech.)

Not only do Irkens have an assumed base vision resolution that seems more or less on par with human beings, but Invader elites are fitted with ocular implants that grant them a significantly greater advantage in this realm. We don’t know to a certainty how well improved an Irken soldier’s vision is, but Zim was confidently able, within seconds and under pressure, to pick out the area of town he lived in from what was miles away under night hours.

On the topic of night vision, I have a hunch that even without the cybernetics, these guys are adapted to see much better than we in dim to dark environments as well. Most of the early part of their life cycle is lived out in subterranean crèches. On the surface, daytime Irk is cast in a sunset red atmosphere. Oddly, a massive portion of their fashion and architectural aesthetics show a preference for these dark, warmer tones. Ruby is far and away the most common eye color in their kind. All of these facts suggest that warm-spectrum hues and pigments were incredibly common in the homeworld’s history, to point of indicating something about a cultural attraction to them- kind of like how humans put the color blue all over so much corporate branding and elsewhere. Zim’s favorite color has also been revealed to be purple. Most of all, given what I’ve seen of Irk’s, Blorch’s, and Devastis’s surface skies, AND Zim’s reaction to staring directly at the sun for more than a few seconds, I’m assuming that most Irkens are wholly unfamiliar with living in an environment as brightly lit as midday Earth.

I do think Irken eyes “glow” in the dark, but not in the emitting sense. Just more in the reflective one. This they would owe to a well developed tapetum lucidum, as seen in cats and deer and pretty much any animal to give off an eerie eye shine under the right lighting. To point back to arachnids, wolf spiders are speedy nocturnal murder machines with highly developed tapetum lucida, in their secondary eyes, at least. What I love the most about that is it makes it very easy to tell if you’re looking at a mother spider because her babies will give off the same eyeshine if you take a pic of one with the flash on.

Additionally, I won’t forget that sleep is no longer a necessity for our alien subjects. This alone gives them a major edge over any dinural race such as humanity. While Zim has his appearances to keep up during the day, the nighttime on Earth is actually when he is allowed the most free rein to work on his endeavors uninterrupted.

Sound

Ah, so this is the part where I rattle off the common theories we’ve collectively formed about Irken antennae as the replacement for an external ear, eh? Yes, but actually no…. jokes aside, it’s just no. I’ll get to the deal with antennae, but as you might imagine, hearing ability also varies all over the place in the insect world.

It is true that antennae play a large role in the hearing of some critters, such as mosquitoes, whose males use them to pick out the high frequency wing beats of nearby females in a swarm. Crickets, on the other hand, use sensory organs on their legs tuned to much lower sound ranges. There’s no one way to evolutionarily put together a sort-of ear, as well proven by the sheer amount of times it convergently happened in bugs and in how many creative ways.

They literally be designing themselves like me playing around in spore. If we’re not talking about that mosquito or honeybee example, then what we are referring to as an ear and most hearing insects is going to be an external tympanic organ. Most people who have passed high school biology would be able to recognize a visible tympanum in frogs- that circular thing right behind the eyes in most species, and understand it as their version of an ear drum. Many bugs’ tympanums are likewise thin chitinous membranes situated… potentially just about anywhere on the body (again, see above). This is what I think Irkens use as a primary hearing organ, in his case, probably situated on their heads in addition to the feelers. The latter organs I think would also be sensitive to general vibrations and subtler environmental cues, like wind direction and pressure changes, but the bulk of their hearing would be owed to the tympanum.

As far as the quality of their hearing, well, there’s not any sign it differs much from the human experience. Like us, they communicate through verbal language, and the existence of the “Dancing Arcade Game (but for aliens)” confirms at least a similar cultural propensity for music as an entertainment form. Zim is an outlier for the fact that he seems genuinely a little hard of hearing next to his kin, screaming as naturally as he talks and repeatedly mishearing (if hearing at all) people who are speaking directly at him. It’s clear something’s up with his hearing, but there’s no clear answer what and why. At first I was tempted to suggest something about sound passing much differently through the medium of earth’s atmosphere (kind of like how noise on Mars would sound muffled to us), but neither Tak nor Skoodge seemed to pick up the problem when they arrived. It really could be as simple as some kind of birth defect, or even glitches in how his corrupted PAK is processing the inputs it receives. Like many others, I want to imagine that his wig could be interfering too, since it covers the whole top portion of his head; as well, I noticed he has more of those incidents with it on than not.

