#posting more than one image in one post since it saves space

[dovalore]

mini deities: the first age

[ririblogsss]

what if Danny give no fu-ks

Ok hear me out, Dannys obsession has never truest been confirmed by the show itself (that I remember) I've seen a lot of people say his obsession comes from wanting to help / protect people. But what if he feels as though that he is now doing more damage than good, after all there are a lot of people getting hurt as colateral damage from the chases he has to go on. Or simply when he has to run away from getting captured.

What if one night he was up late and saw a post about a tragedy that happened because he slipped up (it wasn't even his fault, but he still blames himself for everything). And then he starts looking at all the bad comments against him ignoring all the good ones saying how much Danny Phantom has helped Amity. Because Danny is still human and confirmation bias is real. Imagine how he felt the moment he realized that he was causing people to get hurt instead of keeping them save.

Image the desperation clawing at him with the realization that he has never been able to fully manage his obsession. it makes him sad, desperate, angry.

His entire self is filled with too many emotions at the sametime he isn't even able to identify them and catalogue them properly like Jazz taught him.

and then everything stops and he feels nothing.

Completely and utterly numb.

Like his whole reason to keep going suddenly disappears.

And it has.

He gave up on his obsession and now he has to make / get a new one.

But it's not that easy.

This drastic change could've ended any ghost as they run on (live off) emotions.

Luckily because he's a Halfa, so that has given him the upper hand. Unfortunately it makes it so that he is completely devoid of any emotion.

Months go by and people immediately notice changes, the more drastic one is that Phantom went missing, and eventually a lot of ghost that where coming in looking for him stop. Amity Park is no longer populated by ghosts, and slowly the GIW started to retreat from Amity going to another place following a lead that says there are more ghost activities up north.

But those changes aren't the only ones noticeable. Dannys classmates and teachers can vouch that Danny has changed. Most say he was always quite , and others say he looked down right depressed. Danny didn't do much in classes not that he paid attention before. Its just this time it seems that its not out of being sleepy or anxious about another ghost attacking the school instead Danny looks like he coundn't give less of a fu-k about anything.

He never smiles anymore not even when his favorite subjects (mechanics and space) are brought up. Not even a quirk of a smile. The school decided to contact his parents about Dannys new behaviors. That includes skipping classes, not handing in work, not doing the assigned work in class ect....

And its not like his parents havent noticed, they've had more time in their hands since they aren't using hours of the day/night going out hunting anymore. and they have witnessed their son become a shell of himself. They don't know what to do, and they don't want to worry Jazz about it because she's at collage and needs to focus on her studies.

So when the school contact them and told them that the behavior is the same in school they decided major changes needed to happen. Starting with a change of environment.

Maddie and Jack decided that Amity park was too big of a city with too many people. They could nearly see the stars at night because of the light pollution, hence they decided to move next door to Alicia, Maddie sister, home in SmallVille.

They decided it was the best choice, Danny would be surrounded by nature and he could do online classes that would go the pace he wanted. The move was immediate, the day off they packed everything sold the house and moved.

They only stopped to say goodbye to Danny's friends. A small bye and hug later they were on a 7 hour road trip to their new home.

When they got there the old resident handed them the keys of the home and told them to ignore the their neighbors 'The Kents' as they often made a lot of noice and had group gatherings every month.

The one thing Jack and Maddie forgot to double check was if the house was an actual house or a farm house. Sounds similar, but completely different as they now had 2 cows, 16 chickens, 1 rooster, and 3 pigs to take care off.

Danny was put on duty of taking care of the animals, such as feeding them on time and making sure they were healthy. Jack and Maddie made more of the heavy weight as to re building broken fences and fixing the questionable roof.

(The first thing Danny did when meeting all the animals was name them. After all this was about all the interaction he was going to do.)

Danny didn't have time to think about his lost obsession or his lack of emotions as he was now too busy making sure each animal was taken care off.

Marcy and linda (the cows) were danny's favorite they were very gentle and he felt that they could understand him when he spoke to them the stories of his vigilante past.

On the other hand The Chickens were a nightmare, Glinda was cool as she never chased him down. But Matilda and Bethany were a nightmarish duo spiteful too when he was seconds late to the finding time. Mark the rooster was chill he mainly acted as of he was part of the group that needed protection.

Marice, Betty, and Miss Piggy were the chillest of the bunch never gave Danny any trouble when feeding them and always made a point that they loved their new mudbath installation that Danny made for them on his first 2 days on the farm.

A month after arriving at the farm house Danny noticed that mark was missing. Danny looked everywhere around the property and saw him from afar, at the road. So Danny did the sensible thing anyone would do when spotting a run away pet, and that is call their name at the top of your lungs whilst running after them.

naturally Mark the escape artist run the opposite direction. By the time Danny caught up to him Danny didn't recognize the house he was infant off. So with Mark comfortably in his arms He swears he can see a smug look on marks face. Danny turned away from the house to start his walk back to the farm, but he was met with a kid his age looking at him with distrust.

"Ehhh look kid Im sorry to have crossed the properties border but Mark here" Danny made a point to acentuate Mark in his arms "Runaway from me this morning and I've been trying to catch him ever since, anyways I need to go feed the girls"

The kid starred at him for a second "OMG your from the new family in Mr.duncans farm right? in Aver ST.?" and wow the kid was like a ray of sunshine.

"Yea-" Danny could even finish his sentence before the kid cut him off by starting to talk a mile a minute about how he was so exited to meet people his age that lived near by and how farm chores were harder that normal house chores.

"Jon, give him time to respond. Im Damian this is Jon" Danny jumped he hadn't noticed the second kid at all

"Oh yeah... sorry about that what's your name?" The kid (Jon) slightly less enthusiasm, a bit embarrassed if his tone of voice was anything to get by.

"Danny, Im 15" he responded before he started walking away after all he did need to get in time to feed the chickens unless he wants to suffer their furry. Danny shuddered at the memory that popped up in his head.

"Wait!!! I just thought we could be friends cause we live close by u know" Jon said catching up with Dannys steps. Damian was following from behind.

"Sure kid I don't care" Dannys voice was monotone much like it had been for months.

"Hey were not kids for your information, Im 14 and Damians 16 soon to be 17, so if anything you night be the actual kid!" Danny chuckled slightly it was more similar to releasing air from his lips than a laugh.

Soon a quite and enjoyable science encompassed the group as they went to Dannys home.

"Hmm... you're hold on Mark is adequate and the your determination for getting home in time for feeding is acceptable" Damian spoke up after a while of the passive silence.

"yeah and what is It to you" Danny was slightly urked by Damians default setting speach. He told him as such.

Jon blanched before erupting into giggles that sent him to lay down on the grass uncontrollably laughing. Damians right eyebrow quirked up in what Danny assumed was amusement.

Thus a new friendship grew that day.

They often gathered at Dannys or Jons yard to have picnic in the weekends (as Damian and Jon has school in Metropolis on week days) and hangout with the animals. Danny found out that Damian was a vegetarian and that he had various animals at home. One time he brought his Great Dane Titus, who bodied Danny on sight to give him kisses.

Also Damian was Damian Wayne as in bruce Wayne, Batman sugar daddy. When he said that, Jons milk flew out of his nose and Damian choked on his cucumber wrap. Even Titus gave him a judgemental stare.

Slowly Danny started to smile more, laugh every so often. And things were feeling so much better after not being able to feel anything for a while.

Jazz, Aunt Alicia and especially Maddie and Jack felt so relived to see that Danny was slowly coming back to them.

Danny to this day backs the fact that Mark knew something and planned the whole thing.

[melodyglow-blog]

Why i think Dabi / Touya is still alive after chapter 430

#spoilers ahead

Ok first of all,this shit was so ass, i dont even wanna think about how the final chapter looks like it was set in a dark AU ending where nothing changes and rei looks older than ever, still pushing enjis wheelchair for the past 8 years🤮, shoto being a workaholic (and soon being num ONE). Shouldnt he be more focused on his friendships??

Plus, no mention of his siblings that his arc has been working on reconnecting him with. 🤮 So like...Enji won? Shoto will be number one after all wtff..

But id rather think about the fact that touya could still be alive after the timeskip. Here are a few reasons why..

No gravestone shown, no image of a shrine or a burial, hell..no mention of his death AT ALL unlike with toga or shigaraki, erasers friend and midnight...hell, deku even hallucinates shiggy. If touya was truly dead i feel like we wouldve seen a panel of his shrine or ANY indication if his death.

Society and tech have improved so much that quirkless deku can be a hero, so theres no way that touya, with a partial healing ice quirk isnt kept alive.

He was last shown to be 'slowly marching towards death' like BITCH thats literally what being alive is, we are all slowly marching towards death😭

This man is allergic to dying and i do believe that hori left his outcome ambiguous for a reason, if hori wanted to show touya dead he 100% would.

Shoto smiling..like bro would be smiling like that after his oldest brother passed away, like i said, intentionally hori is avoiding any mention of Touya, even natuso is not shown or mentioned, just that shoto has become a workaholic and on his way to being number one...

Plus the panel text is from Deku's pov. So its not todoroki's internal monolouge thats revealed, only his expression and hopefully thats an indicator that his siblings are ok.

Hori has 100% lost the plot lmao, the ending is so convoluted and out of character that theres simply no in universe reason why Touya would be straight up dead. Making shoto mention his father instead of his brothers or sister or MOTHER was certainly a choice🤮🤮🤮.

Old rei pushing enjis wheelchair is sickening and i dont wanna believe that shes still his maid if she has had to mourn touya a second time, its gross and literally a dark au cause wtf.

Since none of shotos siblings were mentioned, this empty space of detail lets us assume that shoto isnt stressing about them. If touya was dead we would see him visiting his shrine, in japanese culture, visiting gravestones and praying to shrines of the dead is symbollic.

I firmly believe that hori either got seriously sick (he said his ears were leaking fluid) or got pressured by his team (he said he cried when his management made him scrap an extra comic page he drew of dabi and sceptic on the past) , i believe that at this point, he didnt have a lot of creative control over his work and wasnt allowed to dedicate more panels to the LOV. HE HAD to prioritise enji and the characters at the top of the poll. When touya came 4th on the final poll, it was too late, his story became enji's story even though hori confessed that he had initially written enji to be killed off in the high end nomu fight.

The story is such a retconned mess, theres no way he wasnt planning shiggy and touya to be SAVED physically, literally touyas last panel is of him crying alone lmaoo.

IN BOTH of Horikoshi's previous serialized series the villains lived and got to reform and atone at the end..

But yeah, my end verdict is that hori intentionally didnt mention touya for the fans to theorise about him living💀

BONUS ~ i saw a post mentioning this, There is also a throwaway panel of the Doctor "curing the uncurable" - which could refer to Touya

[papiliomame]

Road to 3D- Sam Manson (Part 2):

Character Modeling

Part 1: Model Sheet

Welcome to the second and final part of this project. Since people have asked how I do my models, I decided to make a write-up on how I approach these things using the example of a model of Sam Manson. The first part focused on how I make a model sheet fo a 3d model the second part focus just on the modeling. There are many more things about how to create a fully realized 3d character that I could make whole other chapters for, like UV unwrapping, texturing, shading and rigging, but I don't have enough knowledge past the fundamentals on these topics that could warrant their own seperate posts.

Additional stuff before I continue:

I use Blender for all my model

This not a beginners guide or something similar, it would be helpful to already know the general workflow of a modeling, how to use Blender and know different terminology like edgeflow, retopology etc.

