#might post more about other characters and such later but this is the initial thought

[pomefioredove]

lily of the valley

bonjour et joyeux premier mai! in france and belgium we give our loved ones lily of the valley flowers on may day to wish them luck in the upcoming year. sooo I thought... why not treat a few of my favorite boys?

summary: gifting them a lily of the valley type of post: headcanons characters: riddle, epel, rook, vil, lilia additional info: platonic or romantic, reader is yuu, reader is gender neutral, not proofread

𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬

"...Oh? And what's this?"

your first "victim" of the day is none other than the strict and formal Heartslabyul housewarden himself

as a man of tradition, and an enjoyer of flowers, you figure Riddle is the perfect place to start

as you're already well aware of the gardening culture in the Queendom of Roses, you even make an effort to read up on botanical facts about the gift ahead of time, if only to impress him

and... well, you didn't have the time to paint these ones red

or is that only for roses...? these rules can be quite confusing...

When you hand him the gift, he's simply surprised. Flowers? But he doesn't remember asking you for these...?

Riddle inspects the sprig of lilies in his hand, rolling the stem between his fingers as you explain their meaning

and, much to your delight, he's pleasantly receptive

"They're not roses, but... I suppose they're very nice. Thank you,"

𝐄𝐩𝐞𝐥 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐫

"Now, what's all this for?"

if there's one thing Epel Felmier is absolutely tired of, it's flowers

well... it's not that he hates them, it's just... they're a girly thing, right? not to mention that Vil keeps them everywhere- the lounge, the rooms, he'd bet even that creepy basement under the dorm has a pristine porcelain vase full of the seasonal picks

ah, but flowers from you...?

and ones with a special meaning, no less

he'll never admit it aloud, but he's honored you chose him, of all people, to call a loved one

and so, Epel doesn't fuss too much when you take the liberty of putting the sprig in his front pocket, displaying it like a medal of honor

he might even chuckle at the whole thing

this is almost like something an old couple would do... it reminds him a little of his grandparents, even

"Well... alright. Aren't you as sweet as apple pie today?"

𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐞

"Ah? A gift for me?"

his immediate reaction? how delightful!

how long it's been since he's received flowers like this... ah, they remind him of his youth!

despite his initial excitement, though, Lilia soon becomes far more invested in the meaning behind the gesture than the gesture itself!

he's fostered quite an interest in other cultures and traditions, after all, and he'll be more than glad to listen to you talk about your own for hours, and hours, and hours...

his curiosity is quite charming, isn't it?

perhaps he and his cuteness can convince you to exchange more stories sometime!

Lilia takes such a liking to the tradition, in fact, that he passes it on to Silver, Sebek, and Malleus, giving each a new sprig of lilies with a brief (and somewhat confusing) explanation

(Malleus may have to ask you about that later)

but, of course, Lilia reserves the bragging rights of getting his own flowers directly from you

"Fufufu, I hope this won't be the last time I get flowers from you, Prefect,"

𝐕𝐢𝐥 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐭

"Oh, my. For me? They're lovely,"

Vil has received wreaths of roses, bouquets of the finest arrangements, even entire rooms full of flowers from devoted fans and management

but... something about the measly little sprig of lilies you're handing him first thing in the morning is all the sweeter

if there's anything he'll give you credit for, it's your taste in flowers. you must have chosen the best of the bunch especially for him, the way it's practically glowing

as soon as he's done admiring your pick, he pins it to his lapel, and keeps it there for the rest of the day

this color just accentuates his uniform so nicely, doesn't it?

and once you're done reciting your knowledge about the flower, he'll be sure to add his own, explaining the symbolism of such a beauty

"Lily of the valley: a return of happiness... Hm, much like yourself, no?"

(he will not elaborate on what he means by that)

but he does have a little spring in his step for the next few hours

"Oh, and, dear? You can be sure to expect ten times as many of these from me at your door next year,"

𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭

"Ah, such a lovely shape! you have an incroyable eye for beauty, mon trickster!"

quite frankly, it doesn't matter what day it is; to gift Rook a lovely flower out of the beauty of your heart is enough to send him into a never-ending soliloquy

and now you say these are meant for your loved ones? do you mean to kill him with your thoughtfulness?!

he admires the flower for as long as the day will permit, and then presses it for preservation

he wouldn't want to lose this precious memory, after all!

in fact, he'll frame it riiight next to his bed so he may wake up to the sight of your kindness every morning!

and, just to be sure you know exactly how his heart is overflowing for you, you can expect a poem and dozens of flowers waiting for you on your doorstep the next morning

really... where does he find the time?

if you ask, he'll insist he's only expressing himself to you in the same way you have to him

"I only wish to show my utmost appreciation for your beautiful heart, miel!"

[chobani-flip]

rec list of awesome bucktommy fics #1 of ∞

ok. so here's some fics ive read that i loved and i need everyone to read and love as well. more such lists to follow over the summer

Like a Music That's Been Transposed by @faillen

“Hey there, stunner,” Tommy murmured against his mouth once they’d pulled away. “Stunner?” Evan asked, smile bunching up his cheeks. “That’s a new one.” “Mhmm,” Tommy said, pressing a kiss to one of those lovely red cheeks. “You like it?” Evan ducked his head, “Yeah, that one’s uh. That’s pretty good.” His eyes cut back to Tommy and his mouth twisted into a thoughtful moue. “I don’t really have any for you.” “Eh,” Tommy said. “I’m not a big endearment guy.”

Or: Tommy grows into his name.

it is so good, you guys. such an excellent tommy character study.

The Machinery of the Body by @firehose118

Tommy takes one look at the wonderstruck expression on Evan's face after Tommy kisses him that first time and he knows he wants to take Evan apart under his hands like an engine and make him purr. He wants to slowly and carefully clean every rusty bolt Evan never knew he had and put him back together better than he found him.

it is horny and tender. they just care about one another so much 😭😭😭

the skin that binds you by @tiltingheartand

He must make a noise of some kind, because a second later he feels a hand very carefully combing through his curls. Too carefully, actually, although it does feel kind of amazing anyway. “Feeling okay, baby?” Well, good news: at least hearing Tommy’s voice doesn’t make anything worse. “Not really,” he manages, once he unsticks his lips from each other, refusing to move from where he’s got half his face pressed into Tommy’s neck. “Feel like death.” “That’s not as funny as you think it is,” Tommy says, but he’s hugging Buck around the shoulders while he says it. (Buck wakes up with a migraine. Tommy takes care of him.)

they are so good for each other and to each other 😭😭😭

Couched In Metaphor by @alchemistc

BUCK AND TOMMY GO COUCH SHOPPING! THERE'S ALSO EDDIE AND HE IS A GOOD FRIEND! the couch is a metaphor but it's also just a couch and buck and tommy are written so excellently here. i ADORE the way this author sees them and writes them

Your Midnights by Summerunderthesea

He still hadn’t been able to find his footing with Tommy. To find his cool, or to even be able to fake it so that he at least came across as somewhat smooth. At least a bit less of an idiot. So idiodic, non-cool, non-smooth Buck replied with an ‘uhh’. Then, eventually, ‘Yeah. A bit.’ --- A collection of midnights that Buck and Tommy spend together.

a progression of buck and tommy's relationship. so niiiiice.

while you arranged flowers by @newtkelly

Tommy’s eyes catch his and Buck is taken aback by the state of them, blown so black and glassy. He always looks so tongue-in-cheek, like he’s in on some joke and waiting for everyone else to catch on. He doesn’t look like that right now, though. Tommy’s composure is waning—the guy who takes on the world with a million dollar smile and a statuesque cleft chin and flies choppers to Vegas on a whim and into Cat 5 hurricanes to help old friends and kisses clarity into men who thought they were finished figuring themselves out, that guy is just as much a slave to his desire as any mortal man, and Buck is winded by the fact that he’s played any part in that. — Buck’s got a wedding date, but as far as today goes, he’s also got a regular one.

you might have seen the post where i shrieked about another fic of newtkelly, well read this one too. the way they write is so thoughtful and skilled???? shoo, go read!

little by little by @mediawhorefics

a madney wedding coda. it is brilliant. it is beautiful. AND ALSO, the author has an excellent taste in user names. GO READ MEDIA WHORE'S FICS! i shout in the marketplace and i am well heard by all.

Come Fly The Friendly Skies by @rcmclachlan

have you tried to imagine how the initial introductions between buck and tommy during the choppernapping went? no? yes? well, i guarantee you that this brilliant HILARIOUS piece of writing is going to surpass your greatest expectations.

allow me to quote one of my favourite lines at you: "We know you have many options when choosing airlines, so thank you for choosing Kinard Air. Let's begin the boarding process."

yeah, i know if tommy was any cooler of a cucumber that salad would be frozen! isn't it wonderful?!

im also gonna need you to read

@middyblue 's AU where buck works as a Scientist alongside karen and meets tommy when the lab blows up.

THIS IS THE SERIES HERE!!!! THERE ARE TWO FICS (SO FAR) WHOLE TWO FICS!!!!!!! AND IT IS BRILLIANT AND I LOVE IT!!!

Buck's clipboardy-ness is directed towards science! tommy is absolutely turnouts over helmet into him!!!!

ALSO! ALSO!

these are the fics that i keep seeing on rec lists (but that's because they're really fucking good and if you haven't read them yet, do yourself the favour of getting right on that.)

my heart's an autoclave. by @bucktheally

an outlier that should not be counted by @dadvans

prescribed burn by @wakeupnew

you know what actually? all of the authors above? (and any others i mention in the future?) go do the following:

click on subscribe ON THE AUTHOR'S PROFILE

[suzuran777]

BL Visual Novel Magazines throughout the years

Earlier this year, BL game magazine Cool-B announced that they were change their publishing schedule from bi-monthly to quarterly publication (after initially tweeting that the magazine would end publication, which has now been deleted), which made me think about how there are not that many magazines anymore that exclusively focuses on BL visual novel content. This used to different, as there were a lot of magazines in the early 2000s which published the latest information about BL visual novels that were released back then. In this blog post I created a small list of the magazines I've been collecting throughout the years and what kind of information they used to publish. Some titles might be missing, as every now and then I also find new magazines I've never heard of before, but I thought it would be interesting to write a little bit about each of them because I like collecting them!

First of all, even though these magazines are referred to as "BL game magazines" some of them also publish information about new mobile games, otome games, and other joseimuke content (media aimed at a female audience), however most articles in these magazines focus on BL games, and the characters on the covers of the magazine are also from BL media. Nowadays the only magazine that focuses on BL visual novel content is Cool-B, but in the early 2000s there used to be a lot more of these magazines. Some of them continued publication for a long time, while others only published a few issues before ending publication.

Game Pierce (GAMEピアス) Published by a company that simply called themselves "Magazine Magazine" (Later Sun Publishing and JUNET) the first issue of Game Pierce was published in February 2002, and was therefore probably the first BL visual novel magazine. Unlike some other magazines, this one exclusively focused on BL games and didn't combine it with otome or other joseimuke content. Though if you're wondering who the characters on the cover of the magazine are, they're actually not characters from a BL game, but original characters created by Kojima Natsuki. Later, some of these BL characters would appear in some of their manga like GP Gakuen (GP学園). Even though almost all of the covers featured Kojima Natsuki's characters, the back of the magazine did promote specific BL games that were popular at the time. Game Pierce existed for quite a while and ended up publishing 21 issues in total. There was also a version of the magazine called Comic Game Pierce which combined BL manga and BL game content, as well as Boy's Pierce which has been around since 1997 and still exists today, which publishes BL manga.

B's Log The next magazine is B's Log (or B's-Log), which was originally published by Enterbrain before they merged with Kadokawa in 2013. This magazine still publishes new issues even now, but the content they focus on has gradually changed throughout the years. The first issue of B's Log was released in March 2002, shortly after the first issue of the previously mentioned Game Pierce. From early 2002 until late 2004, the magazine mostly published information about BL and otome games, but later they gradually started focusing on more general joseimuke content. As far as I'm aware, the last time a BL game was on the cover was the December 2009 issue, which featured the game STEALl! by Spray. It's not like the magazine completely stopped publishing information about BL games after this though, as they'd publish articles about the sequel of Tennenouji's Luckydog1 (Luckydog1 +badegg), and Karin Chatnoir's BL game Omega Vampire in 2016. Unlike most other BL visual novel magazines, B's Log didn't publish any CGs from 18+ scenes, though of course they would still mention the age rating.

Game Darling (ゲーム・ダーリン) The first issue of the next magazine, Game Darling, was published in July 2002. The publisher is KTC (also known as KILL TIME COMMUNICATION), who mostly published game-related magazines in the late 1990s. However, I am pretty sure publication ended after only two issues, as I can't seem to find anything else published after this. Even though the other magazines that were released around this time were printed in full color, this magazine was printed in black and white, kind of resembling a manga (the size of the magazine was also small). This magazine also only focused on BL games, though they did publish some interesting articles about BL game fandom culture, for example characters from non-BL games that were often shipped together (like Ace Attorney and the Metal Gear series). Something that was also kind of funny to me is that they also published articles in which they recommended computers that would be able to run visual novels smoothly, once again reminding me that I was reading an article published in 2002.

Blueberry Published by Softbank Publishing, this magazine was supposed to be the sister magazine of erogame magazine Raspberry but as far as I know, only one volume of it exists, which was published in April 2003. I was able to find a copy of it eventually, but I think it's definitely one of the lesser-known magazines, especially since only one issue of it exists. It also came with a CD which a lot of magazines used to have as well, which would usually contain trial versions of games, opening movies and other promotional materials such as wallpapers. Compared to Blueberry, I think Raspberry was doing a bit better, as it looks like they published at least 17 different issues between early 2002 and late 2004.

