#over 3 different possible tags which have their own version of spoiler tags

[original-art-stories]

The Magnus Archives Fic list lying on my computer>

The horror and everything else. Mostly Jon centric probably...

Anatomy of a Mask - A new archival assistant is hired. Her name is Mary Sue. Starts as a comedy and absolutely does not end that way.

Plus One - Jon attends a series of parties for which a plus one is mandatory.

Decree Nisi - Elias and Peter divorce (again), and the judge is tired of their bullshit.

Reflection - Jon is haunted by himself, and refuses to take any of his advice.

Rosemary and Thyme - fantasy AU featuring romance, quests, and fairy politics.

What Belongs to the Sea - Selkie AU, mind the tags on this one.

Bell, Book, and Candle - “By the Ride or Die Pact of 2009, Jonathan Sims can call upon Georgie Barker at any time for aid with no strings attached. Despite their rocky history, their childhood friendship, and Jon’s barely recovered alcoholism, this pact is sacred and must be upheld.”

Things Could Always Be Worse - Jon swaps place with an alternate-universe version of himself, who is heroic, chivalrous, and wears plaid. It’s terrible. Inspired by the parodic “straight TMA” blog.

👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨 👁‍🗨

Sex Repulsion and Asexuality Save the World (Though That's Not What Jon Claims): canon divergent from MAG 160, in which Jon is so sex repulsed that a changed word in the Hazel Rutter statement saved the world. Crack is treated seriously.

Refusing to Give Up Tomorrow: safehouse hurt/comfort ft. MAG 160 divergence

The Eyespot Chronicles: Trilogy of works. AU where instead of going Somewhere Else, Jon and Martin stay in the OG universe. However, Jon is a moth.

Déjà Vu: Time-travel fix-it where Sasha, Tim, Jon, and Martin all wake up on the day of the day of season 1, episode 1, with memories spanning from that day to the moment they died.

terror management theory: AU where Mr. Spider kills Jon, and now Jon can't permanently die. Despite this, the fic is rather light-hearted (or at least crack)

Other Kingdoms: A season 3 fix-it, in which Martin uses a Leitner to wake Jon up. Do note that there are references to sex happening (Jon's demisexual in this), but it's rated T so nothing is shown.

When No One Looks: Dark Avatar!Jon AU set during the latter half of season 1

Chamomile: In which post season 4, the NotTea becomes a pet.

If The Archivist Had Been Meant to Fly...: Wingfic in which Jon saves Martin from Simon Fairchild

Molt: This is my favorite take on Web!Martin. This is also a darkfic, to the point that the author was made so sad by chapter 1 that they wrote chapter 2 as a fix-it to chapter 1. Also, as a warning that I would've appreciated but isn't in the tags or summary: there's a scene alluding to corrective rape, but this doesn't actually happen.

Drawn Out of the Unknown: Canon divergent s3 fic, official summary is "While investigating a possible location for the Circus's base, Martin and Tim find something unexpected.

The fic series that contributed to me listening to TMA was this Good Omens crossover by Bibliocratic. Really enjoyed it and finally between this fic and seeing TMA all over my tumblr dashboard (plus having a project to work on with my hands) I finally listened, so I'm thankful for that.

The other series I really love is>

The Magnus Institute vs the 21st Century: a series of emails and IMs which is just utterly hilarious. It's the Magnus Institute going through GDPR compliance processes and it's just fabulous.

And then one I'm still sort of following even though I don't read much TMA fic right now is

 dustsceawung by callmearcturus. It's a Moth!Jon fic with Martin as someone who moved to a town in a different fairy court (in a fae AU). Not complete and hasn't updated in a while but I really like the tone.

The world is too much with us is one of the many many many time-travel fix-it fics (I think that's a genre all it's own in the TMA fanfic community at this point). Spoiler to be on the safe side, it follows Jon after he's dropped back in 2014 by the Spiral, and relives what amounts to the next four seasons of TMA, using the experiences he had the first time 'round to try and avoid the apocalypse--and keep everyone alive in the process. Oh, and he's got the added bonus of already being an Avatar of the Eye. Very much angsty with a happy ending. This one's completed, so feel free to binge.

Martin x Jon 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/41149674As everything ends, as the tower crumbles around them, Jon and Martin hold each other in a firm embrace. What they see of the world shatters, and Jon breaks with it. He awakened, alone, confused, and something was terribly wrong with him.

Tim drags Jon to a party in celebration of his promotion with one goal in mind: getting  Jon drunk off his arse.

Martin is moving to a different position within the Institute and celebrates as well.

through the clouds like a moonbeam: Jon gets wings during the apocalypse. Martin likes them; Jon doesn't.

I’ll bear the waiting now: AU where Jon is the new head archivist with two assistants, but there's a disembodied voice that only Jon can hear. Do note that there is something that looks a lot like suicide but there's a happy ending. (Alternate summary that spoils the fic: Martin is a "ghost" and also Jon's "late" boyfriend. )

true kinda love: Season 3 Co-Archivist!Jonmartin

hiding: Season 3 jonmartin kissing to hide from the Circus

The Garden of forking Paths - Jon and Martin search for each other through universes.

“What about him then?” Georgie asks.

“Who?”

“Him,” she says again like it is obvious who she means, holding up the sketchbook revealing a spread that has several loose sketches of Martin. It surprises Jon it took Georgie so long to find Martin in the book considering he had at least one-third of its entirety dedicated to him.

To graduate from art school, Jon needs to paint a nude portrait, but none of his friends are too keen on modeling for him. As a last resort, he asks a handsome barista.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/46426702When Martin needs a fake boyfriend to bring to his family reunion, Jonathan Sims is the last person he would have expected to volunteer.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51906919Tomorrow, Martin begins his new job as a lighthouse keeper. He knows (hopes) he'll enjoy it. What he doesn't know (yet) is that a very, very curious selkie lives near and is intrigued enough by him to come visit.

https://archive.transformativeworks.org/works/30210444/chapters/81277828 The last fic I read (time travel)

This list has become a behemoth, comprising various lists created by others. I've saved it, but now I need to free up space. This is the process I'm undertaking for every list I've saved.

[mvrtaiswriting]

Reiner Braun - Wonderland (part 2)

Hullo! Part 2 of Wonderland is finally here! I know I previously said it would only have two parts, but it is highly likely I'll need at least one more part before calling it quits! hope you enjoy this <;3 (part 1 here) (part 3 here)

Follows AOT timeline, so please be mindful of any spoilers ahead. Specifically, this first part contains spoilers from season 4 (ish). The segments and different timezones of the story are divided by quotes from different Taylor Swift songs, which were vital for the formation of this idea. More specifically, the song that served as the backbone for this part of the story was Wildest dreams, from the 1989 album (I wish there was a Taylor's version for it, but we'll have to wait I guess.) This part also used Illicit affairs, from the Folklore album and Getaway Car, from the reputation album.

gn! reader.

usual AOT violence.

1.3 K words.

-> tag list for my dear readers who were waiting for an update! lmk if you want to be added &lt;3 @maliakealoha, @turituri09.

I thought "Heaven can't help me now".

A familiar scent tingled your senses, you could recognise the smell of his cologne even in such a busy street, with Sasha shoving ice cream up to your face and local food sellers frying their specialties in the main road. You took a quick glare over the crowd, scanning the millions of faces just to see him standing against one of the shop's wall - his eyes locked on your figure since God knows how long, merely hiding away from the rest of the Survey Corps. It was a miracle Levi didn't notice him staring - things could have escalated quickly otherwise.

You took Hange and the rest of your team to explore the city, explaining everything about their cultural and technological development.

"You've picked up the accent."

Jean scoffed, now bored of listening to everything you had to say. In the past 9 months, you had a full immersion experience of Liberio - you even managed to obtain a driving license. Hange had told you to maintain a discrete profile whilst trying to acquire as many skills as possible, and you did. Onyankopon as your main teacher, you had managed to completely blend in with the citizens of a nation that tried to exterminate your own population, destroying the city you grew up in and killing the people you loved. A nation that birthed Reiner, the love of your life, your nemesis - everything and nothing at the same time, the person that gave you everything and scarred you the most.

When the meeting was over, you greeted everyone and decided to part ways with them.

"They'll get suspicious if I won't be back.. Have fun for me too!"

You said, leaving the building before anyone could stop you or convince you otherwise.

Make sure nobody sees you leave. Hood over your head, keep your eyes down.

Finally entering what had now become your home, you took off the hooded cloak and hang it by the door. Hold habits die hard after all - and despite your cloak didn't have the wings of freedom on its back, it still reminded you of home, of Paradis, of your mission.

"Did they like it?"

Reiner said, greeting you at the door with a warm cup of coffee and placing a soft kiss on your forehead. You only nodded in response, smiling weakly and accepting the cup of coffee. Making your way to the sofa, you let yourself fall on the soft fabric and kept silent. Replaying the day you just spent with your fellow comrades, you wondered whether it was fair for you to hate Reiner so much. Now that you're sitting in his apartment, drinking his coffee, living in his town. It's easy to wonder what life would be like if it wasn't for all these little games, the wars, the hate. You never questioned your loyalty towards Paradis, but sometimes you wished Reiner questioned his. After all, he was serving a country that hated him down to every stupid cell of his body.

His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room.

Tangled up in bed, you're full of him. Reiner's finger tips slowly drawing imaginary patterns on your soft skin whilst he tries to catch his breath. Making love with him was always exhausting, full of passion, and hate, and love, and remorse. It was an explosion of feelings, something that felt so right but so wrong. Loving him was incredibly easy - his features had grown with him, so much sometimes you could almost forget what he did. You could only see the beautiful man he had become, the thoughtful, loving man who only wanted to redeem himself. Who fell on his knees the first time he saw you again and begged for your forgiveness, because his feelings were always real. Because he had loved you since the first day of training as cadets and continued to do so even after so, so many years. Because he hated himself for what he did, wishing he stayed - wishing he would have known better.

It was always easy for Reiner to hit your soft spot, he was your only weakness. Your only motivation. If only your friends knew about this.. no one would approve this. But now your hair smell like his cologne and his lips taste like you, creating a bubble that you hoped would never pop.

"Say you'll remember me."

You whispered, passing your fingers through his blonde hair. Reiner raises an eyebrow in response, melting into your touch.

"Once this will be over."

You whisper again, biting your lips to try and stop the tears from flooding your eyes. His rough hand caresses your cheek and you melt onto his touch, your face slowly adhering to his palm. The sorrow your hearts feel is the same, after all, he only has a few years left.

"I will. Rosy cheeks and all."

Reiner answered, pulling you closer to him and hugging you tightly to his chest. You smiled, grabbing his face between your hands, taking your time to admire the handsome man you lover was. The way time and pain have marked his face, tracing little wrinkles around his forehead and eyes. His strong arms were now holding you and keeping you safe, and that's how you wanted to remember your lover. Handsome, in love, and yours.

It's no surprise I turned you in, 'cause us traitors never win. 

When you snuggled out of bed that morning, Reiner was still in deep sleep. Gentle snores filled the room and allowed you to dress up silently, packing the few thing you had left in his room. You took a second to observe him, as if you could photograph this moment with your pupils. The white sheets were messily covered his toned body, the bed still messy from the night before. You stared at him for a little longer, whispering a little "I love you" to him before leaving that apartment forever. Closing the door behind your back, you put the hood of your cloak on to cover your face - and wondered if he felt the same way 5 years ago, when he ran and never came back. If he felt the same ache in his heart, if he felt this much love for you - if he felt as a traitor.

It was too late to think look back now, as you put your new ODM gear on. Levi had been rehearsing the plan all day, everything was ready: Eren would signal the start of the counterattack.

Standing on the roof of a building, you observed the plan unravel swiftly, everything going according to plan.

"Everything okay?"

Jean carefully asked, noticing how you zoned out when Reiner crossed the stage. You shook your head weakly in response as you hoped with every fibre of your being he would not be Eren's aim. If Tybur was the main target of this campaign, why was Reiner even remotely involved?

Before you could even think twice about it, you were flying around buildings, fighting civilians and avoiding any stone Eren's titan would throw. You fought, you killed. The blood of civilian's that greeted you every morning and sold you the coffee you loved so much was now on your hands, and it was hard to ignore. It was hard to think that a more diplomatic approach wouldn't have solved things. Rushing to the airship to retire and follow the orders received from your superiors, you looked at Liberio for one last time. Scanning through the building, the smoke, the shots, you finally managed to catch a glimpse of the Armoured Titan. A bittersweet smile formed on your lips as you followed the titan's movements from above - it looked as beautiful as its owner, as crazy as this might have sounded. A chuckle escaped your lips as a tear streamed down your cheek, burning your skin as if your eyes were leaking acid.

I knew it from the first Old Fashioned, we were cursed.

[ax-reticule]

rules

  LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF REAL QUICK~

     Hi, I’m Snaggletooth, you can call me snaggle, snags, or snag too. I don’t care which. I’ve been roleplaying for a real long time. If there is anything else that’s not clear here or not stated that you would like to know, please feel free to shoot me a message. <3

                     - Listed in no particular order -

     - Both mun and muse are over the ages of 21. I will NOT even humor romantic interactions with characters AND muns under the age of 18. For my own comfort, I won't follow if you are under 18.