Smell

Alrighty, NOW we can round back to focusing on the antennae, because this is actually the main thing our insects fine tuned theirs for. And when I say fine tuned- I mean fine tuned. Blood suckers that find their prey through the CO2 of their breath, flies that can pick up on potential food sources from miles away; In the land of the little, scent is everything. Beyond it being their main tool for exploring the environment for what to eat and what to avoid, chemical messages are the backbone of bug-to-bug communication. Pheromones are the divining rod of lonely spiders looking for a mate. They are the bugle of yellow jackets when rallying the nest to attack a threat, and they are the signals that govern about every single action an ant takes from adulthood until death. Obviously, Irkens are much more sight & hearing dependent than these comparisons, but they still have much more bodily specialization dedicated to this sense than we can relate to. For one, they are fastidiously hygienic. Like, “the care-bots from that really creepy episode of the Buzz lightyear cartoon” hygienic. We have yet to see any livable surface of Irk that is not sky to underground terraformed over in all-consuming metal infrastructure. There’s less than no sign of visible life besides the Irkens; ffs, there’s not even soil in sight. Not on Devastis, either. The Organic Sweep sounds like such a nice and pretty euphemism in the face of the actual horror of Blorch’s fate, and all to spare the boots of their military from touching even a speck of “unsavory alien filth”. They live in such a controlled and purified environment that I can’t even imagine the absolute assault on the senses Zim’s every day on our barbaric ball of dirt is. Over and over again he gives off the impression that the constant stink of this place is in fact his chief complaint about living among us. The majority of insults he throws toward humans relate to how they smell or the fact that he finds them “filthy”. We’re flat out nasty to him and I don’t blame him. Even relative to other animals, humans are especially RANK due to the combination of sweat, oils, and bacteria that coat our skin.

And believe it or not, I do think Irkens are in a position to talk shit in this regard. Zim is a really sweaty boi; however, I posed an idea back in that write up about Irken skin before- to summarize- that his kind maintain remarkably sterile cuticles due to the presence of a toxic chemical in their skin. This, I said then, could have been the key to Zim’s lice repelling trait, but I wasn’t so specific at the time about more than that. I got the idea from a group of millipedes that, when disturbed, can secrete hydrogen cyanide as a deterrent to predators. I like to imagine that Irkens can do a similar thing via sweating, not to thermoregulate like us, but as a stress response. It would at least explain why Zim seems like a very nervous sweater. Fun fact if you didn’t know, cyanide’s smell is similar to almonds.

I’m deadass telling you I think Irkens just smell like almond extract. Do with that what you will.

Touch

So, in writing this whole whatever it be, this part was the trickiest to come up with any productive analysis on. I’ve already guessed at what I think Irken skin feels most like (spoiler: hairless caterpillars) in the analysis I referenced up top. Zim being able to pass himself off as a human under the examination of the Skool nurse points to an average body temperature somewhere around our own. What I did find interesting while rewatching the series though was the sheer amount of pain tolerance on these invaders, except in one way. Can I extrapolate this fortitude to Irkens universally? Probably not! Zim is a member of the most elite of the most highly trained members of Irk’s military. I wouldn’t take what a seasoned veteran can handle and assume that’s the human floor in a nutshell, but our invaders CAN tell us quite a bit about their ceiling… starting with the fact that these bastards are ridiculously heat resistant. Irkens are a durable race broadly, but their reactions to extreme temperatures strike me as jaw-droppingly underwhelming, if anything.

Irkens DON’T like being engulfed in flames. It’s still a painful experience to them, but seemingly the kind they can pretty much walk off as soon as it’s over. Through explosions and fire we have seen Zim (and Skoodge) survive in one piece. We’ve seen The Massive take a whole dip into a burning star with no ill effects to the crew within. Most amazing to me was the time in Battle of the Planets when Zim willingly piloted Mars into grazing by the Sun at close range while trying to evade Dib. Totally exposed driver’s seat and he was no worse for wear after this.

Further in the comics we see this touched on in the Zimvoid arc. Zib’s favorite method of torturing the Zims under his training program was to torch them at random for sadistic amusement. Quite interestingly, though, Number 2 implies that their bodies do actually adapt to this treatment over time! Theoretically, Zims further along in the program have become all but invulnerable to fire entirely.

On the other hand, one of the truly most painful things Zim has been shown to experience is to have his skin chemically burned. It’s a strange sort of irony that Earth’s water would prove to be an incapacitating force to them in place of any inferno. He’ll smash his skull into the Voot’s windshield with enough force to pop out an eyeball and it’s whatever. Plenty of other things hurt, but he can power through. You turn a shaken can of soda or a bottle of bbq sauce on him and he’s just left screaming on the ground or screaming and running away. Whatever brutal sort of training he had to go through off world, it didn’t prepare him for this.