If you are a beginner and want to learn more about character modeling I recommend the videoseries "Modeling for Animation" by Dikko on Youtube

Maybe I make some reference some tricks from this videoseries

That's it, let's go!

My first step is always the block-out phase. The block-out phase is what the construction lines and the first sketch in a drawing are. I align the frontview and sideview from the model sheet I made in part 1 with the z-axis (the blue line in the images above) and roughly shape out the forms with primitive forms. For this I mostly use a cube with a subdivide modifier.

Having a modelsheet without the clothes obscuring the body makes it much easier the get the form right. The block-out phase is one of the most important steps, if it looks good than I have practically half the work done. This is also a good opportunity to practice anatomy.

After this stage I continue with the head. First of all, don't forget to add the mirror modifier so I just need to model half of the model. There are different methods to approach modeling the head, like sculpt the head first, retopologize and than bake all the deatails onto the retopologized head. I actually prefer to polymodel the head especially when I have a good model sheet. I practially trace the lineart from the model sheet by extruding vertices, once from the frontview and once from the sideview. The most important points are the form of the eyes, the mouth, the form of the face and the jawline. The head block-out is used as an anchor point for the shrinkwrap modifier so that the traced forms actually look like they belong to a 3d form and not 2d lines floating space. From this point on it's just connecting everything, pull and push vertices so it looks like a 3d head and make sure the edgeflow is good. (It's also helpful to know how the planes of the head look like) After that I add the eyelashes, eyebrow, eyes and the ears, now it looks like something!

Now comes the hair. For the hair I used the "curve trick" like mentioned in the video series I recommended. Here is a tip to save time: I choose some edges from the head, duplicate and seperate it from the mesh. I convert this seperated line into a curve and choose a beziercircle as a bevel geometry. This is now the perfect foundation to model the hair further. One thing I needed a long time to notice: To get the beziercircle to a perfect square or in this case a triangle lower the Resolution U to 1 in the shape options. Now I just convert the curves into a mesh and add details and the head is done!

With the head finished I continue with the body. Remember how I wrote with a good block-out half of the work ist finished? Well, for this step I practically just use the smooth brush in sculpt mode and smooth everything out so everything looks connected. Then I retopologize the body and that's it. Well, ok there is a little bit more to it: Before smoothing things out I join the block-out part to a single mesh and remesh it with the remash modifier expept for the hands. I prefer to polymodel the hands seperatly without worrying about the rest of the body because they are difficult to model. I reattach them later. Speaking of reattaching, I make sure that the connection points have the same number of vertices while I retopologize/polymodel. To ensure that, I often use the following trick visualized with a simple example ( which is also described in the video series):

I want to reduce the amount of edges at the bottom of this plane, for this I merge 3 vertices from the middle into 1 vertice seen in the left image. After that I can select the blue marked edges from the center image and dissolve them. The result, which you can see on the right, is a nice clean edgeflow with a reduction in the number of edges.

After modeling every part I attach them together and I have a finished bodymesh the work with.

Now onto the clothes, for this I use the model sheet with clothes as reference. Having a retopologized body makes it easier to model simple stuff like e.g. Sam's shirt. On the left image the marked faces of the the bodymesh already looks like a shirt. I just need to duplicate and seperate this area, clean it up a little and the shirt is basically finished. The more complex stuff like the boots I need to polymodel around the bodymesh.

With that the modeling part is done! Now comes the things I said above: uv unwrapping, texture painting, rigging and shading. These are whole other topics I cannot go deeper because I'm still learning how to do these things but I hope my little write-up about how I appoach character modeling was enough to learn one thing or two.

Thank you for your time and thank for reading!

[navstuffs]

Heart to-go

Pairing: RE2Barista!Leon x GN!Reader

Summary: You hate coffee. Of course with your luck, you end up falling in love with a cute blushing barista.

Warnings: COFFEE SHOP AU, SUPER FLUFF, blushing leon, tooth-rotting fanfic, reader DOES NOT like coffee (i could never), reader/leon are clueless and shy, sabrina and gabriel are names used in this fic, image taken from google

Author's Notes: hey, im back (sorta?kinda?). i had this fanfic saved for a while and since i haven't been able to produce new material, i decided to edit and post some of my old drafts. i plan on posting the other coffee shop au - nsfw version, but from now i hope you enjoy reading this one!

If someone told you before that you would visit a coffee shop and actually order the same cup of coffee every day, you would laugh at their faces. You don't like coffee, period. There is something about the smell or taste you just don't like it. Warm, cold, sweet, unsweet, with chocolate, you tried it all. It just isn't your thing, which made some people look at you as an E.T. sometimes, but hey, to each its own, right?

Your co-worker Sabrina is the one who invites you out to a popular coffee shop nearby your work. Before you even attempt to say no, Sabrina explains that yes, there were other drink options and some delicious pastries, like "some of the best brownies" she had eaten her entire life.

So you agree, with the promise you wouldn't regret it.

There is no line when you enter, around 5 pm. You pass this coffee shop often going to work, the smell strong in your nose if the door is open. You never entered, of course, but now inside, you must admit it looked cozy. A lot of natural light comes from the big windows in the front, illuminating the entire space. There are tables and chairs, at this time empty, compared to how full and hectic they could get in the morning.

As Sabrina orders her long order, your eyes wander the menu, written behind the counter on a giant blackboard. They had other options, as Sabrina explained before, such as handmade Italian sodas and some juices. When Sabrina is done, you turn your attention to the very attractive cashier. The kind you see on the cover of magazines, like a model or something. And cute. He has innocent blue eyes, a soft face, and blonde hair under the black cap. Your eyes glimpse at his name tag, "Leon," as he waits for your order.

"What do you want?"

And the words come out of your mouth before you can even think, something you would never have ordered in a million years.  

"A coffee?" 

You can feel Sabrina's neck twist, shocked. You ignore her, ignore how your voice went two higher tones than it should, focused on Leon, who continues smiling, patiently waiting for the rest.

"Sure, which one?"

"Coffee?" Your eyes roam around the many, many names and sizes as if you know what all those names mean, and you decide to risk it all. "How about your favorite order?"

Leon's eyes widen briefly before a faint red tone rises to his cheeks. He chuckles, surprised, before placing the order on the computer. 

"Right, okay then, my favorite order. Anything else?"

"Nothing, that will be it."

You pay your bill without looking up. Sabrina looks semi-concerned and amused when you are done ordering, a strange smile on her face.

"Are you okay?"

"I panicked," You whisper, hoping Leon can't hear the panic in your voice as you pull her to a table before she can start asking more questions.

You sit to wait for your order, and you notice Leon and another young blonde lady behind the counter. He seems to be blushing about something she says, and you wonder if that wasn't the most adorable thing you've ever seen.

"You are staring," Sabrina warns, her voice denoting humor. Why does it sound like Sabrina is having fun with your misery? You look out the window to the traffic slowing down since it is the end of the afternoon. When your order finally arrives, you turn excited, expecting to see Leon but being greeted by Ashley's happy face.

"Enjoy!" Ashley exclaims before leaving. You grab your small cup of warm coffee with a top layer of foam on it. It smells like cinnamon and vanilla. You really, really don't want to drink it.

"Careful now, Leon is watching," Sabrina teases, making you turn to look for Leon. He is indeed staring at you, his blue eyes filled with expectation. When he catches you looking, he turns his face away, a deep blush on his cheeks, too focused on cleaning something behind him.

"I can do this." You tell yourself, taking a sip from the cup. Yeap, still bad. Still bad as the first time you tried it. You drink another small sip because Leon could still be watching before placing the cup on the table. "I don't think I can do this." You confess in a whisper to Sabrina, who doesn't answer. She giggles, drinking her coffee as water. She saves you the dignity to not tease you anymore, at least.

Noticing she wouldn't be any help, you take small sips while listening to Sabrina's news. It was easier to drink while she talked so that you could ignore the sour taste in your mouth.

When your cup is finally empty, you sigh in relief. You have done it. You are NOT disappointing any cute blushy barista today. Leon appears at the side of the table, eyes filled with expectation.

"How was it?"

"It was so good. My friend over here loved it, right? Right?" Sabrina smiles happily in your direction. You want to strangle her, but you nod, smirking instead.

"Perfect, Leon. Thank you."

Leon's eyes lock on you, and you stare back, starstruck. No one should be allowed to be this charming. His smile lights up his entire face, making him look even more special. The type you could fall in love with if you aren't careful enough.

"I will get those for you, then," He cleans the table, then leaves, nodding in your direction. When he is out of a safe distance, Sabrina sings low.

"I think he likes you!"

"Shut up, Sabrina!"

-x-

After that, you start to visit the coffee. Daily. You get to meet the rest of the employees: Luis, a handsome man with a captivating smile who constantly flirts with you. You already know Ashley, a young college student who is always excited to see you. And well, there is Leon. It is odd how you click so fast with Luis and Ashley; you could joke with them as much as you wanted, but things worked a little differently when it came to Leon. He made you nervous.

He always welcomes you with a warm smile and treats you with respect. You tried to tease Leon once, but it died in your throat when you watched his expression. He just looked so innocent, you just didn't want him to dislike something you did or said. What if he misinterpreted?

You also continue ordering the same coffee. Your newfound trick to not throw it away? Take it to work and give it to Sabrina. You know you are wasting money, but Leon's smile is worth every cent, especially when you place the money on the counter for "Leon's order". Like one morning, two weeks after your first visit, you enter the shop, and it is Luis at the register.

"Hello, pretty thing. Same order?" Luis asks, winking. 

"You know me, Luis, I am loyal." 

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Luis sighs, pretending to be disappointed. Ashley waves in your direction when she sees you, asking. "Let me guess, another Leon's order to go?"

"You know, it is my dream. One of those days, you will enter those doors and ask 'Can I get Luis's order or maybe Ashley's?" Luis teases, "No, it must always be Leon's order. I have started to wonder why."

"I like his coffee," You whisper in your defense. Luis smiles, knowing exactly what you like. He points to Leon's back, too focused on a coffee maker. "Your boyfriend is waiting."

You show off your tongue, rolling your eyes and going toward Leon. He guides a cup of steaming milk into a to-go cup, almost as if he is drawing. You don't say anything, watching his concentrated face as he finishes. Every inch of his attention to whatever he is drawing. When Leon is done, he turns toward you, opening a smile.

"H-hey. Here it is."

He puts the to-go cup in front of you, uncovered. You find it weird but don't discuss it.

"Morning. Thank you. My favorite, as always." You grab a lid nearby, closing it. Leon seems disappointed but doesn't say anything. You quickly take a sip, holding back a scowl. "Perfect as always, Leon. Thank you. I don't even know where I would be without Leon's every morning... Leon's order, I mean!"

The frown is gone, and Leon smiles timidly, blushing. Of course, you must embarrass yourself in front of him, but honestly, you don't mind. Your mornings always got much better after seeing his smile. You leave the coffee, waving bye to Ashley and Luis. When you are gone, Ashley and Luis surround Leon, too curious.

"Did they see it this time?" Luis wonders.

"No."

"Such a nice person, but so clueless," Ashley sighs, holding her chin. "Maybe you should just try writing your phone number on the cup, it would be more direct."

"Or maybe they don't like me that much..." Leon declares, making his co-workers groan.

"Not this again, Leon."

