#stuck in a 2007 anime

[totheidiot]

i discovered the death note musical yesterday and my life has been Changed.

[13eyond13]

Please tell me about art and media you know of that accurately captures the weirdness of dream logic and atmosphere and emotions... books and movies and video games and art and comics and YouTube stuff, whatever you want... you know, where it only makes sense on an intuitive level and falls apart when you try to explain it...

[cartoonkitten]

y’all check out my fav movie ‼️‼️

[kochanski]

can you guys recommend me your favorite cat outfits. I really want to make one more video edit this weekend and then I have to be done because I really will just sit there for four hours and do it. but.

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A plate of light brown bumpy flatbread with blackened spots, surrounded by za'tar and green olives. End ID]

خبز طابون / Khobz taboon (Palestinian flatbread)

Khobz taboon ("taboon bread") is a soft, chewy Palestinian flatbread. It may be eaten with olive oil and za'tar, but it is best known as the base of مسخن (musakhkhan), where it is topped with spiced aromatics and perhaps chicken.

Khobz taboon gets its name from the vessel it is traditionally cooked in—an outdoor, shallow conical oven with an opening at the top and a clay or metal cover to trap heat. Taboons may also have an opening at the side through which the fire can be stoked, especially in the east of Palestine. These ovens were historically made from a mixture of local clay and hay, but have more recently also been constructed from clay treated to be sturdier, or from metal.

A taboon is used by packing flammable material, such as hay, fabric, animal dung, wood, and charcoal, around the outside of the oven and letting it burn overnight; the fire transfers thermal energy to the clay, and to the river stones, sand, glass, or flint stones (صوان, "ṣawwān") that form the base of the oven. The ash is then brushed away, and the flattened dough is placed on the stones or stuck to the walls of the oven to cook. The clay and stones will continue to release thermal energy and cook things throughout the day. The clay and ash give a distinctive flavor to anything cooked inside the taboon, making this method a source of nostalgia for many people who have transitioned to cooking in indoor ovens.

Khobz taboon was traditionally made with whole wheat flour. Most people today use a blend of around two parts white flour to one part whole wheat, or else all white flour; they may even add milk or milk powder to ensure a very soft dough. This recipe uses a blend of flours to combine the nutty flavor of whole wheat dough with the pliancy of white dough. It also begins with an optional pre-ferment to mimic the traditional Palestinian method of including a piece of dough from the previous day's bread into each new batch (like a pâte fermentée) giving a rich and slightly sour flavor to the final bread. It calls for the use of rocks to imitate the bottom of a taboon; the rocks give the khobz its distinctive dimpled texture, and ensure that no interior pocket forms in the bread.

In the years following 2007, the siege Israel had imposed on Gaza caused a shortage of cooking gas that led to a resurgence in the use of taboons. The ovens were used to bake bread and to grill sweet potatoes during the time of their winter harvest. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli military forces repeatedly destroyed taboon ovens and assaulted villagers who tried to defend them, as Israeli settlers from nearby villages complained about the smoke that the ovens produced. Some of these ovens had been used to bake bread for entire families of 40 or more people. Palestinians continue to build, use, and defend these ovens, despite the fact that Israeli law de facto forbids Palestinians in the West Bank to build anything.

Today, Israel is deliberately targeting and destroying bakeries in refugee camps that had been supplying bread to tens of thousands of people in Gaza, continuing a long campaign of starvation of the Palestinian people.

Support Palestinian resistance by calling Elbit System's (Israel's primary weapons manufacturer) landlord; and donating to Palestine Action's bail fund.

Equipment:

A large, shallow mixing bowl, like a Moroccan qus'a

A large (12"), shallow clay cooking vessel, such as the bottom of a Moroccan tajine (one that is rated for very high temperatures), or a large baking tray

Assorted smooth river rocks of varying sizes, from 1 to 3" in diameter.

Make sure that your rocks have been thoroughly cleaned, and that they do not contain any fissures, cracks, or veins that could contain water (this water, once heated in the oven, could cause the rocks to crack open). Instead of river rocks, I used lava rocks designed for use in a clay tanoor. You just need something to provide thermal mass and give a bumpy texture.

Ingredients:

Makes 3 large breads.

For the pre-ferment:

140g whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp active dry yeast

140g water

You may also use a pâte fermentée that you already have (just adjust the ratio of white to whole wheat flour added later accordingly), or a sourdough starter. The hydration of the starter doesn't matter, since you will be adding water by eye later.

For the bread:

330g bread flour or all-purpose flour

30g whole wheat flour

5g salt

Water

If you skipped the pâte fermentée step, add 170g (rather than 30g) of wheat flour at this stage, as well as 1/2 Tbsp of active dry yeast. I have not tested the recipe this way.