     - I have seen all of the anime, read the manga for what has been translated, and have read all of the translated novels. I am flexible with a lot of versions and variations but this blog will likely not been spoiler free. 

     - This blog is multi-ship but will be highly selective and I would like to have our characters build a relationship first. - There will be dark content on this blog, mostly mentions of childhood abuse and manipulation, as well as mentions of violence. If you'd like, I can keep them away from our threads altogether but otherwise I will tag them as they arise. I use a simple "tw ___" system.

     - Other oc friendly! Crossovers possible, I’ll be working on other verses for her at some point.

     - On duplicates: my relationship with one muse will not carry on to another even if it’s the same muse. Every muse is a different interaction!

     - Reblog karma: I’m not super strict about this, but if I notice that if it becomes a constant thing, I will soft-block you. I know not every meme suits our characters interactions but if it’s HC memes and you reblog without sending one, I’m going to get salty.

     - Do not reblog my roleplays unless you’re participating. I feel like that’s common knowledge for rpers but I’m just throwing that out there.

     - Canon and other OCs welcome. I love all the characters!

     - Mun is very friendly, I promise, don’t be afraid to talk to me or let me know if you have any concerns or questions.

     - I Have several years with rping experience. That being said, I don’t like to enforce any sort of post length requirements since I know block happens and life happens. If it's short of my reply, I won't mind as long as you give me something to work with.

[em578]

I wonder if Tyrian was going after faunus (like Fiona) on purpose, because of that chance of seeing in the dark- it’s been brought it up, on how other people should have been able to see and they obviously didn’t forget about it because Tyrian could see during the attack

He could have gone for Robyn first, and obviously he was going after the crowd for maximum body count, but Penny “killing” Robyn would have had the same effect and seemingly confirmed Ironwood killing pro-Mantle activists- by targeting faunus it 1. reinforces the racial element of racist Atlas, 2. gets Fiona out of the way, who’s clearly important to Robyn (she won’t be thinking straight and Fiona’s gonna be a first priority), and 3. removes potential witnesses

Anyways, beyond that, hey so obviously not all faunus can see in the dark, but I’m now wondering if Marrow’s able to see? or not. because he didn’t really react during the whole attack, and his semblance seems like it could have stopped that from what we’ve seen, and I’m really really hoping I’m wrong here because I don’t want him to be bad

[pacificwaternymph]

Alright, Kid xornoth AU question/proposal

BTW, Sorry for all the asks, I just love you AUs and just got my tumblr account so I can finally ask questions of my own and I'm so excited

How do shelby and Xornoth meet the other rulers, I've been thinking about it and just landed on the idea that Katherine just invited them to the overgrown completely forgetting about the meeting between rulers, and Xornoth and Shrub just, tag along to it

Xornith stays outside the door, or far away, while Shrub kinda stands closer to the table/Katherine

Or, Katherine goes to vist Shrub, but forgets theirs a meeting and everyone goes looking for her; because she's NEVER late and they are very concerned

And they end up finding out that she went into the forest, they go in there, and eventually find Shrubs house

And Shrub is very confused as to why there are 11 adults all 5-9 feet tall at her house; then Katherine has an 'oh shit' moment and waves nervously to the other leaders

Xornoth slowly makes his way to his room, because why are their so many people here!?

(Either version)The other rulers are very confused, and Scott is panicking internally, because this is the mother of that child he made have a panic attack in accident

Meanwhile Shrub is a bit Weary of Scott, because he was right next to her 'not-child' when he was having a panic attack and was possibly the cause for it

And the other rulers, including Scott, at one point notice how Kathrine is 'accidentally' acting flirty; which is out if character for her and they just decided to learn more about this gnome

Because 1. Katherine keep blurting out random flirts on accident and they both act like their crushing on eachother(they are), 2. They've never SEEN or heard about "gnomes" before, 3. She seems more Weary about Scott then them, even though Lizzie is like 8 ft tall, and 4. Apparently she has a child? Or...a not-child?

And at the end, Shrub realizes she has to build a much taller house if she wants to meet them again, at her house, Or a completely different house all together? 2 houses, one for her an Xornoth, the other to meet friends taller then 6 feet(because Shrubs around 4 feet while Xornoths around 5, and Katherine's 6? I believe)

Haha I really like both of these ideas! I do already have plans for how Shrub and Xornoth meet the others (which I won't delve into because spoilers), but these are both also really fun scenarios to explore!

Yeah, Xornoth definitely edges around the group whenever they meet. Unfortunately for him, the WRA have all adopted him as their new nephew and they're all very extroverted so it doesn't take long before he gets dragged into the middle.

Shrub is a bit disdainful towards Scott in the beginning, but is quickly won over not only because he's super apologetic, but also because he's kind of awkward and nervous in a way that reminds her of Xornoth.

All the other rulers are just in... complete shock when they notice Katherine behaving... quite strangely around Shrub, because they've never seen Katherine flirt with ANYONE before. She's always been the type that won't say something unless she means it.

Also don't worry, I love receiving asks! I'm flattered you like them so much.

[faithiegirl01]

Not my gif credit goes to @brianahonack12

WARNING spoilers for possibly both season 2 and 3 of stranger things so read at your own peril…

1. I’m thinking of starting something called Faithie’s stranger things corner where I state opinions or like observations about Billy {and possibly Steve or any other character} would anyone be interested in that? If so let me know and I’ll tag y’all in the first post.

2. I know I’ve talked about how mad it makes me that we will very possibly never get to see Billy get his character arc and see him be good kind sweet loving Billy {which I still FULL heartedly believe we will be seeing him come back in S4}, but I had a thought today when making my parents watch the show with me.

I think I was wrong before, in a way he did already have a character arc. It may not have been a big one… but it was still a hint at one {hence why I think 100% we will be seeing Billy alive again}.

In a way we did get to see him start to change, we got to see it when he looks at Max for that split second then decides to save her and her friends from the mind flayer. If he was such a monster then why in the world would he have done that?

I’ll tell you why! He did it BECAUSE he loves Max and he finally started to show he cared by trying to save her and her friends from getting hurt.

3. I realized something else, maybe just maybe this will give others hope like it has now given me…

But I 100% think the body that got killed was NOT Billy…

Now before y’all start going off and getting mad at me hear me out on this ok?

Lets remember back to when Billy first gets “abducted” by the mind flayer shall we?

Well if you’d remember he sees another version of himself and that other version of himself talks to him. Also when he sees this other version of himself talking to him he’s already flickering in and out of the upside down…

My theory is that, the Billy we see get essentially shish kebabbed isn’t really Billy’s body…

What if somehow when we saw the two Billy’s it was the mind flayer switching out with a knock-off Billy that had all of Billy’s memories and essentially was Billy?

I mean it would make sense on why the mind flayer had more control over his actions and mind then he did with will in season 2. But it also make sense that Billy’s mind is essentially a little more messed up then wills hence another idea of why the mind flayer is so controlling of Billy. It could be either one, but I myself really like the idea that it’s easier because it’s just a different body with Billy’s consciousness. 

What if the whole time the real Billy has been in the upside down and never really died at all? What if it was only really Billy’s consciousness in a fake body the mind flayer had made to throw people off?

Idk. I just thought it’d be an interesting theory and I just had to share it. 

[mfpeace]

@justbeingedgy @weird-colombian-gurl You asked me to elaborate on the "Ches already has a kid" theory in the notes of that one mf analysis post (which I really liked, go check it out!!), so that's why I'm making this one, cuz notes are a bit too restricting for what I want to talk about!

Though next time think twice before asking me to talk about something I'm interested in, because you never know when you're gonna wake up lovecraftian horrors!! :DDD you'll see what i mean when you press read more :))

So, I'll say it right now - this post is largely inspired by the second story highlight of this Instagram user (sorry, I don't know their name, only that their Instagram handle is dee_girl_metalfamilyfan), it's in Russian though, so keep that in mind

Alright, so I'll break this theory into two parts: the first one will be all about Ches, and the second will be about his potential child (spoiler: you might've seen her!)

Without any further ado, let's get to the Ches part:

1. The creators said that they're gonna explore Ches' character in the second season. Obviously, it doesn't mean anything on it's own, but just wait.

Dima: Let's talk about the second season a little. Of course, the seconds season will show development of the old characters, as well as new ones. That's in short. As you see, Ches looks a bit different here.

Alina: Yeah, we'll show a bit more about Ches at the ages of 18 to 20. His past. We'll reveal a bit more about his complex character, as much as it's possible.

(The source of the translation) Also I think they also said at one point that adult Ches will get some character development too? But that's probably a given, considering that we wouldn't see his youth if it wouldn't have affected him in the present, flashbacks without any relevance to the overall story don't sound so good

2. Not sure about this one (we don't know how much in character it was) but I can't not mention it.

Alina: Actually there was this one fanfic that I really liked. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was about Ches having a daughter, which is a cool topic. It was relatively in character and truly interesting. It’s great when people focus not just on sexual relationships of the characters, but also try to look at their development. That was a really interesting one. That’s it.

(UnityCon '19)

3. This one's a pretty big one, in my opinion. So, this is what they said on ArtWave '19:

Dima: Ches also has flaws.

Alina: [to Dima] Don’t spoil stuff.

Dima: His flaw is that he's very... irresponsible, let’s say.

So, maybe, just maybe, Ches does have a child but he, you know... left them? As the Instagram highlight from the beginning say: "he might be irresponsible enough to leave his child, and he's probably irresponsible enough not to use any contraception" (rephrased, not the exact quote)

4. Alright, so, the only mention of this one I can think of right now is the aforementioned Instagram highlight. The Metalfamilyfan says:

I contacted Korg/Корж, (admin of @ metal_yama [and I believe one of the organizers of the Metal Family Meetup in Moscow]) and she asked Alina on one of the meetups: "if Ches were to be a father, what kind of father would he be?"

And she said: "The kind of that would say "kid, look at that birdie over there!" an then he would run away"

Someone's words are not the perfect source, but they did tag Metal Yama and from what I know they didn't disagree with what the author of the page said. if anyone has anything to say about this (disprove or definitely prove what I said) feel free to do so in a reblog, notes, DMs, send me an anonymous ask, or in any other way you feel comfortable with

5. Ches has literally been through the same thing, and we know how important the theme of the cycle of abuse is in Metal Family (or, in this case, the cycle of neglect? Abandonment? Idk)

You managed to hide your PREGNANCY from me! AND you've been hiding the child from me for a whole year!

YES, because you would've insisted on aborting him!

AND NOW I'M INSISTING ON PUTTING HIM UP FOR ADOPTION! OR I'LL LEAVE RIGHT NOW!

6. Here we can see Ches with a blonde girl. Nothing too special, probably just a one time hook up. He doesn't seem to be interested in her, and she seems to be annoyed with him.

But wait...

What is this?

Like, it doesn't even matter if there's actually a punk/rock/whatever band named MOM or not, I just think it's pretty weird to put it in this particular drawing of Ches and this random woman who is implied to have slept with him. It's not integral to Ches' character as, for example, Korol i Shut is. It's just... there. For some reason.

------------

Alright, now, finally let's get to the second part of the theory: who is, exactly, his child?

The short answer is, according to this theory, her:

First, let me list every single instance of her appearing in canon (and by canon I mean everything made by the creators. Even with this definition of canon it's not much, I promise): The screenshot you can see above on the left (it's a screenshot from the second season and it appeared here), an instagram story posted by Alina (above, right), and two drawing with a lot of characters where you can spot the girl which I'm gonna call her PinkHair or PH for short, I'll mention them later I feel like I should mention this, comparing the sources of the images and the dates when they were posted, it's safe to assume that the screenshot in the classroom has the latest and final version of her design. The red hair most likely doesn't mean anything

1. Alright. So. we've seen Dee and PinkHair in a classroom together, so they're most likely related in some way, or at least they know each other. Their exact relationship doesn't matter here, because all that matters here is that they're related story-wise

Let's look at the first image. This is the banner of the main Metal Family channel. Ches is near Heavy (they get along quite well and I'm sure Heavy aspires to be like Ches in many ways), Dee (we can see his classmates/friends near him, they're all about his age), and we can see people related to Glam on the left side of the image (including Ches!), and Vicky's - on the right side (notice how the hell sign is also there)

Now, I'm not absolutely sure about this one, but it's still kind of weird - look at the image on the right (it's from ArtWave 2021 btw) - wouldn't it make more sense to put PinkHair near Dee? Also, Curiously enough, not only is she not close to Dee on this image, but she's also standing next to Ches.

