#or can’t access certain references

[regulusrules]

Yo, I saw your post about orientalism in relation to the "hollywood middle-east" tiktok!

How can a rando and university dropout get into and learn more about? Any literature or other content to recommend?

Hi!! Wow, you have no idea how you just pressed a button. I'll unleash 5+ years on you. And I'll even add for you open-sourced works that you can access as much as I can!

1. Videos

I often find this is the best medium nowadays to learn anything! I'll share with you some of the best that deal with the topic in different frames

• This is a video of Edward Said talking about his book, Orientalism. Said is the Palestinian- American critic who first introduced the term Orientalism, and is the father of postcolonial studies as a critical literary theory. In this book, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of the concept and a deconstruction of western stereotypes. It’s very simple and he explains everything in a very easy manner.

• How Islam Saved Western Civilization. A more than brilliant lecture by Professor Roy Casagranda. This, in my opinion, is one of the best lectures that gives credit to this great civilization, and takes you on a journey to understand where did it all start from.

• What’s better than a well-researched, general overview Crash Course about Islam by John Green? This is not necessarily on orientalism but for people to know more about the fundamental basis of Islam and its pillars. I love the whole playlist that they have done about the religion, so definitely refer to it if you're looking to understand more about the historical background! Also, I can’t possibly mention this Crash Course series without mentioning ... ↓

• The Medieval Islamicate World. Arguably my favourite CC video of all times. Hank Green gives you a great thorough depiction of the Islamic civilization when it rose. He also discusses the scientific and literary advancements that happened in that age, which most people have no clue about! And honestly, just his excitement while explaining the astrolabe. These two truly enlightened so many people with the videos they've made. Thanks, @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog

2. Documentaries

• This is an AMAZING documentary called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies A People by the genius American media critic Jack Shaheen. He literally analysed more than 1000 movies and handpicked some to showcase the terribly false stereotypes in western depiction of Arab/Muslim cultures. It's the best way to go into the subject, because you'll find him analysing works you're familiar with like Aladdin and all sorts.

• Spain’s Islamic Legacy. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste since one of my main scopes is studying feminist Andalusian history. There are literal gems to be known about this period of time, when religious coexistence is documented to have actually existed. This documentary offers a needed break from eurocentric perspectives, a great bird-view of the Islamic civilization in Europe and its remaining legacy (that western history tries so hard to erase).

• When the Moors Ruled in Europe. This is one of the richest documentaries that covers most of the veiled history of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Bettany Hughes discusses some of the prominent rulers, the brilliance of architecture in the Arab Muslim world, their originality and contributions to poetry and music, their innovative inventions and scientific development, and lastly, La Reconquista; the eventual fall and erasure of this grand civilization by western rulers.

3. Books

• Rethinking Orientalism by Reina Lewis. Lewis brilliantly breaks the prevailing stereotype of the “Harem”, yk, this stupid thought westerns projected about arab women being shut inside one room, not allowed to go anywhere from it, enslaved and without liberty, just left there for the sexual desires of the male figures, subjugated and silenced. It's a great read because it also takes the account of five different women living in the middle east.

• Nocturnal Poetics by Ferial Ghazoul. A great comparative text to understand the influence and outreach of The Thousand and One Nights. She applies a modern critical methodology to explore this classic literary masterpiece.

• The Question of Palestine by Edward Said. Since it's absolutely relevant, this is a great book if you're looking to understand more about the Palestinian situation and a great way to actually see the perspective of Palestinians themselves, not what we think they think.

• Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance by S.S. Sabry. One of my favourite feminist dealings with the idea of the orient and how western depictions demeaned arab women by objectifying them and degrading them to objects of sexual desire, like Scheherazade's characterization: how she was made into a sensual seducer, but not the literate, brilliantly smart woman of wisdom she was in the eastern retellings. The book also discusses the idea of identity and people who live on the hyphen (between two cultures), which is a very crucial aspect to understand arabs who are born/living in western countries.

• The Story of the Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole. This is a great book if you're trying to understand the influence of Islamic culture on Europe. It debunks this idea that Muslims are senseless, barbaric people who needed "civilizing" and instead showcases their brilliant civilization that was much advanced than any of Europe in the time Europe was labelled by the Dark Ages. (btw, did you know that arabic was the language of knowledge at that time? Because anyone who was looking to study advanced sciences, maths, philosophy, astronomy etc, had to know arabic because arabic-speaking countries were the center of knowledge and scientific advancements. Insane, right!)

• Convivencia and Medieval Spain. This is a collection of essays that delve further into the idea of “Convivencia”, which is what we call for religious coexistence. There's one essay in particular that's great called Were Women Part of Convivencia? which debunks all false western stereotypical images of women being less in Islamic belief. It also highlights how arab women have always been extremely cultured and literate. (They practiced medicine, studied their desired subjects, were writers of poetry and prose when women in Europe couldn't even keep their surnames when they married.)

4. Novels / Epistolaries

• Granada by Radwa Ashour. This is one of my favourite novels of all time, because Ashour brilliantly showcases Andalusian history and documents the injustices and massacres that happened to Muslims then. It covers the cultural erasure of Granada, and is also a story of human connection and beautiful family dynamics that utterly touches your soul.

• Dreams of Trespass by Fatma Mernissi. This is wonderful short read written in autobiographical form. It deconstructs the idea of the Harem in a postcolonial feminist lens of the French colonization of Morocco.

• Scheherazade Goes West by Fatma Mernissi. Mernissi brilliantly showcases the sexualisation of female figures by western depictions. It's very telling, really, and a very important reference to understand how the west often depicts middle-eastern women by boxing them into either the erotic, sensual beings or the oppressed, black-veiled beings. It helps you understand the actual real image of arab women out there (who are not just muslims btw; christian, jew, atheist, etc women do exist, and they do count).

• Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This is a feminist travel epistolary of a British woman which covers the misconceptions that western people, specifically male travelers, had recorded and transmitted about the religion, traditions and treatment of women in Constantinople, Turkey. It is also a very insightful sapphic text that explores her own engagement with women there, which debunks the idea that there are no queer people in the middle east.

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With all of these, you'll get an insight about the real arab / islamic world. Not the one of fanaticism and barbarity that is often mediated, but the actual one that is based on the fundamental essences of peace, love, and acceptance.

[blossoms-phan]

thinking about this photo

[sincerelyneo]

teeth | l.hc

“fight so dirty but your love’s so sweet”

💿now playing: teeth by 5 seconds of summer

❯ summary: Traditionally the caption of the cheer team and the captain of the soccer team are friends - some even date. But you and Donghyuck definitely aren’t friends - if anything you’re enemies. The two of you can’t go five minutes without an argument. So, why are you letting him fuck you in the locker room?

❯ pairings: haechan x fem!reader

❯ genre: college!au, enemies with benefits, smut

❯ words: 2.5k

❯ tags: 18+ minors dni!, bickering, swearing, unprotected sex (don't do this!), hate sex, degrading names, general name-calling, manhandling, haechan is an asshole, but reader is also lowkey mean, choking, use of nickname 'princess', reader uses she/her pronouns, hardly any plot, it's literally just them hate fucking idk what to tell ya.

cheeky author's note: i'm very brtish, so referring to this as soccer literally made me want to rip my hair out 😀

“You don’t have to be so rough you know, Hyuck!”

"Will you just shut up and let me fuck you!?" He snaps.

The red metal of Lee Donghyuck's locker is cold against the skin of your bare back. Honestly, you don’t even know how it happened. But somehow the captain of the soccer team (and the boy you swear you hate) has you pinned against the boy’s lockers, one leg wrapped around his waist and the top half of your cheer uniform hiked up just enough to give him a full display of your tits. His left-hand grips your hip so tightly that you’re certain he’s doing it on purpose just to piss you off.

Not only that, but he also has your skirt bunched up around your waist. Giving him just the right amount of easy access to pull your panties to the side and tease his cock between your folds.

"Will you just hurry up and stick it in!?" You try to yell at him but, from the way he’s teasing the head of his cock at your entrance, the attempt comes out like a feeble whine.

Exactly on command, the scowl on your face quickly morphs into a wince, and the annoyed quirk on your lips disappears to form a small 'o' as Hyuck’s grip on your hip hardens and he pushes his cock quickly into your cunt. You can’t complain though - you did just tell him to stick it in.

"Shit," you squirm, hand coming up to his chest, pressing hard against the badge of his soccer uniform that rests on his right peck.

"Now look who’s needy," He teases. "I vividly remember you saying I’d be the shittest fuck on the soccer team."

"That’s what this is about!? You’re still mad that– uhh," you’re cut off by your own moan and your nails sink into the fabric of his shirt when he starts to move his hips. His pace is surprisingly slow - deliberately teasing - in comparison to his rapid first thrust inside of you.

"Christ! Even when you fuck you talk too much," Hyuck curses, his hand wrapping around your arm to free himself from the grip you have on his shirt.

"You're one to talk," You hiss back. "Even when you fuck you’re still an annoying little asshol– "

You gasp as he pulls out of you completely and then thrusts into you once again.

"You could've at least warned me, you dick,” You exhale, your walls readjusting to his size for the second time - and what a big size he was.

“Yeah, yeah, spare me the lecture princess.”

You can’t believe that even when he’s buried to the hilt inside of your pussy he’s still calling you that stupid fucking nickname. It’s not the word ‘princess’ itself that bothers you per se; it’s Lee Donghyuck’s intention behind the name that makes your blood blister with anger. He’s been calling you ‘princess’ since your freshman year in college but you’d only ever inquired about it recently.

You were at a party, and even though you hate the bones of Lee Donghyuck, you’d be lying if you said your social circles didn’t overlap. It was inevitable, he’s on the soccer team, you’re a cheerleader; honestly, the two of you should be friends. But you’re not. And because of your strained relationship, it was no surprise that the minute you walked through the door he’d picked a fight with you.

You can't even remember what the argument was about now, but you know the two of you had gone back and forth in a boxing match of insults that always ended with him throwing the word ‘princess’ at the end of his rebuttals. And you really couldn’t quite understand why. In your mind, being called a princess was a compliment, but to Donghyuck, princesses were “spoilt bitches who have no grip on reality.”

Safe to say you didn’t think the term was one of endearment after that.

And it was at that same party where you’d insisted Donghyuck would be the shittest fuck on the soccer team – something you’re currently finding out as being not true as he fucks you senseless six ways to Sunday. In all honesty, even when Yuta had asked you the question in a silly little game of truth or dare, you knew Hyuck was the cop-out answer. Truthfully, your real answer would have been Jisung or Chenle. They’re both a little younger and act more awkward with you. But still, you’d let hell freeze over before letting Lee Donghyuck think he was a better fuck than somebody else. However, you’re pretty sure you’ve broken that promise to yourself from the way you’re breathlessly panting and gasping from the vigorous drilling of his cock. That or hell genuinely has frozen over.

But still, what did he expect? The two of you couldn’t go half a second without a petty argument. Sometimes you find yourself just doing it because you were bored and he was there. After all, it’s just the norm between the two of you.

That’s why you can’t quite understand why he’s taking a stupid comment said in a passing game of truth or dare to heart. You’ve said worse to him, you're sure of it.

Hyuck pulls out of your pussy and the emptiness that lingers between your legs has you groaning – even if it’s just for a second. He doesn’t give you long to harp on the loss of friction because he wastes no time dropping your leg from his hip, gripping your waist and slamming the front of your body against his locker.

You want to make another snarky comment about his roughness, but you secretly love it. Well, it’s not so secret actually — Hyuck is well aware that you like his manhandling because he feels your wetness becoming more slick on his cock as he thrusts into you from behind.

His pace in the new position is still tortuous, slow and teasing, and so fucking annoyingly good. But you don’t know how much longer you can take the tormenting leisurely pace. You want more - you need more. If he didn't have your arms pinned behind you and you flush against the lockers, you’d claw at his back to make him go faster.

You feel a warmth on the nape of your neck as he nuzzles against your ear, placing a kiss so gently, that you’re shocked at the sudden contrast in his demeanour.

“This the shittest fuck you’ve had, huh?”