Taste

The perceptive side of this I think may not be too hard to figure out. Irken food, as alien as its actual composition could be, has been shown to be heavily analogous to human junk food. I hesitate to call what Irkens are scarfing down “meals” in the proper sense, because I’ve noticed that neither Zim nor his kin intrinsically understand the concept. When he’s trying to blend in as a human being, he puts a LOT of bizarre effort into convincing us that he, just like you inferior creatures, TOTALLY eats “food” on a regular basis like a normal person. When Irkens eat their own products, it’s all and only “snacks”. What follows is the conclusion that their eating habits are not structured into any schedule and that Irkens instead graze throughout the day as they please- and even possibly that eating altogether is more a recreation to them, instead of a necessary function to sustain life. Some fans have speculated that the PAK could provide an Irken with all of the necessary energy to survive absent of nutrition. I kind of want to contest this, given that caloric energy is only one purpose of taking in food… but it’s definitely the most immediate one. Nonetheless, they still eat constantly on screen and it all has to be going somewhere. Whether they need it or not, they still readily digest snacks (and presumably use those chemical building blocks to regenerate tissue damage) with a terrifying metabolic efficiency. Assuming that the resemblance of their snack foods and our leisure treats are not purely coincidental, one gathers that sweetness is the largest dimension of Irken cuisine. They are drawn most enthusiastically to carb-dense synthetic, plant, and possibly fungal matter in the same way that the human brain lights up at the prospect of fat and sugar-loaded meals. The flexible tongues of Irkens to me also resemble the nectar catching, segmented mouthparts of some bees. I would be willing to bet that they can taste salt, but jury’s out if it is something they crave, like us, or are repulsed by, like ants. That would have to come down to the scarcity (or not) of the resource on their home planet and whether or not desiccation was a serious threat in their natural history. In other regards, Zim shows strong negative reactions to most Earth foods, if not physically, than in his expressions. They definitely have powerful vulnerabilities to many human ingredients, and so are very sensitive to the presence of these toxins. I can’t imagine acidic or bitter substances are at all pleasant to them.

Now comes the much more interesting question I’ve thought way too long and hard about in the shower a time or two. Knowing that Irkens are likely a herbivorous breed, ergo, thankfully would have no interest in the consumption of the human race… what about the vise versa??? I don’t just want to know what they taste, but what would they taste like?

So, you’ve decided to mix it up for the thanksgiving dinner and forgo the same boring old bird for an Irken you have vanquished (via what I can only imagine was a freaking miracle of luck). What should you come to expect? Most importantly and I must emphasize this, the secret to preparing their meat is the same as Tolkien dwarves, you have to skin them before anything else. The separation of edible tissues from the cuticle is necessary to avoid ingesting the defensive toxins it contains. Even if the concentration is not enough to provide a danger to you, it could end up contributing an unpleasant, bitter flavor to the final product.

That done, discard the head and digestive organs. True as it may be that Irkens are wholly free of parasites, with a chance that the viscera could be edible, it’s not likely to taste that great and besides, do you really want to take chances with exposing yourself to an entirely foreign gut biome you have no immune adaptations to? And don’t even think about the brain- I don’t care how rare the infection rates are, alien prions are a big no. If you happen to run into any cybernetic implants during the cleaning, however, set them aside! They could be worth a small fortune in the right circles. But, for the purpose of eating we’re really concerned with the muscle tissues, a delicate white meat with a texture similar to fresh crab. The bones need not be wasted, and are fine to leave in, or can be boiled on their own to make a flavorful stock which can be added to soups or a delightful gravy. A surprisingly practical use of Irken bone could also be in the compost bin, being rich in chitosan and other powerful garden fertilizers. The flesh can do well fried, or roasted to a crispy exterior. The oven rule is the same as chicken, low and slow, to prevent drying out. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the gravy idea or marinades. The flavor profile of the meat itself would be utterly unique from what most of us are used to, comparable to a nutty crayfish. Savory, a bit of a sweetness, and a mineral hint that pairs quite well with mushrooms or rice.

I can’t recommend serving this to any guests with shellfish allergies in good conscience. If they insist, do so in caution and with knowledge of the risk of cross reactivity.

And there you have …. certainly a thing I did write and queue up for y’all!

[saintsenara]

Do you think ronarry works better than hinny? (I do.)

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

the advantage ronarry has over hinny is that ron is a man who also has a defined character archetype both within the series as a boarding school romp and as a folkloric epic, which means that - very much unlike ginny - he is permitted to actually undergo some onscreen character development throughout the seven-book canon. ginny, in contrast, does everything which might make her interesting as a character in the background of the narrative, before turning up fully formed to serve as little more than a tool to underscore that harry's definitely super cool, hot, and fun once he's stopped being canonically short.

besides this, however, the two ships have a huge amount in common. both ron and ginny are people harry adores because they're fundamentally fun to be around - he just likes hanging out with them both and draws comfort from their presence precisely because they let him just be [unlike hermione, who likes to nag him]. both ron and ginny are also people whose relationship with him harry doesn't fully understand the complexity of - he's incredibly dismissive of ron's feelings of jealousy at having to play second fiddle to him; all of the things he does to keep ginny "safe" in the war are straightforwardly paternalistic, and he spends deathly hallows oblivious to the fact that she's, presumably, having quite a miserable time at hogwarts... ron's arc gets a resolution when harry is compelled to watch the locket-horcrux's softcore porno and finally understand what ron's been bottling up, which i do think is written really nicely in canon. the resolution of harry and ginny's relationship - like so much about them - happens offscreen, which is why I think the timeskip to happy-ever-after feels so unsatisfying canonically. but that's why we have fanfiction.

which is to say, ronarry is a hot ship - and i will defend it with my life - because it is the crucial combination of two lads having a great time, two lads having deep-and-meaningful chats after being idiots for ages, two lads having a nice cup of tea after enjoying themselves thoroughly in the bedroom, and two lads who are - canonically - the loves of each other's lives, whether you wish to interpret that as platonic or not.

