#so they yap and yap and yap non stop

[avenin]

I am having a sensory moment but I stg dogs should not exist. Shut the fuck up.

[anaphoraholic]

light yagami evil autism (original img under the cut)

[corviiids]

sparknotes for chapter 9 of as you like it because a very kind commenter asked for a breakdown and if theres one thing im good at it's breaking down

(spoilers for the fic obviously)

tihs chapter gave me so much trouble. i sat on it for so long i literally hated it by the time i posted it but im starting to forgive it now. it was, as ive said, originally way longer, and the next part of the fic was supposed to be the second half of this one... but it was starting to get absurd and i realised that neither part would have the weight i needed them to have if they were lumped in together. (with some relief, honestly, because i kind of had wanted them to be separate initially but didn't think they'd be long enough. i dont know myself very well.) anyway, the next chapter should be a bit of a doozy now although hopefully not SO absurdly long.

this chapter picks up where the previous cliff hung off, which is to say, after the 'shadow' akechi reveals that he's actually just the real ass guy. akechi in the palace what will he do. the chapter doesn't immediately kick off with ren's reaction though and that is because ren is the most repressed man alive and does not know how he feels about it.

so, akechi disguised himself to enter his palace, which is significant for a few reasons:

1. he's disguised as himself

which i think is ironic in a fun way, but it's also just a very basic nod to the fact that akechi pivots between which of his personae is his default. this isn't necessarily super meaningful, but he does later refer to the black mask suit as

a costume, instead of an outfit. i mean, don't read into it too much, he's just talking, but i did think that probably points to how he feels about his appearance generally.

2. more importantly, his disguise involves taking off his mask.

so he's disguised, yes, and he's disguised as himself, yes, but that disguise is a literal unmasking, which is also kind of ironic. in presenting himself this way he has literally and figuratively made himself vulnerable. they're inside his heart, and the entire time he's in the palace, he is exposed... again both literally and figuratively because he also starts sharing more with ren than he ever has. look, i just think it's fun to have a character who has so many layers that he has to lie so hard that he becomes himself again.

i only want to point this out because (this is also part of larger meta about mona lol) akechi knew about the metaverse, but there is no way to intuit the method of stealing hearts without guidance. it's such a specific and involved process. thje most akechi could work out on his own was that if you killed a shadow, that person would have a mental breakdown. no way to guess that if you send a calling card and then go in within the next 24 hours and take a physical manifestation of a thing that you didn't know existed (process) would lead to that person ahving a change of heart (result). so even if akechi had a palace and knew about it, even if he wanted to do something about it, he would have assumed there was nothing he could do about it - i also have no idea what the process would be for sending yourself a calling card, even if he DID know about the process. so basically in this fic akechi found his palace and just assumed that was it. he was like, fucked up lol. anyway

this just straight up isn't true HAHA so i put in the silly little dichotomy of akechi gently taking ren's arm to protect him from slipping on the ice while telling him that he lied about caring about him. i think in this chapter as akechi begins to openly explain more and more of his thought process, this is probably the first truly clear glimpse you get of exactly what akechi's distortion is and how deep it runs.

the things akechi says with total conviction in this chapter are just... not true, not a fair or founded way to view the world (or the art of performance haha), but he says them with total conviction, and hopefully it should show off how unreliable he is as a source of exposition. one commenter asked about this moment of akc's eyes going yellow and if it was somehting that happened in canon - not really, i was just thinking about those little moments in the game after you send a calling card where the game cuts from the person to their shadow to do a little oneliner about their distortion.

akechi's IN his own palace, so i thought it would be fun to kind of make it a physical thing that can happen to him where he sort of merges with his shadow for a brief second in the moments when the distortion is strongest.