No.

“Yes,” you reply and he growls deeply. There’s a rough snap of his hips and it catches you off guard so much you have to bite down on your lip to suppress a whimper.

“Fucking liar,” he scoffs.

The insult makes your face screw up in a glare, but still, all you can manage is a breathy, “Am not.”

No matter how good the length of his cock is making you feel, you don’t want to give him the satisfaction of admitting he was right – that he’s not the worst fuck on the soccer team. Not that you had much experience with the others.

But even though you refuse to use your words to tell him you’re loving it, your body betrays you by being so fucking responsive to his touches. And no matter how hard you fight against him, Hyuck never lets you gain an inch. In fact, every time you try to free your arms from his, he lets out a frustrated groan, and the sound only makes your pussy throb harder.

His hand slips up your body until it finds your throat, where his fingers dig into either side of your neck. He stops his thrusts.

“Well if you’re not lying, are you saying I’m a shitty fuck princess?” He asks innocently as if he’s about to be gentle with you, but you know better. After all, this is Donghyuck. “If you want to pretend like you don’t want this; if that helps you sleep at night, then fine, but your slutty cunt is so fucking wet, I can almost feel you soaking my balls.”

He ducks down to place a kiss on your jaw, and you feel his lips smile into it as you shudder from his words. Instinctively, you swing your head away from him, only to be yanked back by the hand around your throat. He chuckles against your skin, hips starting to move again, thrusting shallowly into your stretched cunt.

“If I’m such a shitty fuck, I supposed you want me to stop, huh?” He asks in a low voice, lips grazing your cheek.

Noises you’ve never heard yourself make before tumble from your mouth as you moan and sob shamelessly. You try to bite your tongue, try not to fuel his ego, but his rhythm is too good at tearing down your guard, which is why you find yourself crying out, “Please don’t stop!”

He laughs, fucking you harder and faster, the stings of pain from his cock hitting you so deep morphing into a hot ache of pleasure that coils tighter and tighter in your core.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he growls.

His fingers, still on your throat press into your skin, not hard enough to cut off your air supply but just enough pressure to force out strangled moans. Your shoulders rub against the coarse material of his soccer kit, grounding you against him as he fucks you in punishing thrusts.

You don’t want to admit it, but your body can’t resist it.

“Fuck, gonna cum,” you mumble, eyes squeezed tight together.

“Yeah? You gonna cum for me like a good little slut?” he murmurs into your temples

The low rumble of his voice has the tension in your core ratcheting higher, pushing you closer to your release. Your head feels like it’s floating as the tight spring in your stomach coils until it finally snaps and has your knees buckling beneath you.

Hyuck keeps his speed steady, fucking you through your climax and savouring the way your walls clench around him in rigid spasms. Your orgasm triggers his and he clenches his jaw.

“Fuck, I'm gonna cum,” he ruts into you harder, and all you can do is moan for him.

“Please,” you whimper.

He chuckles at your submission - he’s never seen you like this before - so needy and desperate. He didn’t think it was possible to love anything about you; but this right here, you fucked out and pleading for his cum, yeah, he fucking loves it.

He ruts into you a last few times with thrusts that are wild and more frenzied, his thighs slapping against your ass. He contemplates cumming inside of you, but he figures he’d save that for another day since the two of you had forgotten about a condom and hadn’t really discussed it.

And…did he just think about having sex with you again?

With a loud groan that rattles against the metal in the empty locker room, Hyuck pulls out of your cunt and jerks his cock until he’s cumming onto the small of your back. Unable to stop yourself, you moan softly and a stupid smile spreads across your face when you hear him sigh.

After that it's silent, only your rapid breaths echoing in the room. He’s pressed against you, face buried in your neck, holding you and your weak legs in place. You stay like that for a beat, but then you remember who it is that’s just fucked you.

Without any more hesitation, you shake his grip and push him away from you. "Christ! Stop breathing down my neck. Fucking gross."

If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s your arch nemesis you would have stayed tangled up in him a little while longer, letting yourself get soaked up in the fact that that was the best sex you’ve ever had.

As you turn around to face him, he looks at you with the softest expression you’ve ever seen on his face.

“There’s a towel in my bag if you want to…”

You scoff, “How chivalrous of you.”

You pull the towel from the bag in his locker and start wiping at his cum on your back. Your body is turned away from him but you can still feel his eyes lingering on you as you wipe away.

You stop to look at him, “What are you still doing here? We have a game in like 10 minutes. Shouldn’t you be like…warming up or something?”

“I think I’m already warmed up,” he mumbles and you shake your head with a smile, going back to cleaning yourself off.

“Seriously, get on the pitch,” you demand when you see him still lingering.

There’s a hand in his hair, scratching his head and he looks a little flushed. You never see him like this, it’s weird. The Hyuck you know and loathe is cocky, smug, arrogant, all of those kinds of words; but the one in front of you looks so awkward, flushed. Is it weird you kinda like it?

“Are you waiting for me to tell you you aren’t a bad fuck or something? Seriously Hyuck, get lost,” you try and joke, pulling down your cheer uniform.

“No..I…” he stumbles.

You groan, “Oh no, don’t do this. Don’t make things weird.”

“I’m not—”

“Can’t you just be like a normal guy and…I don’t know, say it felt good to fuck me like you hate me or some shit?”

His eyes sweep over your face as if he were studying you. His face softens and he steps closer.

“I mean I could say that, because it felt fucking amazing actually,” he says and you swallow thickly. “But you’re wrong about one thing.”

You pause, freezing as he comes towards you. You don’t even register how close he is until you feel his breath on your lips and his chest against yours.

“What?”

“I don’t actually hate you that much,” he admits, and your eyes widen.

“Yeah right, funny joke,” you roll your eyes and laugh sarcastically but he’s not laughing with you. In fact he’s just looking at you, deadpan, and it’s starting to freak you out.

When you realise that he is in fact serious, you cross your hands across your chest.

“You’re not gonna start doing all that cheesy shit they do in the movies, where you profess your undying love for me, and tell me you never really hated me and it was all just a miscommunication, are you?”

“Fuck no!” He almost gags at the mention of it. “Just because I said I don’t hate you that much doesn’t mean I like you? Are you crazy?”

“Well I’m just making sure,” you poke his chest.

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, “But I do wanna do this again…” he trails off so quietly that you wouldn’t have heard it if there was anybody else in the room with you.

“This?”

“Yes, this. Us. Fucking,” he explains. “I fucking hate you, but fuck, I think I love your pussy.”

[coralinnii]

Congrats on 2.7k followers!! You deserve it! :D For the event, may I request Malleus, Azul, Jade and Floyd with a gentle giant S/O? As you can already guess, S/O is super tall (you can change this detail if you’d like, but perhaps they’d even be noticeably taller than Malleus?) and maybe even kind of intimidating because of it, but they’re very friendly, quiet, and gentle. 

Again, congratulations on your achievements!! Keep up the great work you’re doing 🥳

‧₊˚✧ My Statuesque Sweetheart ‧₊˚✧

↳ Tall Gentle Giant/Reader

feat: Malleus ❋ Azul ❋ Jade ❋ Floyd genre: fluff note: no pronouns were used with the reader, I love beluga whales (it’ll make sense in Jade’s ver.),

Sooo…being someone that can’t relate to being tall :I, I went around to ask some of my taller friends to know what’s that like, so this took longer cuz of research. I also got into Genshin to prep for another prompt someone asked me and dang, do I gotta research on that too.

Similar prompt: Tall!reader who loves hugs

2.7K Followers Writing Event 2023

You were certainly a surprise to him. In his long years, rarely does he find people where he doesn’t have to tilt his head down for once.

Despite your height, you were as cute and friendly as a woodland creature, a contrast to Malleus who exudes regal power without much effort. He’s fascinated by you as your stature can command the room yet your energy has a rather soothing effect on him and those around you. 

Man is saying you have zero scary dog energy, and that is adorable to him.

If you’re the affectionate type, congratulations! You’d be one of the few to be able (and allowed) to reach his horns. What started as curiosity soon became a habit as you made it your love language to care and clean Malleus’ iconic features. As a bonus, everytime you are done it’s fun to lay your head gently upon Malleus’, between his horns which catches him off guard no matter how often it happens. 

Having a tall man with money certainly has privileges as you now have access to his personal tailor as well. Was there a pair of pants you really like but it only reached your ankles? Not anymore, let the royal tailor deal with that and add some matching accessories to that. 

However you feel about your height, you are a sublime creature of beauty to Malleus. When he looks up to you smiling at him with the shining moon behind you highlighting your tall outline, he hasn’t seen anyone more otherworldly than you. 

You stand out amongst every human I have encountered. Hm? Ah, I do not refer to your stature but rather… the way you effortlessly capture my attention and ensnare my thoughts with visions of you.

Azul being around an incredibly tall person? What else is new? Azul doesn’t feel all that insecure about his height, before or after meeting you.

Well, you’re definitely the most pleasant person he knows that towers over him, at least. He knows that many, him included, would use your sort of stature as an advantage over others. Instead, he likes your rather sweet nature and way of conduct. 

If you have stretch marks due to your rapid growth spurts, Azul would feel absolutely touched if you trusted him enough to show it. Azul would genuinely praise your resilience to may have been an aching and painful experience to go through. If you let him, he could create a potion to get rid of the marks if it truly makes you insecure, but he finds you beautiful no matter what. 

Watch him flinch and get flustered anytime you wrap your arms around him, smothering him with your taller form. You would laugh to see him so easily out of sorts if you press your weight onto him. He can handle it of course, but the heat of your all-encompassing hugs is vastly different from his time in the cold sea. 

Azul would provide certain things that would suit your needs that others may overlook. Suddenly, you would find blankets that can cover you entirely, or you were gifted a coat that is actually a long coat that doesn’t awkwardly cut off at a weird length on you. Mirrors in Azul’s private room are always suspiciously up to your eye-level whenever you visit. 

He’s happy to know that you see him as someone reliable regardless of that. He has an interesting way of showing his appreciation

Do you like the new decor of the Mostro Lounge? The new additions are quite beautiful and eye-catching. The tall but dazzling designs were inspired by you, after all.

Oh my. What a sight to behold, you are. 

Jade doesn’t seem like the type to brag about his advantageous height, but he is aware that not many can reach his stature and even fewer actually pass him in that regard. 

He still treats you as courteously as he always does, even more so as the two of you start to grow closer. 

A nice bonus about having a tall boyfriend is that most of the things in his room are perfect for you! Beds you can fully stretch out in, actual full-length mirrors that don’t make you bend down, and furniture that doesn’t require you to squish yourself into. Jade’s (and Floyd’s) has become one of your favorite places to visit.

He does find it amusing that some people may find you intimidating because of your height as he knows that you were far from any definition of that word. Jade would chuckle to himself whenever he sees you getting happy or excited, like watching a playful beluga whale squeaking in joy. Your gentle features and bright smile shines through any misconceptions of your intimidating form. 

Though not quite used to it, Jade doesn’t mind having to crane his neck to meet your gaze. Especially not when he could watch your adorable quizzical expression as he asked you to lower your head to him, only to whisper teasing words into your ear. He especially finds it fun to watch you jump to your full height in flustered surprise, even occasionally bumping your head on a hanging decoration. 

Really, how could he resist you? 

Do you need rest, my love? Perhaps a cup of tea can soothe your aches and joints while you sit.

Oh, Floyd would have no issues with you being taller than him. Probably the opposite, really.

Don’t @ me but I fully believe Floyd has a thing for legs, be it his own or others. He’s so fascinated by these human features that you may even catch him blatantly staring appreciatively at your legs. 

“What’s the big deal? They’re right there, who can blame me?”

He will however, with full confidence, laugh his lungs out if you hit your head on the door frame or trip on an ottoman seat you didn’t notice. Maybe he’ll rub the ouchie away but he’ll be laughing while he does.

Be prepared for impromptu fashion shows with custom made shoes to show off your gorgeous mile-long legs. Floyd could spend hours looking through online shopping with you, showing you websites that specifically cater to tall drinks of water like yourself.