Instructions:

For the pâte fermentée:

1. Mix flour and yeast in a small mixing bowl. Add water and stir to combine. Cover and leave out at room temperature for a day, or in the refrigerator for up to three days. At the end of the rising time, it should be about one and a half times its original size.

For the bread:

This recipe makes a high hydration dough that will need techniques such as slapping and folding to knead effectively.

1. Mix flours and salt in a very large, shallow mixing bowl. Add your pâte fermentée and mix to combine.

2. Add water until the flour comes together into a soft, sticky dough and continue keading. Have a bowl of water on your workstation. Every time the dough starts to stick to your hands or the sides of the bowl, wet your hands and rinse down the side of the bowl with some water. This will gradually add water to the dough.

3. You will notice the dough growing smoother and laxer. At this point, start kneading by repeatedly folding the edges of the dough in towards the center. Do this by occasionally wetting your hands, then running a hand along the side of the bowl and under the edge of the dough to unstick it from the bowl; then fold. You will get stuck less often if you try to touch the dough as lightly and briefly as possible. Every few folds, dimple the surface of the dough all over with your fingertips. You will have been kneading for about 10 minutes at this point.

The dough should become more smooth and less bumpy—you will notice it holding its shape and becoming more stretchy as gluten forms. It should form into a ball when you fold the corners in and hold its shape for a minute, but then gradually expand to take the shape of the bowl. I added about 2 1/2 cups of water total (in dry conditions) during steps 2 and 3.

4. At this point, the dough is wet enough that the slap and fold method is the best way to knead. Wet your hands and again unstick the dough from the sides of the bowl. Hook your hands under the dough and quickly pull it all up into the air; fold the hanging bottom part of the dough under, and plop the dough back down, folding it on top of the part you plopped down earlier. Give the bowl a quarter turn and repeat. Do this continually for another few minutes.

5. When the dough is very smooth and lax, smear some olive oil on the sides of the bowl and under the dough, and pat some oil on top.

6. Cover the bowl and bulk ferment the dough at room temperature for 8 hours, or for 16-24 hours in the fridge. At the end of the rising time, you should see bubbles beginning to form on the surface of the dough.

To shape and bake:

1. Place a layer of rocks at the bottom of a clay cooking vessel or baking sheet. Put the sheet in the top third of the oven and preheat your oven to 550 °F (290 ��C), or as hot as it will go.

2. Meanwhile, fold the edges of the risen dough over into the middle a few more times with damp hands. Pinch off a large piece of dough (about the size of two fists), and fold the sides over into the middle to make a neat packet.

3. Drop the packet of dough onto a heavily floured surface, and flip to flour both sides. Pat the dough flat, then throw it back and forth between your hands, catching the edge each time as you spin it through the air, like a pizza crust, to stretch it into a circle about 1/4" (1/2cm) thick with a diameter of about 10" (25cm).

You may also stretch and pat the dough out on a flat surface.

4. Remove the tray from the oven. Flip the dough circle over the back of your hand to transfer it and lay it down over the hot rocks. Re-stretch it into a circle, if necessary.

5. Place the tray back in the oven and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the top of the bread has golden brown spots. Repeat with each piece of dough, leaving the rocks in the oven for a few minutes between each one to allow them to come back up to temperature.

6. (Optional): Hold each flatbread directly over a gas flame for a minute or two to blacken a few spots and mimic the flavor that a wood-fired oven would give to your khobz.

You may also use a method similar to the dhungar technique to smoke your bread. Place each piece of bread one at a time into a large vessel with a closely fitting lid, alongside a small bowl. Light a piece of wood on fire and drop it into the bowl; then cover the vessel with the lid as you allow the wood to smoke for a minute or two.

[duckprintspress]

Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale

A guest post by Aeryn Jemariel Knox. (@jemariel)

Ah, the citrus scale. It’s like a cryptid roaming the edges of modern fandom communities. Long-tenured veterans speak of it with affectionate mockery while newcomers google curiously. A relic from a bygone fandom era, the citrus scale saw a brief resurgence in 2018 during the Tumblr porn ban, suggested as a way to avoid the new bot censors trawling for posts with the NSFW tag—though never, I think, in seriousness. 

That may have been jocular and short-lived, but it does point to the reasons why the citrus scale was created in the first place. Certain fandom activities have always had to fly under the radar to one degree or another. Whether you’re trying to evade legal action or simply avoid deletion based on explicit content, a certain level of obfuscation is sometimes worthwhile.

It’s not hard to find the generally agreed-upon definitions of the citrus scale’s levels. According to Fanlore, KnowYourMeme, and others, this is more or less the “official” citrus scale:

Orange: Light stuff, kissing, nothing below the waist or under the clothes. 