Though this whole thing could be explained by art theory (too many small things in one corner of your drawing isn't great composition wise lol sorry PH) but I still can't quite skip this point

2. Remember the "MOM" lady? Fun fact, she has the exact same pearl earring that PinkHair has on the screenshot.

3. I'll put all similarities with her supposed parents in this point: Mother: * She's also pretty uh.. glam? for the lack of a better word? Or feminine in a traditional sense, yeah I think that's a better way to put it. Like colors they prefer to wear for example, and jewelry. Characters like that aren't common in Metal Family * She's gotta be a blonde. I can't imagine her being anything but blonde. If she manages to maintain that hair color as a brunette I'm just straight up assuming her character arc is gonna be killing God because these kind of people are capable of anything. I fear them with every fiber of my being. * I can't say for sure because of the shading, but it seems like they both have gray eyes, and she also has darker skin compared to most MF characters. Though, it's likely that Mom just applied a lot of fake tan Ches: * We know that Ches for sure has darker skin * AND grey eyes * There's also some possible personality similarities but I'm not sure if you can compare a child to a parent they've never really known in this way

That's about it, I suppose, I hope there isn't that many grammar mistakes and logically unfinished parts and whatnot in this post I forgot to edit lol x) I'm not sure how to end this post other than to remind you guys that almost all the points in this posts are inspired by the "тупая теория" highlight on the dee_girl_metalfamilyfan's Instagram page, so go check them out and subscribe, they post Dee x The Quest Girl fanart and and always credit the artists. Without them this post would be much, much shorter.

Thanks for reading this post, please feel free to let me know your thoughts on this post <3

[theotherhufflepuff]

Simon Snow Trilogy Tarot Cards...

Ok so, a little while ago I saw this frankly stunning artwork by @vkelleyart and I started thinking about the Major Arcana archetypes and how characters from my favourite book series could fit into them.

So I made this list. It took a lot of thought and I’m still not 100% sure on some of them but I have explained my thought process for each card.

I don’t know how much crossover there is in the Venn diagram of “Simon Snow fans” and “tarot readers” but I’d love to hear your opinions and/or alternative suggestions (be respectful though, obviously). I’ve left “visual prompts” for most of the cards explaining what they looked like in my imagination and if anyone wants to draw any of these (or their own alternative version!) please tag me; it would make my day! I can’t draw for toffee so I am 1000% never gonna try to illustrate any of them myself.

List under the cut because it is loooong.

Spoilers ahead for the whole series!

0 The Fool - Shepard - Shepard just follows magickal creatures around and says “yes” to everything... he is the pure embodiment of the Fool archetype to me; care-free, innocent... prepared for everything and yet totally clueless. Visual prompt: Shepard about to (attempt to) step into the fog as he follows a fairy into the forest.

1 The Magician - Penelope - “Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I don’t mind saying” Baz, at least once in each book. Penny never worries about not having the power or words available to do whatever she wants; she is comfortable in her power and it is always there, ready to be wielded however she sees fit. Visual prompt: Penny wearing her Stevie Nicks cape, standing by a chalkboard in the classic “Magician” pose, ring clearly held aloft.

2 The High Priestess - Dr Mitali Bunce - Dr Bunce is possibly a more formidable magician than her daughter. Highly intelligent, straightforward and, let’s be honest, judgemental. But she does have all the answers. Visual prompt: Dr Bunce carrying around her laptop, phone sandwiched between her ear and her shoulder.

3 The Empress - Lucy Salisbury - Lucy exudes the nurturing, Earth Mother vibes that are central to the Empress archetype. She saw the best in everyone and all she wanted was to love Davy and live with him in their cottage with her chickens and their child. Visual prompt: Lucy, barefoot and pregnant, feeding the chickens outside of their cottage.

4 The Emperor - Lamb - This is one of the ones I’m not totally sure about. I went through a few different ideas but ultimately settled on Lamb as the “Vampire King of Las Vegas”. He is an imposing figure, ruling his city with an iron fist; if you are in his favour, Vegas is your playground, but cross him and you will suffer the consequences. Visual prompt: Lamb sits on an antique chair in his opulent suite at the Katherine, the lights of night time Vegas visible through the window behind him.

5 The Hierophant - The Mage - Again, this one took some thought and I’m sure some people will disagree with this interpretation... I’m not completely sold on it myself. The Mage was all about reforming the old traditions of the World of Mages and he amassed a following by doing so. But he turned out to be somewhat of a false prophet; abusing his power to oppress those he deemed “the enemy”. Visual prompt: The Mage in his Robin Hood costume, sitting at his desk at the top of the Weeping Tower, surrounded by his piles of banned books.

6 The Lovers - Simon and Baz - Obviously. As stated at the top of this post, I love @vkelleyart’s version of this card, but there are a lot of scenes across the series that could be used to illustrate this archetype. I personally always love to see the original “and then he kisses me” scene.

7 The Chariot - Fiona Pitch - I struggled with this one a bit and I don’t really think that this is the ideal version. But the image of Fiona, rolling up to Blackfriars bridge in her vintage sports car to rescue Baz from the Numpties really stuck with me so that’s what I went with, for lack of a better idea.

8 Strength - Ebb - Ebb is often dismissed and underestimated by other magicians but she is wicked powerful. But more than that, the Strength card is about inner strength, self control and the wisdom to know when to fight, and when to rest. Ebb is highly intuitive about the people - and goats - around her and is always careful not to talk about her twin brother, only conceding that she knows of his presence once a year and never giving in to the temptation to talk directly to him. Ebb saw the war coming and knew that she could probably end it all by herself with the power she had; but she also knew that she didn’t want that and she had the strength to say no, to eschew the expectations the rest of the World of Mages placed upon her and live quietly, instead. Visual prompt: Ebb in the hills behind the school with the goats, she wears a flower crown that the Dryad made her.

9 The Hermit - Agatha - the Hermit eschews the outside world in order to take an inner journey of self discovery, knowing that this is the only way to find real answers and achieve real growth. Agatha, jaded by the World of Mages, took herself off to California, leaving her wand at home. She didn’t know what she wanted but she knew it wasn’t magic. Visual prompt: Agatha sits on the beach at twilight by a small campfire, Lucy the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel by her side.

10 The Wheel of Fortune - The Crucible - The Crucible’s decisions, like the Wheel’s, are unpredictable and inevitable. Once it’s happened, you’re stuck with the consequences - sometimes bad (being stuck with a toff vampire who hates you) and sometimes good (getting the best room in Mummers house).

11 Justice - Natasha Grimm-Pitch - Natasha needed justice to find peace; her whole story is about justice. She was swift to act when the vampires attacked Watford, dispatching them without hesitation. When she came through the veil to find Baz and ask him to bring her murderer to justice, she knew that would also provide some closure for him, too, both for her death, and for his. Visual prompt: Natasha Grimm-Pitch appearing from beyond the veil, looking for Baz and finding Simon.

12 The Hanged One - Nicodemus - The Hanged One is about feeling stuck, but also about finding peace where you are when there’s nothing you can do about it. Nicodemus chose to cross over for eternal life, but he was stricken from the book; his (considerable) magic effectively taken from him and his fangs removed. He was stuck in between - not a full vampire, not a magician; he exists on the fringes of both communities. He got himself there and then he had to figure out how to get by, carve out a place for himself in order to survive. Visual prompt: Nicodemus sits in the tree in the garden of his mother’s house in South London, waiting for Ebb to come and sit on the empty bench beneath him.

13 Death - [scene on the Great Lawn] - Ok, so.. this might need some explaining. My immediate thought for this card was that it should be the Humdrum but Death is all about clearing out the old junk in your life that doesn’t serve you in order to make space for the new. And the Humdrum isn’t making space for anything. So I was thinking about times that has happened in the story and I thought about how the death of the Mage made room for real progress and an end to the war with the old families. Visual prompt: Penny and Baz (literally) run into a fleeing Agatha on the Great Lawn; the Weeping Tower looms in the background, the Mage and Simon visible through the blown-out stained glass windows.

14 Temperance - Simon and the Humdrum - Temperance is, as you might expect, about balance and harmony. Simon used so much magic at once that he couldn’t control it and it tore holes in the magickal atmosphere. Simon had to fill the Simon-shaped hole to restore equalibrium and stop the magickal firmament from collapsing altogether. Visual prompt: Simon kneeling in the Weeping Tower, pouring his magic into the Humdrum as he fades away.

15 The Devil - Smith Smith-Richards - The Devil is about feeling trapped by temptations in your life, often because we’re afraid of what we would do with the freedom we’d have if we let them go. Which got me thinking about Smith-Richards (that name never gets any less ridiculous) and all the magicians who were taken in by the temptation of “fixing” their magic. But it was a false promise and those magicians who narrowly escaped taking Smith-Richards’ spell were all freed from the idea of their magic being “broken” in the first place. Visual prompt: Smith-Richards (looking like the guy who would be cast to play Simon in the Netflix series) standing on a stage in the packed-out White Chapel, rapt audience hanging on his every word.

16 The Tower - The Humdrum - Originally I wanted to use the Weeping Tower for this card because the imagery is on point but the meaning doesn’t match. The Tower is about absolute destruction, the crumbling of something you thought core to your being. The Humdrum steals magic and renders magicians homeless because of it. The Tower is about having to start again from the ground up - just as the Grimms did when all the magic was drained from Hampshire. Visual prompt: The Humdrum, wearing Simon’s face, stands in the grounds of Pitch Manor, laughing. (I have always thought of the holes looking like a burn in a piece of paper - sort of glowing and smouldering at the edges as it eats away the atmosphere. I know the holes can’t actually be seen - the Normals would freak out - but that is imagery I would use here)

17 The Star - Lady Ruth’s candles - The Star is about hope and healing after the devastation of the Tower. Lady Ruth’s candles were a symbol of hope that kept her going when she thought she had lost her children. They provided comfort and, at the end when it became clear the Lucy was gone, the healing of knowing that her child had finally found his way home to his family. Visual prompt: Lady Ruth’s candles in front of a window, a bright star can be seen through the window.

18 The Moon - Agatha and Simon - So, the Moon is all about examining blurred lines between illusion and reality - nothing looks totally clear in the moonlight. It reminded me of how Simon never really seemed to have a clear view of his feelings for Agatha and what their relationship was. When he properly examined his feelings, he found that he didn’t love Agatha and was going through the motions because he thought it was what other people expected of him. Agatha was doing the same. It also brought to mind Simon, going out of his mind worrying about Baz when he was missing - as well as basically every other thought Simon ever has about Baz before Christmas Eve 2015 - and somehow mistaking it for hating him?? Simon is not stupid but sometimes he’s real dumb. Visual prompt: Agatha and Simon meet on the ramparts, both looking for Baz, and break up.

19 The Sun - Simon - This card is all about innocence, optimism and joy. Nothing about this series personifies this more than Simon flying above Shepard’s truck in America, feeling free and hopeful about the future for the first time in over a year. Visual prompt: Shepard’s truck drives through the vast empty desert, the sun beating down. Simon flies above the truck, joy on his face.

20 Judgement - Niamh and Agatha - Ok, this one was hard to figure out and this is maybe not the right solution, but I was very stuck. Judgement is about self improvement through self reflection. As a small twist on that theme; Niamh and Agatha challenge each other’s view of themselves and their interactions with the world around them. Visual prompt: Agatha and Niamh, sweating to death in Niamh’s “shitty Ford Fiesta” (I’m very salty about that line; my Ford Fiesta is lovely and it has aircon). Niamh is frowning, obviously.

21 The World - Simon, Baz, Penny and Shepard - The World is about completeness, the ending of a story, fulfilment and belonging. At the end of AWTWB, Simon has finally found his biological family, he is starting to accept that his boyfriend and his found family love him for who he is, magic or no, and he can finally start to imagine a future for himself. Baz has learned new information about his vampirism, Penny has found new confidence and Shepard is finally fully accepted into the group. Visual prompt: Baz, Penny and Shepard sit on Simon’s sofa (possibly still pink from Baz’s spell, possibly he spelled it navy blue again) Simon sits on the floor. They’re all eating leftover sandwiches and cake from Lady Ruth’s.

[katara0524]

Impromptu Ramblings about the NEO:TWEWY Demo

In case y'all weren't aware, I've been a pretty big fan of TWEWY for a couple years now, and with the sequel coming out next month, the excitement I feel for this game is greater than ever :) I played the Demo for the first time yesterday, and following a couple views of some livestreams of others playing it, I felt like sharing my (very ramble-y) thoughts prior to the release of the full game. This post WILL contain spoilers for both TWEWY and NEO:TWEWY, so if you want to avoid those from now on, please block the tags: #twewy spoilers, #ntwewy spoilers, #neo twewy spoilers, #ntwewy, and #neo twewy ^_^ Oh, and if you wanna keep up with any other posts I make about my experience with this game, please refer to the tag "kat plays neo twewy" :)

-First things first: I have not watched the Final Trailer and I don't plan on doing so to avoid spoilers, especially after the pre-release era of KH3 where a lot of the later trailers spoiled a lot of the endgame content. That being said, I've seen some minor screenshots from the final trailer including what many believe to be characters from the original TWEWY, namely Shiki and Joshua. That is all I know about the Final Trailer and I would very much like to remain as blind as possible going into NEO :)

-The very first cutscene was quite ominous in the sense that this game is likely going to be about "changing fate" (a recently common theme in Squeenix games, which I do appreciate), perhaps leading off from the end of A New Day in the OG and trying to stop an Inversion of Shibuya. Also worth noting that A New Day had similar aspects in which the main character experienced "future visions" of tragic events, although in A New Day these events were not able to be changed, while in NEO it seems like one of the main "powers" our protagonist has is specifically to rewrite these events and avoid a "bad ending." Very interesting indeed!

-I really like the revamped comic book style dialogue scenes, it's much more fluid and modern, which is an excellent direction for the series to take!