This man will be floored by the experience of being the little spoon of a hug. To be able to lean into your arms and rest his head on your chest, listening to your heartbeat while you  lovingly pat his hair? You can be unknowingly smothering him and he’ll be loving every moment of it. 

Regardless if you’re confident or not, Floyd loves to take you dancing. If you’re not confident in your dancing, Floyd is more than happy to lead you with every beat until you have fun. The man just loves to see the flashing lights paint your body, with your smile being the brightest of them all.

Did you get taller, Shrimpy? Aha ha, just pulling your leg there! Though, wouldn’t make a difference to me. You’re still a hottie even if you, hehe!

[suzukiblu]

So like, I don’t actually remember where I first saw the concept of soulmates getting access to each other’s superpowers but I very much needed to write something about it. Especially because that thought gave me some thoughts about how certain characters' origins/powers have gotten retconned, and welllll . . . We'll just call this WIP behind the cut here "soulmate superpowers".

The real problem with the marked increase in the global population of superpowered individuals both on Earth and in reality in general is what happens when they meet their soulmates. And the problem also depends, depending on the kind of soulmate. With romantic and platonic soulmates, the problem only happens on and off, which is much more manageable. 

Familial soulmates, though . . . for those the problem isn’t just “sometimes”, and therefore isn’t quite as “manageable”. 

Cadmus didn’t really tell Experiment Thirteen much about how soulmates worked, though, so when the full Kryptonian powerset only kicked in after the Kid met the real, original Superman for the first time . . . 

Well. He hadn’t known that was something he maybe should’ve thought a little more about, at the time.

.

.

.

“Wait up,” Serling Roquette says, staring down blankly at her tablet. She’s sixteen and crazy-weird and brand-new to Cadmus and showed up in wild clothes to apparently run the genetics department now that they’re under new management. Or something like that, Superboy guesses. He only signed on about five minutes before Roquette did, but she asked for a DNA sample to compare to his previous on-file samples and, like, cross-reference with them or whatever, he doesn’t know, he kinda stopped understanding what she was talking about by that point. “You’re supposed to have Kryptonian DNA in your setup?” 

“. . . uh,” Superboy says, because what kind of question is that? “Yeah? Like, no shit, doc, I didn’t get heat vision and ice breath from the human half.” 

Admittedly he is terrible with both of them, but he does have them. He just kinda avoids using them, is all. He fucks enough shit up with his TTK as it is; he doesn’t need to add frost damage and burny melty destruction on top of that. 

He’s thought about asking Superman for tips on ‘em a couple times, but he always feels real stupid when he does. Like, what kind of an even-only-half Kryptonian is he, if he can’t figure that shit out on his own? Superman did. And hell, even that asshole Henshaw did, and that prick isn’t even actually Kryptonian, he just– 

“This is human DNA, youngblood,” Roquette says, looking up at him. “Like, literally all human DNA. Real heavily augmented human DNA, we're talking ultra-crush gravity here, but like–you know, like somebody tried to forge the artist’s signature, but they didn’t actually think to use the right pen?” 

“What?” Superboy says blankly. 

“Do people not actually ever look at your DNA?” Roquette says. “Is that not a thing? You’re a clone, how are people not ever actually looking at your DNA?” 

“People look at it all the time,” Superboy says, still thrown off by what it sounds like she’s saying. That’s–he’s not–what is she saying? 

“Are they, like, mad stupid, then?” Roquette asks skeptically, wrinkling her nose and raising an eyebrow. “It’s literally the wrong pen. It’s the wrong ink. It’s not even a pen!” 

“I have literally no idea what you’re sayin’, Doc,” Superboy says, staring blankly at her. 

“I’m saying you’re about as Kryptonian as a human can get, which is literally zero point zero percent,” Roquette replies frankly, half-waving her tablet at him. “Whoever built you–” 

“Mostly Dabney Donovan, unfortunately,” Superboy says. 

“–okay, well, is Dabney Donovan as much of a lying shithead as I’ve always heard?” Roquette asks, waving her tablet at him again. “Because the data supports him being a lying shithead. He twisted your genes through a Kryptonian-shaped mold, maybe, but they’re still human genes. Fully and totally and like, seriously, does no one ever look at your DNA?” 

“I’m just human?” Superboy says blankly. “I–no I’m not! I have Kryptonian powers!” 

“Yeah, about that,” Roquette says. “No you don’t.” 

“What?” he says. She flips her tablet to face him; stabs a brightly-manicured nail emphatically at a bunch of figures and graphs he can’t understand at all. 

“You don’t have a single superpower except for tactile telekinesis,” she replies, frank and matter-of-fact. “None nada nothing and zip zilch zero. Genetically speaking, you are a highly-specialized highly-flexible telekinetic, but that’s it. That’s all you got in the playbook, youngblood."

Superboy stares at her. She keeps holding her tablet up like he’s gonna just suddenly magically understand what all the figures and graphs on it mean. 

“What?” he repeats, and feels like a fucking idiot about it. 

“When did you get the Kryptonian powers?” Roquette asks. “Like, did you come straight out the cloning solution with those, or . . . ?” 

“I didn’t get any yellow sun in development,” Superboy says, feeling–disconnected, sort of, and a little numb. What does–that doesn’t–he’s Superman’s clone. Like, only halfway, but– 

If he’s not Superman’s clone . . . is he just made out of that piece of shit Westfield, if . . . ? 

“Okay,” Roquette says. “So did you get the powers soon as you hit daylight, then?” 

“No,” he says. “I didn’t–not until–” 

When did they start kicking in? It took a few weeks or so, he knows. Maybe . . . maybe a little bit longer? It was– 

“Did it happen before you met Big Blue, or after?” Roquette asks real pointedly, and Superboy thinks he stops thinking, maybe. Just–everything in his head disappears all at once, and his mind goes totally blank, and . . . and he . . . 

“I’m not–I–” he tries to say, and doesn’t even know what he is trying to say. 

“Yeah,” Roquette says. “Like I said. You don’t have Kryptonian powers. You’ve got your soulmate’s powers.” 

Superboy stares at her for one more second, then bolts out of the lab without another word.

[mister-mickey]

Word of god

(This is going to be a VERY long post so buckle up)

Word of god is a phrase used in fandom that refers to something that the author of the source material has said, but was never confirmed in the source material. Because it was never confirmed in the original material, it isn’t considered canon. However, word of god is basically the next step down from canon.

This means that while you can choose to ignore it, you can also choose to accept it.

In the outsiders fandom, there are certain “word of god” type things floating around. Think soda going to Vietnam (and then that being retconned) or Johnny’s legal name being John. Even Dallas being scared of spiders, of crying after he read little women, of Steve enjoying wearing women’s underwear (?).

These are all examples of word of god. They were not mentioned in the outsiders book, but they are all things S.E Hinton has said on her twitter and in other places.

I’m only sharing the definition because what a lot of people never seem to talk about (possibly because they don’t know or because they don’t know how to access it) is S.E Hinton’s fanfiction. I think a lot of people would enjoy learning about some of the other things S.E Hinton has said about the characters. (Keep in mind, on her ffn account, she claims to not be S.E Hinton, but using the details she’s shared about her fanfiction in interviews, it’s pretty obvious that this is her account)

Just keep in mind, none of this is canon unless you personally want it to be. Don’t harass other people for accepting or not accepting any of this as canon. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and that includes letting other people make their own personal spaces and headcanons.

I’m going to share all of her outsiders fics here (as in, I’m going to link them so others can read them too) and then I’m going to share every detail that I noticed. If you read them and notice things I missed or didn’t talk about, PLEASE REBLOG WITH THOSE THINGS!

First fic- The Haircut, published in 2008. This takes place after their parents die but there is no mention of Johnny or Dallas, so it could be before or after their deaths

- Pony cuts his brothers’ hair (or at least Soda’s) probably because they can’t afford a professional haircut

- Either pony is really bad at it (possible, as seen in the book with Johnny) or Soda is incredibly dramatic

- Darry checks pony’s homework

- Pony is not great at math but does well in English, however he still misspells things (which makes the fact that he judges sodas spelling or grammar in the letter soda sent in the outsiders very funny)

- Soda is likely very forgetful (he forgot that he left the iron on and burnt a hole on his work uniform)

- This is something we could have figured out anyway because of the time period, but it’s implied that their mother would have been the one cutting their hair and ironing their clothes.

Second fic- The first Christmas After, published in 2008 (shortly before Christmas too, on December 14) this takes place after their parent’s death and after Johnny and Dally’s death.

- The Curtis brothers are willing to forgo tradition in order to save money (Darry says they agreed on no Christmas tree and mentioned avoiding getting a turkey for thanksgiving, even though they ended up getting one anyway because Darry’s job gave it to them)

- Soda apparently is not actually a decent cook. People like to headcanon that his cooking tastes okay and just looks funny or tastes a bit too sweet, but apparently soda seriously fucked up the turkey.

- Twobit is willing to eat gross stuff (he ate the turkey and darry jokes twobit would willingly eat cat shit)

- The Christmas tree is also free, like the turkey. Soda got it at work. I guess the Curtis brothers are pretty lucky, or they have jobs that kind of care about them (wild idea)

- I think this was mentioned in the book, but Darry is very casual about drinking. He grabs a beer after work.

- The real reason Darry didn’t want a tree is because he knows it’ll be upsetting to do christmassy stuff without their parents.

- Darry will shove his feelings down to try and make the holidays enjoyable for his brothers

- Steve has a mother who is active in his life. This is crazy to me because everyone just kind of assumed he didn’t have a mother. I will continue to deny her existence though lol

- Steve’s mother cares enough about the Curtis boys to send Steve over with some fudge.

- The Curtis brothers have their own ornaments. Soda’s is a car colored like a candy cane, Darry’s is a reindeer holding a football, and pony’s is an elf reading a book. The ornaments were from their father.

- There’s a joke that I think I’m not catching? I think it’s twobit saying that he called a girl a ho, but it might be innocent? I’m not the best with tone. He’s making a Santa Claus joke

- Twobit likes eggnog (gross) and shares it with soda. The eggnog has whiskey in it, which is what gets Steve interested in drinking it.

- The Curtis brothers had a dog named bowser, who also had an ornament. Bowser was a present for Darry’s fourth birthday. Darry assumed he was the only one that remembered bowser, but soda claims to remember him too. I guess this means bowser died when soda was very little. Possibly before pony or when pony was a baby.

- A lot of the Christmas ornaments are crafts that the Curtis boys made at school. (Aww) Darry and soda grew up faster than Ponyboy did, apparently pony was willing to do kid stuff longer than they were (they stopped wanting to make crafts by middle school but pony did them even after) Darry thinks it’s because their mom wanted to keep her baby a baby.

- The boy’s personalities show in the ornaments they made, Darry’s are well structured and planned, but with zero imagination. Sodas are sloppy and not great, but hold character. Pony’s are said to be eye catching and imaginative.

- Pony is supposed to call Darry from a pay phone if he realizes he’s going to be late for curfew. Pretty solid rule, I think

- Mr. Curtis wasn’t actually better at understanding people than Darry is. The main difference seems to be Mr. Curtis’s patience in dealing with people he doesn’t understand. Darry compares himself to his dad

- Their mother and father also have ornaments! Their mother is an Angel playing the piano (considering the other ornaments, we can assume their mother knew how to play piano) and their dad’s is a Santa going fishing (I guess he liked to fish)

- This is basically canon anyway, but pony was too skinny and frail after Johnny and dally died

- Soda is lactose intolerant. This does not stop him from consuming lactose. He is kind and sleeps on the couch when he does so that pony doesn’t have to listen to him farting all night (disgusting)

- Darry understands soda even if soda doesn’t say anything. So I guess Darry not understanding pony isn’t because pony is quiet and doesn’t tell him anything

- They have ornaments for Johnny and dally. Johnny’s is a little dark haired Angel singing a hymn, and Dally’s is a little devil with wings and a halo with an evil smirk.

- Johnny doesn’t like cutesy things. He is a greaser, he’s still tough. They all decide that Johnny and Dallas would like if they saw their ornaments.