-x-

Three weeks pass like that. You go in, say hi to Ashley and Luis, get your coffee with Leon, smile at each other, and leave for work. There is some teasing here and there from Ashley and Luis, you tease back, and that is it. You wonder if you should get a different order, but Sabrina seems happy enough with the coffee, you are happy enough to see Leon, so it works.

The next morning, you enter the café to find Ashley organizing a casket of brownies. After greeting each other, you grab one from the basket. So those were the limited edition brownies Sabrina always talked about.

"Hey, Ashley, are those the famous delicious brownies?"

"Yeah. Made by an extraordinary chef, but I can't reveal his identity. It is top secret."

"Can I get one? And also a Le-"

"Leon's order? Yes, yes, I know," She groans, sounding tired. Leon appears from the back office, opening his usual smile when he sees you. You like to think it is your special smile, but it is probably how he smiles at every single client.

"Hey."

"Morning, Leon."

He starts preparing your drink the way he always does. You wonder if Leon is bored or if he can even make it with his eyes closed. Maybe you should ask him if his favorite order has even changed next time? As you watch Leon work, you give a big bite to the brownie. It is delicious. The perfect balance between chocolate and sweetness. 

"Ashley, those are so freaking good!" You exclaim, bringing her attention back to you.

"Oh really? Our chef will love to hear that!" Ashley says with a suggestive tone, giving a quick side look to Leon. You finish the brownie in a few bites as Leon puts your cup on the counter, his cheeks painted red. Again your cup is uncovered. You grab the lid and close it. It has become a ritual by now. 

"Thanks again, Leon."

When you look up at him, Leon has a different expression in his eyes. He blushes, no more than he usually does, his hand raised. Before you can ask what is wrong, he places his hand over yours on the cup lid. His hand is warm, probably normal for someone working with hot drinks all the time. You don't say anything, waiting. Leon seems to be waiting as well, for you to say anything. Neither of you does, and the moment is broken when the door opens, a huge group of women coming in.

"Sorry, I don't know—" 

"Bye!" You rush out of those doors, not looking back.

Well, that was certainly odd, you think. Leon has never touched you before. It seems that he wanted to tell you something, but at the same time, he was waiting for you to say something? When you get to work ten minutes later, the cup still warm in your hands, you search for Sabrina, not finding her. Gabriel, your other co-worker, explains she is sick.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Nasty flu."

"Oh, okay. I will message her later then."

You look at the cup in your hands to her empty table before asking Gabriel.

"Hey, do you want some coffee?"

"Free? Don't mind if I do! What has on it?"

"I guess coffee, milk, cinnamon? I don't really know."

"You don't know?" Gabriel asks, grabbing the cup from you. "You don't know what is in your cup? Here, let me smell it, I have an excellent sense of smell." He opens the lid to smell it and exclaims, "Awn, this is cute."

"What?"

"The heart."

"What heart?"

Gabriel carefully gets the cup to show you a heart drawing on top. You want to hit yourself in the head; is that what Leon has been doing? That's why he held your hand this morning to show the heart? No, it couldn't be. When Gabriel starts taking the cup to his mouth, you pull the cup back, placing the lid.

"Sorry, Gabriel, gotta go! I will return with another one!"

You rush back to the store, holding the cup firmly. Maybe, just maybe, Leon has been drawing those for you only, and you always close the lid? Maybe this is what he was trying to tell you this morning. What if Leon draws a heart for everyone? Shouldn't you be paying for that? What if—? No, no time to think of that. Perhaps this is your chance. You enter the shop, gasping for air. Ashley is nowhere around, and Leon is dusting around the table. When he sees you, his brows furrow, but he doesn't hesitate to get close to you.

"Are you okay? Something wrong?" Leon sounds concerned, his eyes scanning you.

You try to speak, still catching your breath. You pull the lid, triumphant.

"What does this mean?" 

When you two look at the cup, the drawing is gone. There is just a mess of brown liquid, smelling like vanilla and cinnamon. You can't believe it. You turn to Leon, pointing at the cup and him, your mouth opening and closing.

"Have you been drawing hearts in my cup this whole time?"

"I have." He admits, blushing. 

"Thanks?" Jeez, you couldn't come with something better. Leon nods as if understanding before starting to turn away. "No, wait, please, I mean, I like them. A lot."

His face lights up, and you wonder how someone can look so adorable. It is so unfair for you poor heart.

"Tha-that's good, then. I was wondering when you would see them."

"Well, 'cause the lady who drinks my coffee doesn't open the cups!" You try to explain to him, biting your tongue. Leon waits, confused. "Yeah, I don't like coffee," You finally confess your secret somberly, like a sinner talking to a priest.

"So wait. You don't like coffee and keep ordering it? Why?"

Well, now it is your turn to feel your face burning. Realization passes through Leon's face, and he starts stuttering something before three older ladies walk in, going directly to the cashier. He grabs your cup, his heart thumping as he rushes to write something. When Leon gives you back, you see his number written in black ink.

"Ca-can we discuss this better later tonight? If you want to, of course," Leon asks. You nod. "Then you can tell me all about your hate for coffee."

"I would love to."

[kozachenko]

(Click the image for better quality)

Yipeeee that Keiki and Mayumi fanart I posted the WIP of is finally done woooo- This piece was a very experimental one that I'm kind of OK on. Maybe because I've just gone insane looking at it for so long and I'm my own worst critic lol.

Artist's Notes;

So I've once again been playing around with my rendering style, mainly because I have been wanting to improve my lighting for a while now and as I was just scrolling through Tumblr, I saw some of the official art for that one webcomic-turned-animated-TV-Show Lackadaisy and was immediately inspired. I also have seen a technique a few times in the past where the lineart and shading are merged together, so I've been meaning to try that for a little while.

I did some experimentation on this one sketch of Keiki I posted in my sketch dump and I really liked the results of it, so I carried those over to this piece.

I ended up scaling up Keiki and Mayumi from the original WIP because I felt like they were both getting lost in the composition, and I'm glad for that because I think it works a lot better. I'm not a fan of how Mayumi's sword turned out at all, but it's not really meant to be the focus of the piece so eh. Overall, I think I could do better with my colours, probably because with Keiki and Mayumi's colours, I did them flat in greyscale and then used a brush on the overlay blend mode to colour all of them over, after which I changed the base layer for their colours from white to yellow and then lowered the opacity so it all went together better. I also decided to use gradient maps for a lot of the background elements, mainly to experiment with getting in my values first to make them pop out more. I ended up finding a really nice sky gradient on Clip Studio Paint that I really liked, and that kinda helped to establish the colour scheme of the background a lot. I think the whole "start in greyscale then colour" thing really works better with painterly styles rather than more illustrative ones, and while it is good at making sure your values are more readable, I honestly don't think I have the skill level to pull that off yet. Honestly, I think I've been looking at this drawing too long or maybe I added too much to it, but I wish I could've made the colours less monochromatic, but I'll just save that for the next piece I do.

I do love how the flame (...well it's more of a weird space rift than anything in this piece) and the lighting turned out, those were fun to do. I was initially struggling with the flame and how Mayumi is positioned in front of it before realizing "Oh wait! This is a weird abstraction of a weird creature! I don't have to follow the laws of anatomy!" and just dislocated it's flamey bottom jaw from the main body. I also changed the colours of it since I was really not liking how incredibly bright it was when it had lighter colours. Again, the gradient maps served the more painterly style of the flames well.

I also love how Mayumi turned out. I could do her sleeves better but that's more of just me needing to study how those types of sleeves fold in that position more. I'm also very happy with the posing, the technique I used for that was taking photos of myself in the positions I wanted, blocking in the silhouette and then modifying that by adjusting it to my lines of action that I drew on top of the original photos, and then sketching over the silhouettes and drawing in the shapes of the hands overtop of the photo if I needed to get the fine details right. As for what I do to take the pictures myself, I use a tall chair I have, prop up my phone with a phone stand, put on a ten second timer and scramble to get in position. Yes, I did have to use a bunch of thin markers I had to try and get the hand positioning on Keiki's pose right, yes I do have a fake sword that I used to get the positioning of Mayumi's arms and hand right, the sword was for an old Halloween costume from several years ago. I really like how both Keiki and Mayumi turned out in this drawing, I'll have to play around with these designs for them more in future drawings.

Also, if you wanna know why I draw buildings like that, when I watched Fantasia 2000 as a kid (One of the Disney movies where they make really beautiful animations to classical music) the way they drew the buildings in the first few sections Rhapsody in Blue segment (the jazz one with the cities) changed my brain chemistry and now whenever I need to draw buildings really quickly, I refer back to that. Since the buildings aren't really the main subject, I didn't put much thought into them.

As you can tell I am very tired of this piece, mainly because I made things harder for myself by overcomplicating the process compared to what I usually do, mainly with the whole "starting in grayscale then adding colour." I'd honestly just prefer having a black layer set to colour that I can just toggle on and off when I need to see the values, but it was good to experiment. And that was mainly the point of this whole drawing, to experiment. I'm definitely going to have to play around with this new style I'm going for, mainly because I liked how it turned out a lot in the augmented Keiki sketch, and also because I want to find ways of making it suit my style more. I also really want to keep experimenting with my lighting like this, it's very fun. Last but not least I am never starting in greyscale again because dear god I do not like the workflow it forced me into. I don't have a problem with the method itself it's mainly just a skill issue lol.

If you wanna read my headcanons for these two, I put them in my WIP post, so you can read them there if you want to. The more I look at this the more I prefer the simplicity of my WIP. I might go back to this and just take away the fancy colours and effects to see what it looks like without all of that stuff and reblog this post with that drawing, but for now, I don't think I can look at this drawing again for a while.

[copperbadge]

Amateur Translation Programs

So I had a lot of imaginative and informative responses to my post about looking for an amateur translation program -- something where I could load in a foreign language and it would insert a box where I could add a translation every-other-line. The idea was that this way I could practice translation with more advanced texts, and texts I chose, and thus move away from Duolingo, which at this point is good for drilling and daily practice but not for more advanced learning.

I didn't find precisely what was needed but I did get some inspiration for further explanation, and I also learned that adding the term "glossing" (thank you @thewalrus-said) into my searches helped a great deal in terms of weeding out programs that were either "Let this AI translate for you" or just endless promotional links for Babbel and Duolingo and such. I thought I'd collect up the suggestions and post them here; at the end I'm including my best swing at designing what I wanted, and why it doesn't work yet.

Suggestion one, from many people, was various ways to generate a page that is simply fixed Italian text with space underneath each line to add in a translation. This is pretty simple as a process and there are sites that will do it for you, such as this one that @ame-kage suggested. However, most of these don't allow for movement in the Italian text, and many produce a PDF which you would need to print out in order to write on unless you're willing to open it in Acrobat (and deal with Acrobat). A good solution for some but not what I'm looking for purely because I'm trying to make this super frictionless so that (knowing myself as I do) I will actually do it.

I did find this version interesting, suggested by @drivemetogeek: Have one word doc saved as your "template" doc and set the line spacing as 2.0 or higher. Select your text from source and paste it into the template doc as text-only. Ctrl a, ctrl c to select all and copy, then open a new document and "paste special" as picture. Right click and set the "wrap text" as behind text. Now you have a document where you can, basically, type over the existing text because it's the background of the page. This seems like the most frictionless version, because you could set up a bunch of them ahead of time. If you wanted to move between desktop and mobile, however, you'd need to ensure that the pasted image was fairly narrow so that you don't have to sideways-scroll.