[bloodsadx]

thanks to everyone who has sent me asks and such saying i understand how to draw for being nice and stuff. i'm going to ramble about some influence/process stuff below if you want to read abt it

this might read as some kind of artistic statement or defense or something but i like to talk about this kind of thing just in case anybody can ever get anything meaningful out of my own thoughts and practices. i got to where i am after a lot of careful consideration and spending time thinking about what i like in other people's art, just like anybody else that makes art to any serious degree.

my "style" is very much a deliberate series of decisions that i have honed into being very fast for my own pleasure and enjoyment because i am very inspired by people like king terry/garo magazine/the heta-uma style, keiichi arawi, inio asano, hiroyuki imaishi, toru nakayama, phil elverum (as a cartoonist), gary panter (who was a friend of matt groening and wrote an essay about selling out that is worth reading and did a lot of stuff with RAW magazine which is one of my favorite things to think about), DIY/skatewear brand t shirt cartoons, early MSPA hussie stuff, etc. a lot of my favorite artists walk a line between constant high effort and low time investment art; often contrasting elaborately planned perspective grids or high resolution rendering with simple cartooning. asano and arawi i think are very clear and famous examples of artists that use 3d rendering and photography for backgrounds while drawing very deliberate and expressive characters on top of them. toru nakayama is really inspiring to me because he, like toriyama, has a very deep understanding of form AND cartooning and has a way of making extremely densely crafted cartoons which feel visceral and almost like plastic toys you can pick up and play with on the page. also just one of my favorite colorists. and i think hussie and arawi and imaishi are all fantastic character designers with very strong understandings of designing art styles that convey information very quickly and deliberately; i think bryan lee omalley and jamie hewlett were also big early influences on me for the same thing- they all have art styles with very clear line/negative space proportions, strong shape language, etc, and for a long time in my life i have sought to grasp a similar understanding of these things. and then i think phil elverum's fancy people adventures cartoons and just like skate brands and "shitty" DIY drawings and stuff (the album art for nana grizol's love it love it is like burned into my brain forever; seeing basquiat paintings and poems in a museum when i was 15 made me feel whatever and crazy and etc) are just something that serve as a constant reminder to me that some of the most effective art is art that is simply fun to look at, especially when it comes to making comic and cartoon art. simplicity and joie de vivre are very important to me as artistic concepts.

and i mean, i do fuck with crazy painter dudes and shit too; i was huge into goya when i was 14 and had a print of the witches sabbath taped to my wall until i was like 22, i fw waterhouse & bruegel the elder insanely. i am like a sponge for most kinds of art and i do a lot of art research all the time. most of my first book was heavily influenced by compositional techniques from pre-raphaelite painters and the iconography of egyptian & greek wall art and especially especially extremely crowded gothic art and the concept of horror vacui.

but anyway, im not really insecure about my art, i know how much effort and time and practice and research i've put in, i definitely know my strengths regarding cartooning and stuff, and i'm even more aware of where my work needs "improvement" in order to be "commercially viable." i've been in multiple positions in the past several years of taking art seriously where other people have been dismissive of my art and i've seen other people fail to capture the energy & simplicity that i am able to get in my own art, etc.

for people interested in my Process and the things that i work on to draw the way that i do, the way i have gotten whatever skills i have has been mostly through drawing the same things over and over and over (toenail, cavity, pimple, gunk, making different expressions and doing different poses); i draw in pen MOST of the time, and i have for a very long time, and i make few edits, and i focus on keeping energy and confidence in my lines; i do perspective studies, i've spent a lot of time doing gesture drawings and environmental studies inside and outside. i draw a lot of movie frames and do color studies of youtube videos and stuff like that. i remember reading some kind of criticism of post-KAWS/street art infiltration of commercial art that artists now are most rewarded for drawing literally the same thing over and over and over like their hands are printers and that the main thing artists are then allowed to do within that context is express themselves through minor variations within that key theme; i don't think im THAT rote but it has definitely informed my perpsective on what i do and what i am interested in doing. on some level i have designed my art to be easily reproducible by myself because i want to make comics and sometimes even to animate my characters and that requires me to be able to draw a lot of drawings relatively quickly. this is another reason why character designers and video game key artists are such massive influences on me, takehito harada and akiman and toshiyuki kusakihara being some huge ones i've spent a lot of time doing studies of i didn't mention previously.