- Joking about Johnny and dally makes the gang a little happier. Even after death, they bully Dallas a bit because they miss him (the hang him at the top of the tree 😭💔 and they giggle about looking up his ornaments skirt)

- Dallas would allegedly have set fire to the tree if he was there and saw them doing that

- Steve has a bunch of cousins in Muskogee Oklahoma, as well as an Uncle Bob

- Twobit’s sister is named Bren. Twobit is close with his grandmother and is visiting her for Christmas. He is going to give her whiskey for her present because his mom doesn’t let her have it.

- Soda likes to attack his brothers with tickles

The third fic- The Drive North, published in 2007. This is the longest fic, and it’s an au. I have several disclaimers I think I should make before I talk about it.

Disclaimer one- this is a Wild West au, it takes place in the late 1860s. Because it’s an au, there are some things that don’t really translate to canon. I will be sharing things that are canon to this fic, and maybe expanding how I think they’d fit into canon, but just remember, they do not fit perfectly

Disclaimer two- some of the things changed directly contradict canon. Several of the characters go by different names, some of them even have the wrong ages (I originally assumed everyone was the same age as in canon, but then mason and Tex from Tex showed up and they were ten years older than everyone else which doesn’t make sense because Tex takes place in the 70s and they should be younger than the gang), and some of the characters have pretty different back stories (the Shepard siblings are orphans in this and they’re being raised by their grandfather. This contradicts canon because in That was then, this is now, they are said to have their mother and a stepfather)

Name changes

- Steve is called pistol

- Angela is called Angelique

- Twobit is called Two bits, and his real make was changed from Keith to Eugene.

- Dallas is called White snake, which leads me to my next, and the most important, disclaimer

Disclaimer three- there is a lot of racism in this fic. Mostly weird Native American representation. This mostly comes from Dallas and Tim, but basically dallas is a white child that was kidnapped by native Americans and was then raised by them. Tim’s parents were killed by native Americans (which is of course a thing that happened back then, but I don’t think it’s written very well) These are common racist tropes, and I think it would do people good to be aware of that if they choose to read this fic.

There is also a few brief references to slavery and the civil war, and off the top of my head, I don’t think any of the characters were particularly against slavery. So if you want to read this, be aware of that so you don’t get caught off guard. There’s also a few slurs/incredibly outdated terms

I think thats the end of the disclaimers, if anyone else thinks of something I should add, tell me. I think this fic is an interesting look into the characters, but I don’t want people going in blind and unaware of the negative aspects of this fic

- The Shepard’s grandpa is named Philippe Shepard (Shepard is spelled different several times through the story, so is Philippe) he is fairly well off, I don’t think he’s rich, but he is successful. He has a Spanish gelding which is a fancy horse. Darry is jealous of him. Philippe is a former Texas ranger and he is very strict and good at bossing people around

- The Curtis brothers are doing a cattle drive under Philippe’s supervision. He’s their boss basically

- Soda’s real name is actually Patrick in this, and “Soda” is short for Sodacrackers because he likes hardtack.

- Everyone loves soda. Just looking at him makes people feel good

- Pony was a solemn baby that liked to study his surroundings. He was only silly when he was around horses, which is where he got the nickname Ponyboy. (His real name is Michael)

- Pony and soda are uncannily good with horses, which is why Philippe Shepard hired the Curtis brothers. Darry seems to really admire Philippe actually, he doesn’t shut up about that old man

- Curly Shepard is described as a hot-head, who doesn’t seem particularly skilled because he’s riding drag. This is the worst position to take because the dust gets kicked up at you. Curly was very upset about getting that position

- The Curtis parents died at different times in this. Their mother seems to have died of some sort of sickness because her death is described as “lingering”. Their dad went off to war (the civil war, on the confederate side. This does not make me fond of Mr. Curtis) when Darry was fifteen.

- Philippe Shepard does not support slavery. He also seems to have an anti-war stance. At least for himself. He says he won’t get his head blown off so people can own slaves. Philippe Shepard fought against the Mexicans and the Comanche at some point, and has enough experience with war to know he doesn’t like it

- Ponyboy has a paint pony

- Pony cried after he said good bye to the lake (the Curtis brothers are leaving their house for good) because he spent a lot of time at the lake. Darry seems embarrassed of him for that

- Pony wears soda’s hand me downs, but they still don’t fit him because he’s scrawny.

- Pony is tough physically, but incredibly emotional

- Soda has a chestnut mustang horse

- The Curtis brothers will be relatively well off after the drive. Darry plans on sending Pony to a school so he can put his book smarts to use and live in a society where that stuff matters

- The first chapter is repeated twice lmfaooo

- Two bit does not like Philippe. Philippe also uses flattery to get his way lol

- Twobit is the cook, which I guess means in canon he could be a decent cook too. He learned how to cook from his mom

- Mr Shepard is in love with Twobits mom 😭

- Mr Shepard also uses his money to get his way

- Twobit’s sister is named Lizzy in this one. Either he has a shit ton of sisters, or his one sister does not have a decided name

- Mr Shepard does not approve of ms Mathews babying Twobit. His eye twitches when she says he’s “just a boy”

- The Curtis brothers are said to have sold their eggs to make money

- Johnnys name is John, and he’s named after his father. So he’s John jr. He’s also called “little John Cade” 😭😭❤️❤️ and he’s going to be twobit’s assistant

- Dallas is their scout/interpreter. Original when I read this, I thought Dallas was actually Native American and I thought that was interesting. But no, he’s just a White guy that was raised that way. I think native Dallas would be very cool to see though, becuase I hate the trope of white people being raised by native Americans instead of people just writing native Americans

- Twobit is lazy. He doesn’t like getting up early or walking

- Mr Shepard does NOT think twobit is funny. I think he might actually hate him

- Mr Shepard spanks his grandkids and he makes sure to tell everyone. He also seems fully willing to spank other peoples kids too (he threatens twobit) He is very strict with his grandkids. He says he uses a quirt, I looked that up and it looks scary

- Mr Shepard is genuinely mean asf, and he seriously doesn’t like twobit oh my god

- Mr Shepard is seriously down bad for ms Mathews. He hates twobits dad 😭 he even calls the dude worthless

- Twobit’s dad was a sweet talking drummer who only stayed around long enough to give her kids

- Philippe has dark eyes and white hair

- Philippe was present when twobit got the nickname twobit. I think twobit isn’t particularly proud of his nickname.

- People don’t seem to like Dallas. I’m not talking other people, even the gang seems kind of uncomfortable around him. Also the gang isn’t a gang. I don’t think they’re necessarily even friends here.

- Curly is confirmed to be just a nickname. His real name is not shared

- Twobit got his nickname when he was ten. Instead of it meaning that he has a big mouth and will give his “two bits” to any conversation, it means that he’s so useless that you wouldn’t give “even two bits for him”. The twobit lovers can feast on any angst that provides. It explains why he doesn’t like his nickname in this

- Twobit’s little sister worships him and his mother adores him

- Another reference to Mr Shepard having a big old crush on Twobit’s mom 😭 this point is really being driven home, and it takes twobit a while to realize. He is horrified when he dies and almost drops a barrel on Johnny 😭

- Jesus Christ Philippe won’t stop threatening people. He says “every pound lost is money out of my pocket, and I catch anyone taking money out of my pocket there's going to be an inch off his hide.” Which curly confirmed is true and not just a phrase.

- Pony doesn’t give a fuck about cows. He calls them meat on hooves 😭

- Pony, pre fic, never liked going into town and didn’t like people. I don’t think he’s friends with Johnny (yet)

- Darry likes talking to people and sharing his opinions. He’s respected in their town

- Pony doesn’t think he’ll ever grow as big as Darry or soda. I find this interesting because I always just assumed he was small because he was younger.

- Pony prefers animals to people

- Pony likes to watch people instead of talk to them. This is already kind of canon, but it’s funny to hear him talk about it

- Darry has to ride big horses because he’s a big boy. It’s also implied that he’s still growing?! Apparently he’s still filling out into his frame. How fucking big is he going to get jfc

- Soda likes pretty horses, but he’s smart enough to pick horses based off of their speed

- Steve and curly both like hot (I’m assuming wild) horses. The difference is Steve can handle it, curly can’t. Curly got thrown off his horse 😭

- Tim and his grandpa both ride the fancy Spanish horses. They’re very pretty but pony feels tired just looking at them because of how jittery they are. But they never get tired

- Tim and his grandpa are long boned? I think this means tall? Or maybe they have long limbs lol. They’re also said to be heavy muscled. I don’t know if that contradicts Tim’s description in the outsiders, where he’s described as lean. I don’t know if heavy muscled means bulky, but it feels like it would? Tim can be lean and still muscular but the way it’s written makes him sound pretty different from the book

- Curly is convinced that he’s going to have one of the fancy horses one day, but Tim and Mr Shepard think he’s stupid for thinking that. So I guess he probably won’t. In their family, you have to earn a fancy horse, and curly hasn’t earned one yet

- Dallas rides a white horse that he stole.

- Buck Merrill is the sheriff? I find that very interesting because he was just a party guy in the outsiders

- Dallas is wearing a breechcloth, but sometimes wears pants. He also wears eagle feathers and face paint. I don’t know if that means anything. He is said to be Comanche (or at least associated with them)

- Dallas cut off Johnnys dad’s ear and wears it on his belt as a trophy. He did this because Johnnys dad was beating Johnny, so I guess they’re still close in this fic

- Everyone can sense Tim and Dally’s tension (it’s not sexual, it’s worse) and they are placing bets on who will fight who first

- Steve claims Dallas grabbed a creature off the ground and ate its head off

- Dallas has a sweet tooth

- Dallas only really talks to Johnny

- Johnnys dad is a blacksmith, and he’s huge.

- Twobit is a gossip, he makes sure he knows ALL the goings on. Every day he takes a one hour walk across the town to see everything

- Johnnys dad is suspected to have hearing loss and a bad temper

- Johnny got his scar from his dad back handing him with a hoof file (this is the event that caused Dallas to cut Mr cades ear off)

- Ever since then, Johnny has had less bruises

- The younger people on the job get to have more sleep 🥺 tim and darry work early in the morning and late at night because of that

- Angela snuck along 😭 she wants to be treated like Tim and curly so she has been following them for the past few days. Mr Shepard is PISSED

- Mr Shepard’s scoldings have caused tears among many people, including Angela

- Mr Shepard CARRIES THE QUIRT AROUND to to threaten people

- Angela is just as good at riding and shooting as curly but not as good as Tim.

- Angela was meant to stay home and have sewing lessons while her family did the cattle drive

- Angela either dislikes doing girly things like sewing, or she just prefers doing horse stuff. I can’t tell if she’s meant to be a tomboy, which I feel doesn’t necessarily fit with her character in twttin, or if she just thinks sewing lessons are boring.

- Dallas knew Angela was sneaking around, which means he is sneakier than Angela Shepard.

- Mr Shepard would 100% beat Dally’s ass which is notable because so far he’s respected Dallas a lot as an adult. He’s very upset that Dallas knew Angela was there and didn’t say anything

- Tim and curly are said to play pranks on angela which is why she’s so sneaky and suspicious

- Dallas cut off a piece of Angela’s hair. This is strange to me because he didn’t have a reason to do that? In the fic he uses it to prove that he was watching her, but how was he supposed to know he needed to prove that? Why did he cut a lock of her hair? Freak

- Dallas calls Angela a scrawny prairie chicken? So I guess she’s small and skinny.

- Tim ends up being the one to start a fight between him and Dallas

- I think Dallas enjoys making Tim angry enough to start the fights. It makes sense to me tbh, it’s very funny and I think it fits with canon. Dallas slashed Tim’s tires in the book, and I guess he did that to get his attention

- Tim is racist, and this plays a part in his hatred for Dallas. It’s apparently because his parents were killed by native Americans, but Mr Shepard says that he needs to stfu because Dallas had nothing to do with that.

- Dally’s real family had a terrible fate and I think they were killed in either the same raid that killed Tim’s parents, or another one close to that one.