Relatedly, people suggested generating a document that is simply the Italian text with empty space beneath it for typing in of the translation. This can be done either semi-automated, using a macro or a language like Python, or find-and-replace on, say, the stops at the ends of sentences. It basically outputs the same as above but with a more digitally accessible format, without any more effort than above. If you were to do this in Google Sheets you could also fix the column width so that it didn't do anything weird when you opened it on your phone. But it is still very friction-y, and does not allow for easy shifting of the Italian as needed. There's high probability of the translation breaking weirdly across the page. Still a top option in terms of simplicity and access.

@smokeandholograms suggested another variation illustrated here where essentially you're converting the text to a series of tables, with each paragraph a row, and an empty cell next to it for the translation. I might play around more with this one eventually, since I think I could possibly make it a three-column and put the Italian in one, the translation in the next, and the auto-translate to let me know where I might be slipping in the third. (Not that I trust auto-translate but comparing a hand translation to an auto translation can be useful in terms of working out when I've messed up the way a tense or mood is read. I tend to read indirect verbs as automatically imperative because I'm a weirdo.)

@wynjara linked to an add-in for Word specifically designed for translators, known as TransTools; this appears to employ a macro to do the same thing, though it does have a format where you can place the translation next to each sentence directly rather than in a separate cell. The full suite of tools is only $45 which is reasonable for my budget, but for what I need I think I could also just create the macro.

Using LaTeX as a tool specially designed for glossing was an option on offer, but I don't know enough about LaTeX to figure out the pros of this one, which is in itself the major con -- there's a learning curve that I think varies widely by person but for me is unfortunately a wall. It came out of a discussion on Reddit about trying to find something like what I want; also in that discussion is a link to a code generator that allows you to…do something…to the initial language, but it's not entirely clear to me (I'm sure it's clear to people who understand coding) what you would then do with it that would allow it to be output in the way I'm hoping for. Like, I could turn a paragraph of text into HTML, I understand that far, but any Italian I find is already on a website.

Moving more into apps that might work, Redditors on the LaTeX discussion suggested SIL Fieldworks, which is a professional language tech tool. Fieldworks isn't a program I'd previously encountered but much as with the ones I had, it looks like the learning curve is fairly steep and it is definitely overkill generally for what I need, though it might also harbor within it the thing I want. It is free, so I may download and play around with it.

@brightwanderer suggested using note-taking or "whiteboard" apps such as Freeform or Nebo; these are generally a kind of "infinite canvas" in which you can drop objects, text boxes, or handwriting. I don't know that Freeform would be measurably different to just using Word and a macro, since I'd still have to input/format all the text and then be stuck with the same "fixed text" setup -- and it's also iOS only -- but for some folks it might be more helpful. Nebo is a similar infinite-canvas with unfortunately the same issues, though on the plus it's available for Android, which is where most of my mobile property resides.

@bloodbright suggested that I was looking for a CAT tool, a professional translation tool mainly used by translators working in the field. This was a concept I'd encountered, but I hadn't found a good starting place. They suggested Smartcat and OmegaT. Smartcat bills itself as an AI translation platform and is HARD pushing the "don't translate it yourself, hire a translator or let AI do it" angle, so it's difficult to tell what it offers in terms of actual tools for translators, and it's also cagey about pricing, so I can't really evaluate it. OmegaT is free and gives off big "some weirdo homebrewed this in their basement" vibe (which I am here for) but I also recognized it from screengrabs that were the reason I veered away from professional-grade software: it looked too complex. Realistically, the major downside of OmegaT is that I don't think I can put it on my phone. One thing I did find interesting is that once you translate a portion of the text, the original language goes away, though I assume you can turn that off if needed. I do kind of like that because it means my distractable brain is looking at Less Stuff.

So where did I end up?

Well, it looked like I was going to have to try a homebrew myself. I had the idea of trying some of the initial suggestions but in reverse -- designing a document where every other line was a single-cell table fixed to the page. You could paste in the Italian, which would wrap around the cells, and then enter the English in the cells.

You can fix a table in place in Google Docs -- you click on the table, then under Table > Style select Wrap Text, Both Sides, and Fix On Page. Getting the whole page set up is a little labor intensive but once you did that, you could just save it as a template and make a duplicate of it each time. And this actually works….on desktop.

Unfortunately, if you open it in the mobile Docs app, the app can't handle the fixed tables and automatically moves them all to after the text that's been pasted in. I tried redesigning it so that it's a table within a table -- one for the Italian, then within that a series of them for the English -- but when you nest a table in Google Docs, it doesn't let you fix the second table in place. And you are also still dealing with the wrap issue, although you can resize the page and add a large right-hand margin as a kludge of a fix for that.

You can build this same kind of document in Word, so I tried building one in Word and then uploading it to Drive, but when you open the Word file in Docs (or in Microsoft Word for Android), it still strips the fixed positioning -- there's just some functionality missing from both apps that doesn't allow them to handle fixed-position tables.

So, the design is sound, just not the final execution. If I could program an app, I could probably remedy the issues with it -- it's simply a series of text boxes nested inside one another with different formatting. I would imagine that's relatively basic to set up, although given that neither Docs nor Word can handle fixed tables in mobile, perhaps I've stumbled on a much bigger problem that everyone is ignoring because nobody actually needs or wants fixed tables in mobile. :D

Experimentation is ongoing, anyway. I might simply have to resign myself to the fact that my translation study is going to have to be in front of a computer, which might be for the best anyway when I inevitably want to compare my translation to an auto-translate to see where I might have read something wrong.

[silent-sanctum]

I hope you're doing fine mijin🤩💗....

Can I request a fic where the stone ocean group survives and jotaro meets his wife(the reader) or ex wife that's upto you

Aha! A 2-for-1 special! Also, hiya @jotarosimpforever and to you too anon 👋 I'm doing fine thank you! Sorry it took this long to answer your requests, I'm currently on vacation so I was busy doing stuff 🫡 But here it is! A post-Stone Ocean fic featuring domestic times with our favorite DILF 6taro 😘 Hope you enjoy ♡

Way Home - Part 6! Jotaro x Reader

word count: 3.3k

“Breaking news: The recent events people termed as the “Shifting Skies Phenomenon” comes to an abrupt halt, resulting in mass casualty midst the confusion of countless civilians worldwide”

The scene was in complete chaos just the way it was for the past few hours. Where it was due to destruction as the heavens changed hues, from burning autumn to midnight void and back in a blink of the eye, now everything and everyone were in complete loss of control, emergency respondents dispatched to numerous vehicular accidents and spontaneous locations with crowds sporting spontaneous injuries.

Where others wouldn’t know what else to brand this phenomenon but “otherworldly”, you knew it as a catastrophic Stand attack.

And you’d come to know these information because of none other than your own husband- A solitary individual who opted to keep his responsibilities a secret from the people he loved, to sacrifice his happiness and suffer a life of “kill-or-be-killed” if it meant giving his family the normal life he could never have.

If it weren’t for circumstances that got yourself involved in one of these Stand encounters, you wouldn’t find yourself falling into the rabbit hole that was learning the nature of Stands, and eventually taking up a managerial role in an exclusive private organization as one of their agents. If it weren’t for that eventful day, you wouldn’t be able to meet Jotaro.

That stoic, abrasive, yet loving man…

Images of him smiling at you with fondness glazing his sharp blue eyes flashed in your mind as you imagined the same man charging head first into the battlefield to save and protect his and your only daughter from this grand scale threat.

And with the sky and the Earth’s gravity returning back to its usual state, you should be relieved knowing the enemy was defeated.

But without being there to witness how it ended, you gave into overthinking, imagining the repercussions that were dealt to achieve the cost of such victory.

As if snapping back to reality, you found yourself running through a plethora of bustling Speedwagon Foundation employees, almost crazed and frantic. The organization was just as rushed and busy as the rest of the world was with one half of the Foundation attempting to get shit under control by getting in-contact with non-government networks for aid and support, and the other half accommodating injured civilians to help reduce the local hospitals from overcrowding.

And just as what’s written in paper, you’ve received information that a chopper had just arrived with 2 members of the Joestar family onboard, injured from a fatal fight. You wasted not even a split second to bolt from the safety of your room and here in the private foundation’s building.

You rounded a corner, pushing past a couple more of people until you were met with a signage that read “Medical Wing”. You’ve studied the place’s layout enough times since Jotaro first brought you here during your orientation. While the place crowded with panicked and wounded civilians, you knew that the Foundation had exclusive areas and services reserved for the convenience of the Joestar bloodline.

Frustrated, you were desperate enough to seek the first nurse you could see and ask where her family was, but you’d find out that wouldn’t happen. Your hurried steps led you to the emergency room and instead of a random nurse, your attention landed on a teenage girl with messy space buns and torn clothing sitting on one of the benches lining the hallway leading to the operating room.

With one arm in a cast and her waist bandaged, the young girl had her free hand curled into a fist, head bowed as she struggled to hold back her sobs.

At the sight of her, your eyes welled up with tears. “Jolyne…”

In an instant, she jerked her head upright at the sound of her name. It took her a couple of seconds before she saw you standing a few feet away from her. Like mother and daughter, Jolyne’s face crumpled into one of sadness, the tears that she held back now rolling down her cheeks. “Eomma-”

You crossed whatever distance was between you and your child and brought her into a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” she started. “I’m really sorry mom.”

With ease, you withdrew enough for you to do another quick scan over her body. “Are you hurt bad?” You grasped her shoulders with a hand, the other reaching up to cup her wet cheeks. “Does it hurt anywhere?”

Your questions only sent Jolyne into another sob, breaking into tears the second you showed your extreme concerns. “I-I’m fine, but appa-”

You paused. “What… What happened to him?”

“He protected me, my friends, b-but…” She furiously swiped at her eyes despite her sobs. “He’s injured the most. He was bleeding everywhere and now-”

You kept yourself as calm as possible, even if you were on the brink of collapsing yourself. “Where is he?” Jolyne pointed to the double doors leading to the operating room.

Your heart caved in at the thought of your husband laying unconscious being worked on by surgeons and nurses to preserve his life. With a heavy and shaky sigh, you nodded as you willed yourself to not cry in front of your daughter.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do better,” Jolyne cried. “I’m sorry for letting that stupid accident with that asshole happen that led to dad going through all this bullshit for me-”

You quieted her as you pulled her into another hug, softly caressing her head. “It’s not your fault, pearl,” you said with a whisper. She continued to sob as she buried her face on your shoulder. “Your father knows that too.”

Gently, you led your daughter to one of the benches and sat her down with you beside her. Considering you’d thought the worst before arriving at the Foundation, you looked at the closed double doors with a newfound sense of reassurance. Another sigh.

“Let’s just wait and hope for the best.”

---

The consistent beeping of his vitals echoed throughout the dimmed room and you were left alone with Jotaro, still unconscious with half of his face heavily bandaged together with his throat, an oxygen mask fit on his nose and mouth.

Jolyne visited minutes earlier and told you that she’d be checking with how her other friends were doing.

An hour ago, you and Jolyne stood up immediately as soon as the surgeon stepped through the swinging doors. To everyone’s relief, they managed to stabilize him from his critical state.

According to him, your husband had a pre-existing heart condition that caused his pulse rate to beat at irregular, rapid intervals. Combined with the knowledge of him having to exert excessive strength despite waking up from a comatose state and the heavy amount of stress piling up the past few months, his body had chosen to shut down the second his adrenaline depleted.