-I would love to have an actual PokemonGO knockoff of Final Fantasy creatures, please Squeenix that would be incredibleeeeee

-Also the LINE stickers??? Are so cute???

-I would just like to point out that Fret is an absolute treasure throughout this entire demo, he's hilarious and I will protect him with my life

-UHHHH don't like that Fret picked up some Reaper Pins just out of nowhere.....or the fact that they're apparently popular all over Shibuya.............did y'all not learn anything from the OG game or what lmao

-Okay so when I first got the "curry or ramen" scene and heard NPCs talking about the new curry place replacing the old ramen place I became IMMENSELY distressed that Ramen Don was totally cut from the game because....well, Ramen Don is a King okay?? But I'm glad to learn that no, he didn't fall off the face of the earth, he's still in business and he's the one opening the curry restaurant lolol. PHEW, crisis averted!

-.....I don't like the sudden appearance of a Wall Reaper and being able to read NPC thoughts. Wtf happened when they left the ramen place??? Are they playing the Game alive somehow?

-Okay so I have my own theories about this "Swallow" character and what they're up to but considering this is only the Demo and I still Have No Idea What's Happening, I'm just gonna say that I think Swallow intentionally led Rindo and Fret to the Crossing so they could join the Game. I mean, add in the fact that Swallow still communicates with Rindo during the Game and you've got yourself a suspicious character right there lol

-"Hey they're shooting off fireworks!" Fret honey that's not fireworks oof (see also: "*laughs* I'm in danger")

-WOOOOOO way to traumatize Rindo right off the bat like that LMAOO

-The visuals for the intro are VERY GOOD, the song is pretty decent until it gets all "screamo" (which I absolutely cannot stand sorry lol)

-Shoka is every Customer Service employee ever and I respect that

-Susukichi went from being "meh" to "WOW THIS GUY IS FUN" in the span of 10 seconds and I also respect that (he is also built like an Absolute Unit which is hilarious)

-The Wall Reapers (and just Reapers in general) seem.....way nicer and more helpful this time around?? Like in the OG the Wall Reapers were SO RUDE gfhjgjdfkhn and yeah I'm sure we'll get some like that but the juxtaposition of the first Wall Reaper in the OG compared to the first one in NEO is insane.

-The puzzles are quite a bit more entertaining this time around even if it's generally the same "fetch quest" formula lol

-"Rindo's Group" way to go Fret HFKJDGHSDFKJ mans really left the default name in there lmao

-OKAYOKAYOKAY so to those who aren't aware I am a MASSIVE SIMP for Sho Minamimoto, he's my absolute favorite and I think about him daily. HIS INTRODUCTION IS. INCREDIBLE. I LOVE IT SM.

-GOD hearing him actually SPEAK FULL SENTENCES is just SO SURREAL I love this sm

-Also the remix of his theme???? NEO TRANSFORMATION????? IT'S SO GOOD????????? It's like gone from a Boss Theme to a more triumphant sounding theme and I am HERE for it (every version of Transformation is just INCREDIBLE and getting a new one is even better)

-I Love Him, Your Honor

-Also idk how exactly but it's kinda weird seeing Sho in the OG vs NEO, cuz while he's mostly the same Insane Math-Obsessed Catboy, he's.....calmed down quite a bit?? Like OG made a whole point of how poorly he cooperates with others (not to mention just being completely unhinged and trying to kill everyone), whereas here in NEO he's......actually kinda working with others??? HELLO???? Sir what happened to you and Neku during those 3 years I would love to know all about it

-I guarantee you Sho is still probably scheming shite and will likely pull some total insane BS later down the road, and I am very much looking forward to that. Also, is he looking for a certain Pin or something??? Cuz he keeps talking about different Pins and even mentions "this is just another Psych Pin" like he's actively looking for a Pin to do something with. Maybe it also has to do with the "latent powers of Players" thing he mentioned as well??? What is this dude UP TO oml (also is he in contact with Neku at all?? they're both technically fugitives at this point right?? WHAT HAPPENED AFTER A NEW DAY I AM BEGGING YOU)

-I seems like Sho ALSO has an idea of what's going on in this specific game (even if he won't admit it straightforward). Per his quote "The game's 142,857. Factor it out," he's essentially saying, "This game is a neverending cyle, figure out how to get out of it" (or at least that's what I got from his "cyclic number" nonsense lolol)

-I do like how Sho mostly stays out of sight until he's needed for a battle or assisting with a mission, that's kind of on par with his whole "uncooperative" quirk from the OG, plus he might literally have to stay out of sight of other Reapers and Players considering he's likely breaking the rules of the Game (not surprising considering him and Neku broke practically every rule in the book during OG)

-The nicknames for Sho- I can't- They're so FUNNYYYY GFHJSDFKJ

-He goes from being called "Pi-Face" and "Tabooty" in OG to "Mr. Minami" and "M-Teezy" in NEO LMAOO

-(Wowee I just realized I've been mostly talking about Sho oopsies sorry y'all, this is what I meant by thinking about him almost daily he is THAT much of a fav of mine ghfkjsd)

-Okay RIP Fret and Rindo for not getting literally ANY explanation as to how the Game works OOF, that is kinda cringe that whoever gets the Pin earns points, not whoever erases the Noise (which like I understand but also URRRGGHHH I WANNA SEE THE SQUAD SUCCEED)

-"I should be going home now it's getting late" Oh you sweet summer child-

-Also love the mention of parents in this game???? KH you could learn a thing or two from TWEWY (poor Rindo's mom fhgjkdh)

-KUBO IS HILARIOUS I SUPPORT HIM AND HIS GROSS FACE (also thank you Final Trailer thumbnail for spoiling my suspicions about him very cool smh)

-Kaie is a LAD I also support him, go King type those funky texts I believe in you

-FRET PLS STOP SCANNING FHGJKSDHKJFGHFKJ he's like me when I scan in OG during Weeks 2 and 3 and see Taboo Noise coming after me ghfjdshfj

-Also Rindo can you stay off your phone for TWO SECONDS ik you're trying to figure things out but Fret is a jelly boi and I don't want him to be upset with you my guy

-Sho being an actual sorta mentor to the kiddos?? Who are you sir this is so unlike you ghfgskj what happened to the guy who tried shooting children in the face 8 times over LMAO (granted he's probably just using them but it's still nice to see him actually cooperating and sharing knowledge with the kiddos aaaaa)

-EYO EIJI OJI THE TIKTOK INFLUENCER IS BACK LMAO

-hgjkfshgkjf "we aren't glorifying capitalism on my watch" THATS SO FUNNY TO ME GFHJFSDGHJKS (also an all-orange ensemble is disgusting you deserve jail for one thousand years fkn Cheddar Goldfish Cheezit ass woman)

-WICKED TWISTERS NAME DROP EYOOO we love to see it

-gfhsgjf Poor Rindo embarassing himself for the sake of the Game that's incredible

-R e t u r n t o M O N K E. That is all.

-Dialogue during boss battles is HELLA cool i love that

-HHHHH THE KANON SCENE MADE ME A N G E R Y FRET STOP SIMPING MY GUY says the girl with a Literal Simp Encyclopedia and simps for pixels on a screen daily

-Can't wait to see the other Reapers :eyes emoji:

-CAN'T WAIT TO SEE NAGI MY BELOVED YEAHHHH WOOOOOO AAAAND that's about it for the demo lolol, I absolutely CANNOT wait for next month, this game is gonna be INCREDIBLE holy hell Prepare for more simping, more screaming, and more vibing from Yours Truly :) I fully intend on sharing more general thoughts like this on both Tumblr and Twitter so it's not just reblog-retweet-reblog-retweet with the occasional comment fhgskjd

If you wanna witness my insanity up close and personal I have a Square Enix Discord server called Sea Side Dreamers! You can look it up on Disboard, or you can add me on Discord @Katara0524#9244 for a direct link :) We have topics about Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, NieR, and ofc TWEWY (as well as other topics!), so if you want some good ol' chaos and chitchat, you're more than welcome to join!

[shook-snatched-and-sad]

so i binged a show called ‘the owl house’...

and to say the least, i am OBSESSED! 

(this contains spoilers so don’t read if you haven’t finished the show yet!!)

aside from the fact that i’m a big old lesbian simp for Eda the Owl Lady, i really loved her storyline. it reminds me a lot of my day to day life as someone with a chronic illness. I want to focus on episode 4 ,“The Intruder,” where we learn of Eda’s curse and later episodes where it’s a prevalent point.

in the beginning of the episode eda’s exhausted to the point where king and luz end up carrying her to her bed (nest). she was already tired, but tried to show luz more magic bc she wanted luz to be happy and let her sleep. sometimes when you’re tired and want to lay down you still try to make others happy, and that can be too much for your already sick body. i am guilty of this 10 times over!

she has her elixir, which is almost like pain meds for me and others with chronic pain (or other meds for others in the chronic illness gang). her elixir has a tag reading, “an elixir a day keeps the curse at bay.” if she doesn’t take it, she transforms into something she doesn’t like. and i mean,,,, yeah, it REALLY DO BE LIKE THAT. even tho i’m still trying to find the right medicine for me, i feel like total GARBAGE when i forget to take my meds. i get snappy and irritable and anxious and everything hurts beyond comprehension; that’s all part of my “curse.”

she also took a little while to reveal her curse to luz, and king didn’t even know but has lived with her for a while. some people i’ve known most of my life don’t even know that i sometimes need a cane or that i even have a chronic pain disorder! you don’t want that judgement or others feeling like your condition is too much for them to handle (which is shitty, but people do say this); you can see that eda has had this happen to her time and time again and that it really left a mark on how she feels about trusting others. 

she also doesn’t remember who cursed her, and this fleshes out in my mind a few different ways:

1. it adds to her trust issues. she doesn’t consciously know who did it, so it could be anyone she interacts with and that’s scary. to her it’s traumatic, and she lives with the aftermath of the event everyday

2. not remembering? mega brain fog! sometimes you just have bad days where your brain is so cloudy that you low key forget someone’s name or a simple word to something (i once forgot the word “tv” and it’s technically not even a word). it’s almost like a tip of the tongue type thing. also, the figure kinda looks like fog

3. sometimes you don’t know what causes your illness. i have fibromyalgia and it’s just one of those complicated medical conditions where there is no determined cause for it. trauma? yeah, maybe. a few people in the fam with rheumatic stuff? could play a part. god spun the wheel and had to add whatever wacky thing it landed on? hell yeah, baby! 

later in the season eda needs some more of her elixir (her meds) and the guy at her usual place doesn’t have it in stock for another 2 weeks. she has to go to the boiling isles’s version of the black market to get it. when she gets to the black market guy, the price is outrageous and he just proves that this show is TOO SELF AWARE FOR ITS OWN GOOD. IDK WHO GAVE HIM THE RIGHT TO SPIT SUCH FACTS ABOUT CAPITALISM BUT GODDAMMIT SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT!! sometimes you can’t get the name brand version of your meds bc insurance doesn’t cover it (even if that’s usually what you get) and you have to get the generic version but IT’S STILL WILDLY EXPENSIVE. and it’s worse if you don’t have insurance. i know other chronically ill people who just ended up smoking w**d for their symptoms until the insurance company stopped playing games, and honestly that says something about the wack ass healthcare system of america *sips tea*  luckily the rude mf that wouldn’t give eda her meds got his stand destroyed and that’s on performing magick without parental supervison

and what i especially like about this show is that they gave this character a curse (illness) and didn’t make it her entire identity for the show. any other time there’s a chronically ill/disabled character, it’s their only personality trait and exhaustively used throughout as a lazy ploy too add diversity. yes, eda has this curse and she lives each day treating it, but she has so much more substance to who she is: she’s a businesswoman, a friend, a mentor, a goofball, a badass, a powerful woman in her craft. eda had said her self at the end of “the intruder,” “no one likes having a curse, but if you take the right steps, it’s manageable.” and that’s exactly what it’s like being a chronically ill person who is able to manage their symptoms with medication and still do certain things that bring them joy. without her elixir eda wouldn’t be able to perform magick and have her business; without my meds and some physical therapy i wouldn’t be able to go to school full time for my photography degree and have a job as a photographer. 

could i possibly be projecting this metaphor onto a character that makes my little gay heart go uwu? maybe but that’s none of your business (unless you feel it too. in that case it’s our business <3). but i seriously cannot wait to see what else is in store for our #1 bad girl in the rest of the series!

(my attention deficit ass wrote this while being distracted from one of my final papers thank you for attending my TEDTalk)

[grapesodatozier]

a smile like flying

finally wrote some kaspbrough!! here’s some through-the-years, friends-to-lovers fluff about bill believing in eddie and the two of them falling in love <3 spans elementary school through college

rating: teen and up (honestly it could probably be general but idk there’s kissing lol spoiler alert)

word count: 2.5k

warnings/tags: fluff, friends to lovers, brief mentions of sonia’s abuse

read on ao3 or below!