Be x Boy This is technically a BL manga magazine, but since they did feature BL games on their covers sometimes, I think it's fair to mention them as well. Be x Boy was a monthly BL manga magazine which published its first issue in 1993. The publisher used to publish various other BL-related magazines as well, which focused on light novels, adult manga, short stories and more. From what I could find online, the original publisher, Biblos, went bankrupt in 2006, but these days the magazine still exists as a BL manga magazine and is now published by Libre.

Binetsu Ouji (微熱王子) This magazine was originally published by Studio DNA (these days Ichijinsha), and would eventually become another magazine called Cool-B in 2005, after its acquisition by Ohzora Publishing. Its first issue was released in July 2002. Even while looking at the oldest issues, the lay-out and design closely resembled Cool-B. Other than publishing information about otome and BL games, they also featured statistics showing which games were popular at the time. Even nowadays, this is still something Cool-B publishes in every issue. Binetsu Ouji and Cool-B allowed adult content, which is possibly why BL game creators would slowly start promoting their games in magazines like this rather than B's Log.

Cool-B As mentioned above, in 2005 Binetsu Ouji was taken over by Ohzora Publishing and relaunched as Cool-B, which is the only BL game magazine that still exists these days and is also the one that has been around for the longest time, as it currently has 115 issues. Earlier this year, they did kind of scare their fans by announcing that they would end publication after releasing 2 final magazine issues that same year, but this tweet was quickly deleted after some game creators mentioned that they would contact the staff and talk to them. Eventually, they announced a change in publication schedule and some slight changes to the magazine. Until earliy 2024, Cool-B has always been a bi-monthly magazine, but their future releases will be quarterly.

Cool-B Kiwame Last month the first issue of Cool-B Kiwame was released, which is a new version of the magazine that seems to exclusively feature BL game content, and the size is also a bit bigger than the original magazine. I'm happy that they could find a way to continue publishing the magazine, as this is usually where BL visual novel creators publish news about their latest games, as well as interviews and extra art. Something new they started recently is that they publish articles about a specific topic in which they ask for both fan opinions and commentary from the game developers. In this first issue of Cool-B Kiwame, the theme was "The worst, most horrible and best bad endings" and I had a lot of fun reading what endings fans submitted and what the creators of these games had to say about this! Therefore, even though the number of new BL visual novels is small nowadays, the magazine still found a way to continue publication.

Pictures in this blog post belong to Cool-B (their website) or were taken from the Retromags website.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Some Much-Needed Downtime TBH

ok I kinda read these species-swap chapters quickly without commenting 2 nights ago bc I REALLY wanted to catch up to the show, and honestly I didn't have much to say? It was a fun showcase of some different species talents, and introduced multiple fun problems for the characters to solve [takes notes in DM]. But it didn't seem to move either plot or characters forward much. Some notes:

Honestly it's surprising that there's only been 1 count of food poisoning so far, when they're trying SO MANY new things. One must credit Senshi's cooking skills!

This might be the single funniest joke so far:

I've seen multiple posts saying Senshi's elfsona reveals him to be feminine by dwarf standards, and I'm genuinely BAFFLED by that take because it is SO obvious that Senshi's elfsona reveals him to be 1. the Hottest Man You Have Ever Met, and 2. HAIRY. We have seen 0 other elves with facial hair. I dug up that showcase of different elves and 0 of them have facial hair. In the Tolkienien lore from which all modern fantasy, or certainly this sort of fantasy, is derived, exactly 2 elves in the history of the world are said to have had facial hair. Elf!Senshi has a tiny little moustache. Elf!Senshi isn't feminine, he is the HOTTEST, HAIRIEST bear in the metaphorical gay club.

...it's possible that he's more of a himbo than we realize, though.

I don't know what's up with Kensuke and I AM worried that it's being directed by the demon. I want it to be Laios's friend so bad...

It occurs to me that "the winged lion is actually the demon at the root of all of this" is probably the biggest spoiler I've gotten, and I didn't even realize how huge a spoiler it was because I DIDN'T get spoilered for the fact that, so far as the characters know, the lion is supposed to be a helpful god. Don't play with spoilers, kids! Even if you want to read the juicy meta!

This initial fight with the gargoyles is probably my new second-favorite "Laios is really quickly analytical and problem-solving in combat" moment (the living armor fight is still #1). He sees how everyone is failing, prevents more problems as he can, realizes they can't win and puts together what pieces they need to get out. In group social dynamics, he's a mediocre leader at best, but he's a superb combat tactician.

Laios is just living in his own little after-school special, and I love him for that.

That first panel is definitely support for the theory that the 50-60yr life expectancy of "short-lived" races like tallmen, orcs, kobolds and halffeet is shorter than it should be, relative to their ages of maturity, because the long-lived races control and hold most of the resources. It's even possible that their ages of maturity SHOULD be even older, but social conditions force them to become "adults" at a younger developmental age than dwarves, gnomes and especially elves!

Panel 3 is Marcille mentally shoving Chilchuck higher on her list of Lives to Extend by Whatever Magic I Can Learn.

I love how the way they figure out that the mushrooms' effects are easily reversible is literally by thinking through the greater social worldbuilding implications of the effects.

^This is the single most Dad we've ever seen Chilchuck...topped only by that 'carry child like a football' a moment later. Actually, he yeets Marcille a LOT while tall - here, over the jump in the travel montage, with Laios to make a loop for the gargoyle...which I'm dead certain is an indication of how he physically treated his daughters. Those kids got casually, affectionately tossed like salad.

.

AND THAT'S WHAT WE CALL FRIENDSHIP.

...okay maybe I did have several thoughts about those 2 chapters.

.

"[Falin] was much tougher than I was. I hear she and our parents still write to each other" is SUCH a line for painting a picture of Laios and Falin's childhoods, and Laios's feelings on it.

.

you can keep your Kabru Wink(TM)s, I am weak only for the Laios Fond Little Smile(TM).

.

I love how Senshi is still musing on this soul = egg metaphor, and I LOVE how both times now that we've seen Laios genuinely lose his temper, it's because someone was saying "why are you just being excited about eating monsters when Falin is in danger?!", and he's snapping because he is fucking NOT dismissing his sister in favor of eating monsters, he is doing EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER to save her and it just so happens that the only plans with a smidgen of success involve leaning into eating monsters. And by trying to stop him from that, you're stopping him from saving Falin.

.

Laios, how tf do you remember the Wink? I'm 99% sure Kabru never once winked in your interactions; I WAS looking for it. Was he just exuding wink energy? (I mean...yes.)

.

The dramatic irony jokes in this chapter are on POINT. Chilchuck: "There's no way this thing still works" [tram door slams shut on his heels, cars immediately starts moving]. "You won't find a military company in the dungeon" [smash cut to Shuro, Namari and Kabru unhappily leading the Canaries into the dungeon]. Impeccable.

Stopping this one here in preparation for going nuts about implied elf-related worldbuilding in the next chapters!

[the-orion-scribe]

An essay on Ford and Mabel

To commemorate my 1000th post, I decided to embark on an essay on the limited Ford and Mabel bonding in the show!

Among some of the shortcomings in the show (including Wendy being chaffed as a main character), there aren’t as many moments for Ford and Mabel to bond over, compared to Ford with Dipper. Well, it’s also due to the short runway we have from A Tale of Two Stans to Weirdmageddon, but for rather odd reasons, Ford didn’t get a lot of screentime and often holed up in his own lab. Even Roadside Attraction did not even drop any mention of Ford. As a mutual lamented to me, it’s likely the case of Ford, like Wendy, being another character whom the writers had a purpose for (as the answer to the mystery of Stan and the Portal), but didn’t know how to write outside that purpose.

Of course, some argued that, for plot reasons, this is so that Mabel gets duped by Bill since she didn’t know about the Rift from Ford. Or that Ford just overlooked her when he offered Dipper the apprenticeship. As such, there is a main misconception that Ford didn’t care about Mabel at all compared to Dipper. Or, in some ridiculously extreme cases, that he hates her. While I guess this was extrapolated from what we might have gleaned in the show, I don’t agree with such extreme views.

People forget that Mabel was actually the first twin he interacted with, and it was largely positive. When Mabel stated that his six-fingered handshake was one finger friendlier than normal, Ford laughed and said he liked her. Given how much he was shunned by many others for his extra fingers, it probably warmed him to hear someone saying something positive about his anomaly. It seemed initially set up that Ford and Mabel should get along fabulously. Even Mabel went as far as to knit finger puppets for Ford and while he sounded rather hesitant in Journal 3, we later glimpsed a scene in which both bonded over something similar (a hand turkey).

Which brings me next on Ford’s journal entry about Mabel. (I also noted he interviewed, or wrote about, Mabel before Dipper). His interview with Mabel sounded largely positive given he remarked how he was “instantly charmed” by her “enthusiastic” personality. Ford also considered her as an “odd specimen” (almost certainly a compliment), and also hoped to seek her help to repair his own coat.

I suppose this interview probably shaped some initial impressions for Ford about Mabel. “Overall positive but somewhat ambivalent/not-really-comprehending how she ticks necessarily” is much of how I would define Ford’s attitude toward Mabel - he likes her, but doesn’t especially identify with her because the traits he admires in her are almost inversions of some his own.

At this stage, one could also take that with his remark in Dipper’s initial assessment about how he “possibly takes after Stanley” as Ford initially trying to identify with Mabel the way he ended up identifying with Dipper, such as him enthusiastically commenting about her sweet tooth and hair curls being a Pines trait. Of course, as it turned out in the show and in Journal 3, his perceptions of the twins shifted and he found himself relating more to Dipper especially when he looked back on Dipper’s entries and additions, and the events of Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons.

I have to admit that when I first read this part, I thought he remarks he himself needed further psychological testing and not Mabel. For some light-heartedness, I rather think of it that way, but there’s something deeper in this for the two’s psychological profiles. First off, the tests were flawed, given Rorschach testing blots should be less definitive, but it probably reflected Ford’s possible lack of comfort with ambiguity, and the preoccupation he had with death and destruction for so long. As for Mabel, it shows a certain degree of wilful misinterpretation, trying to see things through a particular positive lens and has a sort of fear of unpleasantness that manifests in a possibly neurotic drive to control reality around her, which finds its ultimate expression in Mabeland.

This is rather important as something I would delve into deeper later on in this essay, which gave Ford an impression that Mabel’s psychology, while odd, was overall positive and not much to be concerned about. He clearly recognized Mabel’s social ability as a valuable skill, and may see her lack of cynicism as something of an asset too, as we later see in The Last Mabelcorn. I suppose Ford neglected to do a deeper dive into her psychology given the fallout we would see in Dipper and Mabel Vs the Future. He might claim to have 12 PHDs, but I doubted one of them is in psychology.

We move on to the Last Mabelcorn, which is where we see Ford interacted more with Mabel and offer a bigger insight into how he feels about her. First, he agreed with Mabel when she stated she was probably “the most pure of heart in the room” and entrusted her with the unicorn mission, even knowing that the unicorns were difficult (and frustrating). As such, he equipped her with Journal 1 and a crossbow for the mission. Obviously this was for her safety, as well as trying to give her as much help as he could regarding unicorns, even though he himself had little success (Ford mentioned of an arm-wrestle with a unicorn in the blacklight edition which I doubted went well). At the end of that episode, he directly told her that she is a good person, even without being aware of the struggles she had gone through with her morality moments prior. And after the episode he even regarded her as an expert on unicorns given she managed to defeat one, and allowed her to write an entry in Journal 3 about unicorns. I needed to note that Mabel was the only person who wrote in Ford’s Journal after Dipper returned Ford the Journals (and before their recovery in Weirdmageddon). This rather showed how much Ford really trusted Mabel, especially when he regarded his Journal as his “important scientific documents”.

Dipper and Mabel vs The Future is more contentious in this regard. We see how plenty of fans often using this episode as proof that Ford doesn’t care about Mabel just because he only asked Dipper to stay in Gravity Falls, and waved off concerns that Mabel would be all alone in California. However, we need to relook some bits of this in context.

Dipper: There’s also Mabel. She’d be all alone in California. Ford: Mabel will be fine on her own. She has a magnetic personality. I watched her become pen pals with the pizza delivery man in the 60 seconds he was at the door.

From this, we can see how Ford cared enough to observe Mabel’s social skills with the pizza delivery guy, plus probably witnessed plenty of instances of Mabel handling herself without Dipper’s help. I guessed that was further underlined by her success in the unicorn adventure, and thus he genuinely believed that Mabel could take being without her brother outside of the summers.

Dipper: Gosh, we’ve never really been apart before. Ford: And isn’t it suffocating? Dipper, can you honestly tell me you never felt like you were meant for something more?

This is another contentious bit, I admit. It sounded like Ford considered Mabel as a stumbling block in Dipper’s future. Well, I concede Ford isn’t perfect. Again, this is one of those times Ford was projecting his issues with Stan onto the younger twins after finding out how similar he thinks Dipper is to him (possibly aggravated probably by Stan blatantly aligning Mabel with himself, ex, telling Dipper that he belongs upstairs with “me and Mabel”). At this point, he was just extremely clueless about the nature of her and Dipper’s relationship, and how it was much healthier than his was with Stan, probably even at that age.

Nevertheless, to say that he didn’t care about Mabel at all is simply a misguided oversimplification. He cared about them both so much. His traumatic experience with his own twin just tainted how he saw the twins’ bond being something that could be potentially suffocating. He did sort of have a point though; Dipper and Mabel couldn’t force each other to stay glued at the hip forever or it could potentially stifle their individual dreams if handled badly. But the twins were only 12 and had a lot of growing up to do together. It wasn’t a great idea to separate the twins at this point, which was something Ford forgot.

Mabel wasn’t forthright about her feelings about leaving Gravity Falls and growing up until she blew up at the end of the episode. We see how she maintained that mask of optimism throughout the show, even when she was worried about the Grunkles’ falling out and the parallels she found between her and her brother back in A Tale of Two Stans. That mask began to slip when she realized growing up wasn’t as great as she thought, and Ford didn’t know how badly Mabel would take it.