Thinking about that again made you scoff through your tears. “You were always an impulsive idiot…” Saying those words caused your eyes to swell again and sniffle.

But what’s done was done. The doctors did what they could and all you can do was to sit beside him, holding his hand with both of yours, praying that he’d recover faster, enough for him to wake up and calm your worrying heart.

Without realizing, you ended up falling asleep still sat on your chair by his bed. You didn’t know how long time has passed in your slumber and you couldn’t be bothered to find out. All that mattered right now was staying by your husband’s side, letting him know, in spirit perhaps, that he wasn’t alone and that you were with him now.

In a way you couldn’t perceive, you somehow felt like he was comforting you as well. A comforting chill would brush against your cheeks, hair, shoulders, or hands and you welcomed the sensation like an old friend.

Eventually, time would pass from mere hours to days and throughout it all, you continued to stay where you were- always making sure to watch over him with persisting hope.

Today marked the 15th day since his admission in the Foundation’s infirmary ward. His fresh bandages still wrapped around the half of his face and throat. His assistive oxygenation was removed the week prior once his vitals stabilized within normal range.

By now, you stayed so much in the medical room that your responsibilities started to catch up as evident with the numerous phone calls and text messages alerting you from your pocket. You figured you’d answer a few and explain the circumstances surrounding you and your family.

That time, you stood by the window hoping to receive better signal. You were in the middle of arguing with a non-compliant employee that worked under your supervision, and through their whining in the speaker, you picked up the sheets shifting behind you.

On that cue, you turned around with supposed foolish hope but in clear daylight, there he was- stirring into consciousness, brows furrowing and scrunching as his eye slowly opened.

You never hung up on someone this fast before but you dropped whatever conversation you had and rushed over to Jotaro’s side, immediately reaching to grasp his hand. It took him a bit to adjust to the natural light, but he lolled his head to you and locked eye contact with you.

You exhaled a shaky breath. “Jotaro-ssi?” With a weak baritone voice, he croaked back your name with instant familiarity. Your eyes welled with new tears. Right then and there, he grunted as he struggled to prop himself upright. “W-What are you doing? You just woke up. You’re supposed to rest!”

At this point, you didn’t realize you started crying when you light-heartedly scolded him. You gripped his hand tight with frustration and relief, teardrops spilling onto your skin. He’s awake. Thank god he’s awake. “Do you know how much of an idiot you are?! I told you you shouldn’t jump into dangerous situations so recklessly! And now look at you! You should be taking your time and recover lying down and here you are forcing yourself to sit! You really are an idiot-”

“I missed you.”

Your heart skipped a beat and whatever ramble you had left trailed off into the thin air. Jotaro sat there patiently, watching you wistfully with hooded eyes. In your hand, he turned his palm upwards and interlocked his fingers with yours. He had that usual air of stoicism in his expression, but there was no mistaking the wet sheen glossing over his aquamarine eyes.

That was all it took for you to break into a sob as you gently wrapped your arms around him in a soft embrace. You felt him tuck his face against the crook of your neck, his tears pooling on your skin in silence. “Next time, tell me at least. Alright?”

“Mm…”

“Don’t scare me like that again, you hear?”

“I’m sorry…”

“You ass.”

---

It’s been 6 months since then and after the chaos had settled across the nation, the Kujos returned to their seaside villa, settling in for the time being to adjust to the new life after the time phenomenon.

Slowly but surely, every member of the family began to live their lives the way they wanted to- Jolyne would often leave the house to hang out with her best friend Ermes and potential boyfriend Anasui, one day bringing home a kid in baseball uniform named Emporio waiting to be adopted into the family, you returned to work to help the other agents in the Foundation, and Jotaro begun to resume teaching in university, choosing to take a break from field research to give him time to rest.

And considering the stress of the whole Stand ordeal they had dealt with since they were 17, you could get used to a mundane life like this.

The early morning sun beamed a warm orange, filtered through the curtains before it could touch both you and your husband. You opened your eyes to find yourself side-lying on his arm to face a still-sleeping Jotaro, tucked bare-chested underneath the sheets with his face mushed against the pillows

You huffed and snuggled closer, nuzzling to bury your nose on the crook of his neck. With a feather-light touch, you raised an index finger to gingerly trace the faded scar across his throat, the shallow dents across his collarbone, the scar on his left shoulder, and the one on his abdomen. One-by-one, you took the time to feel the skin of each in contrast to the rest. “You’ve been through so much…”

He stirred possibly from your tiny motions and soon enough, the arm you lied on curled in to pull you into his hold.

You couldn’t help but giggle as you looked up to see your husband glance at you with sleep-ridden eyes. You propped yourself on his chest and with your chin planted on your overlapped hands flat on his pecs, you whispered out a simple, intentionally-cute “Good morning~”

Jotaro smiled back. “Morning.”

“Break day?”

He nodded.

Life never felt so ordinary after what had happened but you could get used to this. Where every moment in this new era, they could live out the rest of their lives as a normal couple with a normal family.

And what’s a better way to start their new lives but with the domesticity of a newlywed pair.

Both you and Jotaro started the day accomplishing your morning routines- you in the bathroom washing up, he on the balcony to simply soak in the early morning sun. You made your way to the dining area where he stood by waiting for you with two steaming mugs of coffee in his hands. You took one, returned the favor with a chaste peck on his cheek, and went over to cook breakfast for the family.

On cue with the smell of bacon and eggs permeating throughout the house, two pairs of footsteps bounded down the stairs and barged into the area.

“Well good morning to you too Jolyne,” you glanced at her companion with a smile. “Emporio.”

“Going out again?” Jotaro said, glancing at the duo. “This early?”

“Ermes is gonna go shopping for the new line of clothes that got released yesterday. She invited me and Emporio over saying it’s going to be ‘her treat’, but I know she’s lying,” Jolyne said, picking up a toast from her plate and another to offer her adopted brother.

“Is that pink-haired guy going?”

“His name’s Anasui dad and no, he’s not going,” she puffed her chest. “It’s girl’s day out today.” You and Jotaro looked at the blond boy beside her. “He’s not tagging along. I’m just dropping off Emporio at the nearby bookstore on the way out.”

“And I can find my way back no problem,” Emporio said as the teenager slowly pulled him with her to the door. “I won’t take too long.”

Jotaro still had his doubts from where he was on his seat, but knowing your little girl was able to survive a life of imprisonment and was able to get around the harsh facility, you smiled at her. “Alright. Be back by 9!”

“I will!”

Once the duo were out of sight, you and Jotaro were left alone to themselves. “Nothing like seeing your kids all grown up, huh?” You said as you took a bite of your eggs. He hummed a sound of acknowledgment. “But that just means we have the day to ourselves.”

At that, your husband couldn’t help but smile.

And just as you said, the rest of today consisted of simply staying indoors and “hanging-out” with each other in a life of old-couple domesticity. You cooked the meals and he washed the dishes. You did the laundry and he helped in folding them. You dusted the shelves and he vacuumed the floors. You picked today’s playlist to listen while doing chores and he chose what movie to watch.

Then there were instances in-between chores where either of you can’t help but hover close to one another, seeking each other’s touch and affections. May it be when you’re cooking and Jotaro passes by stealing a piece of sliced vegetable, you sneaking behind to pat his ass when he’s drying the plates, him momentarily resting his chin on your head as you wait for the washing machine to finish, him offering you a glass of water in the middle of dusting, or ending up in a never-ending banter over genres of media.

By the time they finished everything, including the short time freshening up, the afternoon began its transition to night as the skies changed its hue from blue to orange.

You shared one look with your husband and with one wistful stare, he rose a hand to you and you held it. With no worries plaguing your mind, you and Jotaro slowly walked down the stairs to the coast, hand-in-hand. A gentle breeze blew a strand of hair across your face and before you could, he tucked it behind your ear.

Both of you walked across the sand until you stopped a few meters away from the gentle waves.

Jotaro took the initiative to break apart from you, only to step behind and engulf your body with his long coat with his hands still in its pockets. You smiled and leaned back against his chest, closing your eyes as you do so.

For a few minutes, the couple simply stood by, basking in the ambiance- the refreshing sea breeze against your skin, the soothing crash of waves, the birds chirping above. The sea was your comfort place after all, and it was his too. Despite it being months later, you cherished every calm walk such as this as if it was the last.

You’ve never felt at peace this much. It was so nice.

“23 years…” You glanced up at Jotaro when he spoke. “For 23 years of us knowing each other, finally… Finally we can just live like this.”

You chuckled. “Makes it seem like we’ve just been married and this is our honeymoon even though it’s been years.”

“We’ve been fighting the world for most of our lives. Is it strange that until now, I’m still not used to this kind of ‘quiet’? As if I’m cautious that someone could appear at any moment?”

You shook your head, your gaze drifting to the horizon as you thought of your next words. “It’s not. It’ll take some time for us to adjust to this new normal. For all our habitual anxiety to disappear. Hell, it might not go away entirely.”

“But I can assure you this-”

You stepped out of his coat and turned to face him. From this angle, you looked at Jotaro with a smile bearing all the gooey fondness you had in your heart. Gingerly, you rose a hand to his face and with tender care, traced the vertical scar lining the right side of his face. From the top of his brow, down to his blind eye, until your fingers stopped at the bold line of his jaw.

Only then, your hand returned to cup his cheek with your thumb stroking the smooth line of his scar. “Whatever may happens next, I’ll be there with you. Work, people, lingering Stand users… I’ll stay by your side, hm?”

With hooded eyes, Jotaro leaned against your palm and laid his hand over yours. “I can’t say much to change your mind anyways.” He huffed. “You were always so stubborn.”

You chuckled. “You’re not wrong.”

Getting on to your tiptoes, you planted a soft kiss over his cheek, nose, and his lips last, to which you lingered on for a second longer. Pulling away, you wrapped your arms around him and buried your face on his chest.

“Our lives are finally ours, starlight.”

You closed your eyes as you felt him tuck his chin on top of you, an arm wrapping around your waist, and a hand caressing the back of your head.

“Then let’s live them together, sunshine.”

[ask-cyantist]

[Cyan considers the both of you, narrowing her eye lens. She lets out a sigh.]

"I guess that's fair. Impostors are a relatively new phenomenon, since the expeditions for MIRA only began a few Zumiran years ago. Alright. I'll try to explain my theory as best I can."

[Cyan waves for you to follow into the specimen lab. She flips up a projector from a stand, and clicks out half the lights. A few taps on her MIRApad activates some slides.]

"From the limited information I've been able to gather- small sample size, and all... Impostors as we know them can only perpetuate as an offshoot of existing crew mates. They cannot exist in a vacuum- to put it simply, Impostors are a drastic transformation that Beans undergo due to external factors. Stress alone cannot trigger it, because otherwise we would have experienced outbreaks of impostor killings long before achieving space flight. Impostors cannot breed more impostors- at least, I really hope they can't- but they can spread their condition to uninfected members of the same species.

"Beans are not the only sapient race that have Impostors, it CAN exist in other species- but I imagine due to our genetic makeup, the differences in how it manifests must be quite vast. The common factors I've been able to deduce from my own research and sparse records across MIRA's database is that Impostors crave proteins, particularly fatty tissues, to an almost manic degree, and they kill to feed and satisfy that need. In our particular region of space, I have one known, documented source of Impostor genesis."

[Cyan clicks the slide, and her expression darkens as she looks at the image.]