- The Shepards mom’s name is Antoinette and she had a fate worse than death. I say this because Mr Shepard says he wished he was there to put a bullet in her head to spare her from what happened to her. He doesn’t say what happened, but I guess it was pretty awful.

- Tim likes to punch and grapple, Dallas likes to dodge and kick

- They aren’t friends of any sort like in the book, there’s no “cut from the same cloth” here

- Curly, soda, and Steve would have been cheering and whooping if they’d been present, but they’re elsewhere at this time

- Pony and his brothers fight sometimes, but they usually give up pretty quick because Darry gets embarrassed fighting with teenagers, soda starts laughing, and pony will start crying out of frustration

- TIM PULLED A GUN ON DALLAS

- Curly almost shot his toe off practicing his fast draw, which led Mr Shepard to ban it 😭

- Tim, his siblings, and Dallas were all very young when their parents died. No specific age is given, but Philippe says they were all very little

- Philippe is their paternal grandfather (obviously) but he saw their mother as his own daughter and apparently she was very egg beautiful. He seems more sad about her death than his own son’s death

- Tim has an impressive fast draw

- Mr Shepard defends Dallas against Tim and says that he needs to cool it with the anti-native American talk. He says he understands why they’re all mad white people are in their lands. This doesn’t stop him from taking the land though.

- Angela is now riding drag as punishment so curly gets promoted I guess.

- Twobit exaggerates stories and Tim clips them too short. Pony is the best storyteller

- Pony doesn’t know what a “sporting woman” (a prostitute) does until soda explains it

- Pony understands sex, he just doesn’t understand why anyone would ever have it for fun lmfao

- Steve got his ass beat by his dad for wasting his wages on prostitutes 😭 I guess his dad does get physical with him

- Pony says if Steve knew half as much as he thought he did, he’d be the most valuable person on earth 😭

- Pony thinks sex is gross and begs soda not to have sex (soda refuses and says he’s gonna do what he wants)

- Darry really enjoys not being in charge. He likes that Philippe is in charge because then he isn’t responsible for his brothers. He hates babysitting and pretends not to see pony nonverbally begging him to come with him into town so he isn’t alone

- Mr Shepard calls pony and Johnny the youngest, but I know that in the outsiders curly is fifteen, so he’s in between them. Either curly is a different age in this fic, or Mr Shepard doesn’t see him as an individual person (which now that I’m typing that out, I think that’s probably the case)

- Johnny doesn’t like lots of people. As in crowds

- Darry makes pony and soda take at least one bath a month. Stinky boys

- I think pony and Johnny have become friends now, they’re naturally drawn to each other

- Pony yelps runs away from a prostitute because she talked to him? I don’t think the situation called for that? He seemed genuinely terrified and Johnny just followed him

- Neither of them know what the clap is, Johnny thinks they were going to “get clapped” 😭

- Pony likes cats but can’t have one because the coyotes will eat it (very sad, one of my cats got eaten by a coyote ☹️)

- Pony cries when he’s scared

- Twobit won thirty dollars playing a game (he told the people he’d give them a chance to win it back the next day, while knowing that he wouldn’t be there the next day 😭) that’s about 700 dollars today

- Steve tries to look cool in front of soda omgg

- Steve also seems jealous of how naturally cool soda is. He’s upset with himself for being jittery around the prostitutes when soda is so calm and charming

- Steve has a mustache 😒 he grew it out to look older and he fiddles with it subconsciously

- Soda is insecure about “just being charming and handsome” because it isn’t something he had to work for

- Soda immediately started venting to the prostitute ?

- Soda immediately talked about marriage with this prostitute, he hasn’t even done anything with her and he’s already in love with her

- He gave her his entire wage… he gave her TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS and told her to wait for him oh my god

- He saw her flirting with other guys and immediately thought about KILLING HER what the fuck

- THE OTHER GUYS WERE TIM AND DARRY!!

- They were described as tall cowboys so I guess that’s means Tim and Darry are both tall

- Philippe is sick of these teenagers. They all spent their money on dumb shit and he’s judging them hardcore

- Tim and Darry have become best friends at some point, they keep giggling with each other

- Curly gave himself alcohol poisoning the second he had access to alcohol which is kind of funny to me. Either he’s a serious drunk or he’s so inexperienced with alcohol that he die at know what a limit is. I don’t drink at all so I don’t know which makes more sense. I’m leaning towards the second one because of the way he’s characterized in this fic

- Steve gets mad when soda is sad, not mad at soda, just mad in general

- Tim and Darry became bffs because they ROBBED A POKER GAME WITH GUNS! ARMED ROBBERY! They did this to save twobit from being fired after twobit spent money that wasn’t his, which is kind of sweet of them.

- Curly is sad because he was trying to get the guys to enter a brothel (part of the reason he was drinking so much) and got so drunk that he woke up in an alleyway with all his money gone 😭. He laid in rant alley for a day and a half before Tim came and found him 😢 (my stupid son)

- Soda is embarrassed about falling in love with the first woman he saw

- Steve is mad all the time, and soda doesn’t understand how he does it. Soda finds anger exhausting

- Tex and mason are very… ?? Again, they’re ten years older than the gang, instead of ten years younger. They’re both bearded and wild. They live in the middle of nowhere and say that god has abandoned them. Tex says he shot mason to make him shut up

- Nobody has been sick yet except curly, so they have plenty of medical stuff

- Johnny compares Dallas to a knight in this (instead of a gallant soldier in the book)

- Tex says he shot mason because mason gave him a bad cup of coffee. They’re very strange

- Curly broke his pinky finger oh my god (I have to be honest and say everything curly does makes me giggle because he does so much stupid stuff. My baby broke his pinky 😭😭😭❤️❤️)

- Steve cracked his tail bone when his horse escaped, and Darry got bad rope burn

- Philippe likes Sodapop. He does think soda is tiring though

- Tim values the adoration and hero worship from curly and Angela to be too mean to them. He pretends to be indifferent to them, which fools everyone except Philippe (awww)

- Tex and mason are crazy, they talk so much trash and they’re so mean to each other. It gives everyone else a shock

- Angela has a crush on Tex, who is supposed to be around 24 ish. Tex has no plans on doing anything with her thank god

- Angela wanted to be a tomboy because boys got more attention, but now that she desires boys attention, she acts more feminine. This is masons insight because Angela starts acting sweet and precious the second she starts liking tex

- Tex became friends with everyone within a few days of them joining

- Curly is good enough at roping to teach Tex how to do it. It’s nice seeing him be good at something

- Tex took herding lessons from Tim and Darry

- Darry and soda mess with pony enough for him to be suspicious when people tell him things

- Dallas keeps doing things to piss Tim off (he whacked him in the head with a stick and rode off on his horse before Tim could do anything)

- Tim “doesn’t find anything humorous in anything white snake (Dallas) does” and is very grumpy when Dallas does something to make people laugh

- The story ends on a cliffhanger but that’s it

Anyway, take what you want from these fics as canon and disregard anything you don’t want lol

[mc-cookies]

Objectionable

(An Ace Attorney-inspired custom Trait for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, an excellent indie tabletop RPG by the good folks over at @anim-ttrpgs)

Once per Scene, when this Investigator proves that another character is lying or hiding relevant information, they gain 1 Investigation Point and a +1 Contextual Bonus on subsequent Interpersonal rolls to uncover further details about that untruth. During these lines of questioning, if another character finds a flaw in their logic, the Investigator takes a Composure roll with a +1 modifier, and their Interpersonal Bonus ends. [1]

[1] Investigators with this Trait emulate the tactics of scrappy defense attorneys from a certain series of courtroom drama visual novels. By finding contradictory details in the stories of others, they can pull apart an entire testimony at the seams, but if they take too big of a logical leap and can’t back it up, they quickly lose confidence, momentum, and the trust of onlookers.

Each Investigator (player character) has 3-6 Traits which mechanically represent various aspects of their character.

More information about Eureka and its mechanics under the cut!

Eureka is among my favorite RPGs I've ever read, and certainly the best investigation-focused system I've seen. Its systems are deeply elegant, creating a game where players can piece together mysteries alongside their Investigators in a grounded world that still leaves space for supernatural intrigue. Combat is swift and strategic, but deadly if you go in without a plan. Investigations can be complex, but even the stickiest of situations don't require railroading to keep players on track. Mundane and supernatural characters alike have access to unique abilities, quirks, and skills that make each character feel distinct in mechanics as much as in flavor. The game interacts with the real world by way of fiction in a way that's refreshing and endlessly fascinating.

I absolutely recommend you give Eureka a shot, especially if you've been disappointed trying to run mystery stories in systems like D&D5e.

This trait, as is probably clear from the art and description, is heavily inspired by the gameplay of the Ace Attorney franchise, where you're expected to pull at the threads of a story until the truth falls into your lap, but where every further question is a risk. This is part of a broader trend in the rulebook where traits reference investigators from other mystery media, including Columbo, Sherlock Holmes, Jacques Clouseau, Kolchak, and the Scooby Gang (two links), among others.

The text of Objectionable references "Investigation Points", which are an abstract representation of how well an Investigator understands the mystery they're looking into. They can be traded in for "Eureka!" moments, which allow Investigators to retroactively learn information from a previously failed roll or increase their chances on a future roll. Getting a bonus point in this case encourages players to use this Trait whenever it's applicable, and represents the growing confidence of the Investigator as they get to the bottom of the other person's story.

It also refers to Composure, which is kind of like an emotional HP system – having low Composure reduces the possible skill bonuses an Investigator can receive on a roll, because if they're scared, tired, hungry, frustrated, or otherwise thrown off their game, they're less likely to succeed at what they try to do. In this case, the potential loss of composure references Ace Attorney characters getting flustered and embarrassed when the player chooses the wrong line of inquiry.

I'm not affiliated with ANIM (other than being acquainted with their team, since they're quite active within their online communities), but I really do suggest supporting them on Patreon and/or itch.io and/or Ko-Fi. On top of making Eureka, they also run a TTRPG Book Club server on Discord, which is excellent for finding RPGs to read and play and people to read and play them with, and they already have other projects planned after Eureka's full release. There's also a free beta version of Eureka available on their itch.io page, on top of the more frequent updates available on Patreon. Go check out cool artists!

[april-first]

Guide to the Bravern Flower Shop Verse

Posting this for archiving purposes and for future/new fans who won't experience any of this live (or maybe ever, if Twitter breaks) just encounter it as older, out of context fanart on Pixiv or social media.

So. If you’ve ever looked up Japanese Bravern fanart (or fanfic) on either Pixiv or Twitter you must have stumbled upon a certain flowershop AU. It’s official (made and named by the staff, got referred to as such in the 2nd talkshow apparently) and it’s called 花屋バース. Details with links under the cut!

The contributors

Kamokamen, original/main character designer (Twitter @ sangsilnoh)

Oobari Masami, director (Twitter @ G1_BARI)

Ura Ryuuta, chief animation director (Twitter @ matatabeat)

The origins

"happy new episode release" bonus arts by the main character designer

and their two Yotsuba&! joke tweets:

Isami works at a flower shop called Brave Flower

Smith is the single father of the "mysterious girl" Lulu who is in kindergarten

This spiraled into a whole AU that has Actual Lore because the staff kept adding to it.

My main sources were 2 different tweet compilations made by Japanese fans and the very broken Twitter search. I got into the fandom when Episode 9 aired (before that I was just watching the show weekly and nothing else) so backsourcing all of this was not easy, and unfortunately I can’t guarantee this post has every relevant tweet. For example I found nothing about Smith’s job. It might exist, it might not, who knows. But the staff was very clear that they just wanted everyone to have fun coming up with ideas when they were tweeting about Bravern-the-character.