OKAY this is one of my favourite bits of the chapter HAHA the deep soda lore. i dont expect anyone to remember all the way back to chapter 3 but:

literally nobody asked about this but i love the phantom thieves!!! i dream of all the little silly moments of being a team that they must have that we don't get to see in gameplay, for obvious reasons of it wouldn't really work in a game, but i can imagine them in my brain. i can imagine their trickshot contests that get their asses kicked. i can imagine them chanting at each other to chug while joker and oracle compete to down an entire bottle of brand neutral mountain dew baja blast. i can dream.

soda lore is gay.

i dont honestly think it's inherently a bad thing necessarily but this part does kind of set up like... you can see akechi very early on in life forming this worldview that the truth isn't always what you want, you know? this was a 'lie' he and his mother both bought into, they both knew what the truth actually was, so it wasn't real dishonesty, but they just had this little fantasy. i just thought it would be fun for akechi to have a way to bond with his mother and feel closer to her, and that way is by buying into this white lie. idk

akechi's mother isn't really a character and i don't want to form her into too much of one because i think it's very much the point that, like... he made this point in an earlier chapter but having lost her at a pretty young age i think it's quite crucial that akechi doesn't really have a fully formed image of who his mother is outside of what she was to him as a child. so i actively don't want her to feel too real or defined. im not interested in making an oc out of her because i think it defeats the purpose. that said, this line exists to maybe gesture very vaguely at the notion that akechi's mother was a very bright person who similarly was stuck in circumstances that didn't serve to foster her real potential. just the image in my mind of a person who's clever enough to get across algebraic notation in chess by flipping through a book in a few minutes, but was never exposed to the opportunity to learn chess until this moment in someone else's house, and also the particular situation of learning this skill WHILE at someone's place as a call girl, i dunno . i hope im treating this with the grace it deserves but i wanted to build just this particular image in vivid colour while also keeping the reality quite blurry and vague, just to give the reader a sense of where akechi came from while still preserving his limited pov.

my thoughts on the phantom thieves' methods (and how they compare to maruki) are definitely too long and involved to put into a post about this fic chapter specifically, but maybe one day. i also wanna stress im not like... strictly anti-phantom thief or anti-heartstealing lol but i do have thoughts about the philsophy of it and the thieves' hypocrisy WHATEVER that's not for this post. i bring this up only to crow about finding a way to bring up the experience machine (ie maruki's reality) in this fic without it being royal compliant and have it be... hoepfully... sufficiently relevant to the plot. wa hoo! the experience machine came up for the first time back in chapter 4 and im just delighted that i finally got to close that loop. by the way, that experiment is also called the lotus eater machine after the lotus eaters in the odyssey! i dunno that it's actively my favourite thought experiment but it's definitely up there and i think about it a lot.

TITLE DROP

i think i spoke once about what 'as you like it' means. it's obviously the name of the shakespeare play from where 'all the world's a stage' comes, but it has a couple more layers to it as well - akechi's palace is a place where he performs to what he believes other people want or need to see from him - so his appearance is as you like it. and his accusation of the thieves' heartstealing methods is that they twist a person's internal reality to suit their vision - that's the meaning he's taking here, claiming that joker is turning akechi into an unfamiliar new thing, as [joker] like[s] it. you get it.

this running joke of ren really hating vents wasn't something i planned but im attached to it now. prayer circle for his knees

ive basically given up on making sense of samerecarm, which is par for the course for any rpg or video game really where reduction to 0hp/revival are mechanics. like, im inclined to think 0hp is more equivalent to unconsciousness, because... well... otherwise it's pretty cold that they left akechi dead in the engine room without even looking for a way around the wall. lol. but one of mona's revival lines is 'being dead isnt easy!' or something like that, so i kind of just give up and assume it's video game logic you'r enot meant to look at too hard lol. the way i reconcile it for my purposes is to say it's a sort of metaverse-exclusive state of being which is not quite dead but sort of in a limbo state wher eyou can be brought back with specific revival magic, which i refer to as being down. that's uhhh, that's different from the battle status of down... which you get after being hit with a crit/technical/weak skill... look, don't think about it. joker in crow's arms.

this is literally meaningless i just wanted to include a cameo of my very favourite persona q2 battle theme.