Eddie clutches the chains at his sides, the cool metal slipping through his sweaty palms as the grounds whizzes by beneath him, back and forth, the wind ruffling his hair but doing nothing to loosen his grip on the swing. “Come on, Eddie! It’s f-f-fun, I puh-promise!” Eddie looks up at that voice. Some hidden part of him that’s not ready just yet to peek out knows he’ll always look to that voice, would crawl through the dark after it. And as he looks up, still steadily pumping his legs back and forth, the grating, rhythmic creaking of the swing set fades away. All he can focus on is the bright smile on his best friend's face. Bill’s only seven, but he’s fallen gracefully into his relatively new role of older brother to his baby brother Georgie, and it’s like he was meant to take care of people, to show them new things with his arms open like they are now as his blue eyes glitter up at Eddie. “Jump!” he says, his voice all encouragement and confidence that Eddie wants to curl into like a blanket. Eddie steels himself, taming the butterflies in his stomach. As he does, Bill says the thing that gets him to finally loosen his grip: “You c-can do it!”

He can do this. Bill just said so. The words lift him up, let him fly. And he really does for a moment. It’s scary when the ground comes rushing at him, but he’s laughing as the air rushes past him, knowing that, for a moment, his body had felt weightless. The wood chips scrape at his knees and palms as he lands, and it stings a little, but he did it. 

Bill’s at his side in an instant, his smile blotting out the harsh light of the sun as his red curls hang in his face. “See? I knew you cuh-c-could! W-w-wasn’t it f-fun?”

Eddie takes Bill’s hand and lets him help Eddie sit up. It’s so different, the way Bill offers his hand to Eddie. There’s no tugging, no taking without asking. Bill smells like grass and air, and he looks like June, and there’s nothing Eddie loves more. For a moment he can leave the mothballs and stale perfume and antiseptic behind, all the screeches of “Eddie, you can’t do that!” fading away as his head swims with the echo of Bill’s voice telling him, “You can do it!” He smiles to himself as he gets up and dusts the dirt off his knees. He did it.

Eddie clutches at the bottom hem of his shorts, his stomach swooping with his eyes as he tracks the movement of the ride zooming past him. He doesn’t know what it is about the cross sections of the metal, or the speed of the roller coaster cars that makes his heart race like this. It’s different than watching the trains; he can actually get on this one. He’s supposed to get on this one. He can fly and drop and come back up again, if he wants to. He told his mom Mr. Denbrough was taking them to the museum, and he briefly wonders if she’ll be able to smell the cotton candy on his fingers before Bill’s voice cuts through his worried thoughts. “Eddie, you coming?” he asks, hand outstretched. “This w-w-one’s my favorite!” 

The line is long, but nothing ever feels like waiting when he’s with Bill. Bill’s all smiles and red cheeks today, his auburn hair shining under the sun. Listening to Bill talk almost makes Eddie forget where they are. But then they’re at the front of the line, the swooping track in front of them, and Bill must see the fear in Eddie’s eyes, because he takes Eddie by the hand and tells him, “You can do it.” In that moment Eddie’s too preoccupied with processing the way Bill takes his hand without hesitation to be scared. Bill wasn’t afraid of anything—and he believes in Eddie. It makes Eddie feel better. It’s still scary, but Eddie climbs into the seat anyway, and the ride attendant pulls the bar down against Eddie’s chest, locking them in. Eddie’s heart starts racing at the unyielding sound of the lock, his breath feeling thin in the way he’s still getting used to reminding himself isn’t actually asthma. He grips the bars just as he gripped the chains of the swing so many years ago. But then Bill punches him lightly on the shoulder and gives him that soft yet confident grin, and Eddie thinks that maybe this fear is actually excitement. He still has trouble telling the difference.

The climb is the worst of it, but Bill cheers all the way through, and Eddie realizes he’s smiling even as expletive after expletive falls from his lips. 

And then the fall.

It feels like flying. Some distant part of him thinks of the playground, of the wood chips, but this is so much further, so much better. It’s faster, and it just keeps going, the world spinning around him. He lets out a sound somewhere between a whoop and a laugh as his hair flies back. The wind rushes past him, cooling his sun-warmed cheeks. His feet dangle freely as they dip and curve, and then he’s upside down holy fuck he’s upside down and he loves it. 

His legs shake when he gets off, and Bill isn’t embarrassed to help hold him up for a moment as he stumbles. They’re on solid ground now, but Eddie can still feel that rush of wind pulling his cheeks back, and he can’t stop smiling. 

“How w-was it?” Bill asks with an excited, knowing smile.

Eddie beams up at him, wonder still in his eyes. “Can we go again?”

Bill laughs, and the sound of it feels just like Eddie felt when he was upside down for the first time. Dangling and rushing and safe and free all at once. “Let’s try the others, yeah?” The sun makes his skin sing as he and Bill stride across the park, under feats of engineering that leave Eddie almost as awestruck as Bill does. 

Eddie’s hand shakes as it hovers over his laptop’s mousepad, the cursor dangerously close to the button that decides his future for the next four years, and probably well beyond that. The button that, if pressed, will send him to New York City in a few months. A button his mother knows nothing about. 

He wants it, god he wants it so bad, but he can’t help but think of everything that could go wrong. Eddie’s done a lot of things in his life that younger versions of himself would never have thought possible, plenty of things his mother doesn’t know about, but the racing in his chest doesn’t feel fun right now. This feels downright reckless. This isn’t just a broken arm, this is his entire future on the line. This button will change his relationship with his mother forever.

Which he knows is also something he wants, but that desire comes with a painful twist of guilt in his chest. All the rationalizing and cataloguing of her offenses can’t stop that feeling.

But the gentle, encouraging weight that presses to his back helps. Bill’s chest is warm and solid where it presses against Eddie’s shoulder blade, and when he tilts his head to the side Bill lets him rest against him, even turns his face slightly into Eddie’s hair. He puts his hand on Eddie’s hip, settling around him naturally, and gives him an encouraging squeeze. Eddie wants to live in the comfort that gesture brings him for the rest of his life. And he thinks he might just be able to when Bill says in a voice both soft yet sure, “You can do it.” 

It’s the push Eddie needs. The hand reaching out to him, asking him to tag along, that smile and that feeling of sunshine that make Eddie feel like he can do anything. The reminder that wherever this decision takes him, he won’t be going there alone. Taking one last deep breath, he forces his finger down. He feels his breath leave him as letters cross the screen congratulating him. Then the smile pulls at his lips as Bill cheers behind him, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s middle. Eddie giggles and leans into it, feeling completely at home. Fuck, he’d do that a million more times if it meant Bill would keep holding him like this. Because as he looks at Bill, at the pride in his blue eyes, Eddie knows he’s safe. He can take those jumps. He can do it; Bill said it himself.

And he does it. New York isn’t easy, but it’s freedom. It’s that airborne feeling that scares him but excites him more. And while it certainly does a fine job on its own of dazzling him, what makes it feel like a home is the knowledge that Bill is just a short subway ride away. 

Bill has always felt like a reprieve from Sonia, but this is different. She finally, truly can’t reach them, not here. While it definitely is a relief, it also changes things in a way Eddie hadn’t expected. It makes the air around him and Bill crackle when they get too close. Eddie can’t stop his heart from racing around Bill, so loud he thinks it might be audible. And Eddie’s heart has always raced around Bill, this is nothing new—but it feels different now. There’s a possibility that wasn’t there before. This intimacy can go uninterrupted. It feels somehow both less and so much more fragile than before. What was once a fond fantasy now lies right in front of him every time Bill comes over to watch a movie, every time Eddie tells him he should stay the night because he doesn’t want Bill to get lost without him there to help him navigate the streets and subways Bill’s still getting used to.

Tonight’s one of those nights. Bill’s working on a writing assignment at Eddie’s desk while Eddie scrolls through his phone on his bed. He’s not necessarily finished with his homework, but he’s decided he’s intellectually unavailable after eight o’clock on Friday nights. 

He hears Bill sigh, but it sounds at least satisfied, if not excited. Just as Eddie’s turning his head to check in on him, Bill flops himself onto Eddie’s bed, their bodies brushing together in the small space. Their faces are nearly touching, so close he can feel Bill’s breath on his lips. But Bill doesn’t move, so Eddie doesn’t either. He barely dares to breathe, but finally he asks, “How’s it coming along?”

“Not bad,” Bill answers. His fingers brush against Eddie’s hip. Eddie can’t tell if it’s an accident or not, but neither of them move away. “Think I’ve got something pretty solid going.”

“You gonna let me read it this time?” Eddie asks with a teasing smile. 

Just as he always does, Bill looks down with a bashful grin on his face and a faint blush on his cheeks. Eddie loves the way he looks when he gets like this, all modest and embarrassed but clearly pleased with Eddie’s interest in his writing. “Maybe when it’s finished,” Bill mumbles, looking up at Eddie through his eyelashes.

“I thought you said a writer’s work is never finished.” Eddie cocks his eyebrow, and Bill rolls his eyes with a laugh.

“Well I guess you’ll never read it then!” he teases, getting on top of Eddie to playfully push at his shoulder. Eddie giggles, thrilled by the sight of Bill smiling above him, his hair flopping into his face, never doing what Bill wants it to do but always looking perfect anyway.

“Guess I’ll just have to come to the book signings with all the other fans,” Eddie jokes. “Think you’ll still remember me when you’re big and famous?” And it really is a joke, mostly. While the thought of losing Bill is a scary one, it’s not something he lets himself worry about too much. Bill’s too constant. He may be a bit of wildcard sometimes, but he’s never disappeared, not from Eddie. He makes Eddie feel sure he’ll always be there. Always there for him, always smiling at him. Right now his pink lips are pressed together and quirked into a wry smile, and Eddie can’t stop thinking about kissing them. He nearly gasps when Bill drops to his elbow, suddenly so much closer to Eddie, and strokes his free hand through Eddie’s hair. Eddie leans into it as slightly as he can, instinctively chasing the comfort that lies in the palm of Bill’s hand.

“You’re gonna do way bigger things than I am,” he tells Eddie with a soft smile. His eyes overflow with a sincerity that takes Eddie’s breath away. “It’s amazing, the way some things just come naturally to you.”

You’re amazing, Eddie wants to say. But his head always starts swimming when Bill talks to him like this. Bill compliments him a lot, but this feels more like praise, and Eddie can feel the warmth emanating from Bill’s body as it presses gently against his own, and he can smell Bill’s laundry detergent on his t-shirt. Eddie’s even worse than Bill is at accepting compliments like this, and he really doesn’t want to use words now. He wants to kiss Bill and never stop, wants to crawl into the core of the feeling of whatever’s happening between them right now and never leave.

In his head he can hear Bill’s voice: you can do it.

So he does. It’s a little awkward at first, because he has to shift his weight up to reach Bill’s lips. But then Bill is leaning into it and gently lowering Eddie back down to his pillow as he does so. Bill’s hand feels so big as he cradles Eddie’s face, and Eddie can barely decide where he wants his hands. He wants to run them up Bill’s arms and shoulders, he wants them in his hair. He’s also got other stuff on his mind, like the way Bill’s lips feel against his, and how he pulls back for just a moment, hesitantly, like he wants to make sure this is actually happening but doesn’t want to stop kissing Eddie for even a second. They lock eyes for a moment, and Eddie feels so safe, even as his heart pounds at his chest. It’s that feeling of flying, of the risk paying off. The feeling he’s always had around Bill, but so much more concentrated now. It’s so strong he can barely breathe, much less talk. But thankfully, with a silent smile, Bill leans in again, his lips firm and sure against Eddie’s. Eddie dives headfirst into the feeling, and he’s eager to get lost in it for as long as he can, knowing Bill will be right there when he opens his eyes.

taglist: @clouded-eyes-and-salty-tears @eddieeatsass @deadlighturis @constantreaderfool @reddieloserz  @vegetarian-avocado @tinyarmedtrex  @thelazyeye @itfandomprompts @montconde @fizzylemones @lexinatorwrites @thebriarpatch

[kinogane]

Essence of Combat, Part 2: Heat Action

(incidental Yakuza spoilers below)

(previously)

The second aspect of Yakuza action combat that stands out are Heat Actions. You build Heat, press the Heavy Attack button when you see the prompt, and

definitely commit not murder.

Yup.

They’ll be fine, folks.

Heat Actions are consistently the visual highlight of Yakuza action combat, with the cinematography and choreography focused in for a few seconds on your protagonist inflicting some unspeakable pain on some daft sap who thought that picking a fight was a good idea. The cartoonish hyperviolence of some Heat Actions are consistently cathartic, and watching an enormous chunk of enemy health vanish doesn’t hurt, either. And the series knows they’re highlights, as well. Not only do some games make performing Heat Actions a completion metric, there’s an entire Revelation mechanic in 3, 4, and 5 devoted to seeing wild situations and adapting them into new, creative Heat Actions you can use to definitely not permanently debilitate your foes.

In short, Heat Actions are a big deal. A big enough deal that it wouldn’t quite be a Yakuza game without them, and indeed, the first thing I was curious about when I learned that Like a Dragon would switch to turn-based combat was “How are they gonna do Heat Actions?”

The answer is Like a Dragon’s very own version of Heat Actions, Kiwami Actions.

And they're quite the successor.

A few hours into the game, Ichiban comes across a baseball bat stuck in the concrete, and upon pulling it out like a sword of legend, his overactive imagination takes center stage and starts coloring just about every conflict from that point on. Enemies transform into fanciful archetypes and caricatures, and the Kiwami Actions you start gradually getting access to are...

Well, just look at some of them.