Isami & Bravern

- Isami and Bravern drive a motorcycle with a sidecar (ART!) called Brave Thunder

- according to the director Bravern wears a helmet

- Bravern exists in that miniature form which was designed by the director, completely unexplained (first appearance of "easy-to-draw Bravern-kun" | official plushie version which he brought to the 3rd talkshow | non-flowershop AU maid uniform update! also designed by him | "bunny day" update)

(T/N: this is not actual canon, but in the Animedia (May issue) interview’s Q&A section the director said Isami has the impression of someone who has a much older brother who passed away when he was young. JP fandom said nope this is the happy AU so he’s alive)

Smith & Lulu

- Smith and Lulu drive a "granny bike" called Spar Kaiser

- Lulu's seat is a child bike seat dubbed "co-pilot seat"

(T/N: answering a fan’s question, the character designer who designed Smith’s weird shirts once tweeted he’s probably using a translator app to scan the text on them.)

Other characters

- as far as I know there’s no "official" flowershop AU version of Superbia

- some time ago the director made a miniature design for him as well, but people usually draw Superbia in a humanoid form in this AU which was designed by the character designer

(T/N: not flowershop AU related, but Superbia speaks in Hiroshima dialect.)

- Miyu has a moped (a modified old Honda Super Cub) and she rides around town with Hibiki to get McDonald’s

(T/N: also not flowershop AU related, but Hibiki considers Isami a younger brother, according to the 3rd talkshow reports.)

- Satake was Isami's homeroom teacher and he was the one who taught him how to properly ride a motorcycle

- it was due to Satake’s influence that Isami chose an American-style Japanese bike which he bought secondhand for cheap for the fun of repairing and customizing it

(T/N: the tweet linked above is from March, but at the 3rd staff talkshow we learned that Satake’s bike in canon is a Honda CBR250RR. At the 2nd talkshow the staff said he gives off the impression of being a good cook, and the director shared he must be single because of the bike & red jacket combo.)

ADD ALT TEXT if you share this on other sites as screenshots. I genuinely can't be assed to care about credit, but I care a lot about accessibility.

I’m collecting the interviews and talkshow fan reports, and I'm also reading Lulu’s spinoff novel so eventually I’ll post summaries of those. (Unfortunately I don’t have time to do more than summaries.) In the meantime you guys could MTL this collab café report/article if you're interested! (I checked googletranslate and it’s readable)

[lily-of-the-tardis]

*sigh* This article is actually not trying to ignore Doctor Who’s history so let’s take a look instead of screaming about a headline.

First of all the headline’s been changed on the actual website but it doesn’t seem that Twitter reflects that.

The lede has always been about how they’re talking specifically about the Doctor only as they are aware side characters have had same-sex kisses. I can’t verify for certain but I believe they added “explicitly romantic” to clarify things as this section always existed in the article:

They always meant to discuss what’s actually new here: a completely reciprocal same-sex romance for the Doctor onscreen. We can argue about whether Nine was interested in Jack, but I think we can agree there was far more interest displayed by the Doctor when it came to Rogue. But it’s perfectly fine that they wrote an article detailing what actually is a huge moment for the show and honestly that should be encouraged. I want to see more articles writing about queer parts of shows instead of ignoring them.

And yes, this whole thing is a side-effect of Disney but only because their licensing rights (they don't have any control over the show) have made Doctor Who far more accessible in the US. Plus, they're doing some pretty serious advertising to put the show on more people's radars, which is likely why anyone at Deadline Hollywood was even aware of Rogue and wrote this article. No one is pretending Disney has erased the show's past and is doing all these new "firsts".

The issue here is primarily that the headline is disingenuous. Their article has always been about the Doctor’s first explicitly romantic same-sex relationship, but they wanted clicks so they wrote the headline to be vaguer and imply something much more groundbreaking. Even saying “first romantic same-sex kiss” is a bit disingenuous, as it doesn’t clarify the kiss is referring to the title character. (Edit: I somehow missed that the updated headline actually does clarify they mean the Doctor by saying "time lord". This new headline very clearly previews what is discussed in the article and is no longer disingenuous.)

Thankfully they corrected the article after receiving feedback from the fans, which is great.

But they did their research, which y’all would’ve known if you bothered to look at the article (which isn’t actually behind a paywall! A rarity these days, though I can’t speak to access outside the US). If something seems informationally off to you, go to the source and actually look at what they're saying, then find the facts. We're not going to get anywhere if we just continue to yell about headlines without reading the actual article that, you know, expands upon the snapshot headline.

The topic of critique should be their poor headline, not the supposed lack of truth in their article. It's great to call them out for poor reporting, as they claim to be a news source and those should be factual, unbiased reporting as opposed to a tabloid. But the issue in their reporting here is simply their phrasing. Criticize them for misleading, not for an assumed lack of information that was actually acknowledged and present in the article. They need to improve but they won't until the real problem is highlighted for them.

[iminseriousdebt]

GENLOSS RAMBLE

Heyo! This is a little ramble I needed to make before the founders cut comes out!  yipee!

(GENERATION LOSS SPOILERS)

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So we can see in the above images the methods Showfall Media is using to control gl!Sneeg gl!Charlie and gl!Ranboo, they use an already pre-existing technology called an Electroencephalogram (EEG). Now this technology has been in use for decades, and essentially how it works is that it uses electrodes placed onto your scalp combined with a conductive gel to measure the electrical activity in your brain, these electrical signals are usually referred to as “brain waves” and these brainwaves can be subdivided into four categories, Gamma (greater than 30 Hz), Beta (13-30 Hz), Alpha (8-12 Hz), Theta (3.5-7.5 Hz), and Delta (0.1-3.5 Hz)

These different brainwaves are generally assosiated with different emotions, awareness levels, brain activities, etc. Now if Showfall Media has installed these onto sneeg, charlie, and ranboo, that means they have access to their thoughts and feelings, but brainscanning isn’t an absolute precise device, it still takes a lot of human effort and time to properly interpret the brainwaves. If Showfall somehow had a tool to easily interpret the signals they could much more easily operate, say, a live show. Lucky for them there is already a real life solution to this problem, kinda.

Its called Brain Generative Pre-Training Transformer, or BrainGPT for short.  What its goal is, is to act as an assist tool for human neurologists to use in real neuroscience cases and case studies, what it does is it uses a Large Language Model (LLM) full of pre-existing human research papers and other neuroscience knowledge too vast for human comprehension. And whenever a neurologist hands BrainGPT a prompt, (such as anomalous finding or to asses the fields understanding of a certain topic) , “would generate likely data patterns reflecting its current synthesis of the scientific literature”  (braingpt.org)

Now in regards to Generation Loss, what this means is that Showfall Media potentially has acces to this sort of technology, and would be able to use it in the production of their shows, now BrainGPT has a good way to go before its widely avalable. But in the genloss au, it can be far into development at this point, and be available for companies to use in whatever way they see fit.

Now reading and decoding brain signals is one thing, but to mind control someone is far beyond what is capable today, but Showfall Media has somehow developed technology to do so, the way I’m guessing they did it is that they produced certain brainwaves from the electrodes on the actors heads to give them the emotional reactions they needed for the show. I can’t exactly get into the technical stuff cause I’m not a neurologist, but its just a hunch on how I think they did it.

As for the mind controlling devices themselves, I feel there’s a more subtextual reason as to why those objects in particular are chosen as the devices that are central to the show’s operation. Ranboo’s mask has been a heavy emphasis throughout Gen 1 TSE,

Its been a central figure in not only generation loss’ marketing, but also ranboo’s marketing, because when you think of ranboo one of the first things that pops up is the mask, atleast in the wider public’s eye.

But these general associations not only exist with Ranboo, with Slimcicle you usually think of the wide brim glasses, with Sneeg its his backwards cap, and this is with the other cast members too when their introduced on the spinning carousel in episode 2. Furthermore, with Niki it’s that’s she's just so nice, with Austin its that he’s just a gay guy,  and with Vinny and Ethan these associations don’t really exist. So, with Vinny he's just the “hoarder”, and Ethan isn't even introduced. And then there's Jerma, who is relinquished to a goofy character with a weird voice and a strange sense of humour which sort of fits his public image.

But what I wanna mention with Ranboo’s mask specifically is that with the three images shown on the genloss twitter of the control devices, sneeg’s is just a hat, like theres nothing special about it, just a hat with electrodes on it, when you take it off he’s completely in control of himself. But, with charlie’s it’s a good bit harder to just take it off. His glasses are drilled into his skull connected to electrodes which are also implanted in his skull, with an additional feature of a speaker in his jaw. But if you remove the glasses, there would be a lot of bleeding and his vision would be impaired, but he would still be a free man.

But with Ranboo, poor, poor, Ranboo… Like Charlie, they have electrodes implanted on to their brain connected to a switch on the back of their skull (which also may or may not also be connected to their spine, idk its hard to tell). These sprout wires that thread through the mask and lead into their throat, and the mask piece itself is sewn shut onto their SKIN.

Now this makes me wonder, why is Ranboo so heavily guarded when the other are (relatively) easy to set free? Is it because Ranboo is an integral part of the show and therefore high risk? Is it because Showfall needed extra resources for the chat to be able to control them?... Or is it because Ranboo tried to escape so many times before that they were forced to disfigure them to such an extreme degree, and yet somehow, SOMEHOW, they are able to resist, whether it be tapping SOS on their hand when they're on full control mode or shanking a Showfall employee with a dagger, Ranboo, Resists. But Showfall will never let them leave. Or they will? Idk founders cut hasn’t come out yet as of writing this, anyway ramble over. You can leave now.

[thelordofhats]

Murder on the W Express thoughts, heavy spoilers under the cut.

Faust is the easier one to talk about—she’s lost her wifi connection, can no longer access Faustcord or Faustpedia. She’s adrift, and we get to see her cope with that. And it’s very, very good.

I’ve seen people say that her every move is being like, tyrannically dictated by the Gesellschaft, and I don’t really think that’s accurate. At least, not in the sense that she’s some unwilling slave. I would describe it more as… Faust made a (Faustian) bargain (with Faust) to gain knowledge of (Faust) all things. After all—she values knowledge very highly! How could she pass up on this? And I wouldn’t be surprised if the asking price wasn’t even that high.

But what she didn’t really realize is how much she valued the *pursuit* of knowledge, of pushing against her limitations. But now, with all of the information she could possibly ask for at her fingertips, everything is just a matter of entering a couple of search terms, and there you go. It’s all been done before. Sure, there are some blind spots. But given that there are innumerable Fausts, she isn’t really going to be the right Faust for the job of uncovering that. And so, slowly, a lot of who Faust was as a person sort of atrophied. Just follow the wisdom of the collective. If you try and find it out for yourself, you’re just replicating work for no reason—what’s the point? Just follow the path. Embrace the comfort of absolute certainty. Nothing needs to be left to chance.

But the child has, briefly, fallen out of the flask. She doesn’t have that Certainty to fall back on, and it has reminded her of the Thrill of acting on her own initiative. Of not knowing what’s going to happen, and making a gamble. Of actual collaboration with other people, getting different perspectives on available information and sifting the truth out of them. She has, momentarily, returned to the Flask. But a seed has been planted, and is going to grow. A hungry seed, that wants *more* than this gray Certainty. That does not want to be that husk of a self.

(Dante doesn’t parallel all of that, but they definitely reflect on how easily they fell into Faust Knows, Just Ask Faust, and how dangerous that reliance was).

I like it a lot.

Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Not a lot more to say there—because the character to *really* discuss is, as I will refer to her, Alonso Quixano.

We don’t see all that much of her. But there are a couple of things we can say for certain:

1) She is Crazy Powerful. So let’s take it on faith given what we’ve seen that we’re working on World of Darkness rules here, and the higher your generation number the weaker you are. Don is almost *certainly* at least on par with Elena. “One of the last fights in LoR” Elena. “Star of the City who killed a Color Fixer” powerful. Alonso can straight-up tell a lesser Bloodfiend to fuck off and die, and boom, he is dead.

2) She’s comfortable with authority and hierarchy. I’m pretty sure she has an Arbiter silhouette for a reason—not because she is/was one, but because that is the feeling they are trying to sell. She doesn’t explode the guy because he’s a monster, she exploded him because he transgressed against the hierarchy. Also the way she addresses Dante—others are Beneath Her.