"...a species native to Polus, which I dubbed a 'Boreworm'. Calling them a 'parasite' isn't entirely accurate. More like a symbiote- though not by choice. I thought they were exclusively burrowing polychaetes... but I was wrong. Turns out, they spend most of their life cycle sheltering inside an unwilling host for protection. Boreworm infestation does provide some benefits, like expedited tissue regeneration, improved flexibility and heightened senses. But I wish I'd never found the $#%& worms in that dirt."

[Cyan takes a deep breath, re-centering herself.]

"I don't believe there's some secret space coalition of Impostors out there. If there was, we Beans would have been wiped out as a species. Impostors are stronger and heal faster than normal Beans- if they could organize, we wouldn't stand a chance. I've also found that a sort of territoriality is present among my ilk. We don't like other impostors, for various reasons. I suppose for normal impostors, who succumbed to the borderline feral instincts, it's a simple matter of competition. More impostors means less 'food' to go around. For me- my crew is my family. I don't want any of them to die... even if they hate me."

~~~~

@thomasdimensor @impostercrewmate

[Mod: I'M BACK IN THE SADDLE BABYYYY. Thank you both for your asks! :DD I finally got to touch on my personal headcanons for impostors!! And also I laughed at how accidentally similar your wording was hehehe~]

[I could go into more details on the Boreworms, but the post was getting long enough as-is xD So I'll save it for another ask if anybody is interested in my ghastly little parasites~ Enjoy the horrifying implications!]

[tobiasdrake]

I've been asked about my gender a couple of times. Once today, even. And I always freeze up when asked about that because. Like.

The reality is that I have a long and complicated relationship with gender. For years, I've just said "cis-male" because that's the easy answer. It felt like a noncommittal default answer. It's only recently that I've become less comfortable with that because. Well. Identifying as cis is still identifying, still committing to something.

But it's hard to commit because my situation is... messy.

I don't know if anyone is interested to hear me ramble about gender so I'm going to put this all after a jump. But since I'm having a mid-life crisis introspection day, here is my long, convoluted history with my gender identity.

If you saw my "characters who raised me" post, you might have noticed that an overwhelming majority of them were women. I have always felt more comfortable in the spaces that femininity creates than masculinity.

When I picture myself, when I close my eyes and see myself as the person I want to be, as the image I want to project out into the world, I see a young woman in her 20's with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Like Sailor Moon's Makoto Kino, a decade older.

My parents weren't around very much, so these women were my earliest teachers. They taught me how to walk. How to sit. Where to put my hands when I'm moving. And then adults made me unlearn all of that because you're not supposed to carry yourself like that or walk like that or sit like that if you're a boy. Learn to cross your legs in a masculine way!

To this day, I still often walk on the balls of my feet by habit, simply because my legs naturally imitate the posture of wearing heels. But I tell people it's because I watched a lot of Gargoyles as a kid and also really liked the X-Man Nightcrawler. (Which I did and do, and they're great.)

My favorite color is red. The reason my favorite color is red is because it's actually pink, but you're not allowed to like pink if you're a boy. My parents made that clear when they made me stop wearing my big pink winter coat that I loved so very much.

I spent the rest of my childhood and much of my adulthood dressing in black instead. Nobody cares if you're a boy or a girl if you're wearing black. (It also color-coordinates well with pink. That is a fire combination.)

I didn't really know what I was doing as a kid. I just knew that I was doing it wrong. Because people kept telling me I was doing it wrong. Gotta be a man. Gotta man up. Gotta like the things that boys like. Gotta put away the girly things because real men don't like girly things; In fact, "real men" aggressively hate girly things!

Gotta get money. Gotta get women. Gotta be aggressive and violent and not take no for an answer. That's how you be a real man. These are the things I started to internalize as the way I'm supposed to behave, as the space I'm meant to be in.

And I should note that this is not a fair reflection of masculinity. This is toxic masculinity. But it's what I was learning and it's the person I started becoming. Because I stopped listening to women, stopped respecting women, reframed my relationship to femininity as one of desire and power and control.

And I was miserable. I became a mediocre boy with pent-up aggression, prone to lashing out at the slightest indignity or disrespect because gotta assert my manhood. And I was tremendously unsuccessful at getting money and women. Women didn't like being around me very much. Can you possibly guess why? Probably because I was visibly unsafe to be around.

I hated it. I hated doing it. I hated the consequences of it. I was miserable.

Then I discovered that there were LGBT spaces. And I felt saved. My school's Gay-Straight Alliance became my sanctuary, where I could escape into a new world that nobody ever told me about. Where I could let it all of those pressures go and just say, "I am a trans woman."

This was not the end of my journey, though. You might not see the problem there. The thing that undermined my coming out. But for me, looking back, it's clear as day.

I was not coming out because I was more comfortable in the spaces that femininity built than masculinity. Even though I am. My mind was too poisoned by that point for a reason that good.

I was coming out because I was uncomfortable in the spaces that patriarchy built. And I thought being a transwoman would free me from that.

It did not. We are not, any of us, free from the pressures that patriarchy built. I had just traded one set of manacles for a different set. One that I hadn't been socialized in, one that is deeper and more complicated than I knew and that I didn't have the patience to learn because I was just trying to escape.

I wasn't trying to be a woman. I was trying to be what toxic masculinity thinks women are. The grass looked greener on the other side. It looked easier (and holy shit is it not). By that point in my life, I no longer respected women enough to be one.

It was two years before I gave up. Because I was still miserable. Being a woman (or my toxic impression of one) hadn't cured my soul-sickness. I was still angry. I was still lonely. So I went back to full-throated raging masculinity. I wrote those two years off as "experimenting" and I doubled down on toxic masculinity because now I was compensating for something.

I got a career because I'd dropped out of high school and wasn't going to college so I needed to have something. I moved out at 18 and got my own shitty apartment because a real man's gotta have his man pad. I refocused myself: Get rich, get women, be successful as a man. I spent the next years of my life as an angry libertarian incel issuing social darwinist screeds and ranting about how women are all bitches 'cause they won't sleep with me.

Then I started to meet people who were worse off than I was. Who showed me entire facets of the world I never knew existed. And I started to soften. Then I started to learn. And then I started to heal. To find acceptance for the parts of me I'd buried a decade ago.

People I can sit around and watch a TV show with, and see a snooty rich woman on the screen and go, "That one! That one's me. My character is Tahani. ^_^" and they won't judge me or tell me I'm wrong and I need to pick a different one.

Well, they'll judge me a little but only because my characters are always the fucking worst. Not because they're women. In my heart of hearts, I am an egotistic, entitled, prissy bitch and I own it.

I'm happier now than I ever was before, either as a man or a toxic man's perception of what a woman is supposed to be. And maybe my pronouns should be she/her. I don't know. Looking back over my journey, it's hard to feel like any set of pronouns really fits me - but I feel weird being they/them. Nothing feels right to me at all anymore.

I feel more comfortable in the spaces that femininity creates than the ones that masculinity does. Even healthy masculinity just doesn't call out to me the way femininity does, because femininity defined so much of my formative years. Most of the things in my childhood that were good are gendered female.

But I also don't know why they have to be. Why you have to be a woman to like pink, or to wear a pretty dress, or to enjoy cooking, or to cross your legs in a particular way. I don't want to believe that I can't be male but enjoy the things that I enjoy. That I'm not allowed to just decide for myself what masculinity means for me.

And yet, whenever I close my eyes and picture myself, I see a woman in her twenties with brown hair tied back in a ponytail. If I could start it all over again and be that woman from the very beginning, I would.

I don't know.

What I do know is that during my time as a libertarian incel, I started a career. That career has become my family's lifeline. I'm a high school dropout whose main skillset is knowing how computers work and being proficient at Microsoft Office, and I make more money than the rest of my family combined.

I feel like anyone in my age bracket can do my job. But they pay me to do it. Because I'm white, male, and clean-cut. We're forced to live under capitalism, and my family's future depends on the money my privilege earns. Because I'm aesthetically hirable.

So I go to work in the spaces that masculinity built. Then I come home to my LGBT family where it simply doesn't matter because everyone is accepted for who they are individually, no matter what box they fit in.

[hrodvitnon]

Thanks for hearing me out there, I really needed all of that. I think your blog (as well as other tumblr blogs in general like kaiju-krew) help keep me sane while witnessing all sorts of really dumb takes from the fandom, especially from the likes of Twitter and Reddit. The worst takes I've seen so far are the ones that claim that unlike Kong, if Godzilla ever encounters another one of his kind, he would kill them just for disrupting his nap and/or harm a baby of his kind because he's a reptile and something something "alphas in nature kill offspring that isn't their own to prevent competition" and junk like that.

It just really sucks to see them humanize Kong (and in many cases, turn him into a literal saint) while at the same time, reducing Godzilla to just a dumb animal when they're both intelligent and sympathetic but flawed individuals.

Also your comparisons of MV Godzilla to Doomguy and cats is very on-point. All three of them may look and act prickly at first, but there's more to them than just that and if you actually take your time to look past that and get to know them better while respecting their space, they're actually not bad at all. And in the case of both Godzilla and cats, it's kind of like intruding into an introvert's personal space and acting constantly annoying to them, and then getting mad and calling them a jerk once they show signs of wanting you to leave them alone.

(About Matt Frank's post, I took another look at it and he deleted the initial post, probably because of all the backlash he got from it since he misunderstood MV Godzilla's character hard. And in case you're curious on what the post said, it's something on the lines of something like "It's great that MV Godzilla is just an aggro jerkface in the whole movie (GxK) for NO reason at all and I'm all for it").

(That said, his follow-up replies to that are still there and they're still not the best takes. Here they are, for anyone who doesn't have access to that hellish site.)

Yeeeep, this is why I stay as much as possible away from the Twitter and especially the fandom side of Reddit; in fact, there are very specific reasons I would venture into those lawless depths: Check if anyone else has run into a game bug I've encountered and any workarounds for it, or fun gifs I just happened to spy on a Google Image search.

And you know, maybe it's because I just woke up, but to those who demonize Godzilla, I'm about to do something fuckin' hilarious with my power as a fic writer with my own canon at my fingertips. Check this shit out: In an AbraxasVerse take of GxK, when Godzilla is napping in the Colosseum and the authorities are like "what the fuck do we do," who rolls up but THE ACTUAL POPE to welcome the giant napping Nukasaurus Rex and be like "This is a beast of god who protects our world. I talked about this the last time he saved us, did you not listen to my sermon last Mass? For shame. Let the noble beast rest. Amen." Not in those exact words, but yeah.

Oh yeah, @thebeastunleashed showed the the tweets on Discord. Matt, I respect ya as a phenomenal kaiju artist and you're entitled to which Goji's your favorite and also your opinion, but sometimes it's okay to be wrong. (Incidentally, my favorite Godzillas are Heisei and MonsterVerse so I happen to prefer a Godzilla with a soft side.)

[strixcattus]

STHeroine analysis post number something. I'm covering both the second and third routes we did, since most of the theorising space within the SSpectre route comes from the lead-in, which I already talked about. (There would probably be more if we had a Chapter III. I am just saying.)

The things I can note about the rest of the route itself are pretty isolated. SSpectre's "hair accessory" is dark streaks in her hair rather than a light-shaded attachment like we've seen from other Heroines, which is apparently important but lacks the context needed to know how. My first impression is that the dark color alludes to the Long Quiet, but aside from that there's not much to draw from this.