Lime: Groping, implied sex without details, fade-to-black, no intercourse or intimate contact.

Lemon: Sex, in full detailed glory. Woo-hoo! Regardless of the actual acts performed, if you can tell who had an orgasm (or, perhaps, had an orgasm denied), how, and where, it’s a lemon.

Grapefruit: We’ll get into this later.

But these tidy categories are clear thanks to the benefit of hindsight. In the Wild West of the early internet, it was not so easy to pin down exactly what you might be getting into based on which term was used.

At its origin, the citrus scale wasn’t a scale at all. It has its roots in hentai (and was always more popular in anime fandoms), stemming from a specific early hentai film by the title of Cream Lemon (1984). Hentai being what it is, this led to certain subculture communities referring to any story with explicit sexual content as a “Lemon.” And for a while, that was the extent of it. Then came fanfiction.net purging explicit content (2002), Livejournal suffering Strikethru (2007), and other events that pushed burgeoning fandom communities out of their growing hubs and back into smaller, isolated communities centered on a single fandom or pairing. In the relatively sparse early ’00’s internet, anybody could spin up an Angelfire website, pass the link around to their friends, and get a reasonable amount of traffic.  Websites devoted to the works of a single author or small group were common.

I mention this to describe the landscape in which fandom lexicons grew and evolved in the early-mid 2000s. Each pocket community had its own rules, lingo, and expectations; venturing outside of your home pocket could lead to some pretty major miscommunications. 

“Lemon” was established early and its definition has hardly shifted. It means that the labeled content (art, fic, mood board, etc.) includes sex. Intercourse, bumping uglies, etc. However, some yaoi fandom niches used it specifically to mean gay sex of the male variety. In some communities, “lime” developed as a corresponding term for feminine gay sex, while other communities brought it up with the usage that eventually “stuck,” “not quite a lemon.” Given that lemon and lime often go hand in hand when discussing actual flavors, the fact that we had some divergent term evolution is not surprising. But coming in from a different pocket of fandom and seeing “lime,” thinking you’ll be reading semi-softcore sexual tension and instead being confronted with graphic sapphic antics? Bit of a shock, I’m sure.

A more dramatic example is the rating level of “Grapefruit,” which occupies two completely different ends of the scale. In some circles, grapefruit was defined as “less intense than lime,” G or PG-rated stories that were more soft or cute than sexy. In other circles, it was used to mean the exact opposite. Kinkier than kink, smuttier than smut, grapefruit art and fic was where you went to have your eyebrows singed off. Some communities were even more specific, using grapefruit for stories featuring non-consensual sex. This was where darkfic lived – in modern day parlance, your “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” works. To say that this usage difference caused some disagreements would be putting it mildly.

Nobody really worried about orange. Orange just existed, not bothering anybody.

When these terms were coined, the internet was not an assumed aspect of everybody’s daily life the way it is today. There was no Tumblr, no Facebook, no social media to speak of. There were no large repositories of internet lore and knowledge such as Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme. It was a playground. And what do you do on a playground? You make friends! The citrus scale, like so many fandom tropes and concepts, was defined by groups of friends that created them ad hoc to meet their own needs at the time. No one could have predicted that it would become so much a fandom history that it’d be enshrined, nor that I would be writing a blog post about it two decades later. From the common source of lemon, people extrapolated what the rest of the scale might look like, and there was no authority to tell them they were wrong. (Except other fans. That hasn’t changed.)

In conclusion, it’s best not to take the citrus scale too seriously. At best, it’s a cheeky way to avoid censors who try to bar a community from engaging with explicit works, but it’s also varied to a fault and open to interpretation. If you and your community have come up with a use for it that suits your needs, then congratulations: you’re part of a fandom tradition stretching back to the roots of the internet. Just don’t try and tell anybody else that they’re wrong. You might start a flame war.

References:

Prokopetz: Orange and Grapefruit

She’s Got Plans: What is the Citrus Scale in Fanfiction?

Unwinnable: Lemon and Lime

Past Fandom 101 Posts:

Everything About A/B/O Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but were Afraid to Ask)

How to Diversify Your To-Be-Read Pile

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

[deadtiredghost]

Tmnt facts that are canon cause i said so:

All Leo's are sci-fi fans of varying degrees of old sci-fi series/movies

But MM!Leo thinks the old movies are old and thus has no major franchise to obsess over, he is just big into any of the more modern movies of the genre: I'm thinking Interstellar, Blade Runner, idk many more. And then he started watching Final Space and eventually got into Futurama.

But he still would think the other Leo's are old and a bit lame for enjoying old anime so much.