Certainly, you can’t fault RGG Studio for seeing an opportunity to go unabashedly over the top and taking it. Like a Dragon is, after all, the game that took the aforementioned Yakuza eccentricities and pushed them to their furthest yet.

So really, this isn’t much more than the natural continuation of the trademark Yakuza bombast, applied toward Heat Actions with Ichiban’s particularly grandiose imagination. There really isn’t anything like them in Yakuza games past.

So why am I ultimately rather ambivalent toward Kiwami Actions?

Mechanically, Kiwami Actions take on a very different role in combat flow than Heat Actions, as a logical consequence of the combat system switch. For starters, Heat Actions tend to be spontaneous in nature. After building up Heat, you have a brief window to identify that a certain Heat Action is possible and then execute. Depending on the Heat Action, these windows can be quite short, so they can create on-the-fly decision making. I just knocked a whole group of idiots down with a throw and they’re going to get back up soon. Do I go for a Heat Action? Does their remaining health justify using that Heat? Or should I instead simply stomp for some quick damage and look for a weapon nearby?

Once you perform a Heat Action, your Heat will probably drain to the point where you can’t perform another one. Additionally, many Yakuza games offer benefits to retaining Heat while in combat and/or provide other ways to expend Heat for benefits like healing or better quickstepping, which means that there are situations where saving your Heat is a better call.

Another important wrinkle is that most games punish performing the same Heat Action by lowering the damage of subsequent repeats, which means that in longer fights against bosses, you have a strong incentive to look for and set up situations that let you hit a wide array of Heat Moves to drain the boss’s health quicker. So at the highest level, the core of Yakuza action combat is about alternating building and spending Heat in ways that will benefit you in a fight the most.

Kiwami Actions, meanwhile, are 1. uniformly almost always accessible when it’s your turn, 2. simply gated behind higher-than-average MP costs, and 3. do not have deteriorating repeated damage. Once you reach lategame, it does become feasible (and outright optimal) to spam Kiwami Actions (or one Kiwami Action) over and over again to deal as much damage per turn against enemies of higher caliber.

These are all trappings of turn-based combat and JRPGs especially, so they’re very much expected, but as replacements to Heat Actions, it’s a bit of a letdown? It’s just not possible in Like a Dragon to replicate the scramble of figuring out how to hit as many different Heat Actions as possible while trying to avoid getting hit. Instead, you just... pick it in a skill menu and it happens. Again, I recognize that’s just how it is with this kind of combat. I don’t think they should try to replicate that scramble, especially given how I feel about some of the positional battle mechanics in Like a Dragon, and I fully accept that I’m just not going to get that in future turn-based Yakuza games. But it’s an omission I felt during the entirety of my time with Like a Dragon.

Furthermore, on a more aesthetic level, Kiwami Actions weirdly lack the oomph of Heat Actions. Sure, they’re more bombastic and showy, but I find that the flair is often more detrimental than not.

For starters, every single Kiwami Action transports the attacker and the target to an alternate dimension where the attack plays out, then switches back onto the active battlefield. This is a practical necessity of not being able to guarantee that all battles take place in arenas where all Kiwami Actions can be depicted. In fact, if you pay close attention to Heat Actions in previous Yakuza games, they do the exact same thing, only instead of an entirely alternate dimension, the environment and actors are rearranged a bit as needed.

This pragmatic reality, alongside the simple fact that the increased flair and grandiosity means that the average Kiwami Action is considerably longer than the average Heat Action, means that Kiwami Actions are bigger interruptions of flow than Heat Actions. It’s a bit difficult for Kiwami Actions to have comparable impact when they’re very clearly situated away from battle and must have a longer build-up, climax, and follow-through, as opposed to Heat Actions which more easily appear to happen in the moment and are relatively quick peaks of action.

Also, if you look at the Kiwami Actions as a whole, they’re also sort of... all over the place and inconsistent in terms of showiness?

Like, take a look at Adachi’s moveset. The Kiwami Action he learns for reaching Detective Rank 28, Essence of Body Stacking, involves Adachi hitting two enemies on top of each other, then hitting them both down at once. It’s downright mundane. It could pass for a weapon Heat Action.

Meanwhile, the Kiwami Action he learns at Level 45, Essence of Hell’s Wheel, involves, uh,

You should really see it for yourself, if you haven’t.

If this was just one instance, it’d be a weird curiosity. Hell, you could even write this off as a higher level means a more outlandish Kiwami Action. That would be fine, but that’s just... not true? Contrast the above two with Han, whose Hitman Rank 28 Kiwami Action, Essence of Trick Shots, involves some Gun Kata-ass choreography,

while his Level 50 Kiwami Action, Essence of Assassin Dive, is...

a bunch of kicks.

What’s more, just about every Tag Team Kiwami Action is very low-key. In fact, besides Nanba’s and Zhao’s Tag Team Kiwami Actions, all of them could pass for Tag Team Heat Actions, which is completely fine and not a problem, were it not for these category of Kiwami Actions being a weird blind spot of mundanity in comparison to colossal pigeon swarms and spontaneous concerts. (They involve two people! Two people, both potentially able to do some wild shit! Am I to believe that Ichiban is just unable to come up with something suitably imaginitive?)

This isn’t to suggest that Heat Actions don’t have this spread, either. For every Heat Action where Kiryu or Saejima pick a dude up, jump five feet in the air, and drive the schmuck’s poor head straight into the concrete, there’s another where they just... kick a dude really hard. But I don’t have this problem with Heat Actions, so why the double standard?

Certainly, the mundane Heat Actions usually being faster helps a lot. It also helps when after you simply punch a dude on the ground he looks like, well,

yikes.

But two reasons in particularly really stand out to me. The first is that the gap between the most fantastic and most mundane Heat Actions isn’t all that large. Again, grabbing someone, leaping into the air, planting the top of their cranium right into the ground, and not killing them is very fantastical, but it’s just cartoonish and superhuman enough to be within the bounds of what you would expect of a Yakuza protagonist, so it’s not all that weird to see them do something as simple as slam someone against a wall headfirst. With Kiwami Actions, meanwhile, the gap between using your bat like nunchaku and spinning like an hypercharged Beyblade is considerably larger. The disparity becomes a lot stranger to think about.

The second is that even the more mundane Heat Actions can invoke a visceral reaction that the more mundane Kiwami Actions aren’t capable of. I’ve seen multiple people react to the Essence of Pliers Heat Actions, and the sheer discomfort they feel, every time, is extremely funny to me, every time.

Besides maybe Han’s Tag Team: Terrorizing Trample, none of the more simplistic Kiwami Actions come even remotely close to anything like Essence of Pliers.

And at the end of the day... I don’t think they even try to, or maybe even should.

I recognize that I’ve just spent a ludicrous number of words explaining in excruciating detail why I prefer Heat Actions over Kiwami Actions. And yes, absolutely, it’s ridiculous to compare seven games worth of Heat Actions to one game’s worth of Kiwami Actions. And yes, the tl;dr is that I prefer the moment-to-moment of the action combat over the moment-to-moment of the turn-based combat. It’s really that simple. Therefore, I prefer Heat Actions because they complement the action combat very well, more than I think the Kiwami Actions complement the turn-based combat. They’re just fundamentally different, and that’s... the point. It’s totally fine.

Believe it or not, I honestly didn’t spend almost any time wishing that Like a Dragon had action combat. Having achieved 100% completion for Like a Dragon, I’ve seen just about everything its turn-based combat has to offer, and I like it quite a bit. The stats are fun to raise, the weapons are fun to upgrade, and the skills are fun to use. Having to Perfect Guard attacks I’ve seen thrown my way for the whole game to have a chance at surviving in the True Final Millennium Tower is a satisfying postgame test of mastery. And for as much as I might seem down on them, yeah, the Kiwami Actions are fun to watch. You can pull out a human-sized grater and just go to town shredding some putz’s face, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that isn’t good stuff.

So why did I bother writing all of this, besides out of sheer boredom?

Well, I did say I didn’t spend almost any time wishing for action combat.

(continued)

[straightfacedstrangeness]

Not that anyone asked (but seriously I’d LOVE for someone to talk to me about PokeSpe (just no spoilers past vol 13)) but since I made an offhand remark about my Top 5 favorite characters, it occurred to me that I actually DO have approximately 5 top favorite characters, and I’m procrastinating on work, so I’m gonna ramble

**just in case, note that a lot of this will revolve around my childhood experience with gender in a “I’m AFAB (and present-day me still identifies as a cis girl) but I don’t fit in with what media is telling me girls are like” way, a brief childhood feeling of homophobia, and probably general TMI about my opinions and emotions throughout my life, haha

1. Yellow

Okay, so, I was a little kid when Pokemon Adventures started coming out in English, back when manga was released as single-issue monthly comic books instead of complete volumes.  So I was rereading the same chapters over and over while anxiously awaiting the rest of the story (and wound up missing a bunch of issues anyway)

I enjoyed the RGB arc, I thought it was fun, but I didn’t LOVE the series until Yellow showed up.  At that age my ideal crush was “a cute boy my age who would be nice to me” and Yellow was presented to the reader as a cute boy my age who was sweet and kind and gentle, but also good in a fight, as all shounen protags must be.  Extra bonus points because they had just a few physically weak Pokémon and tried to fight battles in a way that minimized damage to their own and the opponent’s Pokémon, which meant they fought in a particularly smart and clever way.  And I was considered “smart” for being good at school, so being a SMART cute “boy” my age who would be nice to me, Yellow was PERFECT.  I mean, I loved the arc in general because of the clever battles, and the mystery of what had happened to Red, why these people were after Pikachu, why Yellow was so secretive about themself and their mission, etc was really engaging.  But also I adored Yellow as a character and partly in a “I wonder if ‘he’ would like me??” kind of way X’D  So to my tiny child self who didn’t even know it was possible to like-like someone of the same gender (because I hadn’t read Cardcaptor Sakura yet XD ), the reveal that Yellow was a “girl” was devastating—I had to cross out floating hearts on at least one drawing of us holding hands (scandalous!) and, while kind of stunned and shaken for a while, decided that what I’d felt all along was a deep, intense desire to be friends X’D (which probably wasn’t too far from the truth since I was pre-puberty and later turned out to be asexual)

(Also note that I never got the RGB issue that had the chapter where Red helps a little ‘girl’ capture a Rattata—later proven to be Yellow’s backstory—so the gender reveal really came out of nowhere for me.)

But anyways, I still love Yellow as a character for all the above reasons, without the crush aspects because I’m way older than them now.

Also when I reread the series ten years ago, I finally realized “wait, aside from surprising the reader, there’s no real plot reason for Yellow to pretend to be a ‘boy’ except that Green told ‘her’ to—so why did ‘she’ do it?”...and because at that time I didn’t even know that nonbinary genders existed, I decided it was cus they had low self-esteem and pretending to be a different person gave them courage (the same reading I had for Mulan at the time).  These days I’m more inclined to “yeah, I think Yellow’s nonbinary,” but that other interpretation was deeply relatable to me and only made me love Yellow even more.

2. Bill

Bill’s definitely a character I’ve grown to love more as an adult, since I’ve gone from seeing myself as “a protagonist doing cool things” to “a side character just living their life who hopefully gets to do something once in a while.”  But as a kid and now, I like him mostly for the slapstick and goofy expressions and the (early chapters Viz translations) outrageous accent  X’D  My brain desperately craves endorphins and the best way to get em is through a good laugh.

But also, I liked that he was introduced as a goofy character-of-the-week who got into ridiculous trouble and had to be rescued, but then kept being brought back, was slowly built up to be the “smart sidekick who explains things,” and eventually got to the point where he was participating in big battles (the Yellow finale on Cerise Island).  I rambled about this in the tags of another post, but I liked that he was a character who was “weak” without being “useless.”  As a kid who was good at school, I was obsessed with being good at things and had developed a black-and-white view of the world where either you were “strong/smart” or “weak/stupid” to the point that failing or just being not-so-good at anything was devastating (it still kind of is), because that meant I was actually “weak/stupid” when I was supposed to be “strong/smart.”  So it was kind of awesome that this guy who kept getting into trouble and having to be rescued—and didn’t even want to BE part of the final battle—managed to hold his own and get through it and help out instead of being a burden that dragged everyone down.  Seriously, he used a MAGIKARP effectively—the Pokémon everyone makes fun of for being “useless” and he used its one attack to save his life!

(Bonus points for all this happening in contrast to my devastating childhood experience of stanning The One Girl Character in every popular shounen series, waiting desperately for her to get to do something in battle, and then her one spotlight episode revolved around her struggling because she was so weak...not only was that actually happening to a boy for once, it was actually happening in a more satisfying/empowering way :’D )

3. Gold

I have extremely specific tastes when it comes to “the dumb shounen/action movie protag,” because as a kid I hated it when the main character was “dumb” because I was “smart” (re: good at school) and people who were “dumb” shouldn’t deserve to be the main character and have all the cool powers and save the world and stuff.  As an adult, I hate it when male characters are dumb and/or jerks but it’s treated as fine or even sexy(??) and the other characters fawn over them, and I generally still kind of hate it when characters who are dumb and/or jerks get the big important role when there’s a female character RIGHT THERE who’s more competent (and OF COURSE she has to wind up falling in love with him)

But anyway, I have extremely specific tastes, and Gold is it  X’D  He’s the perfect combination of “unshakably confident in his own stupid/egotistic views” and “treated as annoying and/or comic relief by the rest of the cast” with a bonus dash of actually being really clever in battle (so my inner child goes “Ah yes, technically, he is ’smart,’ and therefore...worthwhile“)  Making me laugh while also impressing me is like the key to my heart.