The other is her reaction to entering the Long Quiet. In the Spectre route, the Princess says, "I think... this is where I'm meant to be." In SSpectre, however, the Heroine says, "It's kind of nice like this. Kind of familiar..." She's seen the Long Quiet before, or encountered some part of what we are.

Both of these align with my standing theory that TLQ and SM merged and were torn apart incorrectly, but neither is strong enough to confirm it, although I can't at this moment think of an alternative hypothesis that fits with what we've seen.

On to WStranger. This one is pretty interesting! Right off the bat, instead of a disjointed mishmash of several possible cabins, we see a pitch-dark cabin with nothing visible save the things we can interact with... and though we can feel various textures when we touch the walls, there's no way to get an image of where we are.

The stark contrast continues with the stairs. Instead of three sets of stairs seemingly symbolising the Harsh and Soft Princesses alongside a branching middle ground that could be the Stranger or the Shifting Mound in her essence (wait, is that the deal with the stairs? woah!), we get... twelve.

Twelve.

Ten sets of stairs clearly represent the ten Chapter IIs—splintered wood for the Razor, suspended planks for the Nightmare, root-covered stairs for the Witch... but then there are two more. The plain wooden stairs match the stairs to the Chapter I basement, but then what of the glass ones? Are they meant to represent us, the Long Quiet? Or the Shifting Mound? Will they appear in the final cabin?

Do they somehow symbolise the Narrator?

If I had to guess, they're meant to represent the Long Quiet, since "shards of glass" and mirrors are both connected to him. But there's no real way to be sure at this point, and it feels like an outlier in the face of each other stairway matching so well to a Heroine. The Shifting Mound would fit... better, but still feels a little out of place with only what we know so far. Likely it will make sense by the end, but as for now...

We also have the stairway poem, and I'll paste the important part in full:

Obsession and invulnerability. Confusion and insecurity. Ire and interest. Cruelty and despair. Perseverance and willful ignorance. At the core of it all, is something that calls for you. Something familiar, and impossibly distant, that you can only think of as—

In the canon poem, the order is Beast, Witch, Prisoner, Damsel, Adversary, Tower, Nightmare, Spectre, Razor, Stranger. It's difficult to tell with only what we've seen, but the order seems to check out in places—"Insecurity" for SDamsel, "Confusion" for a Stranger-like Prisoner, "Willful Ignorance" for WStranger. The one that seems a little out of place is "Despair" for SSpectre, but it could be that we just didn't see enough of her. And the unsaid emotion at the core of everything is identified as "familiar," again implying some sort of preexisting connection between us and Her that didn't exist in canon.

Then we have the actual Wary Stranger, which is by far the most intriguing part. Instead of one Princess who slowly splits into five contradictory entities, we have a single Heroine who switches between different aspects of her being—six in total—only showing one face at a time.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of most WStranger faces, so they're a bit tough to categorise and I can't tell how, or whether, the questions we chose related to the faces that showed. We have a "blank" face that shows up at first, a "soft" one that looks a lot like the original Heroine (or at least the soft one, the only one we've really spoken with), a "harsh" face that follows her, a "scared" face in place of the Stranger's more monstrous aspect*, a "cautious" or "wary" face (that we got just in the nick of time, and didn't speak with enough to really see how she differed from the "harsh" face), and... that face.

*And this is really interesting! In STPrincess, the Princess is usually portrayed as a dangerous figure with power over us as the player—even though in truth it's the player's choices that have power over the Princess—and this is reflected in her "monster" aspect. In STHeroine, we haven't really seen much of a monstrous side to the Heroine, and the "scared" face seems to imply that the appearance of power is in our hands. I'd be interested to see a Heroine who in canon would be an exemplary of an apparent power dynamic tilted towards the Princess (coughnightmarecough), just to see how she differs. Will she seem to have less power over us than she ought to?

That face seems to have given up, stating that there's nothing to do when we attempt to do something and that there's no point in us approaching her.

In short... we have no agency, and neither does she. We have the illusion of endless choice, but when the time comes to do something, we really don't have any options that mean anything.

It seems pretty clear now that, instead of Change, the Heroine represents Agency. She has more independence in Chapter I than the Princess would. When we kill her, we lose our agency. Instead of evolving into countless concurrent versions of herself, the WStranger switches between faces, one at a time. The catastrophic culmination of WStranger is not endless choices branching into endless contradictory variations, but a complete lack of choice that nonetheless ends just as badly. (And the Prince changes too, especially in this route, where he becomes more carefree! We have Change with us, and the Heroine has Agency with her.)

Instead of confusion, the WStranger faces us with anger. I'm curious, to say the least, whether it would have reacted the same way had we not tried to step forward, to do something. It also says, before being taken away, that "there's so much." Is this a reaction to its nature, or to the Long Quiet? Is there more muddling of the boundary between Us and Her than I initially thought? To what degree can we really call ourselves the Long Quiet? How much of Change is left outside of us?

When we face the mirror, we have been "shaped" and "sharpened" instead of having "grown" and "withered." I'm going to call attention both to the verbs and to the use of the passive voice. There's an implication that this has been done to us, rather than being a process we naturally go through, and that we're being clarified, instead of moving through the stages of decay. We are being made into something by a process outside ourself, and this is the surface-level appearance of our evolution.

Before I get into anything Not!Shifty might have said, I want to point out two things.

Neither SSpectre nor WStranger comments on or reacts to the arms as SDamsel seemed to. I have no way of knowing if they saw them and didn't comment or simply didn't see them at all.

Not!Shifty refers to WStranger with it/its pronouns. Not to read too deeply into a pronoun choice, but far be it from me to not read into them at all (glances at STPlay). (I've made the choice in this analysis to use she/her for the individual separate faces of WStranger and it/its for the WStranger as a whole or combined entity, to reflect how they're referred to in-game and also because Strangers are complicated.) This reminds me at first reaction of how the canon Stranger works. In the basement, while separated, she is referred to with she/her, while the Shifting Mound acknowledges the combined Stranger as several entities in one, using they/them when discussing them. This is tied to how the Stranger touches closer on SM's true nature than any other Princess—they are multiple facets in one, and a failed imitation of SM's true form. The Wary Stranger may be similar. Obviously I don't know and won't speculate as to whether Not!Shifty's true form will appear as a shattered mirror, as it does, but it's not impossible that it would. Overall, it may be closer to a singular concept than to a person, in contrast with other Heroines, as the Stranger is closer to the completeness and multitudes of SM. Despite being a conglomeration of six faces, it's referred to as it, not they, which probably is an important distinction to mark between SM and Not!Shifty.

...The Long Quiet was called the Long Quiet, back at the beginning. Are we still Quiet? Is She still Shifting? Is the place we are in formed from stagnancy or chaos? Does it belong to Us or to Her? I don't have good answers to any of these questions.

To Not!Shifty.

She continues with the fabric metaphor rather than the water one of SM, and continues to seem more passive. My memory of most of SM's later dialogue isn't exactly sharp, so I can't pick out too many notable distinctions beyond that.

She has a bit more to say on the "kind" point than SM, expressing that she feels we have been kinder to her than she can be to us.

She acknowledges the Vessels' perceptions of us, saying that they each see us in a limited way. When she says "perspectives," it feels like she could be talking about perspectives on us, specifically, rather than SM's perspectives of reality in general (or possibly our perspectives of her.)

One of the most definite things she's said is her assertion that the worlds we leave behind are ended. I'm not sure, but I don't think SM ever said anything to that effect, at least not so bluntly.

She also says, "All the people in them fade." Is this meant to be taken at face value, implying there's someone out there besides us? Is she referring to our Voices? I have no way to tell.

She acknowledges WStranger as "constantly changing," and that it is similar to her in this way, which may indicate that she contains some part of Change. But as its change is different from the Strangers, her Change may be different from SM's.

When asked what she will be like, she says, "more of me, and more of you." Are we giving parts of ourself to her? Are we truly separate as we are, or was the tear incomplete as well as incorrect? Are we growing as two entities, or as one entity with two faces?

Aside from growing stronger in my convictions that A: the Heroine contains Agency, and B: we and Not!Shifty have merged and unmerged, and possibly gone through all this before as beings with a different point of separation, I feel like I've got more questions than answers to offer in this point. Not that that's bad! Questions are good! And they shape things.

The one new concrete theory I have is that Not!Shifty might be more of a place than we are. I'm not convinced that the Long Quiet—especially not as we know it—is as much a part of us as we're used to it being.

...If we do end up getting Beast or Witch, you guys have to promise me we'll try to find out if there's a Wild-equivalent branching from them. Okay? And no matter what we get, you guys have to promise me we're done with ending in Chapter II. Okay?

[drunkenskunk]

I'm gonna infodump about one of my OCs, and nobody can stop me!

There's a character of mine that I have very occasionally posted about here: Tuera Ashama. And I think... I should probably explain what she's all about. Especially since I commissioned artwork of her a while back from the two most amazing people in the world.

(Animation by @b0tster)

(Artwork by @pommycore)

Tuera is a character that has existed in my head for a very... very long time. And I keep forgetting that a lot of the places where I used to talk about her kind of... don't... exist anymore? So whenever I start to talk about Tuera, nobody has any idea who the fuck she is or what the fuck I'm talking about.

Fuck, I'm old.

So who the hell is Tuera Ashama, anyway?

I suppose if I wanted to be boring, I could just repost those redacted documents I made for that project thing I'm working on for my own amusement, and call it a day.

But this doesn't really tell anyone who the fuck she is, especially with so much covered in all that black ink. This is just a fictional document created by a fictional government agency of fictional multiverse space cop assholes. And starting with this document is really getting ahead of myself, in more ways than one.

Tuera has a very specific origin, and I want to apologize for the jumpscare that's about to happen:

Yeah.

Tuera was originally a warlock alt of mine in World of Warcraft, from when I played the game all the way back in fucking high school.

To the best of my recollection, I probably came up with her sometime before April 2006. And I only know that because of the metadata from a scanned image that I somehow managed to save from back then:

Tuera was originally meant to be nothing more than a villain for my main on that account, a human rogue named Sheason. She was literally supposed to be a "villain of the week" for the RP guild I was in at the time. Because that's the kind of nerd I was back in high school: the kind of idiot who played Warcraft III for the story and bought the officially licensed d20 Warcraft ttrpg before World of Warcraft was even a thing. I was there day fucking one for WoW, playing on Shadow Council, a fucking RP server.

She didn't really have much of a personality when I first came up with her, beyond existing as a literal foil for Sheason. He was a dude; she was a girl. He was a relatively grounded spy with no magic; she was a half-demon warlock. He was a bitter and reluctant hero who tried to fix things from the shadows; she was a Card Carrying Villain, and a narcissist who loved the spotlight and committed crimes in full view of everyone. He was always flying by the seat of his pants, and trusting his gut instincts more often than not; she had plans within plans within plans, and considered herself a mad genius who studied magic like others studied science. He just wanted to survive; she had an insatiable lust for power.

Even when she became a more reoccurring problem and I started slowly fleshing out the character, her vibe was very firmly entrenched in the territory of Supervillain, because that's all she really needed to be, especially because every time she died (and she's died A LOT), she'd come back stronger.

If you want an idea of what she was like at her peak of Full Supervillain Mode, imagine a cross between Thanos, Blofeld, the Phoenix Force, and Pisha.