[hercarisntyours]

I hope you know your hadestown au has ruined me

“what does he care for the logic of kings, the laws of your underworld / it is only for love that he sings” has ALWAYS been Orion Pax coded to me

it's ruined me aswell dw, if I have to suffer with this so does everyone else /hj

UGHHH THAT'S SO ORION because what DOES he care 😭 I could go on and ONNNN about how orion coded orpheus and just how, hadestown and tf go hand in hand; ESPECIALLY NOW THEY'RE ALL PRETTY MUCH CANNONICALLY MINERS. Genuinely. This au has been living in my head rent free since about the time rotb came out I can't lie, when ever I would hear for example doubt comes in I couldn't help but imagine orion with that, that's how much I connect orion and orpheus LIKE HE WOULD GO TO THE WELL OF ALLSPARKS TO GET ARIEL BACK. HE WOULD MOVE WALLS AND GODS TO DO SO. all while inspiring the opressed to stand up to they're opressors, and now those thoughts are just hightened x100 with tfone orion. Even when I went to see hadestown, I came out thinking about how, tragically Orion and Ariel it is. "Have I made myself their lord, just to fall upon the sword; of some paupers minor chord" is another that just screams Orion to me, especially if gladiator megatronus is hades, because he did make him self the lord of the arena; just to fall when orion sang his song to the primes in the aligned universe (the one which this au started out as, not that megatron is hades i don't think idk I haven't decided)

tbh I've actually been meaning to post new hadestown au stuff but I've been stuck. trying to figure logistics out with other characters but I think I'm going to focus purely on arion/oplita for it rn, especially ariel and the fates (the seekers) because eurydice and the fates is one of my favourite arcs in the show (im lowkey in a writing rut/block 😔 i need help with this au I cannot lie)

I also think Eurydice is so, very Ariel/Elita. Especially an Elita who is feeling the distraught and dystopia of an opressed and climatic world. I think 'a gathering storm', "when the chips are down" and 'nothing changes' shows how I think of her in this au, the realist to orion's delusions. She's fighting for survival, but she has to give in because the hope so had got lost. She did what she had to.

Also, I think Elita is persephone coded, yeah this au is arion but the pain and estranged-ness of persades in this just reminds me of optimus being so far away, physically AND emotionally and Elita having to keep up cybertron; more specifically wfc netflix (I think a universe where Optimus falls down a path just like hades did would be so very good. He's so focused on making cybertron so full of love, he destroys it which pushes away his love)

"It's you"

"It's me"

🫦🫦🫦🫦 fUCKKKKKKKKK this au hurts my heart why did I let the brain rot procreate with the others brain rot

[infiniteglitterfall]

Welp. Just had the most horrifying realization.

What determines whether people want to punch Nazis or not isn’t the fact that they're Nazis.

People only want to punch Nazis when they disagree with them.

[deargravity]

obsessed with hajun because he is so loveable but also deeply unlikeable. which is... literally the charm of his character. he's slightly strange and incredibly elusive and undoubtedly morally questionable but no less human. he's sharp-tongued and insensitive at times, but he's clearly trying to be gentler, and a little more aware in his manner when it's necessary. (congratulations on the cognitive empathy, hajun, i'm sure you'll put it to good use.) i like that his moment of vulnerability didn't soften him up but he's learned to be honest with the people he loves. i know hajun is very much in his senses when he does something wrong, makes someone uncomfortable / embarrassed but i also don't think he'd appreciate his actions being moralised. at the end of the day, he wants to be seen, known and understood for who he really is but he's afraid of baring himself that way. he doesn't want to be an open wound, his childhood home was not forgiving enough for him to express any kind of injury. i suppose he thinks, "if i am to be abandoned, i'd rather be abandoned like a house on fire, not a sick dog. something malicious, unsympathetic and worth remembering, if not possible to return to." he's kind of twisted like that, and it's endearing to me (unfortunately).