4. Crystal

I’m too lazy to look it up, but when Viz was publishing Pokemon Adventures as monthly comics, they must have switched to publishing it as trade paperbacks only and/or had a huge gap between the end of Yellow and the start of GSC, because for YEARS I’d thought Yellow was the end of the series and was shocked the first time I saw later volumes.  (My dad was buying us the monthly issues at the local comic store, and either they wouldn’t have ordered the trade paperbacks or he wouldn’t have thought to check those shelves.)

Anyway, that’s a long lead-in to the statement of “Crystal would automatically be my #1 or #2 if I’d read her arc as a kid.”  She’s a girl, she wears pants, she’s EXTREMELY smart (genius-level “book-smarts” about every Pokémon’s behaviors and weaknesses PLUS being clever in a battle), was tough as nails (she KICKED her Pokéballs!!), had no interest in romance or her appearance, AND had a short arc about losing her confidence and training herself back up to full power.  I would have KILLED for a character like that when I was a little girl being told that “girls don’t like action shows like Dragon Ball Z” (but I was a girl and I did???) and that girls were supposed to be pretty and obsessed with fashion and dating, and that girls were never the main character of action series, just side characters who either did nothing or got one chance to do something and were pathetically weak (see above, and/or Sakura’s fight against Ino (Naruto), those couple filler eps where Téa/Anzu played Duel Monsters (Yu-Gi-Oh), Videl getting pummeled by Spopovich (DBZ), etc).

So anyway, she’s awesome, she’s exactly the type of character I would’ve loved as a kid.  The only reason she’s behind Gold here is because at my age, “makes me laugh” > “the kind of main character I used to wish I could be”

5. Green (the girl trainer...I’m just too loyal to the Viz version to call her “Blue”...)

I’m trying not to rehash the same “I’m a girl but none of the girls in my shows/comics are like me!” childhood woes over and over, haha, but as much as I always enjoyed Green for being extremely clever and outsmarting the boys and being funny when she did so, she always lost points with me for being “pretty” and flirting to get her way, because that put her in the box of “girls are supposed to be pretty and desired by boys and obsessed with their appearance and romance” that was so foreign and disheartening to me as a kid.

But her staredown with Ho-oh at the end of the GSC arc TOTALLY got me.  As a sad adult with anxiety, watching characters who are absolutely terrified overcome their fear, watching characters who are completely beaten down struggle back to their feet and keep fighting, is like my ultimate power fantasy.  That sequence genuinely had me in tears.

Also her bond with Silver is super precious, especially since that’s like the first time in the series we’ve seen her be genuinely emotional and vulnerable with someone instead of teasing or manipulating them.

Honorable mention: Sapphire

I haven’t gotten up to R/S in my reread yet, and I only read that arc once over like a weekend ten years ago, but I’m pretty sure she’s gonna be a Top Fave cus again there’s that “I'm not like other girls!” childhood feel  (last time I’m saying it, I promise)

It’s a story arc where one protag wants to fight the gyms and the other protag wants to win the beauty contests, but the one who wants to fight the gyms is the girl!!  And she’s the typical “dumb but extremely good at fighting” shounen protag but she’s the girl!!  She’s feral and illiterate and a total tomboy and wins all her fights and she’s a GIRL!!!!

--

Anyway, those are my kids and my dude and my probably way-too-personal reasons why.  If you wanna reblog, reply, or send an ask about your own faves...please

[sibyl-of-space]

Leo Tries Modding Ghost Trick (And May In Fact Succeed): Episode 3

The end of this post gets into spoilers for the game Ghost Trick, but I will post that portion behind a readmore. As always this is tagged with #leo-tries-modding-ghost-trick so it can be blocked or sought out as desired.

It's been a while since my last update, because for a while I was stuck. This game hasn't really been documented and the only documentation I found implied that "cpac_2d.bin" was where I should find what I was looking for.

This was, it turns out, a wild goose chase... but it did bear some fruit.

After my last post I sought to "unscramble" other images I found in the ROM. I'll repost this here just because I think it looks cool with the incorrect palettes:

However, after spending a couple days on these, I started to suspect that they were all background images rather than sprites or other visual assets. Nothing looked remotely like what I was looking for. To confirm my suspicions, I started messing around with copying and pasting tiles around in this portion of the ROM to see what assets got messed up. I was not surprised when the only things that got messed up were the backgrounds.

(To do this more rigorously I then completely blocked out all of the tiles with solid colors, and this absolutely confirmed my suspicions.)

...So, what now? The only images in the ROM that I could actually see and feasibly make changes to seemed to be the backgrounds. If I wanted to change a background, I know how I would go about it: "unscramble" the associated tiles, then make the changes or replacements desired and re-"scramble" them before re-inserting them over the originals.

It would be more complicated than that, especially because one would need to also discern where the palette info is drawn from; but since that's not what I've set out to do, I'm not looking into it more at this time. If anyone reading this is interested in that the Episode 2 post is probably a more useful reference.

My next step was to figure out what part of the absolutely massive "cpac_2d.bin" - the overwhelmingly largest portion of the ROM - contains the sprite data I was looking for. I started blocking out bigger and bigger chunks of the .bin to see what assets did or did not load. It got to a point where the game would no longer start and had to be loaded from a save state, but even when so much data was overwritten that it would crash after a few actions, the talk sprites all still loaded perfectly. Even when the entire .bin was overwritten:

It was here that I realized a frustrating truth: the talk sprites are, with absolute and definitive certainty, not to be found in "cpac_2d.bin". Which had been my only lead from the only pre-existing threads I could find.

But hey... on the flip side, I now knew I would never again need to look there for my answers. I moved on to "cpac_3d.bin," and resumed the process of blocking out a couple lines at a time then launching the ROM and seeing what changed.

IMMEDIATELY, I saw results, and bitterly wished to be compensated for the time wasted on cpac_2d.bin.

This image might not look like much, because there isn't a talk sprite there. But that's just it... I know there should be one there, because I have re-played this scene about 5 gazillion times when testing out cpac_2d.bin. This was the first time the talk sprites had ever disappeared or changed in any way.

So I knew that somewhere in the tiles (and/or corresponding hex code) I had just blocked out, is some data that tells the game what talk sprite to display in what contexts. THIS is something I can work with. I had only blocked out the addresses from 04ED4200 - 04ED45C0; so I went back to my master copy of the ROM and blocked out each individual tile in there until AT LAST, I narrowed it down to the single tile that, if overwritten, would cause the talk sprite not to spawn.

04ED4280.

This boy right here.

I had a hunch that all of these tiles with this format - ending in that black and salmon bar - corresponded to similar sprite data, so I started swapping around random tiles to see what happened. And I was right! Some combinations did weird things and/or crashed the game, but I also got some legitimate sprite swaps, including funny results like pulling up what appears to be the French Final Chapter screen reversed (result from swapping in tile at 04ED5F80):

Or the hippie NPC's entire mini spritesheet (result from swapping in tile at 04ED4600):

I can't tell you exactly how I figured this out, but after some messing around with the tile editor and hex code editor, I realized that those "salmon and black" bars are caused by the repeated instance of "00, 80" in the hex editor that signify the "end" of a particular sprite. To my understanding, each of these codes points to a particular sprite (00-07 and 08-0F of each row; meaning two sprites are indicated per row):

So, the game will search for a particular sprite for an asset by accessing a specific address (for example, the address 04ED4280) and the data at that address will "point" it to a specific sprite (in this case, the sprite called by "E8 23 03 00 F0 06 00 80", which is the 4 Minutes To Death hourglass).

If the wrong information is at the associated address the game will load the wrong sprite.

It is from here on out that I really can't explain the process further without massive Ghost Trick spoilers, so proceed at your peril. And I do mean peril, the game rules, so don't ruin it for yourself. Go play it and come back when you’re done. It’s short and very good. :p

I'll start off with listing all of the hex codes for sprites that I’ve worked out so far, again the vicinity to look in the hex code is 04ED4280:

E8 23 03 00 F0 06 00 80 - hourglass D8 2A 03 00 FC 07 00 80 - fuller hourglass D4 32 03 00 C8 0D 00 80 - this appeared to be a skinny version of the Sissel smirking sprite?

The following correspond to Sissel's "Yomiel" talk sprites, which specifically I am looking to replace:

9C 40 03 007C 19 00 80 - neutral smirk 18 5A 03 00 44 19 00 80 - neutral frown/serious 5C 73 03 00 E4 18 00 80 - hand on chin/thinking 40 8C 03 00 F8 18 00 80 - concerned/shocked/sweating 38 A5 03 00 50 1A 00 80 - the gag "D'OH" angular face 18 D9 03 00 BC 09 00 80 -  ghosty boy with sunglasses (not a Yomiel sprite, but if my end goal is playing as a cat the whole time, which it is, this is another one to replace) D4 E2 03 00 D8 1B 00 80 - mouth slightly open/slight surprise 78 18 04 00 98 18 00 80 - facing down, flat line lips, serious/melancholy 10 31 04 00 9C 18 00 80 - angry/emotional yelling

Sissel's true endgame sprite:

AC 49 04 00  54 10 00 80 (memory address 04ED42F0)

And the last couple I know:

88 BF 03 00 90 19 00 80 - Yomiel's evil smirk. I don't think Sissel ever uses this so I don't think anything needs to be done here.

00 5A 04 00 40 19 00 80 - Lynne! This was the first non-Yomiel-or-Sissel sprite so I assumed that for now it's safe to quit here.

So; where am I currently at?

For right now, what I have done is over-written all of the codes that point to Sissel's "Yomiel" sprites and instead pointed them to the endgame sprite. This is a messy way to go about it and it results in just the hex code AC49040054100080 repeated over and over, but for right now, I have confirmed it does exactly what I want it to do... it LETS ME PLAY AS A CAT!!!:

There are definitely things wrong with doing it this way. I am 99% certain Yomiel doesn't exclusively use his own sprites, so I am pretty sure in the final chapter this is going to turn Yomiel into a cat too. So that's not going to work out. But I'm still extremely stoked by this very tangible progress.

My immediate to-do list is as follows:

* Isolate the addresses pointing to any other assets used for Sissel that look like Yomiel to ultimately replace (the "Trick" icon, the "return to Sissel" icon when playing as Missile, etc...) * Isolate the portion(s) of cpac_3d.bin that correspond to the actual sprite data. I've found the pointers, but not the sprite data itself. I might have to resort back to aimlessly blocking out portions until I get somewhere; but I need to know where the sprites are if I want to ultimately create new ones

And some future things to work on down the road:

* Look in the data for the specific chapters that tell it what asset(s) to pull. Maybe in the final chapter the band-aid fix is as simple as pointing it to a different sprite for Yomiel than for Sissel. * Work on new assets to implement over the existing Yomiel assets - full new sprites for cat!Sissel, new icons replacing Sissel's face, etc.

My big ultimate dream is to somehow implement a switch you can toggle on-and-off to view Sissel as he sees himself vs. his true self; but that is infinitely beyond my capacity right now. For the moment, the most important fires to put out are changing all Sissels into cats, and then not turning Yomiel into a cat down the line.

I'm extremely excited now that this has once more entered the realm of possibility.

[being-worthy]

Sunday Home Cinema: Army of the Dead!!

I haven't done one of these reviews in a long time (thanks to Covid-19 ¬¬) but I'm glad this film was the one to get me back in doing these reviews.

Honestly, I found out about the film about two weeks ago when I clicked on it on YouTube out of curiosity. It looked good and I'm an all big fan of zombie films and series and every zombie-themed film/series, even if it's extremely bad made (e.g. Z Nation but it's so funny to watch).

Sorry for any mistakes or things that make not much sense but I'm writing this at 2.30am and I just wanted to write this down while it's still fresh (I might review it later on if I feel like it).

> SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!! <

Apparently, Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead (here's the trailer), which can be watched on Netflix, is the prequel of Dawn of the Dead from 2004 also directed by him, which was a remake of the George A. Romero classic. I've got a hard time seeing this due to the zombies being so different but well, let's just roll with it.

Scott Ward (played by Dave Bautista) is offered/hired for $50 million by Bly Tanaka (villain/businessman played by Hiroyuki Sanada) to break into a walled Las Vegas after it was overrun by a zombie outbreak starting at the outskirts of the city with patient zero aka alpha zombie Zeus (more to the different zombie types later on) to "apparently" retrieve $200 million that is stashed in a safe at the casino's basement. Basically, it's like Ocean's Eleven but with zombies giving the film a nice touch.

I knew from the moment Tanaka offered Scott this job that there was going to be more to it. Why else would a stinking rich guy like Tanaka need to have a group to retrieve some money when: a. the insurance paid him some of that money back. I know he mentions he can't use it but come on, people like him know how to find either a way around whatever rule there might be or even wash it. And b. he looks like a guy who understands how business works and is well off, so you're telling me he wants to send a group there just for $200 million? B*tch please, I'm sure that's just petty cash to him, and there's surely more to it, especially after one of his goons (Martin) "invites" himself to tag along with the group to "make sure" they get the job done.