From Thanos: the megalomania, the ego, the love of monologuing, and the mad genius. From Blofeld: the seemingly inexhaustible resources to construct elaborate supervillain lairs in increasingly absurd locales (she even have a volcano lair at one point). From the Phoenix Force: tremendous and terrifying cosmic power capable of shattering reality. And from Pisha, the nagaraja vampire from Bloodlines: an abyss of time behind her eyes, a collector of powerful and strange occult artifacts, and an existence beyond petty morality, being shunned by mortal and her own kin alike.

I mean, you could probably swap Thanos with Doctor Doom and lose nothing, because her most defining feature was her uncanny ability to cheat death with a variety of methods. But that's just quibbling over semantics, especially since they both did the "Doombot" thing.

The only reason I chose Thanos instead of Doom is because one of her biggest fortresses was in space, and Thanos is a far more cosmic adversary than Doom.

Thing is, the more I wrote about Tuera, the more fascinated I became with her as a character. The more depth I wanted to give her, outside of being just a cardboard cutout of a villain. I started to flesh out her backstory more. She was originally a half-succubus, because of course she fucking was, I was a desperately horny high schooler. But this is also where things get slightly interesting.

Fun fact! I realized that Tuera was trans LONG before I realized that I was. And, with the benefit of hindsight, it really does feel like my subconscious was desperately screaming at me to figure this out. It's almost funny, because I originally justified it to myself by being like "oh, I'm just filling in a plot hole, this doesn't have any deeper meanings that I should maybe examine."

See, I did eventually realize that she shouldn't have been the result of her father fucking a demon, that's just stupid and immature. No, it was a much better idea to have her be "designed" and "grown" instead of being born. Her "father," Venthrax, was an evil genius with designs on universal conquest, and would've created her to be a living weapon of that conquest. Except... why would he make her a girl? He'd be shoving her full of different genetics and demon blood and alien anatomy, but the base he'd be working with would naturally be a clone of himself, wouldn't it? Venthrax is a fucking asshole who obviously believes that he was the perfect organism, so he'd want his living weapon to be a copy of himself, but Better.

And Tuera didn't agree with that assessment. For more information, please read this:

Even funnier, at least to me: it was around that time that one of her abilities changed that further cemented the whole "you're definitely trans, dipshit" thing that I wouldn't realize until years later. Because at first, being "half-succubus," she was meant to be a prolific and skilled shapeshifter. But after I changed her backstory, the shapeshifting was slowly but eventually dropped in favor of her making portals and using teleportation spells. This is funny to me, because many, MANY years later, I'd come across this tweet:

The moment I saw that, I was just like "...yeah, that tracks."

Speaking of the teleportation, that's another thing that changed. Long before I finally realized Blizzard games aren't actually written well at all, causing me to lose all my interest in WoW, and long before I swore off Activision Blizzard King games entirely after Black February, Tuera just... left Azeroth. I kept writing stories about her hopping around the multiverse, but she was no longer tethered to the worlds of warcrafts.

It was around that time, writing these short little unconnected vignettes about her adventures across time and space, that I realized: she's much more interesting when she's not a supervillain.

Like, don't get me wrong, she's still not really a good person She's still very much selfish, and self-centered with, in her own words: "a casual tolerance for murder to rival even the hardest of hardcore dungeon crawlers," but... I mean, she's just not a dick for no reason anymore, y'know?

It's kinda funny, because she's still doing the same kind of things she used to do, just... for slightly different reasons, and I no longer consider them overtly villainous. For example: one of her first villain plots in the RP guild I was part of involved Tuera starting a cult to try and topple the Stormwind monarchy and take it over for herself. And now... she'd still want to destroy the monarchy, but just not to replace it. It'd be more out of a sense of a "fuck the nobles, death to all tyrants" kind of mindset.

To be honest, I think the main appeal of Tuera as a character for me is that she is more than a little bit of a wish fulfillment power fantasy. She can live unapologetically as herself without worry. She doesn't care about the opinions of anyone but herself. She lives without fear, because everyone who has ever tried to kill her has either failed, or it didn't stick. She's loud, she's brash, she stylish, and she does so many things simply for the aesthetic of it. When she sets her mind to something, she is completely unfettered in the pursuit of her goals, and will never stop. She's defied death, she killed gods, she's visited times and places I can't even imagine.

Tuera has complete autonomy over her own life. True freedom.

And I just... I compare that to my own life. The fact that, while I can admit I'm trans here on the internet, I'm so deathly terrified of trying to transition in real life because of... [vaguely gestures at everything] that I still haven't yet. And, to be honest, I probably won't get the chance before I die.

There is just so much about her that I wish I was.

But I'm not.

Ah well.

At least I can write my silly little stories, scratch out my silly sketches, and occasionally commission fantastic artwork from amazing people.

... wait, I just realized. I spent all this time talking about Tuera, but I still haven't gotten around to explaining what the fuck is up with that fake redacted document from the beginning.

Maybe I'll talk about D.I.C.E. another day.

[cyle]

The major costs of Tumblr are just storage and access CPM, right? Would optimizing the way posts are stored and compressing the data more efficiently significantly cut costs?

no... i believe the biggest cost of tumblr are the (extremely small number of) people working on it. maybe after that is bandwidth and then storage and then compute power? it's been a little while since i've looked at that breakdown though, so i could have that mixed up.

regardless, yeah, yet another reason we invested a lot of time in the Neue Post Format was to save on storage costs and compute costs -- it's cheaper to compress, store, serialize, and deserialize, than our old post format.

but the thing that really takes up the most space are images and videos anyway, that's probably like 95% of our storage. at one point we had the biggest Amazon S3 storage bucket in the world (i don't know if that's still true).

[m-a-salter]

this is not a post about peter capaldi

It is a post about Tabitha Carvan's book, This Is Not a Book about Benedict Cumberbatch, which I recently devoured. It is a sneakily profound book about patriarchal society's double standards around pleasure and enthusiasm, and if you have ever worried about whether your interest in [insert pop-culture enthusiasm here] was weird/pathological/in-any-way-problematic, I urge you to read this book.

I have never felt more seen and understood; in some of the quotes below I have made some minor substitutions such that the sentences are now 100% about me:

“I wanted to keep looking at [Peter Capaldi]! —but I also wanted to avoid ending up at a Not-Traditionally-Good-Looking-Yet-Extremely-Attractive-Celebrities Anonymous meeting, sitting next to some Steve Buscemi fan, having to declare I was an addict.”

“My friends and family often send me mentions of [Peter Capaldi] they've found online, thinking—ludicrously—that I wouldn't have seen them already.”

“…[R]evisit the memory of what it was like for you when you first found fanfiction. A little while ago, I saw a news story about a woman living in a New York apartment who discovered an entire other, hidden apartment behind her bathroom mirror, and isn't that just what it's like? A completely new thing you never knew about, which was there the whole time. And then all of a sudden, you have so much more space to move around in than you ever realized.”

“Coming out as a [Capaldian] is easy. Since the inside of me is almost entirely [Peter Capaldi], it's simply a matter of drip-feeding it to the outside. I start by casually dropping [Peter Capaldi] into conversation, at a rate of one mention per every five hundred times I think of him. Then I reply to people's text messages with [Peter Capaldi] GIFs, deploying a mere fraction of the images of him saved on my phone."

“And I know self-declaration is a far cry from self-determination, but at least it's a step up from self-care, the substitute aspiration we've been sold. That was the conclusion reached by the writer Anne Helen Petersen too. After researching her book on burnout, she reported that ‘skincare routines, pedicures, sweet treats, elaborate vacations, even massages—none of it feels as good as actually figuring out something you like to do, and then doing it as if no one was watching, and no one ever will, and it will never, ever find a place on your résumé.’”

“...[S]omething trivial, like a crush on a celebrity, can have unexpected, maybe profound, consequences, not in spite of being trivial but because it is. Because it's fun, because it doesn't matter, because it's purely for you, because it feels stupidly good. Because the joy of it expands. It seeps into other parts of your life, transforming it, and you, in ways that do matter—a lot.”

[tinybro]

thinking about jasico feat. that soulmate tattoo sleeve concept i posted about literally six years ago now, this got so long i'm just putting it all under a readmore to save y'all from having to scroll through it

the tattoos appear bit by bit in real time as someone's soulmate grows up and develop as a person, which means shit's wild when jasico-flavored. nico and bianca both grow up never developing any tattoos the whole time they're living in italy – bianca because she was fated to die young, and nico because jason's decades away from being born. it's not initially odd since people have relationships with age gaps, but the older they get without anything showing up at all the rougher it gets. they both get teased about being forever alone, or future cradle-robbers whose soulmates haven't even been born yet. it's part of why they were so close growing up. but then nico's develops rapidly towards the end of their stay in the lotus hotel, and by the time they get out of the haze of it he's suddenly got a partial sleeve.

bianca can't help but be quietly resentful. she knows it's not his fault, but she's just a kid herself, and they were in this boat together their whole lives and then suddenly her little brother has someone out there and she still doesn't. it becomes part of why she jumps on the chance to join hunters of artemis, eager for some space and rationalizing to herself that becoming immortal would mean she wouldn't be way older than her future soulmate.

meanwhile nico was distracted from bianca's frustration by the excitement of his new tattoo. it means he does have someone out there, someone close to his own age, and he obsessively studies his tattoo's imagery trying to see if it could be linked to anyone he meets. he gets his hopes up meeting percy, but they're dashed pretty quickly – his tattoo is all stormy skies and wolves and eagles, and try as he might he can't justify any of it as being related to percy. it's even more obvious much later when he finally gets a chance to see annabeth's arm and it's so clearly percy-themed. for a while he confusedly wonders if the lightning on his arm could be tied to thalia, and the thought of it is a little suffocating even if it should feel good to know he's "normal". but none of the rest of his tattoo seems to match her, thankfully, and she doesn't have a sleeve at all pointing to him either. for a long time, he figures his tattoos must be the frustratingly metaphorical kind and dismisses the obvious zeus connection.

jason, however, has a fairly developed partial sleeve of tattoos from the moment he's born. it's a little weird that it never changes at all – nico's development as a person is pretty much frozen in the lotus hotel – but jason spends his early years comparing the imagery to all the older campers, curious but never quite managing to link anyone to it. he knows right away that reyna couldn't be his soulmate, because they're the same age and whoever his soulmate is has to be at least 5-10 years older than him. he's still the popular golden boy of new rome, so he of course has other kids crushing on him that try to see themselves in his tattoos. the boldest ones try to claim a connection directly, but he can always shoot them down easily knowing the ages don't line up. and then when he's around 12, his forever-unchanged tattoo suddenly develops rapidly out of nowhere. images of some kind of playing cards appear in it, as nico discovers mythomagic soon after leaving the lotus hotel. ocean waves show up one day only to turn black a few days later. a silver arrow sneaks in soon after. then the imagery starts getting macabre pretty quickly – skulls and bones and graves take over most of it.

nico has an idea of what's up before he even meets jason – from the moment he's told about new rome and lupa and hears they have a son of jupiter, a lot of things feel very obvious. but he's still fighting all that internalized homophobia and feeling the fallout of his doomed crush on percy, so he keeps his mouth shut. he always wears his jacket anyway, and makes sure to wear long sleeves when it's too hot for the jacket. he keeps his tattoos hidden away, and no one's really close enough to ask about it besides hazel, who can tell it's sensitive and so doesn't pry.

but jason remains oblivious for a good while. the newer imagery on his arm has obvious pluto/hades vibes, but hazel or nico are both clearly too young for his false estimate of how old his soulmate would be. he doesn't hear about the lotus hotel shit until he's on the argo ii hearing stories from percy, and that's when he finally starts wondering.