3) Her drip is impeccable. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Those are things we can state for certain. Past this is speculation on my part:

1) She fucking *hates* herself. She is, in her own mind, a horrible monster. And she views her own nature as being basically inescapable. She isn’t chasing redemption here, making up for past acts. She can’t be redeemed. She can’t change. She puts on the boots so that she can Stop Being Alonso Quixano completely. She *needs* to not be herself. Not a different version of herself, she needs to be somebody else entirely. It doesn’t seem like she shares Don’s memories at all. She wants to have nothing to do with herself.

2) She doesn’t actually believe that Fixers are the paragons of virtue that Don does. But she does very much like the *ideal*, all the same. She read a bunch of stories that were maybe children’s stories, maybe just press releases, and what she really loved was the idea of the kind of person who would believe in that, even though she never could. A pure heart believing in heroes, in chivalry, in Justice. So the persona of Don Quixote is carefully crafted to be that.

3) The Dream Ending is probably going to be some level of “sorry, you can’t just wish yourself out of existence like that”. Don isn’t getting full-on replaced by Alonso, but she is probably going to have some level of *awareness* of Alonso, and of her own nature. A gradual synthesis.

4) Alonso is a Blood Fiend. Don is… mostly not. I think Rocinante prevents Don from doing most of that kind of stuff (except, if I am reading this right, eating that one W Corp employee to recover).

5) I don’t think Dante can rewind bloodfiend stiff, judging by how it interacted with the Warp Train—if Alonso did go all out and needed to recharge, she’s gonna have to munch people, there’s no getting around it.

[ghostradiodylan]

I subscribed to a Russian dataminer for cut content from The Quarry. You’re not supposed to share and I understand why and support paying people for their work! Buuuut I also understand why people might be hesitant to pay someone in Russia on a poorly translated website to access this stuff, so I’m gonna take my chances with potentially being banned because a couple of these things the Quarry fandom at large needs to see! Screenshots and discussion under the cut.

[you can subscribe or send tips here if you’re interested, they do have more SMG stuff including cut DPA content]

Thank you @insertlovelyperson for this!

These are somewhat Ryan and/or Dylan centric because I find them the most interesting, but they also had the most story-impacting cut content IMO.

RYAN WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO WARN DYLAN ABOUT THE WEREWOLF OUTSIDE THE RADIO HUT.

I know I’ve talked to a bunch of people about this. I know @andromaqves was one and I can’t remember who else but omfg, justice for Ryan!! I think they cut this because they made the werewolf more obvious than Justice's performance indicated but THAT MAKES IT WORSE. DO YOU NOT SEE HOW THAT MAKES IT WORSE YOU GUYS?!

Ryan also could have had the chance to actually get a shot off against Silas in the version of the radio hut scene where Dylan isn't bitten, and he'd think he had killed the werewolf.

Then as he's heading back to the radio hut, Dylan warns him that it's coming back and we get the rest of the scene as it plays out in the game.

I get why they cut this, because if they established for certain that regular bullets can't actually harm the werewolves, there's no stakes to Abi potentially shooting Nick, but it's a cool sequence, it's always good to see the boys work together, and it would have been AWESOME if Ryan could have been infected here instead of Dylan!

This exchange just made me laugh:

Kaitlyn to Ryan: you really look up to Mr. Hackett.

Ryan: Yeah, he’s always been nice to me.

Kaitlyn: Well, so have I!

Ryan: A few days ago I slipped on wet grass and ate shit and you laughed and shouted ‘Nice Walkin Christopher Walken' and everyone called me that for the rest of the day.

Kaitlyn: See, you get my best bits! 😂😂😂

Dylan reads Ryan the synopsis of a romance novel they find in Mr. H’s office that appears to be a thinly veiled reference to the bonfire love triangle. 😂

Ryan and Kaitlyn: actually showing care and concern for Dylan post-amputation instead of pretending it didn't happen.

Dylan, in shock but still an asshole: I'm fine, I’m doing better than Kaylee Hackett. 💀

Again, this is just funny and a great question from Emma.

Abi can not be into the kiss with Nick, presumably due to the no-longer-in-place relationship system. I'm betting if you didn't get their relationship stats up you would get this result.

Laura claims to Ryan that Chris Hackett drunkenly admitted that his family was KILLING PEOPLE who were investigating them, but there's nothing else to back that up in the datamine that I've found so far (not that I think she made it up lol, just that it would have been interesting if the Chris scene was cut to remove that too).

And the one my heart can't fucking take, Kaitlyn and Dylan on the way to the scrapyard variant where Ryan has kissed Kaitlyn at the bonfire and they actually talk about it because she asks Dylan if he's jealous of Laura getting to go off with Ryan. He says he's jealous but not of Laura...

"You're pretty awesome and I'm... just Dylan" 😭 😭 😭

And, "you guys seem like you've got a connection"?? Kaitlyn as Rylan shipper, confirmed. 💖

More details and discussion on the Discord @itscomingupaces made us: https://discord.com/invite/RHgdqBBXh7

[kenomacreature]

THE MAGIC CIRCLE, or "WTF is Darkness, anyway?"

Part Three

A comprehensive, themes-first take on what Deltarune is "really about"

The Gaster of it all

The foremost trouble with Gaster is that there just isn’t very much to work with. We know so little about the guy that we couldn’t even figure out if a certain Valentine’s Day letter was or wasn’t from him. And since we know such little concrete information about Gaster, some might argue that trying to conjecture one’s way towards grand conclusions about him is a fool’s errand. Luckily (or unluckily) for you, dear reader, a fool is exactly what I am.

All joking aside, I do actually want to try my best to be cautious in this section. Since Gaster is someone who exists just as much outside the text as he does within it, any theory involving him risks mixing evidence with unsubstantiated fanon interpretations. For this reason, I will try to specifically list every premise that I need to come to my conclusion, so we can be on the lookout, together, for any pesky leaps in logic. Make up your own mind on whether these are all within the bounds of reason, or whether there’s something here that you can’t accept or find implausible. 

Premise 1: We can use information about Gaster in Undertale to inform our understanding of Gaster in Deltarune. Given that every known character that exists across both Undertale and Deltarune share not only similar personalities but also broadly similar circumstances, it seems like a safe assumption that the same applies to Gaster.

Premise 2: The information the Gaster followers give us can be trusted. This is to say that Gaster was the former royal scientist, that he was shattered across time and space, and that he exists at some higher level where he can “listen in” or watch during gameplay despite not physically being present. If we don’t trust the information of the Gaster followers, there's barely any discussion to be had, as these are some of the only sources of information we have about him. We don’t have any reason to distrust their claims, so they can be taken on faith for now.

Premise 3: Entry 17 was written by Gaster. The room displaying Entry 17 is literally named room_gaster in the files of the game.

Premise 4: The subject of Entry 17 is the substance of Darkness, as seen in Deltarune. Gaster literally refers to the subject of his experimentation as “Darkness”.  

Premise 5: Gaster is the mysterious person talking to us during the opening of Deltarune. There are numerous allusions to Gaster during this opening scene, such as the track which plays during it being titled ANOTHER HIM, a reference to an Undertale file tied to Gaster. The person speaking also shares Gaster’s exact manner of speech and verbal tics, minus the Wingdings font.

Premise 6: Deltarune Gaster exists in a similar state to his Undertale counterpart. The Gaster who speaks with us in Deltarune is a disembodied voice who is somehow able to communicate with us, the player, and seems to exist diegetically as part of the menus. A reasonable explanation for this would be him also being shattered across time and space and occupying a higher plane of "reality".  

Premise 7: Gaster’s experimenting with Darkness is what led to him being shattered across time and space and existing in this higher state. What else could the relevance of Entry 17 possibly be? The fact that you need to manipulate time and space to even access the room displaying it seems to point clearly towards this conclusion. As discussed earlier, Dark Worlds seem to behave strangely when it comes to time and space as well.

Premise 8: Darkness is a metaphysical substance that somehow dictates the nature of Undertale and Deltarune's worlds. If Darkness caused Gaster to become a disembodied being able to exist within the menus and code of the game, then this must surely mean that Darkness is tied to the very fabric of reality that makes up the worlds of Undertale and Deltarune.

With all of our premises established, I can now make what might, devoid of context, seem like an insane claim, but which follows quite naturally from the premises outlined here.

Conclusion: The Light World is actually a Dark World

Okay, what does that even mean?

Well, think about how in Chapter 2, Queen planned on making a Dark World inside a Dark World. What if she’s already inside a Dark World inside a Dark World? If sufficient manipulation of Darkness can shatter one’s embodiment in time and space, placing oneself on a higher or deeper plane of reality, then what that seems to point to is that Darkness simply is the substance that makes up the reality of Deltarune and Undertale. And if that’s the case, it means that the Light World is essentially just a very big Dark World.

The beauty of this hypothesis is that it makes perfect sense thematically. Deltarune and Undertale are fictional worlds where, like in the Dark Worlds, certain characters are aware of their own nature as fictional beings – characters like Gaster. And really, Gaster is exactly like the secret bosses in that he’s not free even in his own confrontation with his lack of freedom. Like how the Will of the Fountain guided Jevil and Spamton towards their reckoning with their nature as Darkners, the Will of Toby Fox guided Gaster towards a reckoning with his own nature as a fictional character. This is why Gaster, and possibly Dess, exist diegetically within the code of the game. Here in our world, the code is what forms the existence of Deltarune (the program). But once you immerse yourself in Deltarune (the fictional world), crossing its Fountain (so to speak) via your suspension of disbelief, the code becomes representative of something else – the “Depths”, a deeper layer within the cosmological fabric of Darkness.

Armed with a basic understanding of Deltarune’s cosmology, we are prepared to tackle the question of who and what the Angel is.

The Angel is in their Heaven, all is right with the world

Let me pose you a question. If Darkness represents fiction, what does Light represent? Because Light is an established concept in Deltarune. It’s not mentioned quite as much as Darkness, but it’s right there in the name of the “Light World” and “Lightners”. Darkners talk about the light inside Kris’s soul, which also makes an appearance in the lyrics of Don’t Forget.

So, what is Light? Well, if you’re on board with the conclusion that Darkness represents fiction, I think there is no choice but to accept that Light, as its opposite, represents reality. Or, at least reality in relation to fiction.

Deltarune seems to operate on a certain hierarchy of command. There are Darkners, who, as Ralsei is eager to remind us, are subservient to Lightners. But Lightners themselves seem to be subservient to an even higher force, one that shines more radiantly… A figure that is, funnily enough, shrouded in darkness. Their Heaven is only briefly mentioned at the end of Ralsei’s prophecy. They’re worshipped as a monotheistic God in the organized religion of Light World’s Hometown. And Spamton yearns to confront them, hoping it will allow him to cut his strings. In fact, Spamton seems to think they’re already present and addresses them directly in dialogue, asking if they’re watching.

This hierarchy of command maps out perfectly to the metatextual layers of Deltarune. Darkners are fictional beings within the fictional world of Deltarune and so occupy the lowest level of this hierarchy, worshipping their creators, the Lightners. Notice that “Lightners” is plural – Darkners don’t just worship the individual creator of their Fountain, they worship Lightners in general because it’s only through them, collectively, that they can exist. And who are the creators of the Lightners? Well, it’s us, right? We’re the beings one rung up the ladder. We’re the ones who “give their existence meaning”. Granted, Lightners worship an individual being, the Angel, instead of a category of beings. I think this is fairly easy to explain, though.

The world of Deltarune is made in service of the player. It is for the player’s sake that the game is designed as it is. Even if Toby Fox operates in a sort of demiurgic role of actually having to construct the game and the narrative for us, it is ultimately we who are the God of this world. We, the player, are the Angel.

I can already hear the question forming in your mind: “But what about Noelle? Isn’t she the Angel?” I mean, she does literally compare herself to one. And an Addison calls her one. And Spamton calls her one. And she's associated with snow angels. And the doll her and Dess create looks like an angel. And her Dark World attire is very angelic too. Is there any possible explanation for this other than Noelle being the Angel?