Ford thought he was doing Dipper a favor by giving him a head start on his studies. This is probably a bit too charitable of an interpretation, but one could, I suppose, see Ford's “something more” remark as “Dipper more than just half of a set” instead of “implying that Mabel is in some sense inferior than her brother.” As said earlier, he even believed Mabel would be fine and thrive on her own, too. That the two could have reached a compromise if needed.

We can probably conclude that Ford actually did not disregard Mabel or see her as the "inferior twin", but he just found trouble trying to connect with her despite his initial positive impressions. At the same time, due to Mabel's outward outgoing personality, he overestimated Mabel's confidence in being on her own, and also (subconsciously) projected his own issues with Stan on the younger twins. Not to say Ford was a bad person by any means, but he was misguided in some of his assumptions and impressions.

On a tangent, I say the recent fan episode Return to the Bunker tried its best to imagine how Ford and Mabel might go on an adventure together. However, it instead exaggerated too much of his flaws (e.g. his trust issues) and it became more of a Ford bashing episode. Yes, we know Ford isn't perfect by any means, and he might be unfamiliar with interacting with others like Mabel.

Yet, as we also saw from the canon (the show supplemented by Journal 3), he could get along well with Mabel, especially in such a desperate situation like confronting a Shapeshifter (how he dismissed the others' suggestions is really beyond me). We even saw how Ford was willing to give up himself to Bill in WMG when Bill threatened to torture or even kill the kids.

I supposed the writers of that fan episode did read J3 but took the wrong lessons. While definitely an attempt to show Ford's flaws, the episode instead went the other extreme. Ford could sometimes be insensitive (like the remark he made about "suffocating"), but not anti-social or downright unpleasant.

There is definitely potential for more positive Ford and Mabel bonding moments that could further underscore that Mabel could cope well on her own (from what we saw in The Last Mabelcorn). From what @hkthatgffan also told me (and on Reddit), when Lost Legends was coming up, everyone thought, from Hirsch's hint through his emojis, that we might finally get a Ford and Mabel bonding story but instead we got an (admittedly) half-hearted attempt to redeem Mabel from her role in WMG.

I supposed another angle could be Ford and Mabel also coming to terms with their roles, given Ford is partly responsible (and even took some blame himself), and both can overcome the trauma together. I don't doubt these are already concepts being explored in various fanfics and fanarts. And here are some other ideas from Reddit.

Let me end off with some parallel scenes between Ford and Mabel, which show how similar both are. We need to also remember that it's not exactly Dipper-Ford and Mabel-Stan, but rather Dipper and Mabel paralleling each of the Stans in different ways. That is probably another essay for another time.

This essay is written with assistance from @jacky-rubou (who already provided an initial essay for me to work from) and @callipraxia who is able to offer more insights.

[ourtalechara]

... thoughts? (Full idea under cut)

What if someone who knows how to use vocal synths like. Made a vocaloid version of Hamilton. Assign each member of the cast a character that sings for them. It'd probably be a community project if it happened, because that's a big undertaking, but it would also be more fun as a community thing. I don't really know how to use these programs, (I have tried to make Teto say things, and technically I have succeeded in making her say things) BUT I can brainstorm casting ideas with my limited knowledge of fanon Vocaloid personalities!

As indicated by the picture above Hatsune Miku would probably take the role of Hamilton. Her being the most popular Vocaloid makes her a prime candidate for title character. Also I just like the image above with Miku's silhouette on the star with her name.

Idk who Burr would be. Flower maybe? Off the top of my head. Is there someone who it would make sense to oppose Miku in the way that Burr does? An anti-miku? Neru? Nah, I've got better plans for Neru...

You can't spell Laurens without L en. You can spell Philip without it, but that doesn't matter, he's going to be playing that role anyway. It just feels kinda natural for me, as he's pretty young and boyish, which fits Philip, and I feel it fits Laurens too. There's no Len's-relationship-to-Miku-mirrors-Laurens-relationship-to-Hamilton to this or anything, I'm pretty sure that's the case for most of these.

Lafayette is Teto this is a fact. They're both so silly and they like baguettes they're the baguette bois I need this so bad someone give me a Teto cover of guns and ships and I will love you please I feel this in my soul.

Also, I like the idea of Teto in the second act wearing a flashy red coat and debating with Miku in the cabinet. She's perfect for this role.

Mulligan/Madison? Uh. Idk. Again. Flower? Again? Maybe Fukase? I will probably form a stronger opinion on this/borrow someone else's opinion later.

The Schuyler Sisters!

I'd say MEIKO has good strong eldest sister energy fit for Angelica. Also they're both red.

For Eliza, my first instinct is to say Luka, although there's also a voice in my head saying Gumi, and there's also probably someone outside of my head who has another idea that might be better. ?

Rin has big "and Peggy" vibes.

For Washington I want to say KAITO or Guackpo, like, a tall, imposing man. KAITO would be perfect if it weren't for the fact that in most fan works I've seen, KAITO's pretty goofy, and Washington really isn't. I think that that's probably just bias though, he's not always like that. He could make a great Washington. Idk much about Guackpo but it could probably fit. He's a samurai. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, but maybe it could.

Philip Schuyler as Neru. I initially thought of this as a joke, as Schuyler doesn't speak a word himself, and Neru has no official voicebank (I personally headcanon her as mute), but Neru as his second act counterpart, James Reynolds, could be really interesting? Neru hates Miku so much that she decides to extort her for money and ruin her career? It feels very in character for Neru to do some of this stuff in a way, it just feels right I guess.

So that's. Most of the main characters. Or all of them. Unless I'm forgetting someone. I have no ideas for side characters other than the Neru ideas. I feel like the utau default voice whose name I don't know off the top of my head should be in there somewhere. Maybe. Maybe the one with the big blue thing on her head. The young one. In positive dance time. Idk there's lots of Vocaloids and lots of characters (but there's more Vocaloids) and I need to end this post now goodbye.

[bbcphile]

CPTSD and Mysterious Lotus Casebook Part II: Di Feisheng, Violence, and Emotional Regulation

In last week’s meta, I wrote about complex CPTSD, its stereotypes, and how DFS and LLH each show different aspects of CPTSD symptoms.

This week’s post focuses on DFS and self regulation, including emotional regulation. As I mentioned before, it’s common for tv shows and films to have characters who have survived child abuse or traumatic combat situations be affected by out of control, violent outbursts. What I find fascinating about DFS, however, is that, while the jianghu and even Li Lianhua initially see him as someone who resorts to violence at the slightest provocation, that’s not at all who he is according to what we see on screen. While he does lash out with violence, he is more in control of his actions, expression of emotions, and violent impulses than just about anyone in the show.

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is a challenge with complex PTSD for a number of reasons, including: 

Traditional flashbacks (re-experiencing the traumatic memories as though it is happening again)

Emotional flashbacks (experiencing all the emotions from the trauma as intensely as if it were happening again, including grief, rage, betrayal, fear, etc.)

Body memories (experiencing the physical sensations of the trauma like it’s happening again)

Hypervigilance (being constantly on the lookout for threats to defend against them and keep yourself safe) and its resultant irritability and overstimulation

Intrusive thoughts (seeing images or thinking thoughts related to the trauma that you can’t block out)

Nightmares (of the trauma), or insomnia from avoiding nightmares and the resulting exhaustion and irritability from sleep deprivation 

As a result, anything that reminds someone of the trauma can be a trigger that could set off any or all of these reactions. That means, for DFS, that being betrayed by someone he trusted, or being poisoned and made powerless, or being attacked by someone with more power than him, or confronting his abuser is never about experiencing just that event in isolation: it almost always brings up the feelings of the earlier, even more traumatic times similar things have happened. Also, it’s not just events or people’s actions that can be triggers: smells, colors, textures, sounds, tastes, shapes, terrain, enclosed spaces, decor style—anything can trigger this sort of re-experiencing. As you might imagine, responding appropriately to people and situations can be difficult when your brain is constantly telling you that you are in danger or actively being harmed!

How do people deal with being bombarded by emotions, memories, and sensations of the worst times of their lives? The version media shows most often is a traditional “fight” response, where people lash out at others, either preemptively to avoid being hurt or in retaliation for a real or perceived hurt, although lots of survivors of CPTSD turn this fight response inwards in what I’ve started calling “lashing in,” where, like Li Lianhua, they direct the anger and hatred that should go toward the perpetrators of abuse toward themselves instead.  (There’s also the “flight” response—avoiding and running away from things that remind you of the trauma or throwing yourself into distractions by being a workaholic—or the “freeze” response of dissociation, or the “fawn” response of trying to appease and placate someone harming you, but more on those another day.)

DFS, Violence, and Emotional Regulation

I want to emphasize that I’m not saying DFS isn’t violent: Di Feisheng does lash out, verbally and physically! (And for a great image set of the number of people he chokes, check out this post by @difeisheng.) What I find fascinating about DFS is the way he is such an interesting twist on the idea of lashing out;  he’s not hurting others during a flashback or nightmare, or harming others as an outlet for his anger, or killing first and asking questions later to stay safe. He’s using violence but in a deliberate, controlled way, and as a last resort. And this is even more impressive given all the potential things that might trigger him.

Leaving Seclusion

His first appearance as an adult in the show’s present highlights this beautifully: his first act when he breaks free from seclusion is to tell Jiao Liqiao and Yao Mo not to kill the people who have intruded on his hideout, which is the reason FDB and LLH live past episode 5. This is wild to me, because it would be easy for someone who has been on the run from the Di Fortress his entire life and clearly fears being recaptured to say they deserve death for trespassing or because they could be Di Fortress spies. Or, since he spent a decade recovering from injuries liable to make him feel helpless, he could have used it as a chance to fight them as a way of proving to himself that he is still strong and capable and unlikely to be recaptured. Instead, he tells JLQ and Xue Gong to stand down and uses his qinggong to leave the scene, not even interrogating them to find out more. So, even though being unexpectedly interrupted while he’s still weaker than he used to be would activate his hypervigilance and increase the likelihood of him lashing out, he doesn’t. Anything he’s feeling stays internal and not on his face, such that he looks and acts unaffected. And since it’s one of his earliest appearances, it’s proof that this pattern is present from the start. It’s not just Li Lianhua’s influence or DFS’ time without memories as a-Fei soothing his bad temper or rage or uncontrolled violence: he was never out of control to begin with.  

Asura Grass

DFS’ restraint comes into play again when he finds out that Li Lianhua blocked his meridians with Asura grass, interfering with his ability to access his qi. I am feral about this moment. DFS has spent his entire life trying to be as strong as possible so he would never be helpless again and regularly has nightmares/flashbacks of his childhood in the Di Fortress in which he didn’t have the strength, training, or skills to defend himself properly, and to times he was helpless and couldn’t control his own body because of the mind control bug that had been put into him against his will. His nightmares show that he remembers the pain it caused when the Di Fortress head rang the bell, and that the bug writhed in his neck while triggering that pain. In poisoning him with the Asura grass, something that literally moves and grows inside him to make him weaker and unable to fully defend himself, LLH could have unknowingly reenacted that trauma from Di Fortress. The fact that it happens immediately after two positive things–he had regained the strength he’d lost so he’d be feeling safer and freer than he had for the last decade, and the fact that he’d just found LXY alive after mourning him and losing interest in martial arts beyond wanting the security his skills provide–would have made this betrayal hurt even more: it’s the sort of thing that crushes hope and makes you think you’ll always be trapped. That it came from someone he cared for (as a rival, as an aspirational figure, as his equal, as a romantic prospect, etc.) and still mostly trusted could have itself been a trigger because of the early days at Di Fortress when he learned the hard way that his options were kill or be killed, and trust and kindness didn’t fit into that world.  Despite the fact that LLH’s using Asura grass on him would be an incredibly painful combination of triggers and terrible timing, DFS stays mind-boggling in control of his external reactions. When he realizes his meridians are blocked, his face falls and his fingers twitch slightly (they are usually either held completely still in a studied, neutral rounded position or in a fist if he’s really mad about something and doesn’t mind showing it externally), and he starts to take a step towards LLH. But before he’s moved much at all, LLH tells him to stay where he is and not come closer. 

And he stops. 

He’s having Big Feelings about it (and who wouldn’t? Especially since part of his trauma is being immobilized when trying to get back at the person who harmed him!), as the Throat Bob of Feeling (his biggest emotional tell) shows, but he stops and hears LLH out. 

He escalates things later by putting his sword to LLH’s throat and telling him he’ll torture him to get the cure, but it’s more a warning than an actual threat; the fabric of LLH’s robes is between the blade and his skin so not even the flesh will be nicked. And once he learns that LLH is doing this not to harm him but because he wants his help–before he even knows what LLH wants his help with–he removes his dao from LLH’s neck and asks for more details. (There’s so much to say about how he wields words in this conversation, too, but it’s already getting too long!) This interaction shows that, for him, physical violence is to counter an active threat, even if he’s mad and hurting, and that his default even during times of extreme stress is to stay calm, despite how incredibly hard that would be for anyone.

DFS and FDB

This could be an entire meta on its own, but since it’s more obvious than some of the other points, all I’ll say here is that Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng argue and fight all the time, but Di Feisheng almost never instigates it: DFS usually tries to ignore FDB and walk away to avoid the conflict entirely, and once FDB throws the first punch, DFS’s goal is to get out of the fight, not to hurt him. Look at how FDB is actually trying to choke DFS when they’re wrestling and DFS is more bracing against his shoulder, as @difeisheng has said, or even at the rest of the fight choreography where each of DFS’ strikes is to force FDB to let go of him and to leave the room. 

(Note: FDB tries to strangle DFS first, whereas DFS is mainly trying to brace himself against his arms and keep him at arm’s length.