we don't know much about his childhood in the yeon household (he did move to japan all by himself when he was 13 - which is a whole another can of worms to unpack because can you imagine having to independently build a life at that age in a new country, learn a new language and stand on your feet after being thrown out by your family? can you blame hajun for being a razor-sharp hazard to society? his childhood was pitiless, the city was even more so, no wonder hajun's only constant companions were his isolation and the fangs he had to grow to survive.) but i'll make a reasonable inference based on dongha's experience. we see hajun as he is now, with his cold, precise anger but we also see dongha's wet, thrashing rage that hasn't realised its purpose or target yet. dongha is the closest we have to understanding the extent of the yeon's family cruelty. dongha is everything hajun would have been if he'd still been his parent's son, hajun is everything dongha could be if he leaves behind his family. which is still insane, if you think about it. and i think about it constantly.

the self-made cynic, as they say. i like that he's disarming, unsettling, insincere, insensitive, sadistic, self-serving, cunning manipulative etc. whatever people want to say about him, but i also like that he's his truest self with allen and anne, and doesn't plan on changing that. the world be damned, they are the only ones that matter because they've looked him in the eye without flinching or turning away. like... BAE are so everything...

anyways, i hope he continues to be perceived exactly as terrible as he pretends to be, and i hope the writers leave his beautiful, skewed moral compass intact because i love every single reprehensible act he commits. (for his next trick though, i hope he uncovers something to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against yeon conglomerate and sink them into bankruptcy.) i hope he continues to cook for allen and anne, i hope he stays fiercely committed to protecting them and caring for them, because clearly everyone else is nothing and if there is one thing he has faith in, it's the family he chose for himself, the family that chose him right back.

hajun and his quiet, precise rage. hajun and the childhood he had to bury so he could evolve to survive in a bigger, crueller world. the childhood that taught him to be afraid, and the adulthood that hasn't quite unlearned it just yet, but baby steps. something about hajun and i get mean when i'm nervous like a bad dog. something about anne and allen embodying tell me every terrible thing you did and let me love you anyway, and hajun taking the risk of believing it. and taking the risk every morning until he doesn't forget. hajun and i am not brave enough to look those who love me in the eye. hajun and it's not a conscience that assures morality, it's the resolve to be a better person to people you care about.

but we can't unpack all this right now. if you suffered through all that and are still here, i hope you have a good day.

[beckybarnes]

If you make fun of beginner artists you are a LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[vaunteir]

i could azujamify these songs watch

[endspace-robot]

waiting for a new challenger can be SOOOO boring

[clannfearrunt]

A slightly edited writeup stitched together from discord ramblings, about Rill vs his adoptive families. Lol. It’s long

Fathom and Mariana are an international and interracial couple, and they’re the same morph*. There are actual layers of bigotry they’ve faced while trying to get married. However, they are also very much pampered kids from generationally wealthy families. They do consider themselves very socially progressive, but this is true only relative to their immediate social circles. They have this Image of themselves as Good People and don’t have the self-awareness to recognize and unlearn the bigotry they do very much still hold, mainly towards other species. This has been a constant source of headache for Rill, who has to live with them and interact with their families.

(*Fish have a system of distinct “morphs” in addition to sex that informs the gender politics of their various cultures. The two morphs are referred to as drakes and hens in this language. I swear I will get into details on a different post. The particular ways the intersection of sex and morph is handled varies a lot by culture, but across most of them people are expected to be attracted to the opposite sex and morph. Relationships between the same morph can face more scrutiny than same sex ones in many places, as morphs are much easier to determine than sex at a glance.)