Noelle is certainly associated with angelic imagery and language, as all the examples above indicate. But take note that whenever she’s associated with angels, it’s in the lower case, referring to angels abstractly. Not once is she directly associated with the capital-A Angel. What seems clear to me is that Noelle is a special Lightner, with a special connection to the Angel, which is to say a special connection with us. This is made clear in the Weird Route, where we can use Noelle to “break” the game, bypass certain restrictions, disregard what’s “supposed” to happen and forge a new path, in a twisted reflection of Noelle’s own interest in video game glitches and creepypastas.

But really, when you think about it, Noelle being the actual Angel is kind of an incoherent notion in the first place. Even beyond the thematic significance of Light, we know what the Angel is, broadly speaking. It is a watchful deity existing above the Lightners and Darkners – this much is clear from how both Lightners refer to them, and from how Darkners like Spamton do. There is simply no explanation for how Spamton could be referring to Noelle when he talks about the Angel.

If you’re already convinced that she’s the Angel, this dialogue might mislead you into thinking Spamton is referring to Noelle. But on further inspection it’s quite obvious from context that Spamton is referring to the one who’s actually looking for the ring – us, the player. Immediately proceeding this dialogue, he asks us (the player - or Kris, who we're controlling) to pay for the ring. It plainly does not make sense for the dialogue to be addressed to Noelle.

Likewise, you’d have to jump through a lot of hoops to interpret this as anything other than Spamton directly addressing the Angel’s Heaven, which he believes is observing his current actions (as opposed to many Noelle Angel theories which speculate that the Angel's Heaven will be not a literal, but abstract concept corresponding to a future Dark World, or even the Roaring itself, at any rate caused by Noelle). But this naturally leads us to the question of what exactly the Angel’s Heaven is.

From what Spamton says, and from its description in the prophecy, it seems that the Angel’s Heaven refers to an actual, tangible location or plane of existence. Given that, I think it makes intuitive sense that the Angel’s Heaven is simply our world – the world above the Light World, the Even Lighter World so to speak, the home of angels and divine light. This is how Heaven can be “watching”, as Spamton says.

Banishing the Angel’s Heaven – the goal of the prophecy – would thus mean, well, sealing away the real world and severing the connection that was established at the beginning of the game, which is just a more complicated way of saying that it refers to ending the game. As explained earlier, Deltarune is itself a sort of Dark Fountain, a constructed world filled with characters prepackaged in certain contexts that we’re meant to enjoy and bring meaning and resolution to. The primary difference seems to be that within the story of Deltarune, this “Fountain” (if you will) was opened from the inside, by none other than Gaster, our gracious host, and must thus be banished from the inside as well, by the Delta Warriors of Legend.

I believe that this is the ending that Toby has teased, the conclusion that he dreamed of nearly 14 years ago. As the boundaries between the player and the game gradually break down, so will the boundaries between the Light and Dark Worlds within the game's diegesis, culminating in the Roaring, which I fully expect to be represented through overt meta-awareness and glitch aesthetics, similar to Undertale’s endings. What else would an apocalypse look like within the metaphysics of a video game program, after all, but a fatal exception error? The Roaring is the edge of the shadow, where reality and dream meet. And to bring an end to the Roaring, that connection must be severed.

In conclusion…

Deltarune’s narrative, like Undertale before it, is highly concentrated on a metatextual exploration of fiction and the impact it can have on people’s lives. The crucial difference is that where this was mostly relegated to subtext in Undertale, Deltarune is overtly grappling with these ideas through its plot. Not only with the metaphorically loaded nature of the Dark Worlds which serve as the backdrops to the adventures of our characters, but also with the player character themselves, their outright awareness and rejection of the player controlling them, and the ways in which those complicated feelings manifest in the Dark Worlds generated from their Will.

In this way, Deltarune is not only interested in exploring the impact of fiction on the lives of its creators but also the impact of reality on fictional constructs, which in turn reflects our own real world struggles to make sense of our place in an incomprehensible world which may or may not be created by a higher being.

A proper understanding of the thematic preoccupations of a text can open up new avenues of speculation and focus one’s sight on the things that truly matter the most. In this essay, I offered answers to some of the most pressing questions in the community, such as the identity of the Knight, the mechanics of Dark Worlds, the nature of the Secret Bosses, the identity of the Angel, and the significance of their Heaven, but I think more important than any answers to those mysteries in themselves is how they connect and tie into the central themes of the narrative.

By no means do I expect all of my conclusions to be completely correct, having less than a third of the full game to work with, but I do at least think they’re in line with the established themes it's been exploring, and well supported by the textual evidence we’ve been provided with so far. I’m eager to hear my ideas picked apart and criticized, and even more eager to get my hands on Chapter 3 and 4 – even if it ends up invalidating every conclusion I put forth here. Ultimately our theories should not exist for the sake of establishing or perpetuating arbitrary divisions, or to further our own profile as independent theorists, but to attain a better understanding of the narrative we’re being presented with. To that end, I can only hope I was successful.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The task of the Palestinian is to be palatable or to be condemned. The task of the Palestinian, we’ve seen in the past two weeks, is to audition for empathy and compassion. To prove that we deserve it. To earn it. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors get baited and interrupted on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. They are begging reporters to do the most basic tasks of their job. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. Even when under attack, they must be costumed as another people to elicit humanity. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space. If that weren’t enough, Palestinian slaughter is too often presented ahistorically, untethered to reality: It is not attributed to real steel and missiles, to occupation, to policy. To earn compassion for their dead, Palestinians must first prove their innocence. The real problem with condemnation is the quiet, sly tenor of the questions that accompany it: Palestinians are presumed violent — and deserving of violence — until proved otherwise. Their deaths are presumed defensible until proved otherwise. What is the word of a Palestinian against a machinery that investigates itself, that absolves itself of accused crimes? What is it against a government whose representatives have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “wild beasts?” When a well-suited man can say brazenly and unflinchingly that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people? It is, of course, a remarkably effective strategy. A slaughter isn’t a slaughter if those being slaughtered are at fault, if they’ve been quietly and effectively dehumanized — in the media, through policy — for years. If nobody is a civilian, nobody can be a victim.

[...]

I don’t hesitate for a second to condemn the killing of any child, any massacre of civilians. It is the easiest ask in the world. And it is not in spite of that but because of that I say: Condemn the brutalization of bodies. By all means, do. Condemn murder. Condemn violence, imprisonment, all forms of oppression. But if your shock and distress comes only at the sight of certain brutalized bodies? If you speak out but not when Palestinian bodies are besieged and murdered, abducted and imprisoned? Then it is worth asking yourself which brutalization is acceptable to you, even quietly, even subconsciously, and which is not. Name the discrepancy and own it. If you can’t be equitable, be honest. There is nothing complicated about asking for freedom. Palestinians deserve equal rights, equal access to resources, equal access to fair elections and so forth. If this makes you uneasy, then you must ask yourself why.

[lemon-lime-behavior]

Do you have any references for your older zoro? I’ve been looking for the more plump muscular references and can’t find any ;-;

I apologize in advance I got a bit rambly.

So usually when I'm drawing bodies I'm not necessarily looking at a single reference. I sketch the pose I want first and then start digging up things to help me get certain body parts right, other body parts I'll just bullshit based on memory. I've spent a decent amount of time practicing, studying anatomy, and doing figure studies, so I can usually pull off something that looks mostly correct just off the cuff, but references are very helpful for bodies or poses I'm not used to and also to keep me from getting too much in a rut with my own knowledge and developing bad habits.

Here's the general process:

Now how I found those reference images was googling things like "shirtless man leaning forward" and "arm grabbing other arm" and "man squatting" and then just being persistent in my digging. Sometimes it takes a while!

All this to say, I don't have just one reference photo for what I used when drawing Zoro, it was a combination of a few of them and just what I already knew offhand. I can share some of the images I used in that drawing, though it's not all of them (I deleted them from my files as soon as I was done with them and I couldn't find all of them again)

I definitely hear you though, on how it's stupidly difficult to find good reference photos for body types that aren't underwear models. They're there if you dig around though, and if you want thick muscular guys in particular I would recommend looking up wrestlers and dudes who compete in strongman competitions.

As for the second part of your question, I mean like, sure, I can't stop you, but I would caution against it. Like I said earlier I tend to bullshit parts of my anatomy and... well did you ever play the game Telephone as a kid? If you use my art as a reference you'll be copying any mistakes I made, and the farther away from the source material it gets the more distorted it becomes. Using someone else's art as a reference is okay if you're deliberately trying to study that person's style, but in most cases when creating original work finding photographic reference material, or better yet in person reference material when possible, is best.

My number one piece of advice is to just draw as many bodies as you can, of as many sizes and shapes as you can. If you want more varied but still muscular body types try looking up different sports players, that's always a pretty good bet.

Some good websites for finding varied body types I can recommend are: https://www.fatphotoref.com/ (you have to apply to gain access but it's free) https://www.adorkastock.com/ (A very large catalogue, an old dear friend of mine) https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing (Leads you through your own timed figure drawing sessions)

And of course you can't go wrong with doing some studies of bones and muscles!

Good luck!

[daisyjoyflower]

My thoughts/theory on the socioeconomic status of the main characters in Danny Phantom;

Tucker Foley - Middle class

It would seem he has been to the Amusement Park that Sam refers to in “Attack of the Killer Garage Sale” (as he knows the price to get it and the food expenses) meaning it is within his reach to go there, but not on a moment’s notice and not frequently, as he declines her offer to go, due to the expenses.

He can afford things like his PDAs, however he mentions in one episode that his current PDA isn’t paid off yet. This shows, his family, like many, can afford to make payments on electronic devices, however do have to pay in monthly installments and it’s a big enough deal that Tucker, at 14, is conscientious of the fact that his device is not paid off yet.

While we only see a few shots of Tucker’s house, it seems to be a fairly normal house and his bedroom appears to be a standard size bedroom (unlike Danny’s and Sam’s which are larger).

Even though he can’t afford unplanned trips to the amusement park and needs to make payments on certain items, he is never shown to be struggling for necessities, such as food and clothes.

This therefore, leads me to the conclusion that the Foleys are a part of the middle class.

————————————————————————

Danny Fenton - Upper Class

In “Attack of the Killer Garage Sale,” Danny’s parents make the statement that, as Fenton’s, they have plenty of money (but tell Danny he needs to earn his)

In “The Ultimate Enemy”, Jazz is seen to be telling her classmates that she has to choose between Hartford, Stanford, and Yale (all of which are expensive schools). Never is the money needed to go to these schools, mentioned as a problem though. And that can’t be blamed on “the show not tackling such issues,” as after Valerie’s family looses their money, Valerie is shown to have to work a job in order to save up for college. Therefore, it seems to be implied that the Fentons can afford to send Jazz to such a school, and still pay for Danny to go to college, two years later. The only loophole to this would be Jazz having a full ride scholarship to the school of her choosing, which is possible, but not probable.

When we see Danny’s house, it on the outside appears to be a normal size two story house, however Danny’s bedroom looks to be bigger than the average bedroom, some shots even making it look like it could be the size of a master bedroom. As well, both him and Jazz (the two kids of the house) are shown to have their own tvs in their bedrooms, something that isn’t standard, especially not at the time the show aired.

His parents have to pay for their ghost hunting equipment somehow.

This all makes it seem likely that Danny is actually from the upper class. It’s just not glaringly obvious, probably because his parents, rather than spend money on typical rich people things, such as fancy homes, ect., choose to spend their money on ghost hunting and lab equipment.

———————————————————————

Sam Manson - The 1%

The Mansons appear to be rich far beyond the Fentons. Sam states that her family is filthy rich. She was also self conscious enough about the amount of money they have, that she kept it hidden from Tucker and Danny for a long time.

Their house is huge. They have a screening room, bowling alley, middle of the night access to delivery services, and are said to be able to afford a plane and/or a yacht, most of which are out of reach to average upper class citizens.

There is an episode where she rhetorically asks why her parents can’t have day jobs, like normal parents, implying that her parents don’t work, at least not in the traditional sense.

She mentions that their money comes from her great grandfather, which tells us that her family’s fortune is “old money,” and there is enough of it that it’s been around for generations (though that fortune has probably grown over the years from being invested in the stock market and such)

With all this in mind, it seems the Manson’s are a part of the 1% or close to it.