Even in the ep 13 fight, when Di Feisheng eventually poisons Fang Duobing with gang qi, he gives him several verbal warnings to draw his sword first, because he doesn’t want to fight someone who is unarmed. He’s also not trying to kill FDB; he’s trying to hurt him just enough that LLH is forced to ask for his help and agree to live. (More on this in the yin leaves meta I will eventually write.) So, again, it’s controlled violence in service of a larger goal, not vengeful, uncontrolled lashing out. 

DFS and the Limits of Emotional Regulation

There are 3 main times when DFS’ control over his anger/hurt/violence is shaken or in jeopardy: 1. when he finds out Li Lianhua was poisoned and is dying; 2. when he wakes up in pain and with no memories in the corpse seller’s place; and 3. when he wakes up from a nightmare/flashback–still without memories–in a bed with LLH hovering over him. For each, I’ll explain possible reasons the event could be so triggering to clarify why he struggled with emotional regulation. (Also, keep in mind that being triggered can happen even if the person in question doesn’t consciously know what triggered them or why, so while he might be aware of some or all of the connections between the present event and his past experiences, he wouldn’t need to be consciously aware of any of them for them to affect him emotionally and make it harder for him to control his response.)

Fight over Bicha

The scene where DFS learns that LXY was poisoned for their donghai battle and thought it was on DFS’ order is fascinating, because it is the most angry and volatile we see DFS at any point in the show as an adult: he yells, repeatedly, his voice shaking with emotion, and he chokes Li Lianhua twice. Given how tightly controlled he is the rest of the time—including when he confronts his abusers and any of the times he is captured or tortured (I’ll talk about the latter two in a dissociation meta later)—that means that whatever he is feeling must be overpowering to shake his iron control. So before we get into analyzing the way that he is still showing restraint, even here, we need to address why this realization would be such a trigger for him.

Although DFS claims he’s angry and upset about the realization because he wants to be the best in a fair fight and his previous fake victory made him seem like a joke, it seems highly likely he’s not telling the full story, since that’s not really a thing he does. (For a full listing of things he lies about or deliberately omits/withholds, check out this post.) In fact, it seems very likely his reaction happened because of just how many triggers this scenario managed to hit. For example, at Di Fortress, he was forced into fights he didn’t want to participate in, where the odds were stacked against him because he was a child forced to fight people older and more experienced than he was, so as an adult, he wants to fight people who are at his level, and not people weaker than he is, because he doesn’t want to continue the cycle. This is why he isn’t interested in fighting other people on the martial arts list, why he barely expends any power at all on fighting the Sigu sect members, etc. He knows what it feels like to be on the other side of that, and in the same way that he wants to free the children in the Di Fortress so they don’t have to suffer as he did, so he wants to never be the cause of someone suffering under an imbalance of power. Also, since every escape attempt from Di Fortress and every attack against his abusive master was rigged against him—because the mind control bug could stop him in his tracks—he likewise doesn’t want to deprive someone of their agency like that. We also know that Di Feisheng and Li Xiangyi signed a peace treaty for five years, where they promised not to attack each other; that promise not to attack each other was exactly what he kept trying to form with the other prisoners in Di Fortress, but he couldn’t find anyone to agree and just got stabbed for his efforts.

Li Xiangyi breaking the peace treaty would have shattered that dream (and probably his heart a bit, too), but even that wouldn’t hurt as much as finding out, all at the same time, that: 

1. He had thought he was the best in the world at martial arts which to him meant safety and security from Di Fortress, and he just found out it was based on a lie; 

2. His now second-in-command, JLQ, had poisoned LXY (which violated the peace treaty), a betrayal that would reactivate his already very prevalent trust issues; 

3. He had fought and almost killed someone in a rigged fight when he tries to be deliberate about his kills and violence so as not to perpetuate the abuse he suffered from; 

4. JLQ had essentially tried to turn him into the butcher the head of Di Fortress wanted him to be, and he hadn’t known it for a decade; 

5. LXY had spent a decade thinking DFS endorsed the sort of abuses he abhorred;

6. LXY is now dying and mostly powerless because of what was done in his name and because he didn’t notice the poisoning kicking in, and LXY refuses to fight for his life or to give DFS a chance to save him and essentially undo the harm that has been done. To DFS, LXY is making him complicit in his death yet again, which would mean being again responsible for the death of someone he wants to live, just like he was as a child. 

Oh, and he’s facing all this with his meridians blocked and without access to his qi, which means he’s most likely feeling perpetually hypervigilant and helpless, which would mean everything is likely to feel like even more of a threat and emotional regulation is even harder.

In short, it is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. And this is all assuming that he mainly thought of LXY as purely a rival he respected: if you read DFS as already loving LXY (whether he realizes it consciously or not), you can see why it would be even worse.

And of course, all of Li Lianhua’s suggestions that DFS pretend he didn’t hear or move on and fight someone else are not addressing the main issues, because he doesn’t know them. But if DFS wasn’t about to tell LXY that someone was framing the Jinyuan alliance for the murder of SGD a decade ago, he’s certainly not about to tell him his deepest secret–that due to a mind control bug, one ring of a bell can render him absolutely helpless, which is why fair fights and being strong enough to defeat any enemy are incredibly important to him–so of course, to LLH, it’s just about DFS wanting to prove he’s the best as part of an ego trip, even though that’s not it at all. And of course LLH’s dismissiveness is going to make everything worse for DFS.

With all that in mind, let’s look at his body language and actions to see how he handles things when he is incredibly close to losing it. Although he does lash out, his first choice, as always, isn’t violence: he gathers info via eavesdropping–rather than bursting in during a fit of rage as soon as he learns the truth–and when he confronts LLH, he yells at him first, telling him what he overheard. It’s only when LLH tries to avoid the subject by snarking at him about eavesdropping instead of telling him the truth that DFS grabs LLH by the neck and shoves him against a pillar. 

The moment in the entire show he is at his angriest is when he yells “It matters!” after LLH says it doesn’t matter who won or lost.

This is what DFS looks like when he’s losing control: his arm shakes for an instant before he locks the muscles to keep in place, and he puts a tad more pressure than he meant to on LLH’s neck before he realizes it and pulls back again. He’s been incredibly truthful here, in a way: the fact that he didn’t win because Li Lianhua was poisoned matters tremendously to him. He’s just not saying why and letting LLH believe the worst of him, which is another of his common strategies.

In case there’s any doubt that DFS’s choking of LLH is more designed to warn than to harm and is overall incredibly controlled apart from that moment, just look at his grip: Li Lianhua can talk and breathe normally and even turn his head the first time, so this move designed to show that DFS is mad, hurt, and serious about the conversation rather than actually trying to hurt or punish LLH or cut off his air. He also lets go completely while trying to convince LLH to let him cure him. He only grips Li Lianhua’s neck again when LLH refuses to accept help and only applies any real force when Li Lianhua essentially calls his bluff about killing people from Baichuan Court (or rather, tells his own bluff–a lie that he doesn’t care what happens to them). 

Even there, since he’s making threats he doesn’t mean, he’s very much trying to play into the villain role LLH saw/sees him as (the person who murdered SGD, broke a peace treaty, and poisoned him), but he’s not doing it to harm LLH or “just” force him to have a second duel: he’s doing it to try to convince him to live, to give him something to fight (him) for: the safety of other people DFS thinks LLH cares about most. 

After all, most of the conversation isn’t about a second duel at all: it’s about DFS trying to convince LLH to let him find a cure. No wonder he has the Throat Bob of Feeling twice when LLH explains that he’s dying and doesn’t have much time left.

With that in mind, the fact that DFS uses the traditional Di family choking move again when LLH refuses to agree to let DFS try to cure him is a fascinating metaphor for how DFS approaches violence when it comes to LXY: he’s using a move designed to cause harm, but with the intent to convince LLH to accept help. In other words, he’s using a technique designed to kill to try to force Li Lianhua to live.

a-Fei and Hypervigilance

Even when DFS wakes up with amnesia, only remembering “kill or be killed” and some of his worst trauma memories, and would be most likely to act on pure instinct, he still exercises restraint. When he finds himself first at the corpse seller’s and later at Lotus Tower, not knowing how he got to either place, it would be the work of a moment to snap the neck of the man trying to sell him to be married to a dead woman without his consent, or to stab the hair stick (or knife? I can’t tell which) from the nightstand through Li Lianhua’s throat. But even then, when he’d have every reason to assume his life is in jeopardy and he needs to kill first, he doesn’t. In both cases, he pauses, gathers information, and listens, and lets go. (And yes, he collapses in the first of these two instances instead of actively making the choice to let go, but he’s already loosened his grip to listen to Li Lianhua, and when he sees the corpse seller the next day, he doesn’t try to harm him, or even exhibit any animosity at all toward him, showing again that once the threat is passed, so too has his desire for violence.) Even when he’s under threat or having a flashback and all he knows is killing, he doesn’t kill. 

DFS and Violence against Abusers

Even when he does intend to harm–particularly with his two abusers, the head of Di Fortress and Jiao Liqiao (who he kills, even though it goes against his policy of not killing women)–his emotions and actions are tightly controlled: while he does choke them and destroy their meridians, and tell them why he’s getting revenge, his voice, strength, and facial expressions are almost superhumanly regulated. 

Confronting an abuser is incredibly difficult, because it usually triggers the feelings of fear and helplessness that were experienced during the abuse. It might be hard to imagine DFS feeling fear or helplessness because he doesn’t explicitly show it as an adult much, but the fact that he still has nightmares/flashbacks of being immobilized and hurt by the head of Di Fortress means that even though he’s an adult who is at the top of the jianghu, he’s still regularly re-experiencing the terror of being helpless and at his mercy for decades, and his fear of helplessness has motivated almost every action of his since. That means that he would be struggling during that confrontation, fighting off literal and emotional flashbacks and/or dissociation, and trying to convince his brain that he’s no longer a helpless child about to be punished or killed. And, generally speaking, once you’ve confronted one abuser, future confrontations with different abusers trigger all the feelings from the confrontation with the earlier abuser, especially if the aftermath of the confrontation was traumatic (which, given that it’s when JLQ incapacitated, captured, and tortured him, it definitely was). So, when confronting JLQ, he’s probably reexperiencing that fear and helplessness on top of everything else.  And, given how often we see him show nothing, even while being tortured, the cracks in his facade here speak to just how deeply the confrontations are affecting him. 

He doesn’t even raise his voice, and the only hints of the toll the confrontations are taking on him are tiny, almost invisible facial movements, which you can see in the gifs below:

When the head of Di Fortress offers to make him the new master and in charge of abusing others, the muscles of one cheek and under the opposite eye start twitching.

(and zoomed in if you need a close up!)

2. When JLQ taunts him after he broke free from her prison by saying “Do you want to escape?” his jaw works from side to side as he forces himself to not react.

3. When he chokes JLQ after she says she’ll kill LLH for being the reason DFS doesn’t love her, it takes him two tries to speak before his voice works (look at his lips forming the opening word twice before working the third time.)

So, clearly, the lapses in his control aren’t violent outbursts; they speak to something far more nuanced than that, namely, the emotional turmoil confronting an abuser brings up.

[Also, compare this to LLH’s reaction when he finds out SGD tricked their shifu into sacrificing himself for him. He’s flooded by his emotions, which affects his fighting style, and it triggers a Bicha flare. Note: I’m NOT criticizing LLH here. His reaction makes perfect sense and I’m not saying DFS’ approach is better. I am saying that it’s unusual to have the hero be the one who lashes out and has less emotional control and to have the person the jianghu sees as the temper-tantrum prone villain be the one who keeps his emotions in a chokehold.]

So many shows have confrontation scenes with an abuser be either profoundly triumphant events or violent revenge fantasies where the character almost loses control beating up the person who harmed them. These scenes are fascinating not just because DFS doesn’t rejoice or lose control, but because of the way DFS’ microexpressions show how hard the confrontations are for him. These are not the actions of someone who is controlled by rage or violent impulses. They’re the actions of someone who has spent so much of his life with his body controlled by the non-existent mercy of others that he refuses to let anything, including his emotions and memories, wrestle his hard-won control of his body away from him. Of someone who knows what it’s like to suffer, powerless, at the violent hands of others, and tries to make sure that the violence he commits with his own hands is well-reasoned and justified. Of someone who is hypervigilant not only to external threats but to the threat he himself could be.

In other words, the extreme amount of control he exercises over himself and the way he is hypervigilant to the threat that he could pose and the way he goes out of his way to not abuse power over others the way he was abused is itself a manifestation of his complex CPTSD.

The portrayal of his cPTSD is particularly interesting when you realize that the out of control, hyperviolent danger to society villain stereotype is exactly who the jianghu thinks Di Feisheng is for most of the show. But the reality is that Di Feisheng has more self-control than the rest of the lotus trio (certainly more than Fang Duobing does), even when he’s being violent. And, just as the jianghu’s legends have very little basis in reality and do damage to the characters, so does the caricature of a hyperviolent traumatized villain have almost nothing in common with the real experiences and symptoms of cPTSD and actively harm survivors. And I’m thrilled that this show is giving us new narratives about trauma to challenge that stereotype. 

As for how he holds on to that type of control over himself, given that struggles with emotional regulation are part of having complex ptsd? The short answer is a combination of compartmentalization, dissociation, habit, and grounding techniques (including meditation). 

Stay tuned for a post on these coping mechanisms and the evidence from the show that he uses them.

[littleseasalt]

I've been thinking about why q!philza seems to be able to understand and read q!forever and the situations about him for a while now, and now I'm finally able to type out this full ramble so bear with me.

First I wanna say this post is in no way saying that Philza is the only person that understands and knows Forever, there are multiple characters that understand and know him, but I wanna focus specifically on Philza because he might as well be the most curious one to analyze: Other characters that understand Forever are generally his close friends, whom he spends a lot of time with. Meanwhile, Philza and Forever, thanks to the ccs timezones, don't get to hang out quite as much. They are friends, yes, but we don't often see them interacting like philza and the morning crew do, or forever with Cellbit, bbh and baghera, you know? Like, in character, most characters probably don't even understand how their bond actually plays off and how much they trust each other, etc etc.