All the Donnie's and Leo's are the musical fans, but that doesn't mean that Raph and Mikey can't enjoy a musical too! Especially 2003!Raph who grew up watching shit like high school musical and teen beach movie with Leo and Donnie.

The 2003 boys all teamed up to sit on Mikey and tape Mikey's mouth shut cause he would dramatically and badly sing the songs otherwise.

2018 crew are hard into Hamilton of course while 2012 have a knock off version of it that flopped but Mikey loves.

2003 have a musical version of Lost Boys and Faries that could possibly be comparable with some rap songs and some emotional ballads.

Bayverse and MM have batman while 2018 have a weird mixture of some irl media and some really obvious knock offs. 2012 has Wingnut and Silber sentry as comics to replace Marvel and DC in their universe and we all know how 2003 is on superheroes.

All the Mikey's are naturally talented at drawing apart from 2012 who's skills apparently just got transferred to literally every single one of his siblings.

2012!Mikey's writing looks like chickenscratch and his drawings are chaotic in an abstract art kinda way, while 12!Leo can draw anime, 12!Karai is decent at drawing anything reallt, 12!Donnie preffers skatching items and backgrounds rather than people and 12!Raph is the one who does art the most in the fam.

The 1987 turtles are stuck in 1987 and have been since 1987. They like crossovers for the change of pace but 87!Raph and 87!Donnie very much dislike how other turtles have treated them in the past so take any and ever chance to fuck with their alternates in retaliation, feigning innocence well enough that they keep getting away with blatantly insulting their iterations to their face.

Leo is the tea drinker in the family across iterations but most of the iterations don't drink coffee - rottmnt gets into coffee wars (sans Leo and Splinter) but other than that 2007!Donnie and Bayverse!Raph are the only rabid coffee drinkers.

most of the Donnies drink energy drinks if they want a caffeine boost - the nonbinaries and their Monster especially.

The MM kids aren't allowed coffee because Splinter read a watched of child-raising YouTube videos and banned it. Of course that doesn't stop them from sneaking out. MM!Donnie is trying to convince him to allow coffee while MM!Raph just sneaks in his energy drinks.

2003!Casey was convinced the turtles were adults for at LEAST the first month into their friendship.

The ampunt Mikey wears stickers is directly proportional to the amount of leeway Splinter gives him - with the used-to-be-human Splinters being more strict on not personalising his weapon while the used-to-be-rat Splinters such as MM gives the go ahead.

The outlines of this rule are 03!Splinter and 18!Splinter of course who have entirely different ways of handling their adhd child.

And then there is bayverse!Splinter who said fuck the stickers, yes of course my 15-year-old children can have tattoos.

(And yes I firmly believe they were 15 in the first movie, and I attribute their tattoos to Splinter not really seeing the harm in it, or caring much as long as it won't hurt them.)

18!Leo is biologically the eldest but no one knows this apart from Draxum who will never tell at this point. Splinter aged them based on size.

On the other hand, 03!Leo is the biological youngest but only Donnie knows this (science shit to find it out) and will never tell anyone because he found out that 03!Mikey hatched first and that information can never be allowed to get to the turtle in question.

2012 Casey is transfem but doesn't know it yet and 2018 Casey is what 12!Casey will look like at 20.

All Donnie's watch anime and all Mikey's watch horror movies - despite how much they may or may not scream at the horror movies.

07!Mikey sells art online and 07!Leo becomes a language tutor in their 20's. Ironic as 12!Raph attempts to sell art online but becomes too emotionally attached to his work and 12!Donnie attempts to tutor for a time but is a terrible teacher.

Leo is a basketball or baseball fan, Raph likes wrestling and basketball, Donnie will partake in basketball or volleyball and Mikey prefers dancing but is open to playing anything... just not watching.

Splinter always watched the tennis, becuase his grandmother did. Leo likes to put it on but doesn't like playing it.

Mikey will forever be confused why the others enjoy watching sport. This stemms from when he was 12 and trying to watch his cartoons and Splinter would always take control of the TV during the Olympics. Mikey is still very salty and has an agenda against the Olympics and any other big sports match on their communal TV.

All the Leo's before 2012 just didnt use the Internet or any electronics as a kid and thus struggles with electronics massively.

Conversely 2012 and 2018 Leo were both on tumblr as kids and read fanfic about Space Heros and Jupiter Jim respectively.

And in addition: Donnie was on the Internet far too much as a kid.

(12!Donnie will never tell but 12!Mikey befriending Chris Bradford on Facebook hit a bit too close to home.)

After Don, Raph is the best at mechanics, other than 18!Raph who is kinda shit at them.

Splinter taught all of the turtles first aid but Raph and Mikey are patched up the most by the other two, which leads to the other two being more confident and skilled at first aid.