and because the main way i make money at this point in my life is through screen printing & reproducing my drawings as items for sale, i spend a lot of time making my art Distinct, Eye Catching, and Iconic, to the degree of instant recognizability even on a t shirt or a sticker from far away, and i try to make my drawings strictly legible and generally focus on communicating ideas and emotions through big thematic and emotional gestures and strong colors that can be easily separated. this is one of the main reasons i havent developed as strong of a rendering/coloring habit; that kind of stuff is difficult to color separate for the purpose of solo DIY screen printing. but i've spent a pretty decent amount of time doing that stuff, and i spend time studying forms regardless, with the lines that i do use. a lot of my sketchbooks are me drawing literally the same thing over and over slightly differently until i have something that i feel is a strong enough cartoon to make into a shirt or patch or sticker design that satisfies a litany of criteria i have for what i consider strong cartooning.

anyway that was a very rambling post but i hope at least people get something out of it even if its just slight entertainment from me blowing hot air out of my mouth for 20 minutes.

[castkorb]

I made this post a few days ago and was asked for more input on Sting's character in regards to future Rogue so here's some more thoughts:

enjoy <3

Future Rogue explicitly says he killed Sting and took his power but I have my doubts about that:

f!Rogue said to Natsu that in one year from the games Frosch would be killed by Gray and thus his pillar would be gone and he would succumb to the shadow, meaning during Avatar Gray and Rogue would fight.

But Tartaros happened before Avatar, and during this arc we witness Sting and Rogue's first shown improvement after swearing change in the name of Sabertooth, which culminates in both of them killing Jienma and erasing Sabertooth's ugly past for good. also using a unique unison raid that only they can do <3

Which solidifies the fact that Rogue is no longer intimidated by his shadow because, as he said himself, Sting would be able to kill it. He no longer lives haunted by the thoughts of his shadow taking over him because he knows Sting will always be there to protect him.

But this obviously all happened in the good future where the world didn't end and now THIS is where the fun begins.

What happened in the bad future where f!Rogue is from?

If my memory serves correct f!Rogue later revealed that his plan was to open the gate of Eclipse to let dragons from the past in and rule them to overcome Acnologia, who would soon descend and raise the world into chaos.

Now I don't think he gave an exact date as to when would this be but, Acnologia did indeed appear later during Tartaros so we're going to assume that's when the apocalypse started in the bad timeline.

And let's rewind for a sec to what happened in the good timeline's Tartaros: Sting and Rogue helped Fairy Tail, saved Minerva and killed Jienma, which is a direct consequence of what f!Rogue did during Eclipse.

I explain:

What would have happened after the games ended in this bad timeline? Would Sting have accepted to become Sabertooth's new master? His resolution begins when he gives up before Erza and the rest during the final battle but I don't think he really makes up his mind about it until the dragons are attacking the city and he fights to protect his guild, both he and Rogue do.

It's not until both of them are fighting at the end of the world that they realise what made Fairy Tail the strongest guild, and even after having tecnically lost, this battle gave them something f!Rogue probably didn't expect.

It gave them hope.

So can we really assume they would've followed the same path had they not fought the dragons? I find it absolutely marvelous and poetic how f!Rogue, having lost all sense of compassion, hope and having nothing left but rage, wanting to cast his revenge in this new timeline indirectly saved him and his beloved from the horrors he had to endure.

Which brings me back to my first statement. In the bad timeline Sting was left with nothing after the games ended, sure Jienma was gone, he got Lector back and he had Rogue but what was he supossed to do from there on? Without the cataclysm of the Eclipse gate I assume he'd want nothing to do with Sabertooth again, or maybe he did, but then as Tartaros arrived maybe the guild had not yet gone through the experience of truly fighting along your peers to protect them, none of the guilds had. except, yknow, fairy tail but they're literally the mcs here

We can't forget that they were fighting literal demons here, plus Acnologia himself. -Again taking in mind the experience of fighting dragons had also not happened here-

You could also argue that the FACE project the Tartaros gates had planned might've actually worked in this timeline, which would result in over half of the population or more being left without magic to fight, it's understandable the world fell into chaos pretty quickly and a huge number of people died, as we saw in f!Lucy's timeline.

And Sting and Rogue were probably neither mentally nor physically prepared to fight all of this right after the magic games, they didn't have time to bond with their guildmates after Jienma died the same way they did in the good timeline, hell I'd even argue Sting was probably in a worse state because he got his emotional and physical strenght tested back then and there's no way he'd recover from that in such a short time with only Rogue's help.

Throughout the manga we see how Sting is the uplifting half of this duo, he's the one who constantly reassures Rogue and the rest of the guild, he's taken his admiration for Natsu and learned from it in that sense, but is bad future Sting like this? Is he able to smile and shine a path to the people he loves, is he able to fight for them?