So, why is it that Philza can understand Forever and the situations around Forever very well? He doesn't always gets it perfectly, obviously, but he always gets at least some parts right. What is it that makes Philza comprehend him?

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that this might be because Philza, out of all the characters, might be the character who has one of the closest audience perspective on Forever.

Now I know that sounds insane but PLEASE, hear me out. Of course, he doesn't have as much knowledge of Forever as the audience, especially cause he doesn't stream everyday and timezones and stuff so he does misses on a lot, but the thing is that Philza was the only character who was there for every single thing that is crucial to understand Forever.

How many people in character knows how much of an impact Tallulah's death left on Forever? I genuinely think Philza is the only one- they thought together that day and he was there to see how down Forever got after she died. On the same day, he also saw the sparks of what would become the ninho project later- him, Forever and Chayanne talked about egg protection rules, such as the safe room, and thought about ways they could use those rules to the maximum. Then there was Bobby's death, which lead Forever to pick up what he talked about the day of Tallulah's death and dedicate himself to this big project to protect all the eggs. He saw Forever's dedication to this project, dropping everything he was doing just to grantee the eggs safety. He sees how much Tallulah's and Bobby's death impacted Forever. He was also there when the whole Quackity taking Richas away and Cellbit traitor thing happened and he was there to cheer Forever up. These three things are *crucial* to understand Forever's character. And Philza night as well be the only one who was there to witness how all these situations actually impacted Forever- again, this isn't to say other characters don't know, understand or comprehend Forever, because other characters do, but Philza specifically stands out to me because he really was there for the initial things that ended up guiding Forever as a character.

[amerricanartwork]

I saw your lilypad art post, and I got curious: why do you enjoy lilypad? it's not a common RW ship, so I'd be interesting to hear what about it you enjoy!

Hear me out, guys... I must explain myself before I get onto the Lilypad essay.

I made that original comment because, at the time, I wanted to just get the aforementioned headcanons out as soon as possible. Understand, my reluctance wasn't because I didn't want to talk about Lilypad, but rather the exact opposite: I had so many feelings about it, yet had put so little effort into expressing them in a coherent, presentable format that I just knew it'd distract me for the next week or two if I let it rent too much space in my conscious thoughts. But now that little comment has left me with several people asking me to share those thoughts, and, both thankfully and unfortunately, I simply can't resist indulging in thoughts about the characters I love—!

Keep in mind, I haven’t finished Saint campaign yet, and even then I’ve found like less than half the broadcasts in Spearmaster campaign yet, so there’s likely some extra canon info I may be missing that could add to or change some of what I say here. I also apologize if some of what I write here seems really out-of-character. I try not to let my passion for my little headcanons and scenarios make me disregard the canon, but even so, I might slip and think up some weird things occasionally. Nonetheless, I feel like I’ve got enough of the picture to start confidently enjoying this ship, so I’ll talk about it anyway! 

As always, feel free to add to these ideas if you can! Without further delay, enjoy this 3381-word essay, with a few initial headcanons sprinkled in, on why I adore Lilypad!

Oh, and just in case, if you couldn’t already tell, major Hunter campaign spoilers below.

Quetzalli on Loving Lilypad

I’m gonna start this out with a preface: I can generally find the appeal in a lot of different ships and the art other fans make for them, but for me to ship something enough to actively draw it and make my own headcanons about it and such (outside of, perhaps, gifts for other people), it usually has to contain a variety of “ship tropes” that I personally fancy. Many of my most-favorite ship tropes tend to be the ones that aren’t just cute, but that carry narrative significance and seem poetic in some way, usually because they can facilitate character arcs in the involved characters. The more of these a ship has, or the more ship tropes I can portray it with without it seeming too out-of-character, and the more I like those specific tropes, the better. This principle is a major reason why I’ve gravitated towards Artimand as my main slugcat ship, but for now, I’m going to focus on which of these I see in Lilypad — in canon content, other fan-portrayals, and my personal headcanons — that, as opposed to other iterator ships, has currently won me over.

I’m gonna describe the main general things I like seeing in this ship. Some of them are more due to fandom portrayals than what’s in the canon, but they all play a big role in my current love for Lilypad. 

Synergy

I’ll begin with how I really appreciate just how much synergy Looks to the Moon and No Significant Harassment are shown to have, at least in fan content! I always like seeing pairings where the characters aren’t just romantic, but also work really well together as a team or even just as friends. After all, just because the characters may be romantically in love doesn’t mean they must only show it in explicitly romantic ways. To me, Lilypad strikes me as a relationship where Sig and Moon would make an amazing team in many aspects of their lives, whether it's collaborating on projects, sharing their interests, or trying to maintain order in the rest of their group. And their compliment is just really sweet to me, though I’ll get to that later.

A Shoulder to Lean On/The Lady

One of my favorite ship tropes is “character with a lot of weight on their shoulder who finally gets to lift it off and be ‘normal’ for once when around the other”. I’ve always found it sweet when characters like this, especially ones who are normally very selfless, finally get a chance to indulge and enjoy themselves for once! And once again, this is another thing I imagine in Artimand too, and you could project this onto Trafficlights given Suns’s implied high status, but I think it works especially with Lilypad, given Moon’s role as group senior means she objectively has a lot to manage all the time with no permanent escape from it. Even beyond the whole Five Pebbles rot drama, Moon probably had a lot on her plate just in terms of maintaining order between the rest of the group and setting a good example to the younger generations, especially as the group expanded over time, not to mention trying to find the solution herself. Combine this with how I picture her to be the kind of person who cares a lot about her image as a “proper” and  “dignified” leader, and someone who often sacrifices her own desires to promote the group’s welfare, I just find it really soft for her to have someone to lean on, metaphorically (and in a worm-off-the-string scenario, literally), and who better to go to than her best teammate, who knows the power of a good laugh and will stop at nothing to have fun with those he loves? Not to mention, since I headcanon Sig as slightly younger than Moon (2nd gen, specifically), I just find it rather cute in an ironic sense that the older, more serious Moon is soft around the younger, far more chaotic Sig, especially as Moon would go through the realization that she actually kinda likes this little troublemaker! 

This also comes back to something I mentioned in the tags of that beepsnort post, which is that one of my other favorite ship tropes is “guy who loves/is good at making people laugh x girl who has a REALLY weird/embarrassing laugh”, and that just works so well with Lilypad! It’s admittedly a very headcanon-based thing for me, but given how I’ve already explained my perception of Moon as very proper and serious, I imagine one of the best ways Sig takes the weight off her shoulders is by being the only person who can consistently make her laugh so hard! And with the beepsnort headcanon it’s even cuter, because of course Moon would be super embarrassed every time she even so much as gives a half-chuckle at one of his jokes, because Sig is relentless when it comes to getting the giggles out of her, and he won’t stop until she’s rolling and shaking on the floor of her chamber, her beepy-snorts filling the room! My GODDD I love this trope so much, and for beings who are inherently such workaholics, I think getting to genuinely relax and have fun for a bit, once she gets over the initial shock and embarrassment, would be something Moon would really come to value.

Inverses Attract/The Tramp

I’ve mentioned it in my last Artimand headcanons post, but one of my absolute all-time favorite ship tropes is the classic “opposites attract”, although I prefer the name “inverses attract”. As I like to portray it, the trope not only involves characters who are opposites personality-wise, but those being opposites of the same core aspect, and ultimately helping balance each other out by offering the other half of the equation to each other (hence the name “inverses”). The trope I just wrote about above is how Sig helps Moon to relax and have fun, but as I try to do with all ships, how does it work the other way too? Well, I really like to imagine Sig learning to be more openly serious and dedicated! Don’t get me wrong, Sig is a hard worker (it’s pretty much the nature of all iterators), but given he seems to pretty strongly reject the quest for the Triple Affirmative, I imagine the next problem would be in him finding a new purpose to strive for. And what better new purpose than in standing by and protecting the group senior he thinks he just might wanna be more than friends with?

It already works because Moon, of course, would work to keep Sig in check and make sure he doesn’t go too overboard with his shenanigans. But just imagine how inspired he’d grow over time seeing Moon work so hard to keep the group together and keep them striving for their purpose, even if he doesn’t agree with it. I imagine it’s why Sig’s methods are still rather controlled rather than purely chaotic, and there’s a reason to his rebellion. Thanks to Moon, rather than slaving away at a seemingly impossible solution until his mind collapses with his structure, he’ll use his talents to, at the very least, keep the local group together as long as possible, because even if they’ll all be gone one day, that doesn’t mean they have to go alone!

It’s why I’m also labeling these two tropes together as “the Lady and the Tramp”, yet another ship dynamic that gets me every time! It’s a specific instance of “inverses attract” where the noble, proper lady finds a taste of freedom and courage from the dangerously charming tramp, who from her finds a new sense of purpose and honor! And in my opinion, Lilypad is most definitely the best opportunity for this dynamic among Rain World ships!

The Fated Couple

Slow-burn couples seem to be pretty popular in many fandoms, but what about a really slow-burn? There’s something just so romantic to me about the idea that Moon and Sig, from the moment they met, have always just clicked so perfectly, and have been by each other’s side so constantly ever since, to the point it seems practically inevitable to everyone (except them of course) that they’ll eventually get together romantically. Of course, there are two main roadblocks to their romance being 1.) their whole objective and purpose for being created is kind-of fundamentally opposed to strong attachments like love (I mean, if Karma 3 is Companionship, wouldn’t romantic love be considered the worst example of that?), and 2.) even if they did reject this purpose, being massive immovable structures with the only humanoid part stuck deep inside a box, a budding romance seemingly couldn’t really go anywhere anyway. In fact, because of these roadblocks much of my Lilypad imaginings take place in the ever-popular “worm-off-the-string” scenario, especially since the next couple of reasons for why I like the ship play a lot into the themes I like to incorporate in this story concept. 

However, these issues towards such a romance are also what make it so sweet in the end! Just think of Moon, alone in her chamber, beginning to worry about how she’s actually kinda sorta, maybe, hypothetically, possibly, just a little bit starting to like the carefree and charismatic Gen 2 in the local group as even more than just a work partner and a dear friend, but oh no, that’s indulging in a Karmic Sin, and as group senior she can’t just throw away their purpose like that and set such a bad example to the rest! What’s she gonna do?? And then on the other side, Sig puzzling in his chamber, pining so hard for the group senior yet seemingly unable to confess, because, even disregarding Karma 3 and the fact that giant immobile calculators aren’t about to be snuggling any time soon, why would someone as perfect and powerful as her want someone like him, so dismissive of their core purpose and unorthodox in his methods? Is there even a point in having these feelings at all, when they might very well end up simply fading to dust along with the rest of his structure?

Maybe, they both think, it’d be better to just keep these feelings to themselves and quietly love from a distance. That is, until…

Moon’s Collapse and the Slag Reset Keys

The fourth reason is, of course, the most steeped in canon. It goes back a bit to the “shoulder to lean on” concept, but even aside from that, there is something just so romantic about this on both sides.

Firstly, from Moon’s perspective. There’s no doubt that the collapse must have been very traumatic for Looks to the Moon physically, but I like to think about just how much it’d affect her emotionally, too. I mean, being so painfully destroyed by your own brother, with seemingly nothing that can be done to stop it and no one to help you? And then consider how lonely it must have been in her final moments. The only comfort she does get is from Spearmaster’s visit, and even then she sends him off to go deliver her final words, which has still got to be really depressing. And finally, think about how betrayed she must have felt, trying so hard throughout her operation to help her citizens and the local group and be kind to everyone, only to have it be repaid like this, forced to collapse in on herself, being buried under her own body, unfathomable pain all around, and with not a soul to help her.

So then, think about just how shocking and heartwarming (literally, if you think about it) it must be when that lovable Gen 2, always so playful and carefree normally, is the one to give her a second chance and being her back when all hope seems lost, and using such a unique delivery method no less! I mean COME ON, Sig literally brought her back to life, how could one NOT fall in love with someone who did that for them? It links back to the “shoulder to lean on” idea, in that, for once, someone finally looked out for Moon and gave back to her for all the kindness she gave to the world. Think about this as the moment she truly realizes she’s in love with No Significant Harassment, and how tragic it’d be knowing now, it’s too late to say it. But, even so, if he’s willing to go this far to make sure she’s okay, then maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance her love at least wasn’t alone.

Now, my thoughts about this from No Significant Harassment’s side (which also kinda turned into a mini NSH appreciation paragraph that links back to the earlier Inverses Attract and Lady and the Tramp segment), I think it’s very poetic to see him going out of his way to take his messenger concept, originally used for no more than a trivial prank and at most a very experimental and unfinished alternative communication method, and turning it into a noble last-ditch effort to rescue the one he loves. It doesn’t just clearly show how much he cares for Moon that he worked to save her when no one else did (and if that’s because the odds of being able to do anything seemed very low to the rest of them, that makes it even more sweet) I think it shows off a lot of Sig’s character beyond just being a jokester. Like, I’d seen this kind of personality for Sig in the fandom content before, but this action and the other broadcasts are what first made me truly realize not just that it is based in canon, but that, more importantly he’s not just stupid or unfocused, he’s rebellious. He doesn’t joke around because he just doesn’t care, it’s because he’s independent, he’s got other places he wants to go and plans that don’t fit into what most of his peers are used to. He makes light of the world because he sees what others don’t, and it’s honestly pretty frickin’ funny how blind others can be most of the time (case-in-point: him making a slugcat from a messenger, which no one else thought to do because those creatures seemed too “dull” and “primitive” to ever be capable of such a thing). So think about how significant it must be when he’s openly taking something seriously. This is where that dynamic of the Tramp, and how Sig would benefit from this relationship is really highlighted. I just adore it when the easygoing, carefree character finally finds purpose in their lover, and springs into serious action like they never were before! And it makes sense too given what I said about them not getting together before: seeing Moon collapse would show him directly that even beings as durable as iterators don’t last forever, so if he’s got these feelings for Moon, he’s got to make a move while there’s still a chance! And what better way to show his love than to bring her back when all hope seems lost? Which brings me to the final aspects I’ll talk about here, first of which is…

True Love’s Kiss

Yes, you read that right. The real reason I love the slag reset keys as a plot element so much is not just because it shows Sig’s secret strength of character, not just because it finally gives reward to Moon’s kindness, but because it is a real fairytale come true! 