If I was offered that kind of money to go to a completely sealed city ruled by zombies, I wouldn't accept it no matter how bad my situation might be. The probability that something might go sideways is too high not to mention the risk that the virus spreads out to the rest of the world, I wouldn’t be able to live with that on my conscience.

In order to pull off this heist Scott assembles a team for the mission:

Vanderohe, the tank and chainsaw man. There'll be a little paragraph for him since his fate doesn't make entirely sense to me.

Marianne Peters, the pilot.

Maria Cruz, the mechanic.

Kate Ward, a volunteer in the quarantine zone. She's Scott's daughter and the only (human) survivor in the film.

Geeta, the mother. She ventures into the zombie-infested Vegas to find money in order to pay for safe passage out of the quarantine zone for herself and her children. I believe she dies in the helicopter crash but we don't see her body, so she might be alive somewhat?

Ludwig Dieter, the thief/safe expert, and I love how he questions everything lol!

Lilly "The Coyote", "the one who knows her stuff" aka zombie expert. Somehow interesting that she's got a conscience/good heart.

Martin, the inside man, and Bly Tanaka's right hand and got the death he deserved by kitten Valentine.

Mikey Guzman, the Sharpshooter and a YouTuber.

Chambers, the muscles and Guzman's sidekick (sort of). Her death was very predictable and her own fault! Girl, why the hell would you tell Martin that you don't trust him directly to his face?! That's such a rookie mistake!!

Burt Cummings, also the muscle for like 5 minutes before turning into the bait/bargain chip for a "deal" with the zombies in order to pass their territory. Overall, he's just a big jerk.

We see the first five people are survivors of the outbreak when Vegas was "freshly" being overrun by zombies and barely made it out of the city before it was completely sealed off. The rest of them are new characters. Almost none of them have any deep character story/feeling/development, most of them are quite plain and you don't care whether they survive or not. I've got also a hard time seeing any father-daughter relationship between Scott and Kate. I get that they haven't talked to each other since Scott had to put down Kate's mother after she got turned into a zombie but if I hadn’t seen the beginning I'd say they're just two strangers who met during the outbreak and he saved her at some point.

I very much like the fact that they introduce different types of zombies! On one hand, we've got the standard zombies aka shamblers who move slowly and are dead if you blow their brains out and if they bite you you become a shambler too. Then, there are the alphas who are fast (so fast that they can dodge bullets), they can also think, take orders, and are very organised. If you're bitten by one you become an alpha too but they also die if they're shot in the head which is easier said than done! We've also got a zombie horse, that's more bone than anything else, and a big tiger kitten called Valentine who used to be part of Siegfried & Roy's show (which also throws in the question, during which year is this movie set? They've both already passed away and they haven’t been retired from the entertainment world for a while before they passed away, and we see Tanaka carrying a modern mobile, so it must be during the past 2-3 our years.)

Their leader is patient zero aka Zeus who we see at the beginning being transported by a convoy of soldiers from Area 51 to somewhere else but never makes it there because he breaks free due to part of the convoy crashing into a car of a recent married (while the guy gets a blowjob and doesn’t watch the road!). He also takes the Bride as his queen (later on she's beheaded and her head still alive), who we see to be pregnant!! HOLY COW!! This throws in sooo many questions! For instance, how do zombies reproduce? The same way as we humans? What will the baby look like? Full zombie? A hybrid, half-human half-zombie? What power would they have? Do I even want to know or see this? Probably. Probably not. How many times did I wish they'd have introduced something like this in TWD (before I stopped watching it). At some point the virus that makes people zombies is supposed to mutate, every virus mutates at some point. We did already see a zombie baby in Dawn of the Dead but that was different since the woman was already in the late stages of pregnancy when she got bit. This one was one that was produced from zombie sex. I’ve got a feeling that their sex must be quite violent to say the least. Also, they way how the care for each other, especially Zeus for his Bride and child and seeks vengeance for both their deaths showing they’re capable of feeling and caring for their people. Maybe, just maybe want to find a way to survive without having to turn people but I think they’ll still need humans as a source of food. I don’t think they’re capable to live from eating normal food.

I've to make a special mention about Vanderohe. Besides, the fact that he's very attractive, there are a few things that don't make entirely sense to me.

He survives the nuclear blast of Las Vegas since he was looked inside the safe, which I can see being possible but (a little more possible than Indiana Jones seeking shelter in an old-fashioned fridge from a nuclear blast in Indiana Jones and Kingdom of Crystal Skull)... the whole city was nuked! And I mean big smoke of mushroom nuke! So, shouldn't the place, I don't know, be radioactive or something like that? And shouldn’t he find the nearest decontamination shower? Furthermore, it doesn't make sense that he gets infected, i.e. bitten. He gets into a fight with Zeus while they're in front of the safe and I watched that part several times and in slow motion too and we don't see Zeus bit him. There's one time where Zeus almost bites him but his teeth don't end up sinking into the flesh. He has Van in his hold, dislocates his right shoulder, and almost bites him there but only almost! In that same moment, Dieter hits Zeus in the head and pulls Van into the safe closing the door behind him (and most likely gets killed/turned by Zeus). I repeat there's no "visible" scene of Van being bitten by Zeus or any other zombie in another scene. So, where the f*ck did he get the bite and from who? I've also read that there's a theory of Van being immune because he's not turning as quick as the soldiers at the beginning of the movie when Zeus escapes the convoy (he still might be able to infect others though). He starts to feel lightheaded/dizzy and his body feels cold to the touch on the plane, and around the bite we see the veins turning black but that's it.

As much as I love the concept of the movie, it's very predictable as well as easy to figure out who makes it out alive and who makes it out the other kind of "alive" and it also reminded me a bit of Resident Evil (the first film was good and the rest just a waste). Tanaka wanting a fresh sample of an Alpha to make a virus that enables him to create an army of zombies he can control and take over the world. He could be Wesker's twin and his company the equivalent of the Umbrella Corporation. It's worth to watch but it doesn't compare to other zombie films such as 28 Days Later or even Dawn of the Dead (the classic and newer version), and many others.

[silver-wield]

I absolutely can't get enough of you analysis and I was wondering if you could do one of cloud and tifa after the plate fell and after barret hugged tifa? when sephiroth visits cloud again. like how'd that have been from tifa's perspective too?

Sorry this took a while to get to, Nonny. I would've had it done yesterday, but instead I wasted my time banging my head against a brick wall. Lesson learned lol

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be reasonably long.

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx

Recap time!

The sky has fallen and our brave failures have escaped by the skin of their teeth! Cloud watches over Tifa until she wakes up, then follows her until they locate Barret.

AH MY HEART! Cloud's so adorably concerned for Tifa. (also far too goddamn pretty! Someone shove mud in his face or something I can't stand it!)

Who knows how long he's been waiting for her to wake up. There's a couple of times it looks like he wants to reach for her – there's a definite twitch in her direction with his left hand – and then as she goes to get up, he takes her hand to her help her. Someone remind me, how often does Cloud offer Tifa his hand? A lot? Yeah, that's what I thought.

It's a very demoralised journey through the rubble to find Barret.

Well, I was aiming for a screen showing him punching the wall, but this is better. His rage and grief burst out. He's punching the wall with his actual hand and not shooting at it with the gun. This is because he wants to feel physical pain to dull the stronger emotional pain. Those were his friends. He should've stopped it. You can hear him sob Marlene's name once that rage is spent. He thinks they're all dead, including his innocent little girl. It's a powerful moment for his character.

Here's a hint of a grief stricken Cloud too. He cared about the trio. He wanted to save them. Nobody had to offer payment for his services. He tried to be the hero and failed. He doesn't know how to handle these emotions or how to comfort anyone either.

Tifa blaming herself is typical for her character. She puts a lot on her shoulders and keeps her feelings locked up tight. She sees the situation from the pov that if they hadn't blown up the reactors then Shinra wouldn't have dropped the plate. Barret sees it as, if Shinra weren't destroying the planet then they wouldn't need to blow up reactors. It's a pointless back and forth, round and round with no true winner. They have different povs, morals and principles and that's why Tifa just agrees with him in the end. Why argue on top of everything else that's just happened?

Tifa is very much the peacemaker, who doesn't want people to get into unnecessary fights. She'd rather back down than fight if there's a possibility of another choice. She says this in chapter 3 with her “I know we have to make a difference, but not like this.” And to the Shinra manager she says “I don't want anyone to die”

She's a goddamn sweetheart who can pack a punch, but doesn't need to rely on her fists first.

This is why later on with Elmyra, she stops Cloud from arguing to go get Aerith. It's not that she doesn't care. It's that she doesn't see the point in forcing your opinion on someone. By giving Elmyra time to think through their side of things she's letting the situation settle and everyone can approach it calmly and rationally. Which is exactly what happens. Elmyra had time to think and agreed with them. Because of Tifa. Because she’s the mature one.

The real!Cloud hand twitch lol we know what this means and I think I've already mentioned is plenty of times in other analyses.

Barret and Tifa's body language here is very placid, not romantic in any sense of the word. Her body is turned to the side and he has one arm around her shoulder. He's not got his head tilted down towards her and hers isn't tilted up at him either. Her arms are by her sides. This is minimum contact and barely qualifies as a hug. It's perfunctory comfort between friends. What it does is motivate Cloud – who harbours romantic feelings – towards the urge to comfort Tifa in the same way. He wants her to rely and find solace with him. Because his feelings are driven by romantic urges the way he comforts her is different.

And we're on our way to Aerith's house, where Cloud suspects Marlene is. Barret's highly emotional – shocker – and begs Cloud for hope, then admits it doesn't matter what he says he'd get mad. Cloud accepts this with a bland face, what else is there to say? He can't admit he might be wrong, but he can't say with all certainty that he's right.

He asks Tifa about the Ancients and then we get a visit from Sephiroth.

So after we see a future flashback of OG Sephiroth talking about the Ancients like before, Cloud gives us a blurry 1st person view and pan up of Sephiroth. Now, this one is a vision that only he sees, but that really doesn't matter to him. He sees that creepy ex-boyfriend stalker smile and freaks tf out. You can hear him whimper.

So, we don't get much of the scene from Tifa's pov. She's noticed Cloud freeze, probably heard that whimper. She's definitely concerned – you can see her frown just before we move back to Cloud – but she's unsure what to do about it. She's not a doctor after all. She has no idea if the right thing to do is insist on talking to Cloud about it, or pretend it didn't happen. She has to take his lead, which is to forget about it.

“Through suffering you will grow strong. Isn't that what you want?”

Cloud's a sweaty mess of fear at this minute, but you can still see this question on his face and his answer that no he doesn't want to suffer. The part of him that's real!Cloud definitely doesn't want to suffer, but it's too scared to do anything.

I find the possibility of this being a different aspect of Cloud's personality interesting. It's a vision, after all. So while we have real!Cloud in chapter 8 trying to encourage himself and repair the broken parts, we have this Sephiroth aspect that wants Cloud to remain broken and afraid. It's a good metaphor for how Cloud tackles his mental illness, and of the 4 different Sephiroths, the hallucination is the one that speaks the most and talks about Cloud as a person. It's the one that tells him to run away in chapter 2. It's the one that calls him a failure. It's the one that murders Tifa.

It's a manifestation of his mental illness. Not totally because there's more happening than just that, but of the 4 Sephiroths we see, this one is the one that causes Cloud to freeze the most. This one is the one he's terrified of more than the rest. The one that's not actually there.

I had to choose between this and Cloud looking terrified, but this one has Tifa edging into the frame with a concerned look on her face. Cloud's lost in his own head, probably overthinking everything Sephiroth just said to him. He dismisses Tifa again – remember, he doesn't want her to have a bad opinion of him, so he's pretending to be ok as usual. A lot of his reluctance to confide in her is his fear of her being disappointed in him. A lot of Tifa’s reluctance comes down to the aforementioned need to avoid confrontation. She doesn’t want to fight. If Cloud refuses to talk, she’ll respect that. She’s not pushy.

Conclusion.

Tifa and Barret have known each other for 5 years, give or take, but Barret doesn't even know the story of Nibelheim because Tifa keeps emotional things to herself. The way she's struggling to contain herself is mistaken by him as anger. It's not anger. It's self-blame. And because Cloud understands Tifa better than Barret – despite them having been apart for years – his real self has the urge to comfort her. He doesn't know how because he lacks social skills and emotional maturity, but after seeing Barret's example he understands this is the way he wants to support her.

I just added my suspicions about this version of Sephiroth to another post, so to sum that up, I think most of what he says is induced by Cloud's own feelings of failure and fear. The times Sephiroth shows up can be attributed to the connection Cloud has through Jenova, but the content of Sephiroth's speech comes across more like it's Cloud's inner self dragging him down. Sephiroth is the darkness within Cloud – the representation of his mental illness that won't ever become a memory, that's something he has to fight against every day. The fractured parts of Cloud's psyche aren't strong enough on their own, which is why the one in chapter 8 was chased away. It's only once they're reunited because of Tifa that Cloud becomes stronger overall to fight against his inner demons.