Leo's first aid experience is very much similar to an army medic, using improvisation based on his prior knowledge without any of the proper hospital procedure while Donnie's is much more based on his research into medicine and thus much more clinical.

The outliers are the 18!kids cause Donnie finds biological shit kinda disgusting unless he HAS to do it.

And then there is the 87!turtles who don't really get hurt for longer than an episode's run time. Despite this every single one of them are able to accurately and skillfully carry out any medical procedure should the need arise becuase cartoon logic and convenience. It is a skill they have and its usually 87!Donnie ordering them about while 87!Raph plays nurse.

Mikey and Raph spray paint together sometimes in all iterations other than 87.

87!Mikey and 87!Leo have never kmowingly committed a crime.

Mikey looks up to Leo most out of his siblings, and Leo would look up to Mikey in turn if he could get over the jealousy towards his youngest brother.

There is not a single itteration where Leo doesn't sometimes kinda wish he could be more like Mikey - he has never voiced these feelings and hates that he feels this jealousy.

If you wake Leo up from sleeping he will be alert, a bit grumpy about it, but will never turn you away. He rarely gets a full good night's sleep anyways, ans becuase of this he is prime target to bother when he is awake... up until they turn 14 where Leo gets into the habit of pretending to be asleep so Mikey doesn't bother him and starts meditating until he falls asleep.

The prior headcannon excludes rottmnt and mutant mayhem.

Mikey starts bothering Donnie more and joins him in the lab late at night a lot.

If you dare to disturb Raph's beauty sleep you will get a pillow to the face and a shouting to at the least.

Everyone of the turtles loves Kung Fu Panda or whatever similar movie exists in their world. They won't admit it but its because Poe reminds them of Mikey.

Raph maintains that he doesn't like physical contact much to get out of hugging the sweaty humans in his life. He is actually fairly chill with hugs he just hates the feeling of sweat on his scales so much, and learnt that the hard way when Casey brought him in for a hug after a fight and he shoved him off and blustered a bit. But any of his siblings hugging him is fine, he only ever shoves them off out of annoyance.

Donnie is the least huggy turtle, but he will sometimes lean his full body weight on April - which is fine in most iterations but some cannot handle the weight, I'm looking at Bayverse.

If Mikey were a human he would be a borderline nudist when home and everyone who lived with him would complain about it.

Like [insert hair covering here] and a fluffy dressing gown from when he was 9 wrapped around the waist if you're lucky.

[tobi-rx]

Okay I can’t be the only one who sees this: that a Transformers/Arcane au could work.

Like, imagine a humanformers au where the transformers are inhabitants of Piltover/Zaun, or a transformers au where the Arcane characters are Cybertronians. I just think it could work and translate pretty well, especially given the similar overarching storyline of class struggle and war?

I think I’ll call it the Arcane humanformers au and the Arcane Cybertronians au respectively.

Not sure how I can justify the Arcane characters and the Transformers characters existing together without either making the transformers characters whatever species’ occupies the world of arcane, or making the arcane characters into cybertronians.

Idk yet how character interactions would work if I just stuck humanformers into the arcane world or if I just stuck cybertronian arcane characters into the transformers world, like it’ll take more thinking on my part that I’ll do later.

For clarification purposes I’m thinking about multiple continuities of Transformers, not just the movie which frankly launched me into the rabbit hole.

Keep in mind I am not familiar with all the transformers lore, nor am I familiar with League of Legends lore, and I’m not entirely caught up with Arcane yet.

With my preamble out of the way, hear me out:

Piltover/Zaun = Cybertron before the civil war that destroyed the planet.

Piltover and Pre-War cybertron both have a corrupt council of sorts. There’s a clear class divide, and while the Pilties/Upper caste of Cybertron live in prosperity it comes at the cost of the suffering of the Zaunites/the lower caste of Cybertron, who are the Decepticons-to-be.

Vander and Silco would probably have a similar role to Megatron as rebellion leaders, and in arcane cybertronians au, one of the early decepticon uprisings ended in disaster. Arrests, police brutality, death, etc.

Vi and Powder’s parents were among the decepticon rebels, and they were adopted by Vander, a la Optimus adopting a war orphan Bumblebee in some continuities?

I know Piltover and Zaun are still standing in League of Legends but imagine if in Arcane humanformers au, the use of hextech weapons results in the destruction of both cities, resulting in the arcane humanformers equivalent of the exodus from Cybertron in transformers.

Perhaps Piltover = Iacon and Zaun = Kaon??

The Iacon Hall of Records = Piltover Academy

And given that maybe Alpha Trion and Heimerdinger get similar roles?? Like they’re both the head of their respective academic institutions in the upper class city and also members of their councils.