I know this sounds crazy and probably totally unrelated to Rain World, but think about it! You guys have probably seen Snow White and Sleeping Beauty before, or at least one of the two? Isn’t the whole trope that the beautiful princess, fairest maiden in the land, gets cursed through some means or another to die (or in Aurora’s case, fall into an indefinite sleep), which is only undone when the strong and brave prince, riding upon his noble steed, awakens the princess by giving her true love’s kiss? I already love both those movies on their own for various other reasons, but after my description, is this starting to sound familiar in another way?

I mean, with everything I’ve said about Moon in this post so far, there’s no doubt you could perceive her as the “fair princess”, who through unfortunate circumstances is put to a premature and indefinite death. And there’s no doubt Sig fills the role of the brave prince by working to save her with the slag reset keys, which in this metaphor are undoubtedly the “true love’s kiss” that ultimately conquers all, always longed for, and finally delivered! And hey, given Hunter is the one to carry the keys to Moon, a small yet courageous beast who stops at nothing to meet his goals, Sig even has his own “noble steed”! And even if Hunter is technically the one to actually deliver the green neuron, and the death the “princess” succumbs to wasn’t out of genuine malice towards her, I think the sentiment is still there and the parallel is close enough! 

But yes, as strange as it may sound, the fairytale parallel is the main reason Lilypad resonates with me so much! Those classic fairytale-esque romance tropes and that poetic storytelling found in Disney’s first feature-length animated films has always been dear to my heart, and is even more so now that I’m older and can truly appreciate the beauty of them. So now, even in my fandom experiences, ships that win my appreciation over all others are often those that manage to embody those classic romance tropes and themes as best as possible, and frankly, even Artimand loses ever-so-slightly to Lilypad in this regard! Or, as I also enjoy calling them, “Lifeline”, for reasons that are probably obvious now. 

And it’s even better when you consider…

Some Things Never Change

Another trope I’ve recently begun to love is the idea that some phenomena in the world never truly disappear, but simply manifest in different ways, sometimes unexpected ones. And given the whole Triple Affirmative quest and the Ancients’ mass ascension philosophy, this idea is something I especially love seeing in Rain World content. Even the canon events show this idea, but think about how wonderfully it would work with Lilypad beyond just the slag reset keys, especially taking up that “worm off the string” iterator AU concept some have explored in this fandom already.

Just think about how sweet it would be when Moon and Sig, operating primarily through their puppets now, get to finally hug and kiss and be with each other so directly now! Think of the way Sig would speak to Moon about how, even after her collapse, she's still somehow beautiful as ever, and Moon returning with how even all the trouble the group has faced hasn't put a dent in his charm! And it's even sweeter when you consider it’s against everything their creators stood for! Think of Moon, after everything she’s been through and how much she’s probably changed at this point, now willing to give some of these “worldly attachments” a chance, because you can never truly get rid of them, but she knows better than anyone that you won’t be around to experience them forever, so why not enjoy it while you’ve got the chance? And it’d make sense too, not just for her own benefit, but for Pebbles and the rest of the group’s sake too! She’s always strove to set a good example for them, and since their original quest has left them with nothing but pain and trauma, why not show them that maybe all these attachments aren’t so bad after all?

I just think it’d be really interesting to see Moon joining Sig in that rejection of the Triple Affirmative, and what better way to do that than by finally embracing that love they’ve felt for each other for so long? Because love never truly dies, it just appears in new people. And maybe they don’t have to spend their whole lives as grand iterators, the vast infinitely-advanced mechanical deities who embody perfection in almost every way. Maybe, even just for a bit, they can just be people, falling in love just as their creators did all over again!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

And with that, I think I’m FINALLY done here. HOLY COW, this is easily my longest post yet, and I hope it doesn’t disappoint! Part of the reason it took so long was because I was trying to find the perfect way to express all these ideas without it just spilling out onto the page in some weird half-coherent mess. But eventually I just said “ah screw it, let’s just ramble about this ship and see where it goes!” and my god, did it go far! And I still managed to somewhat organize it, so yay!

But aside from that, thank you SO MUCH to everyone who asked for my thoughts on Lilypad, and everyone who made it to the bottom of this essay! I’ve never really gotten a chance to openly ramble about one of my favorite ships to the rest of the fandom like this, so seeing that some fans, even if it’s ultimately not a huge amount, actually wanted me to do it was such a welcome surprise!

I hope you all enjoyed the drawings and the art! I’ll be around in case someone wants me to write another ship essay or something! And who knows, it’s likely I’ll find more reasons I like Lilypad as time goes on and I see more fan-content and find the rest of those broadcasts! But at least this was a starting point! 

Expect more LIlypad content to come in the future, but until now, thanks again for the opportunity!

[dingodad]

Ok, so this has driven me crazy for the longest time. What the fuck happened to post retcon Japsersprite? The one we know is from pre retcon, since he was on John’s planet when he brought it into the void. Nothing was ever mentioned to happen to post retcon Jaspers, so where is he. I can’t believe Hussie forgot about him, he didn’t forget about the two Nannasprites. Did post retcon Jaspersprite just not exist? Maybe he died on LOWAS when Typheus blew it up, but there is no mention of that at all. I guess only Jade or the Nanna’s would know then, but nothing is ever said about it. Also is there a way to know if the Arquius that becomes lord English is the pre or post retcon version?

i'm gunna play good cop bad cop here cus there's an answer you don't want to hear and then there's a sort of interesting consolation prize answer at the end.

the answer you don't want to hear: it doesn't matter! :P i don't think this really needs explaining but the whole point of davepeta/jasprose's ultimate self spiels is that tying yourself in knots trying to figure out who's "pre-retcon" and who's "post-retcon" is, as they say, for the birds. john is john is john. hussie didn't "forget" that there are supposed to be two jaspersprites: while a story can occasionally get away with having two Daves or two Roses because Dave and Rose have interesting things to say to themselves, the fact that homestuck has even ONE character called jaspersprite simply strains the reader's ability to give a shit. there is the room nor the need for TWO jaspersprites, of all the damnedest things.

(there can be two nannasprites because two nannasprites are funny - but if there's one thing worse than creating the same CHARACTER twice, it's telling the same JOKE twice.)

the other answer is about sprites in particular. do you know why video game graphics used to be called "sprites"? i only thought to look this up just recently: it's because, like the fairies or spirits of folklore from which they get their name, they float above the background of the game world without interacting with it directly. this should form the basis for our understanding of homestuck's kernelsprite, as well, which borrows both from folklore and from computer programming. they are of course ghosts on a literal level, with spritely undead tails and the ability to pass through walls and physical barriers like they weren't there - but the way they interact with the story itself is similarly ethereal-and-or-ephemeral.

sprites appear at the whim of the heroes to serve a very particular purpose - which, you will notice, is exactly what davepeta says they're doing when they show up in hell - but then the moment that purpose is complete they might as well stop existing. dave- and jadesprite show up inexplicably on the battlefield as the reckoning begins: are they killing themselves now that their purposes are complete? where are all the lususprites, anyway; did they do the same thing? erisolsprite initially seems to indicate that he's going to fuck off and possibly explode like all the other sprites who hate themselves, but then just shows up again 200 pages later later at the convenience of the trickster arc. the same is true of all the sprites presumed-dead following the events of GAME OVER, who show up as-needed in the new timeline to form the next generation of redundant ghost freaks. this is simply how sprites operate. whether they're "alive" or "dead" at any given moment is the wrong way of looking at it - they're ghosts for goodness' sake!!

the fact that the story never tells us what happened to "that other jaspersprite" is supposed to make us think less about it, not more, because knowing where one of them is - the "ultimate" one, in fact - should be enough to put our minds at ease. but it also deliberately leaves the door open for another jaspersprite to show up if the story ever somehow, against all odds, finds a place to squeeze one in. which is again exactly what the plot point is currently doing with sprites like erisol, who for all intents and purposes was dead up until the moment page 666 started

[ilanarose7]

Bells Hells Episode 95 Morning After Thoughts

SPOILERS BELOW!!! (This has become a weekly thing for me to help digest the episodes and I'm probably gonna keep doing it. really helps with my episode memory as well)

New favorite Campaign 3 episode unlocked!!!! The title of this episode has been released on Beacon (I won't spoil that), but I will personally be referring to it as "Shopping and Shipping" in my own head. It just had the perfect amount of everything and felt so incredibly cathartic (then stressful in the best way) after everything that's happened in recent episodes.

Let's break it down:

The Essek v Astrid verbal showdown!!! Essek appears to hold all the grudges that Caleb doesn't (or at least didn't really at the end of M9). When Astrid dropped the "Ludinus has an itch in the back of his neck" lore I was thinking back to when they first learned more about the harness and someone (I think it was either Marisha or Laura) wrote in their notes "We cut off Ludinus's head!!!" that was later read aloud. After that convo, that action seems like a decent play. That or maybe the Cadeuces-style Dispell Magic to the back of the neck. (side note: of course Fearne bought the Vasselheim version of the Kama Sutra 😂)

NEW CLOTHES FOR EVERYONE!!! We know there's new Dorian art waiting to be released since he rejoined the party, but everyone is getting an Aeor-ready makeover! It makes perfect sense, but I was still thrown off by the level of outfit upgrades and am so excited for the art!

Pumat is BACK! Well, his Simulacrum are at least. I don't care, just hearing that voice made me so happy. And also Dorian giving all his money to Orym so he can buy the armor? So what if I was squealing?

Downtime at the Cabaret ❤️ The Imodna kiss as Laudna went back upstairs. The Callowmoore flirting leads to Ashton, for the first time in a LONG time, successfully pick-pocketing Fearne. Dorian and Chetney banter back in full swing. Fearne leaving the EXU group hug to give Dorym a moment together. going back slightly but Iva Deshin made Bells Hells clock that YES, YOU ALL DO GIVE OFF POLYAMOROUS VIBES! So many character moments that have been needed in such a plot-heavy story

Ashton shows their head off to Essek! I have been waiting for this for sooooo long!!! Allura had given some answers, but talking more about how Dunamancy and the Assembly's manipulation of Dunamis has played a role in everything going on. While the cast know this info out of character, its good that they finally can do so in character as well

Laudna, Delilah, and the Sword-Shaped Elephant in the Room. Well, damn. First off, the acting in this last hour or so was AMAZING!! Also incredibly demonstrative of the level of trust at the table. Now to talk about the moment itself. The line between Laudna and Delilah has been getting blurrier and last night I don't think Marisha even knew fully where Laudna ended and Delilah began. The cast and many insightful Critters have been comparing Laudna to an addict and last night is an incredible example. The way Laudna handled it was wrong, this could have been a conversation rather than an initial attack. But was Laudna or Delilah the one making those choices? Or being manipulated into them? In the moment, the calm approach the group tried to take was the right one, but honestly, Laudna needs a harsher talking-to like what Chetney did with Ashton post-shard incident. Taliesin on 4SD said that's what saved Ashton from leaving the group. It might be something that, other than Imogen's love, may be enough of a wake-up call to help her break away from her Delilah-induced magic addiction

TLDR: The whole episode was full of amazing moments that were cathartic, informative, tense, and heartwarming. THE PERFECT BELLS HELLS EPISODE! again, that's just my opinion. I'd love to hear what everyone else thought too!

[vgperson]

What Did I Do In 2023?

Whatever I wanted, mostly.

----

As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

----

Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.

I'm also hoping to buckle down and finish one of my own games, but as usual, who knows how that'll pan out. Letting my whims carry me this year let me finally finish From the Sidelines and Ut0p1a, which was great, and it also led me down a Battle Network rabbit hole, which was... fine, but definitely for a narrower audience. I'd always like to get back to more free game translations and the like, too, but it takes effort to find things I'd want to translate. For now, I think my increasing desire to be able to let loose some of these original games I've been planning, and the stories in them, might come out on top.

[mareastrorum]

How to Deceive Enemies and Manipulate Gods: A Bard method to Asmodeus's body-swapping bullshit in Critical Role's Downfall

Of course, SPOILERS for Downfall (C3 E99-101) follow.

In 4 Sided Dive episode 26 (through C3E101), Brennan said that Father Milo Cowst was an illusion the entire time. This is a fun theorycrafting post about how to emulate Asmodeus's ploy to create an illusion of an (un)friendly spellcaster tagging along while impersonating a friendly spellcaster in the same group. Unless someone casts Truesight, at least. All the same, this could make for some fun bullshit in your own game.

As a prelude, this assumes that you have a Bard, any subclass. The exact number of class levels needed will vary depending on the options chosen. Perhaps there is a multiclass combination that could pull this off, but this is a fairly straightforward way of doing it.

This post will go through each of the interactions involving Arcadia Cerenvetorix and Father Milo Cowst that required an explanation. I also tried to include some discussion of alternatives when they were available.

Initial note: At 10th, 14th, and 18th levels, Bards are able to learn 2 spells from other class lists. I will note when that option is necessary to gain access to a particular spell.

Impersonating Arcadia Cerenvetorix

This achievement is fairly straightforward. There are a lot of spells and items that would allow a caster to impersonate the appearance of another person. The strategy, however, would be to choose a method that doesn't use up concentration so that spellcasting isn't limited.