The big concession the couple made in order to gain their family’s approval was that they wouldn’t have biological children. So of course they went to adopt. But. The reaction of the extended family towards Fathom and Mariana's adoption of Rill, an Inkling, was mostly confusion. Like, most of them didn't exactly disapprove, but were definitely like, "? what the fuck?? why".

Rill himself consistently gets the impression that they chose to adopt him to reinforce their image of being Good Progressive People. When he was younger he definitely got paraded around at social events and occasionally ended up on gossip publications, and he only recently managed to weasel out of ending up on his parents’ social media posts all of the time. He’s a goddamn publicity stunt. It’s sickening. Unlike what Rill believes, it’s not an intentional Thing on his parents’ minds though. It’s definitely there, but it’s subconscious. Anyways.

The Nykur family initially reacted to Rill with an air of condescending curiosity; their view of Inklings is very colored by longstanding stereotypes of them being simple, frivolous, and lazy, and they had met very few Inklings in person to remotely challenge this view. They've warmed up quite a bit to Rill as he quickly adapted and showed himself to be a bright, well-spoken young man. They mildly pity him for not being able to speak their mother tongue (it is physiologically very difficult for Inklings), but he can respond in either an extremely restrictive selection of words he can manage to pronounce, Peixe (a more globally common Fish Language), or in writing, which is just absolutely phenomenal from an Inkling wowww way to go boy! Even now that they’ve grown to mostly like him, though, Rill consistently gets the vibe of being treated more like a talking animal than a family member, let alone a person.

Mariana's family, the Poecilias, were a little bit more familiar with Inklings, as her country’s warm and humid climate allowed a thriving minority population of Inkfish to establish itself there in the past century or so. They were expecting a boisterous, flamboyantly outgoing boy as per local stereotypes but have been pleasantly surprised by Rill's more reserved and shy demeanor. Some of them might like him a little more than they do Mariana lol, she's definitely the problem child of the family. They don't visit this side of the family as much due to the slightly strained relation Mariana has with them, but they do tell her to bring Rill when she does. Rill... doesn’t dislike them as vehemently as he does the Nykurs, but he finds them very draining to deal with regardless. He’s mostly kind of wearily disinterested in them for now.

The extended Nykur family has been more overtly shit towards Rill. Wether it’s because they’re “more” bigoted towards Inklings or if it’s just that they’ve had more opportunities to show themselves he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. They seem to be under the mistaken impression that the reason Inklings have a hard time with a bulk of their language is because it falls outside of their range of hearing, and they’ve said some heinous shit in earshot. Rill doesn’t... really know what the best course of action is for him here, so he’s been just been quietly seething. When he visits them he mostly just tries his best to stick close to his parents or Nobils, the butler, and not end up alone with the rest of the family. In all fairness I don’t think most of them would intentionally hurt him, but Rill doesn’t really want to find out.

TO Fathom’s credit also I do think he has told off his family over the really overt shit. He's not malicious, he's just clueless (if occasionally dangerously so), and there is a threshold where it's obvious enough that he's gonna know it's Getting Bad. And he does, technically, actually like his son. So Fathom will intervene, but most of the time it's not like. Serious/stern enough. It's very "hey let's not talk politics at the dinner table"-core... You know that vibe of "ohh don't get so mad at your horrifically racist/queerphobic/insert bigotry here uncle it's thanksgiving dinnerrrr let's not ruin thanksgiving dinner 🥺”. Rill gets a lot of this. He hates Fathom so much. Defend him or don’t, make up your goddamn mind.

Rill is genuinely terrified that if he acts out too much he'd just be unceremoniously disowned. It's much less of a hassle for his "family" to distance themselves from him than it would have been if he was their biological child, or even at least the same species. If this happens he has literally no one else to turn to for support. This fear is a central force shaping his Behaviors. I do think it's a significant bit less likely than he's convinced himself it is? Like, his parents are probably not actually going to drop him like a hot potato the moment he even slightly talks back at them. He's not wrong that they could, and on some level it's not impossible that they would, but it is more unlikely than he's convinced himself it is. With a lot of things I have to have this preface of like. Yes Rill's fears are very much rooted in reality. But he's also very much prone to paranoia and blowing up the risk factors of some things. Important to remember both things are true.