If we’re going with the archivist origin for Optimus Prime/Orion Pax, he’d be the Dean’s assistant or apprentice, the Dean being Alpha Trion. If we’re going with the police origin for Pax, he’d probably play out a character arc similar to season 1 Caitlyn after meeting Megatron.

Wait, ayo? Caitlyn releases Vi from jail as their first official meeting, and in the IDW comics, police Orion Pax releases Megatron from jail as their first meeting, after Vi and Megatron were wrongfully imprisoned -

Tangent: I declare MegOP or OpMeg lesbians, it’s canon now because I make the rules /hj

The Arcane = Primus? The Allspark?

Shimmer = Dark Energon/the blood of Unicron, but also they’re both purple (referencing TFP).

arcane Cybertronians au: where Singed is studying how to use Dark Energon to bring the dead back to life, like bringing his daughter back to life, without turning her into a zombie or something, like Dark Energon does in TFP.

Cybertronian Silco giving Jinx Dark Energon in a last ditch effort to save her, and while it brings her back, she goes a little insane like Megatron in TFP. Perhaps Silco is still a drug lord? Chem baron? But instead of shimmer it’s dark energon.

Hextech = New upgrades/mods/technologies powered by harnessing the power of Primus or the allspark? Like perhaps hextech crystals are like allspark fragments in TF: Animated 2007.

Maybe in arcane Cybertronians au, the allspark was fractured long ago, but allspark fragements can be found around the planet. Or maybe allspark crystals are rare but can just be found in deposits?? I’m not sure how hex crystals work exactly in the arcane universe. But maybe the Cybertronians start using allspark fragements in their machinery and weapons and it turbocharged stuff, plus has magical properties.

Like, maybe Cybertronian Vi gets upgrades in the form of the atlas gauntlets. Perhaps Cybertronian Caitlyn gets retrofitted with a allspark powered shotgun.

Maybe Jinx’s Shark Gun, Fishbones, is like Megatron’s fusion cannon.

Maybe in Arcane Cybertronian au, Primus (the arcane) went into stasis (sleep) but with the increased use of allspark crystals (perhaps tied to the power of Primus?? I’m not sure what the relationship between the allspark and Primus is supposed to be), and a war ramping up, Primus is waking up like the Arcane does in season 2???

For Cybertronian Jayce and Viktor, I’m considering Viktor’s arc to be kind of like IDW Senator Shockwave. Like perhaps Jayce and Viktor are cybertornian senators, and also scientists of course, and Viktor is Kaon’s senator perhaps?

If we follow league canon, perhaps Cybertronian Viktor gets subjugated to Empurata and Shadowplay and becomes the Machine Herald (Decepticon Shockwave) after trying to help the lower class which he comes from? Opposing the rest of the Council of cybertron? Maybe as a senator, Cyber-Viktor was upgrading mechs, and suspected of building an army, he was punished as a result.

Perhaps Jayce would take a role akin to Ultra Magnus? I mean, Jayce has his Atlas Hammer (I think that’s what it’s called), and Ultra Magnus has his Magnus Hammer (TFA) or has the hammer of Solus Prime for a bit (TFP).

Oh wait what if some hextech weapons in arcane are artifacts of the Primes?

What if in Arcane Humanformers au, the Primes wielded powerful magic artifacts whose power is closely tied with Wild Magic/the Arcane, and that is part of what is triggering the Arcane to wake up?

Anyways, that’s all I got for now.

If anyone else wants to add anything please use the tags and tag me cause I’d love to see what other people might come up with if interested! :D

[chimeracauldron]

Pointless ramble about Genshiken anime incoming

I've been watching though the Genshiken anime with a friend , and a scene in Genshiken 2 (ep 21) caught my attention bc they threw in two disgaea references back in like 2007 (I almost didn't catch the hanako reference at first bc they gave her angel wings)

But now I can't stop thinking about the surrounding scene that this reference is in. I was initially curious if this reference was in the corresponding chapter of the manga(ch 33), which was unlikely as disgaea 1 only came out in 2004, and this chapter is from 2005, so at the very least the hanako reference couldn't have been there. But I found that this entire scene was also missing, with all the genshiken guys discussing what Ogiue would be like as a dating sim character, going so far as to openly speculate about her "h scenes", not knowing Ogiue is there listening in on them. I suppose it isn't really above some of the guys in genshiken to be weird about the girl members in private, but the whole scene just felt really gross and now I'm stuck wondering if it was just made up whole cloth for the anime, or if it was moved around from elsewhere in the manga? I can't remember where that scene might've been, and as much as I'd enjoy reading the whole manga again that'd certainly take a while lol. idk just weird little thing that's bugging me!!