Disguise Self is a good option that doesn't require concentration. A Hat of Disguise would save a spell slot, but it's only a 1st level spell, so that isn't too dire for a Level 20 character. Even a moment to break line of sight would be enough to refresh the illusion.

Alternatively, Seeming would achieve the same effect, also without requiring concentration, and would last 8 hours. This would require fewer spell slots and eliminate the worry of not being able to duck away to refresh the spell.

The Actor feat may have been necessary to impersonate Arcadia. While it seems that most of the others had never previously met Arcadia, it’s unclear whether S.I.L.A.H.A. had in person. He may have recognized her voice. In that case, the ability to mimic voices was mandatory. As a bonus, the feat gives advantage on checks for impersonation.

The Illusion of Father Milo Cowst

This one was fun to reverse engineer. It needed to be some kind of deception that would be revealed when the players gained Truesight in E101, but also accounted for everything the PCs thought they saw Father Milo do:

Talk in a manner that his voice seemed to come from his body.

React to events around him.

Appear to interact with objects in the world.

Appear to cast spells.

At first, I thought, maybe Asmodeus must have done Mislead like Emhira had later in Downfall. However, that spell requires concentration, lasts 1 hour, copies the current appearance, and also adds invisibility to the caster. The illusion would require Asmodeus to reapply the illusion of Arcadia every hour after refreshing Mislead. That gets really expensive for spell slots.

Simulacrum seems like an obvious option, and it would be available via Magical Secrets. However, there is no mechanism by which a Simulacrum is revealed other than killing it or Detect Magic. It's a spell in the school of Illusion, but it's not a visual trick—the simulacrum is an actual creature. So that wouldn't work for the reveal in E101. However, it might be useful for your own game.

Next, I considered Major Image—or, more specifically, the upcast version which is Permanent Image. When cast at 6th level or higher, the spell does not require concentration and lasts until it is dispelled. This spell can also be used to create the illusion of a person capable of carrying on a conversation. The illusion can move with the caster and be adjusted on the fly. However, there is no accounting for situations where the illusion is within range but out of earshot or line of sight.

Project Image would work best for situations where the illusion would be separated from the caster and still need to be convincing. That spell allows the caster to move their consciousness to the illusion, so Asmodeus would be able to have conversation as Arcadia or Milo if they split up. The duration is 1 day with a range of 500 miles, so that's more than enough to last the entire mission without recasting. Unfortunately, it requires concentration, which severely limits other spellcasting options.

There's two decent ways to game this: Glyph of Warding and Wish.

Glyph of Warding is a ridiculous trap spell that is highly customizable. Theoretically, It could be used to upcast for Permanent Image or cast Project Image. Asmodeus could pre-cast it a day earlier, rest to get spell slots, then he wouldn't need to trigger it until the Primes were close. Best of all, when Glyph of Warding is used for a spell, "If the spell requires concentration, it lasts until the end of its full duration." In other words, the caster doesn't have to maintain concentration on the triggered spell. (This is a very broken spell RAW, so discuss with your DM about what limits might apply in your game.)

Alternatively, at level 18, a Bard can gain Wish through Magical Secrets. Wish does a lot of things, but the key text reads:

The basic use of this spell is to duplicate any other spell of 8th level or lower. You don't need to meet any requirements in that spell, including costly components. The spell simply takes effect.

Concentration is a spell requirement. Casting Wish provides an option to replicate Project Image without needing to maintain concentration. Further, since it lasts a day, Asmodeus could have cast it hours earlier, taken a long rest, and gotten his 9th level spell slot back with plenty of time to spare. That does seem rather drastic just to create an illusion, but since he gets the spell slot back anyway, it's basically free, and then Asmodeus also has Wish.

Either Permanent Image or Project Image would be the best options because they would allow Asmodeus (as Arcadia) to control Father Milo so they can participate in the same conversation. I think Project Image is better for reasons discussed further below.

Invisibility

In E100, Arcadia cast "a Sphere of Invisibility" on Zaharzht, Tishar, Asha, and the Emissary when they left on a tram. Since it was just four of them, that may have simply been an upcast Invisibility spell, which requires concentration. There aren't any items that would cast on that many people (plenty cast it on 1), nor can spells cast from items be upcast. There also aren’t any items that would allow a caster to hold concentration on two different spells for an extended period of time. Finally, it’s possible that Asmodeus prepared an upcast Invisibility via Glyph of Warding and triggered it somehow, but that’s such a niche thing to trigger at the tram on exactly 4 people (given the larger group size) that I doubt that was the case.

Unless Brennan homebrewed something, it seems like Asmodeus had to hold concentration on Invisibility. That would eliminate any illusion options that also require concentration, and casting a later concentration spell would break the invisibility. As far as we know, it lasted as long as the other team needed it to, but we don't know how the scenes line up. Just because the scene with that team took place after the hospital scene doesn't mean that they happened sequentially. Brennan also mentioned that the invisibility should last nearly an hour when that team's scene began, so the tram trip didn't take very long.

Still, the best explanations for the hospital scene will involve spells that would not compromise concentration on Invisibility, and those would allow for more flexibility for your own nonsense.

Melting the Hospital Gate Lock

In E100, Father Milo appeared to hold and melt a lock on the gate to the hospital. Ayden, Trist, and Arcadia were there at the time.

Of all the spells that could destroy a lock, I think Heat Metal would be the most applicable. It has a range of 60 feet, so Arcadia could have done it from the back of the group, out of line of sight of the others.

Shatter and Knock make noise, so even if the illusion was adjusted to mask the visual effect, there’s obvious cues. Unless there’s a Silence effect (which requires concentration) in the area, they are both suboptimal.

Opening the Hospital Gate

Next, Father Milo appeared to push the gate open for the others. None of the spell options listed above allow the illusion to interact with objects. That had to be a separate spell or ability.

One good option for this would be the Telekinetic feat. It gives the caster an invisible Mage Hand that can be cast without verbal or somatic components, essentially mimicking telekinetic abilities. Mage hand does not require concentration and can open doors, but without the feat, it wouldn't be invisible, and that wouldn't be easy to hide or disguise in this specific circumstance. An invisible mage hand would also be useful for stealing from party members, so it may have been a contingency if anyone took something that Asmodeus needed to use the Factorum Malleus. However, Ayden also has blindsight, so a mage hand would need to stay out of that range to avoid detection.

Alternatively, 3 levels into Rogue to become an Arcane Trickster would also grant an invisible Mage Hand. Even better: cunning action can be used to control the Mage Hand as a bonus action, eliminating any conflict of using an action to control the illusion. However, the verbal and somatic components would need to be hidden with deception and/or sleight of hand, and that would eliminate the option to use Wish in the strategies outlined above (Bards can’t get Wish without 18 class levels).

Unseen Servant is also a good idea, though it costs a 1st level slot. Because it’s shapeless, it would not be detected by Ayden’s blindsight. Like mage hand, it does not require concentration, but unlike mage hand, it is always commanded with a bonus action, which is better for use in conjunction with a controlled illusion. That said, it can only move 15 feet per round, so it will not keep up with a moving group and will have to be recast on location. Also, it costs an action to cast, so you would need to cast it in advance of the round that you command the illusion and have the servant work in conjunction with it.

Animate Objects and Telekinesis (Magical Secrets at 10th level) are viable options, but both seem like overkill given that they cost 6th and 5th level spell slots, respectively. They are also concentration spells, so they’re not viable if Asmodeus had to maintain invisibility on the other team.

Father Milo and Ayden Chat

In the hospital, Father Milo left the room when Trist was about to heal Hallis. Father Milo walked down the hall, then turned to speak to Ayden, who had followed him. There had to be some way for the illusion to respond to Ayden in conversation.

We don't know how far away they got. It was distant enough that Trist didn't have reason to overhear the conversation. However, with her attention on Hallis and Cassida, Arcadia could have walked to the door and watched/listened from a distance to manipulate the illusion of Father Milo.

Alternatively, Project Image would have allowed Asmodeus to shift his consciousness from Arcadia to the illusion of Father Milo. That would have allowed him to see and hear from that perspective, and no one would have noticed that Arcadia had checked out.

Torturing Dr. Bezel

While speaking to Ayden, Father Milo appeared to touch Dr. Bezel and take control of her body, contorting it and causing her harm. Since we know Milo is an illusion, it couldn't have been a spell requiring touch, and it must have been something Arcadia could cast at a distance. Since she was behind Ayden, there's no concern about sleight of hand.

Dominate Person was my initial favorite. It grants the caster total control over the target, so that seems appropriate for forcing Dr. Bezel to harm herself. However, it requires concentration, so that would have ended the invisibility on the other team of gods. Maybe Asmodeus sensed that they had already dropped invisibility, but that's not confirmed.

If a 14th level Bard used Magical Secrets, Power Word: Pain might also be a viable option, but expensive for spell slots. While the spell doesn't do damage, this is also a RP moment, and it's not that much of a stretch to break a doctor's wrists. It doesn't require concentration.

Telekineses would allow Arcadia to manipulate Dr. Bezel's body. Unfortunately, it requires concentration, so there's a similar issue with invisibility.

It may be possible that Dr. Bezel was an extension of the illusion if Ayden lost sight of her at some point. Because the illusion spells are each adjustable and pretty flexible, it wouldn’t be out of bounds to do this. However, it would have been revealed if Ayden had touched Dr. Bezel, which is a serious risk given his inclination to heal and that they were all in close quarters. There is also the chance that the real Dr. Bezel could have walked in. That said, it would not surprise me in the least that Asmodeus would make an illusion of himself tormenting a mortal and then tell Ayden, “they’re not real.” That would be so incredibly on brand to tell the truth while so layered in deceptive illusions. Regardless, that may be a good option for your own illusion shenanigans: you’re already two people, so you may as well be three! (Discuss with your DM whether it would need to be recast to account for a second person—which can be done by ducking out of sight for a few seconds.)

Ayden cast Protection from Evil and Good... which shouldn't have worked to dispel the effect. There is a separate spell Dispel Evil and Good to do that. That said, since it's an RP moment, I don't think Brennan cared to force Nick to expend a 5th level slot for this. Further, if it really was an illusion, then Asmodeus didn’t have reason to recognize which spell was cast and adjusted the illusion to pretend it fixed everything.

Milo "Teleports" Back Inside

After the chat with Ayden, Father Milo stalked off to sulk by the gate. Once things pop off with the other teams, Ayden communicates over the telepathic bond that everyone needs to meet up. Brennan described that "there's a little smell of brimstone and Milo is standing in the room as well."

Asmodeus would have been able to add smell via Major Image, but not Project Image. However, a cantrip like Prestidigitation could add the smell. Either spell could achieve whatever visual effect was needed.

Cassida Teleports the Team / Arcane Gate Escape

Cassida made a split-second decision to go "full traitor" and teleport the team to the others at the Obtenebrator Engine. If she had been paying attention, maybe she would have noticed that 4 people teleported instead of 5, but it's sensible that it wasn't her focus at the moment.

Neither Father Milo nor Arcadia took any actions or noticeable movement in the subsequent combat. They then escaped the Engine with the others via an Arcane Gate.

If the illusion was broken by the teleport or gate (since it has a range), Asmodeus could have recast it with a sleight of hand check, assuming he was in anyone's line of sight. However, the illusion can follow the caster, so it depends on whether the DM would rule how an illusion mimics traveling or if there’s any interference. In either case, being the last to go through to cover any hiccups or recast unseen would be optimal.

Arcadia and Father Milo Split Up

For the final fight, Arcadia accompanied Trist, Umleta, and Cassida to retrieve the scrolls containing the information on the Factorum Malleus. Meanwhile, Father Milo joined the rest to destroy the weapon.

During the combat, Milo didn't do anything noticeable. He seemed to have to make saving throws against some attacks (Brennan listed him when saying who would be affected), and he spoke during his "turn," but Milo didn't cast anything. That wouldn't necessarily require active, attentive control by Asmodeus from afar. Switching consciousnesses for a few seconds (like when Trist was distracted) would have been feasible as well.

What about Telepathic Bond?

Just to head off a question that I expect some people might have, Ayden's Telepathic Bond would not have given Asmodeus away. It allows telepathic communication, but it's voluntary communication. It's not Detect Thoughts, and it wouldn't do something like detect locations of connected minds.

It also turns out that Arcadia and Milo never communicated over the telepathic bond. They only spoke “in person,” so there was no chance for some indication that would give away either of them for seeming similar.

Improving Your Chances of Success

Bards are great for not only having the spells to pull this off, but having access to the skill set to back them up. Their spellcasting ability is Charisma, which lines up well with necessary skills. Taking proficiency or expertise in Deception, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth would be solid choices, especially given their utility for this build outside of pretending to be two people.

As mentioned above, a 3 level dip into Rogue for Arcane Trickster is a good way to manage action economy (action and bonus action) for simultaneously using Mage Hand and either Major Image or Project Image. Mage hand is also more flexible than Unseen Servant, so it depends on what you anticipate in your game. If you intend to rely heavily on this combination, maybe go 4 levels for another ASI/feat too. Cunning Action is also great for keeping up with the group on the run (the others are using a Dash action) without letting an illusion fall behind (which takes up your action).

Why not a Wizard? Pretty much everything above could be done by a Wizard except Heat Metal. An Illusion specialist also gets some bonuses like being able to adjust illusions or temporarily make them real. However, the primary downsides to trying this with a wizard is the lack of expertise benefits and the need to stack both Intelligence and Charisma instead of only Charisma. Taking the Skilled and Skill Expert feats could compensate for some of that, but a MAD build that is only MAD for this specific purpose seems like a waste of a build, whereas the Bard version has a lot more utility outside of being 2 people.

As stated above, the Actor feat is practically a necessity for impersonating people your targets have met before because you can perfectly mimic voices. DMs would probably set higher DCs otherwise. The feat also grants advantage for related checks, making your ploy much easier to achieve.