In my head f!Rogue didn’t kill Sting because Sting likely gave up fighting or chose to sacrifice himself. that being to give Rogue another chance to live or because he knew one of them would die and he knew he wouldn't be able to live without Rogue is up to interpretation :)

And this proves to me that neither can live without the other, when Sting died f!Rogue either lost his mind and gave into grief not fully, he would after Frosch's death and took his powers in order to survive or to preserve a small part of Sting with him, which makes this shit sadder when his shadow fully takes over him and he's no longer concious of this, using his partner's power, the only power able to guide him and subdue him to kill without remorse.

f!Rogue said that Frosch was his pillar but I refuse to believe Sting is not a pillar for him as well, he may have fully lost against his shadow after losing Frosch but his relationship with Sting having ended simply with a "I killed him amd took his powers" I will not accept, Rogue lost half his heart when Sting died/was killed and Frosh was the last bit of sanity that remained of him after that, which was ultimately but not the only reason he wasn't strong enough to fight his shadow.

As you can see I have a lot to say about this arc and I would've given anything for it to be explored more but alas I've spent the last 6+ years rewritting the entirety of this manga in my head and I love to dive into the possibilities, like what could have happened if Sting had lost Rogue in that future? what happened to the rest of the Sabertooth's members? I can be here all day.

But anyways I feel I'm not good enough at expressing my thoughts in written form but I hope it's understandable enough? I'm growing more confident though so hopefully I can puke more nonsense about this two <33

[waffled0g]

how good is Hypnospace Outlaw at the 90s aesthetics?

I haven't played Hypnospace! It looks fun!

But looking at the trailer and some gameplay videos... well, don't get mad, but this is exactly the kind of stuff I wrote my article in faux protest about.

It's not wrong, it's not bad, not saying that. There's truths in there about 90s design. But if you're asking me, the game has a thick layer of Vaporwave over everything. It just comes across as fake 90s to my tastes, personally.

But I think that was the point. I think that's what Tendershoot was going for. It's a surreal game about surfing the web in your sleep, right? So the design isn't going for accuracy, it's more that dreamy fantastical look people remember (or misremember.) It works for them!

Like, I like the key art! That's pretty good. CGI head in space would have been right at home on a Trapper Keeper. That USB cord should have totally have been a serial port instead tho.

And this box art is chef's kiss. I feel like I'd see this on a textbook in computer class.

What I've seen of the actual game though? Hmmmm. You're asking a web designer here for an opinion, and this is a game all about web design. Like they get some stuff right. UI is a lot of fun, down to the Winamp-style skeuomorphic buttons in some of the screenshots.

But for something that's supposed to be set in '99, that's a huge overuse of pastel pink and purple gradients. It's like an Instagram filter over the whole thing. That's Vaporwave, and while it looked cool in 2018 that's not really what was going on at the time.

The MS-DOS sized pixel text bugs me when they should have gone with Windows 98-style higher resolution. They seem to run all their images through an aggressive dithering filter when in reality, JPGs existed too. But it's funnier to have all those crusty GIFs in there, that ages the art more. And is that a poop emoji button? An emoji in a 90s game?

Sorry, that sounds like I'm picking on a game I haven't played. Not trying to knock down any Hypnospace fans. The game looks fun! I'm just being a design nerd and taking a magnifying glass to something I've never seen before today. If you love the look of the game, that's valid! I like Vaporwave too. But Vaporwave is its own separate thing.

So, real quick, let's talk Vaporwave. It's important to understand Vaporwave is evocative of the 1990s, but wasn't an actual thing in the 1990s. The point of Vaporwave is it's meant to be a surreal parody version of the decade, as seen through the lens of the 2010s. I think what happened over the past decade was everyone forgot it was a parody and took it at face value. Vaporwave and 90s just became equals.

And that's how we got this:

What I wanted to share with you all was Vaporwave and Memphis style graphics are starting to be like THE ONLY representation of the decade. I wanted to share that there's more out there to pick apart and use for retro throwbacks.

Maybe further into Hypnospace they get into that other stuff? Thanks for tipping me off about the game! I'll add it to my Steam list.

;-)

[toxicroyjamie]

Do you think Ted was a good coach?

Oof. Controversy!

This is a loaded question, because if you look at his end results, you can't deny that he's a "good coach" in the sense that he was able to completely turn the team around and take them to the top of the league. He was definitely doing something right!!

However I feel like I can't really call him a "good coach" with my whole chest because he doesn't know ANYTHING about the sport he's coaching, nor does he really seem to make any effort to learn (like, he doesn't understand the offside rule until 3 years after starting the job. Why?) He's certainly good as part of a coaching team, because he's excellent at building relationships and connecting with his players, but he would be nowhere without Beard, Nate, and Roy, because at the end of the day a team just can't be successful if their coaches don't know anything about the strategy/technique of the game.