[tommock]

I DNF'd Mistorn: Here's Why

Disclaimer: You asked for this. Let me start there. Don't get mad at me, Mistborn lover. If you clicked on this link, and that means you are taking the dagger into your own hand. The wound is self-inflicted!

I did not finish Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I know, I know, its actually called The Final Empire. The name Mistborn has stuck with so many readers for a reason, so I'll continue to use it as a shorthand. The book didn't work for me, but I think WHY it didn't work for me might be interesting to read about, especially for fellow authors.

If you have read and enjoyed the Mistborn books, or any work by Brandon Sanderson, I'm delighted. I want to applaud any work of fiction that brings people joy (so long as it or its author is not reprehensible in some way (he said, covering his ass)). I don't want you to think this is me taking shots at you or at Sanderson. I'm just talking about a work of fiction and what it did to my brain.

Believe me when I tell you I have no delusions about being some high-handed minister of good taste. You should see some of the anime I watch to destress at the end of a long day trying to be a self-published author, editor, and, well, just an ordinary semi-functioning human being.

I've read many, many books and loved them, only to come back to them later and find they were … less deserving of my matured tastes. Sometimes books meet us at the right time. If Mistborn was, or is, one such book for you, I would be a jerk and a fool if I tried to tell you that you were wrong for liking it. That isn't what this is. But, if you're at all curious why I didn't like it the way you did, here are my thoughts.

Instead of trying to construct some long elaborate essay, I've decided to present my reading notes as I was writing them. If you're at all familiar with my SPFBO9 opening reads thread, this is in a similar, though much protracted style. This is my travelogue of the first few chapters. If these notes are rough or feel stilted in places, I'm sorry. I DNF'd the book a few months ago, and I found in trying to clean up my notes that I was making up commentary to fill in gaps and I don't think that's fair. I've tried to provide some context where I could.

Pages referenced are from the first mass market edition, published August 2007 by Tor

My Notes:

Starts well enough. Interesting introduction to the fantastic elements of the environment (the ash fall) and the enslavement of the skaa. Some neat 2nd world titles “obligator,” etc.

Not great, not riveting, but competent introduction of world and one protagonist, Kelsier. He doesn't know what to do with Vin, though. Disconnect between the characters as we're told they are and their actions. Lacking coherent motivation.

(P.5)The slave that stands and stares defiantly sending a chill through the lord so-and-so is a bit melodramatic. Both actions struck me as over the top.

(writing note)…too many “of courses”

The writing is competent and descriptive. The Mist at night is another interesting setting detail.

(p.6) I immediately dislike Kelsier. “I’ll have to cure them of that (fear of the mist) some day.” This is has an unsympathetic arrogance about it. If this is also the man who stared defiantly at lord-so-and-so, hes blasé about endangering these people, and seems to look down on them, much like lord-so-and-so. I suspect this impression is not intentional. I suspect I’m supposed to think him strong and clever. We’ll see.

(7) rolling his eyes at these people. This seems intentional. But it’s also annoying.

(10) beatings beatings beatings. These “peasants” and their daily beatings. Did I mention the beatings? Their lives are harsh! There are beatings!

(‘) what is this talk about Tepper “leading” the skaa? Leading them how? They’re slaves! What decisions are they making? No, really. What is this forced little conflict? It’s pointless.

(‘) “How do you do that?” “What?” “Smile all the time” - there’s no reason for him to ask this. It’s unmotivated dialogue. How do you smile all the time? How? No. Why, sure. “You keep smiling. Is something about our home funny to you?”

(19-20, ch.1) I’m having trouble with Sandersons storytelling. This is coming across as heavy handed and simplistic. Here’s Vin. She was betrayed. There are betrayals. This boy who came to get her who’s nice enough will also betray her. But the ash is free…

I wonder if we’re going to slowly work through the alphabet section by section. Ash, then beatings and betrayal… who knows what could be next? Crime? I bet it’s crime.

Also - Reen’s sayings and betrayal. I think in general I find it a bit affected when we meet a character and they’re immediately thinking of their backstory … but that’s probably not fair of me. I think what comes across as affected is Sandersons execution. There’s a very light fiction - YA quality about Vin’s angsty introduction. I might have loved it if I read it at 14, but not now.

I’d like to think of an example of what would be more appealing to me - the introduction of a character with similar enough circumstances… Actually, Gideon the 9th might be a good example. We get to hear Gideon’s voice in the prose and the dialogue and get a strong sense of her character as well as the specific and very interesting world building details of how she got into the 9th house. Here, Reen’s betrayal is left completely unexplored, and so I wonder why bring it up at all except for that cheap YA punch in the gut of “my brother betrayed me and now I’m here.”