As a final thought, it might be worth taking the Metamagic Adept feat for Subtle Spell. It can help you pull off spell casts when all eyes are on you or you’re occupied/restrained. It’s a very situational option, but you also get to pick a second Metamagic as well, so it’s not too niche.

And that's about it! It's a rather cumbersome thing to orchestrate, and there were a lot of ways to detect Asmodeus's scheme—with proactive investigation. If you suspect this bullshit is being used against you, go poke them in the face. Really, that would have been enough to expose the illusions.

Maybe this will inspire someone to try some shenanigans in your own game. :D

[sarahjtv]

My Hero Academia: Chapter 424 Spoiler Thoughts:

MHA is finally back from break and we have a calm after the storm chapter. Let me put my thought on Tumblr for a bit:

So, let's get this out of the way: Tomura Shigaraki/Tenko Shimura is dead. Like, DEAD, dead. Unless Kohei Horikoshi pulls the rug under us, I think he's made it clear that Tenko's not coming back. Those last 2 pages were it for his conclusion. He did add one more panel of Shiggy and some dialogue from Deku to say that maybe Deku really did "save" Tenko, but that's all we got. I'm still unsure how to feel about this, but I appreciate Horikoshi giving Tenko a bit more of a conclusion after the last chapter. But, the story isn't over yet, so we'll see if he's mentioned again.

Bakugo's parts were the best parts of this chapter. I'm glad to see him alive and well after everything (I highly doubt Horikoshi would keep him dead again anyway) and that his parents are there for him (Mitsuki yelling at him was funny ngl). Sucks that his right arm will never fully recover, but maybe that rehab will help him get to a good enough place. Also, his moments with Deku and All Might were incredibly sweet and a great conclusion to their little storyline. Seeing Bakugo genuinely tear up and look back on his and Deku's relationship throughout the years honestly moved me because it shows how far this young man has come (the artwork on his face is so good btw; Horikoshi has always been great at expressions in particular). Katsuki Bakugo's character development is one of my favorites in the series and he deserves #1 in every character poll he gets.

EDIT: OH, BAKUGO'S CRYING OVER DEKU BEING QUIRKLESS AGAIN AFTER THE EMBERS BURN OUT ONE DAY I'M GOING TO FUCKING CRY WHAT THE FUCK 😭

Deku continues to be Deku till the very end. I loved Izuku nerding out about how he gets to share a hospital room with All Might because of course he would. It's also nice to hear that A.) All Might reassures Deku that even though he doesn't feel like he saved Tenko because Tenko died, he still might have in the end and B.) Deku still has the embers of One For All which doesn't make him Quirkless. I assume this means that Deku is basically back at the start when he first got OFA. I'm sure his strength is still there at least, but it's probably not nearly as powerful as it was in the final battle.

Also, Deku's haircut 😭! I know they had to do it because it got messed up in the final battle and surgery, but please let his hair grow again before the manga ends, Horikoshi! I want his cute, bushy green hair back! There's also a scar on his right cheek covering his cute freckles I can't. His eyeball popping out of his socket when he sees Kacchan cry was hilarious, though 😂

All Might also telling Deku and Bakugo that they're the greatest heroes to him and everyone else is a really nice full circle on their initial dreams when the story started.

And then there are the two panels we get of Shoto and Ochako. I assume we'll touch on their epilogues next chapter, but I'm curious how they're doing because Ochako looks solemn and we don't even see Shoto's face because his back is turned to us in a dark light. I bet they're reflecting on what happened to Toga and Dabi respectively. We're still not sure if either of them really died, so it's a coin flip as to whether they did or not. There's also Shoto's whole family situation that needs tying up which is a whole other can of worms. I really hope this gets covered in the next chapter.

Finally, we see Deku and the others returning to UA which is currently being rebuilt. I'm guessing we'll see how everyone else is doing post-war too either in the next chapter or later. While we need to cover the main 4 (Izuku, Bakugo, Shoto, and Ochako), we also need to see how everyone else is doing because they weren't the only ones affected by the war. Everyone has battle scars of some kind.

And while the chapter is called "Epilogue", it's not over yet. We clearly have more story to cover and bows to tie as neatly as possible. Horikoshi can't please everyone (no one can, really), but I can tell that he's doing his best and that he still genuinely cares about his story after nearly 10 years. I'd say we have the rest of June at least and the end of summer at most until MHA finally ends. This was a really nice "wrap-up" chapter and we have more to go until the end. Despite its flaws, My Hero Academia is still peak fiction to me and some of the parts in this chapter cement that. It will always have a special place in my heart. I will be sad to see this series go, but I will be there until the end.

EDIT: I just saw Horikoshi's comment this week and it basically confirms that we have more story to come. He doesn't say how many chapter but he says "I'll keep going for a little while" and that we're returning to school life; the "Academia" part of the story. I'm really glad he's not rushing the conclusion because there's a lot of stories and characters to give finales to. I'm also really curious to see how school life is post-war, so I'm glad that'll be explored.

[vermillioncrown]

This is going to be a huge post because you've picked up so much of what we put down I'm just 🥰🥹

@sunshinerotting replied to your post “(@rozaceous) dpnf ch 11: housebroken”:

will be rereading immediately but i love your guys’ characters very much and the way you write the canon characters makes so much sense. the way the people in that house interact with each other is so interesting to me because if tim was actually the normal boy he thinks he is the entire balance would be thrown off. no one else could’ve done what he does in that dynamic. they’re like a jigsaw puzzle to me. i have more thoughts give me a sec

thank you so much! roz and i keep joking that this fic is now an au of an au of an au of an au... and on and on, and then it's like. what makes this still a fic and not a fully original setting and work? we had to sell readers on a lot, that these characters (outside of our SIs) were still some flavor of canon. especially, "who is the core of tim drake?" and yeah, he's so not fucking normal. but he's not obviously wacky, either.

​out of order now i don’t remember chapter numbers: when jason showed up like a huge asshole i texted my friend about it. very much “he WOULD fucking do that but by god is it PISSING ME OFF” and it was!! love that genuinely. might not be what was intended but i do think he IS odd and sad and unable to move through the cycle of grief fully enough to show back up like a haunting and not expect it to get to allie like that. zero ability to understand how loved he is. 10/10 more...

GAH to know you texted abt our fic!!!! 🥹🥹🥹 best praise tbh. and the second sell: how is jason an asshole but worth rooting for later? or at least, allowed into the enclosure lol. we might not have had it summarized as neatly as you did, but roz and i are in full agreement you Read jason here. that's exactly what we wanted, that's so much of what we take from his character in various canons.

allie reminds me of a bobcat which feels weird to say but she’s so nonthreatening outwardly and she minds her business but the second someone steps in on her people it’s like Oh. oh right. teeth and claws. when jason showed back up i felt so much for her. there was no way for her to move. korvin acts in ways similar to me, which i will examine on my own time and not in your comments. i do love how everyone in this house has their own preferred flavor of Avoidance

you also have such a read on allie, i love it. i'll leave her to roz but i'll say my piece that i sometimes get bummed that korvin's so obviously wacky + a lot of gender stuff at play (the audience/demographic of ff readers, we live in a society and all that) that make more ppl focus on korvin over allie whereas they're both equally wack. and korvin's behavior makes the most sense when taken as a convoluted male re-socialization of someone initially female-socialized but rewarded in a male-dominated space. AND both of them are AuDHD, word of god putting that out there. add on the isekai brainworms, and yeah, isekai is just an extended analogy for masking → hence the different flavors of avoidance

tim is somehow the most well-adjusted in this regard, before jason shows up maybe, and thats so crazy. tim drake. Tim Drake ????comparatively well-adjusted to anyone ??? i know i’m forgetting something so i’ll come back but writing that down genuinely through me off a little bit. lol

you also recognize that jason ranks above tim in "well-adjusted" here, god, how does it feel to be so correct. and tim is well-adjusted here! he's never had to be a vigilante! but he's also much lonelier than in canon. something that made retrospective sense while we were writing is that he fell out of liking ball sports (despite not being a desk nerd) is that...who does he have to enjoy them with in this au?

threw not through. anyway I FORGOT ABOUT RUTABAGA. I AM SO SORRY RUTABAGA. the amount of love between the characters is so important to me bc it’s always there no matter how fucked the bats are about showing it normally. the brownstone does end up feeling like a safe space like it somehow feels so easy most of the time and then when tangential forces (sorry dick) show up it’s like the air changes. but allie and korvin and tim all have such Personalities its insane it works out like that.

RUTIE BEST GIRL, forgiven lol. YES YES YES there is so much love and it's like, the love doesn't stop you from doing the work. the bats are so fucked up, and we only get a glimpse of dick and korvin's relationship where you can see the maladapted consequences on both of their parts, dick not being fully equipped to "raise" korvin and korvin wanting to be easy/convenient for dick. and korvin's deep-seated not-abandonment issues tied with family and cultural trauma/burden.

(i still stand by the "good older brother dick grayson" tag, he's just. oh there's a lot. if you read between the lines there's so much being implied for TPAC)

but having allie in this 'verse, allie and korvin together ground each other. that's why they're so co-dependent in the beginning (it's healthier at the end), that's why they still had the wherewithal to seek an outside friend, and yes, that is why the brownstone is like that. their place that they made with their own hands.

obviously jason was an issue initially (it felt redundant to write that sentence) but he’s such a necessary part of them by being 1) necessary to allie and 2) the catalyst allie and korvin needed to end up where they are. i do think ppl that important to each other need one big unavoidable conflict to avoid stagnation like obviously he was a necessary part of the story but he was a Necessary Part Of The Story. does this make sense?? four strand braid.

AND YES DUDE you literally. we were writing this and we had the vibe, but we literally did not articulate it to each other until the very end that jason's actually necessary to make all of them normal. i love everything you're saying about needing one unavoidable conflict to resolve. he is part of a four strand braid. it's so strong. it's critical. korvin still finds jason annoying and vice versa. and yet they'd both say the household contains all of them by the end.

i just like that they start off alone and end up together. that’s my thing. jigsaw puzzle. polycule of all time. i can’t think of a way in which another person would ever get that close to them the dynamics are so perfect to me. every need is accounted for. its like a perfect little box in my mind. i think thats it for now lol i’m happy you guys write together. not just bc i love it but also bc it’s so clear u guys have fun doing it and that makes me happy <3

WE MADE IT. it's one thing to prescribe "hey guys this is a polycule" but selling it? the logistics of a polycule? not so easy, and it has to be tailored to the situation and characters. not all of them are romantically/sexually involved, nor do they have straight-forward relationships (hence, qpr), so having you say it fits and they seem seamless is like. top tier praise. coherence, it's everything we've aimed for.

thank you for all of your thoughts! we do have tons of fun and that's why we love sharing what we have! and we hope to keep doing projects like this, or we'll just be at each other's side while we work on our individual fics.

[lakesbian]

Hi, I just want to clarify that I don't mean this as an accusation but as an honest question; but when you and others on your posts are talking about narrative bigotry in Worm you talk about the racism and homophobia (which I agree with) but you also talk about fatphobia/fat characters being universally handled poorly, and I would love a breakdown as to why this is. With regards to Piggot when she was initially introduced I was thinking from how the heroes thought about her in their POV chapters that she was going to be the fatphobic stereotype of "soft and uncool but mean/unpleasant, disgusting fat civilian who doesn't know real courage and heroism like the thin, attractive heroes", and was pleasantly surprised when she got a lot more nuance than that, and also turned out to be very courageous and militaristic in contrast to the stereotype of "fat = cowardly and doesn't know real survival", with her flaws more lying in how she goes too far in that direction. In general the problem I typically see with how I see fat characters represented isn't just that they have flaws, but that they are never allowed to be "cool". They might be laughably dumb or they might be smart, but in a "loser nerd" way, never in a "clever scheming competent leader" kind of way. If they are negative/mean/evil characters, the emphasis is always on their venal, base qualities like gluttony, greed, and just being a jerk, they are never an "evil is cool" character with flaws like pride or a philosophy that is thoughtful and intended well but goes too far. So in that respect I thought Piggot was well-written, well besides. being literally named Piggot which is cringe but I could excuse as setting up the expectation of a stereotype to later support. And the only other character I remember being described as fat, Gregor the Snail, I have no memory of being any kind of problematic stereotype, though I don't remember him and his chapter that well either. So could you explain why Worm writes fat people badly/fatphobically?

this took way too long to answer because it's like. Well it's a simple answer but also this is a very long ask. so there's more to unpack. the short answer is just that literally, like, virtually 99.99% of the times a fat character or someone being fat is mentioned in literally any wildbow novel it's with palpable disgust. regardless of who the narrator is. it's obvious even with taylor but pact really hammers this home because blake is characterized in a way that indicates he should never be randomly judging someone's weight or appearance and he's still constantly written as observing whether or not someone is "fat." and it's in italics, like it's a slur or some grievous insult. like we're not even at the point of being able to analyze how wildbow writes specific fat characters here due to there are almost none of them and anytime fatness is mentioned it's in the context of it being stated in the same tone as if the narrator was observing someone picking their nose and eating it. like the loathing is Palpable. pay attention to how the phrases "fat" or "obese" or "morbidly obese" are used the next time you're reading a wildbow novel. you'll see what i mean.

as for the specific characters it's like. i think this post has everything icould think to say about gregor already in it, which as you will see is not very strongly opinionated. i mention piggot in it also. i don't remember enough abt either to just wax abt them at length but fundamentally it's that there's nothing particularly Strongly Good about either of them--not doing the "soft lazy uncool glutton" schtick is, like, bare minimum, and neither of them are very far above the bare minimum, and they're in a story that consistently does infinitely less than the bare minimum. there's gonna need to be more than a fat character Having Characterization before we can say that worm isn't wildly fatphobic