Also, Ted's expertise is in coaching kids, not adult professionals, and that really shows in how he handles Richmond sometimes. His whole "winning isn't what's important, it's all about teamwork and having fun and being the best version of yourself :)" is a fantastic mindset for, say, the coach of a little league team, but (as Beard points out) not as wonderful for coaching professionals whose whole job is winning. They're not there to have fun and learn the value of teamwork, they're there to win. I get that the return to football as a fun childhood hobby is a theme on the show, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I feel like Ted doesn't always fully understand the gravity of the sport for people who are truly invested, and he doesn't always do a great job of balancing "having fun and growing as individuals" with like. Doing what these men are paid millions of dollars to do.

As a preschool teacher, I think the way Ted handles conflict is also very reminiscent of how adults handle conflict between young children, which is another thing that would make him a fantastic coach for a kids' team but works against him in a professional setting. In s2, for example, rather than just going to Roy as a superior speaking to an employee and telling him to get over himself and coach Jamie because he's a grownup and that's his job, he tries to get Roy and Jamie to talk it out and come to a resolution like they're two kindergarteners fighting over a toy. He was doing Social Emotional Learning on them, and even though it ultimately benefitted them as individuals, it was not the best or quickest way to deal with a workplace conflict like that between two adults. Can you imagine going to your boss like "hey, the person who's supposed to be training me won't talk to me at all or answer any of my questions and I'm kind of lost" and they were like "lol and what do you expect me to do about that? That's on you, I'm not gonna tell him what to do" insanity

TL;DR I think Ted is fantastic with people and that's a huge asset to him in coaching, but I don't think he knows anywhere near enough about soccer to be a bona fide "good coach" of a professional team. I also think the way he handles his players and their conflicts would be an asset to him if he were a kids' coach or a teacher, but sometimes is frustrating and infantilizing when applied to professionals

[radishaur]

𖦹 relationship dynamics 𖦹

Warnings: vague mentions of Sabaody & Marineford for Luffy and Thriller Bark for Zoro but nothing actually gets spoiled Genre: fluff/character study Characters: Luffy, Zoro, & Law Summary: A deep dive into the unique reader personality and relationship dynamic between each one and their respective one piece man. Author's Note: This has been in the works for a while so hopefully this adds some clarity to the way I view each reader and their relationship with their man! Hopefully, it points out some of the larger themes I try to keep between each part. My aim was to address my own personal breakdowns of each One Piece guy, the reader, and their dynamic, so please enjoy! masterlist

For this relationship, I think that it runs on freedom. Luffy is driven by nothing more than his own whims and determinations, which includes his want to have an amazing adventure. Having a partner who not only shares that journey with him but enjoys it, even seeks it out themselves, would make all the difference.

Luffy's reader in this series is someone with a strong sense of self. I imagine they have a goal, much like the rest of the Strawhats, but they're also ok with taking the long road. They know what they want, but they're here for the adventure and that's half of the fun. They engage in Luffy's silly antics and they always laugh at his jokes. How could you not, when he's laughing at them himself? They're strong, but they also place complete faith in Luffy's ability to protect, which I think is another huge thing for him. He's so intent on making sure nothing like Sabaody or Marineford ever happens again so having a partner that believes wholeheartedly in his ability to do that would mean a lot to him.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think Luffy can never sit still although I think normally he would always rather be doing something. But, I think the quiet moments of solitude the two spend together and the intimate understanding they have of each others more hidden whims or secrets thrives in those moments. They can fully be themselves with no worry of judgment or awkwardness. Lastly, I think that the reader realizes their feelings first but Luffy certainly makes up for lost time with his enthusiasm.

This is a relationship built on a shared joy for life and its adventures, on complete understanding and support, and that's why it works.

A relationship with Zoro is one that functions on stability and routine. Zoro is resolutely dedicated to his goal and he wouldn't want a partner that would get in his way. This reader is someone who feels the same way about their goal, and their shared passion and dedication to their goals is what I imagine brings them together.

The reader in this story has a really forward personality. Zoro is a no-nonsense person, he doesn't play games when it comes to his words or actions, so he would need a partner who respects that and acts the same. That being said, the reader loves to tease him, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. You can't really blame them with how flustered he gets. At the end of the day though, there's an implicit trust in their bond that I think their relationship is built on. Like captain like first mate, I think Zoro has a huge thing for protection. He views his role as the protector of not only his dream but his captain and the crew's, and we see this in Thriller Bark really clearly, so for Zoro to let his guard down is a big deal.