Nobils, the butler, is definitely the main thing keeping Rill from imploding prior to meeting Thresher. When Rill was adopted, he saw The Situation and quickly stepped up as his actual main caretaker. Unlike his employers, Nobils was firmly aware of the gaps in his knowledge regarding Inklings and how to care for them, and worked very hard to fill those gaps and give Rill the best physical and emotional care possible. Rill was at one point extremely close to him, as he was the only safe adult in his life. Nobils also helped raise Fathom, so his failure to be a good father to Rill has been a source of deep sadness and frustration. Unlike an actual parent/child relationship, he's very limited in his ability to confront Fathom, since he's his employer.

Nobils cares deeply for Rill, and sees him as something fairly close to a grandchild. His biggest regret was reminding Rill that he was a well compensated employee in a bid to reassure him that he wasn't being a burden to him. This would have been fine for someone like Fathom, but Rill took it very poorly. He’s retreated into himself since then. Rill puts up an awkward pretense of professionalism between them now that Nobils can clearly see hurts him very deeply... But he recognizes he has no idea how to repair his trust, and has resigned himself to supporting Rill as best as he can while respecting this distance.

Rill does still love Nobils deeply, but he's been trying very hard not to. The realization that Nobils is a servant, doing a job came way after he had grown heavily emotionally reliant on him. It was devastating and embarrassing. Rill wasn't quite old enough or idk. Stable enough? to process that "Nobils is here because it is his job" and "Nobils genuinely loves and cares about him" can be true at the same time. Nowadays this is kind of stewing in the back of his mind but he's too stubborn/scared/mysterious set of emotions to allow himself to admit that it's true. There's a complex and deep well of bitterness and longing. He's never going to forgive Nobils for... being an employee? But if he ever quits he'll never forgive him for that either. He's starved for affection, as much as he'll never admit it, and he's infinitely bitter that any he receives from Nobils is irreversibly tainted in his eyes by their financial ties. Rill is also Not Acknowledging how old this guy is. We are not going to think about the passage of time and mortality or anything. Don't worry about it. Nobils will live forever 👍 It’s his job. He’s very good at his job. He would never leave him.

Nobils is so relieved to see Rill finally hanging out with someone his age he seems to actually like (Thresher). Even if he appears to also be imploding about it. This is an improvement. Can we get this boy a support structure! Can anyone help his boy. Please

[mirensiart]

the best thing about doing home office is that I can draw during the day when there’s nothing to do lol cause September is a dead month for us

This is the calm before the storm though cause October-December are the busiest month of the year, so I’m drawing as much as I can before I’m thrown into job hell once again 🫡

[rubber-glovs]

Guys in computer science/coding class I did it about Leftenmost window😼😼

[silly-boi-broski]

Pacing around my room and foaming at the mouth like a Rabid Dog™ while I wait for my copy of Compound Fracture and praying it sent to the right house

[ttheatre-trashh]

the end of non stop actually lives in my brain btw

[shadowpunk]

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋 𝐒𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄

𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐇 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐍 key words: refreshing, wit, humour. you are a relaxing person to be around and leave a positive impression on almost everybody you interact with! you're always sending the funniest memes in the groupchat and when you really like someone you can talk to them for hours on end. compatible with: fresh linen, grass and rain, rosewater.

tagged by: @a-neverending-story & @vcnenum tagging: @toterwinkel @ghculism @concreete-jungle @th-ousndwinter

[the-ghost-guys]

what are your guy's favorite band?

I like the rolling stones. I don't have a favorite but I listen to them the most.

Queen. full stop. best band. R.I.P. Freddy Mercury. wait hold on I'm dead too