Scars on the back are a swordsman's shame and he is constantly looking behind him for any sign of trouble. Maybe he gets lost along the way, but he prides himself on protecting so for him to let you into his space, to let you touch him in his most vulnerable spaces, to share his time relaxing, it means everything. You both support each other's ambitions and dreams, but you also support each other's care and well-being. Lastly, I think that Zoro falls first but his denial is strong. At first, because he thinks it would be a distraction for his own goal and then, once he gets over that, because he thinks it would be a distraction from yours. Finally, he gets sick a tired of it playing tricks with his head and decides to come out with it, which is the best decision he's ever made.

This relationship is built on a deep respect of each others dreams and their drives to get there, but also on their constant care for one another and their wellbeing.

For almost all of these relationships, I think the reader's ability to really see their respective partner is what makes the relationship but I think for Law especially this is true. Law puts up a mask of indifference that is second to none, so a reader who can see past it, into the truth of who Law really is, is absolutely essential for this relationship.

The reader in this series is patient, which is a must when it comes to Law. They have their goals and dreams, but they're content to go on this journey and explore. They don't want to be a burden, mostly because they see how much weight Law takes up for himself. They're not necessarily quiet, but they're observant, picking up on the smaller details. They want to relieve some of that weight, make sure that everybody is having a good time, and that's especially true when it comes to Law. Law is stubborn and he doesn't let people in easily, so this reader is open for every way that he can't be. They speak their mind, they express their affection and admiration openly, because they can and they want to.

Law is the epitome of actions that speak louder than words. Verbal praise is scarce and he rarely ever says how he actually feels, but it is glaringly obvious in the way he acts. His choices are deliberate, his actions always filled with intent. He gets flustered easily by the way the reader so casually speaks their mind, but he enjoys it. There's no mind games there, no trick or betrayal lurking around the corner. It lets his mind relax for once and I think that really strengthens the relationship. Whether he wants it to be true or not, and trust me when I say that in the beginning he really didn't want it to be true, the reader relaxes him. He can be himself. Reader has seen him at his worst, most ugliest moments, and still chooses him over and over. Lastly, I think the reader absolutely fell first in this situation, but Law fell almost twice as hard. Law's devotion is a labor to obtain, but once it has been earned, it is fierce and eternal.

This is a relationship built on quiet understanding, compassion, and deep-rooted admiration, and it flourishes as a result.

ღ radishaur — i do not own any of these characters. do not plagiarize. please enjoy and remember to be respectful! 

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[ladyluscinia]

I am of course hugely fond of the crew bonding into a stronger community and embracing Izzy as one of them. Love that they are demonstrating their conflict resolution skills and mutual support, and love even more that they do the main foundational work in the absence of the captains - first during the breakup boat era with the trauma bonding and saving Izzy's life in direct defiance of Edward, and then resolving their divides and trust issues after chasing off Edward (and by extension Stede) in 2x04.

It is SO good to see them becoming a unified front who can push back against the bosses (especially since per comedy rules Stede & Edward are probably not going to stop being self-centered no matter how democratic the ship gets 😆).

But I will say it's still very funny when people give them credit for overcoming their strong negative feelings for Izzy, because like...

I don't think those were really a factor, guys 🤣🤣🤣

The show has thrown a bit of a complication into my theory of socially acceptable mutiny in S2 (which I will probably look at more once the season wraps up), but that's mostly because the rules of "how piracy functions" are not a priority for canon to establish. I'm threading together jokes into a watsonian social system because that's fun for me. 🤷‍♀️ So even though my particular explanation is going to have to adapt, the underlying joke still rings true - the mutiny against Izzy is a disproportionately violent response to what he's doing.

Or to put it another way... Yeah, they try to murder him because they don't want to work for him (or, as several of them say, for Black Pete 😆), but it's not really anything personal. Just business.

Meaning that once he's removed from captaincy, he's back to just being a coworker who's kind of a dick. They're not friends leaving S1, but they probably don't hate him?

(Also like the Navy Plot is a lot of things but it was not a reckless endangering of the crew.)

Plus in Izzy's mind, the vast majority of his side of the conflict in S1 is rooted in either 1) Edward leaving him in an ambiguous position of non-authority by refraining from acting as Captain of the ship despite the fact everyone thinks Edward has captured them until 1x07 at least, or 2) Izzy's fairly reasonable belief that all of these guys are going to die when Stede does and are particularly stupid prisoners, not fellow crew.

Both of those problems resolve completely by 1x10. Which in retrospect probably explains a lot of the apparent Izzy-crew relationship shift between S1 and S2 for anyone still not quite clicking on that front.

(Seriously, if you like Izzy in S2 but don't get what changed from S1, try watching S1 again with the things they've made canon about his personality in mind - being in love with Edward, etc. There was a coherent subtext and it's very fun to watch.)

It's really not surprising at all that lingering animosity with Izzy isn't a problem after his short lived time in charge 🤷‍♀️ or that he gets folded into the union. After everything they've been through with Edward they feel he's not on Management's side, and he does advocate for the crew once they are, you know, actually crew.