Maybe Sanderson felt some necessity to move faster here. He wanted to get to the city theiving … but it isn’t working for me, so obviously I think it was a mistake. Obviously he was hoping this would create a sense of anticipation that we would eventually find out HOW Vin’s brother betrayed her, but because he leads with it and then doesn’t explain it, it makes it seem like it doesn’t really matter HOW Vin was betrayed, what’s important is that she was betrayed and now she doesn’t trust anyone. It’s just a bit weak.

THE HEAVY HANDEDNESS (People being mean to Vin - her hard life) (21) the slap in the face (23) Theron looking Vin up and down - “eyes lingered on her … running down the length of her body. … She was hardly enticing (didn’t even look 16); some men preferred such women, however.” (24) “what do you know?” “Enough” - Vin hurts her, expositional dialogue about her brother’s debt and selling her to a whorehouse.

(25) fearing Vin would disappear in a scene she doesn’t have much to do during, we get these unnecessary interjections of her watching the interaction, followed by the explanation of Camon thinking Vin is his good luck charm. This should have been presented earlier, because it just interrupts the dialogue here. But also, it feels inaccurate after Vin made such a useful critique of Camon’s servants. She seems much more useful in other ways than a luck charm, and comfortable offering her criticism without the slightest hesitation.

This chapter ends rather abruptly and without much Go to it. Vin uses her Luck and gets our stuffy official to consider her boss’s mundane business proposal.

The notion that Camon brings Vin along because he thinks of her as his luck charm feels really thin, especially on a job like this where everyone has to look the part. Which raises an important question: what was Vin doing there? I mean literally. Why didn’t Camon have SOMETHING for her to do. Camon didn’t dress her up in any part, she didn’t have any kind of cover story as his daughter or nurse or anything. Just some kid in the room dressed … who knows how while important official business is discussed. She just floats somewhere, doing nothing, as far as anyone is concerned.

VIN’S MOTIVATION Where is it? What does she get out of making this work for Camon if he has no idea what she’s doing? Why is she avoiding him if this is such an important job? Why is she helping him at all?

The pieces are there, but Sanderson doesn’t put them together.

Camon should know about Vin’s ability to “smooth things over” in some capacity. This would give him a serious reason for her being there on this crucial job. Vin should be motivated to help him because if this lucrative job works out, it will go a long way towards paying off her brother’s debt. Now suddenly there is a sense of urgency for her instead of just having a bad time owned by a “crew leader” getting slapped around. The scam itself isn’t enough. Frankly, it’s kind of boring at this point. It’s a slow moving beurocratic swindle.

(32) Kelsier. Sanderson is doing a good job introducing some thieves’ cant here as Dockson and Kelsier are planning their job, talking about how they need a “Smoker.” Someone is a good Tineye. The loss of a man to the Steel Ministry underscores the mortal risk these men are taking. But … there’s something about all this crime play that feels a bit cute, like Sanderson had only a passing, generic understanding of (fictional) gangs/criminal organizations. He’s spent his world building energy on the fantasy aspects of the story - the dystopian Tolkien Lord Ruler and Steel Ministry, skaa, ashfalls, mist - but not on developing the criminal world of the characters, linguistically speaking. They’re all crews working on a job headed by a crew leader. This is the world we’re living in, most immediately, and yet it feels the most underdeveloped.

“Kelsier shook his head. ‘No. He’s a good Smoker, but he’s not a good enough man.’ Dockson smiled. ‘Not a good enough man to be on a THIEVING CREW … Kell, I have missed working with you.”

This stopped me dead. I laughed at the book and put my hand over my eyes. “Thieving crew” is just silly. It’s sixth grade D&D language, but even more ridiculous is the sentiment of Dockson’s statement: that character is somehow a moot point because they are criminals. It’s as if he’s saying: we’re breaking the law, so we’re the bad guys, and bad guys don’t work with “good men.”

Here we see Sanderson’s shallow understanding of the characters he’s portraying. They are stealing from slavers who exist in the service of a brutal, oppressive dictator. But put that aside, and consider we’ve just been told one of their ilk had been caught and beheaded by the Ministry. The risk these people are facing couldn’t be higher. Working with people they can trust, a stand up guy or a “good man,” would be one of the most important things to them. From their point of view a “good man” doesn’t mean a patron saint of the poor, but it means a hell of a lot. If a guy is a drunk who cheats on his wife, you can’t trust him not to turn on you. If he gambles too much, you can’t trust him not to gamble on your safety. He doesn’t keep his apartment clean, how can you trust him to be conscientious about keeping you alive. It all matters - even more so because he’s on a “thieving crew.”

Now, Sanderson probably didn’t give this line more than a moment's thought. He was writing fast and sailed right over it. But that’s exactly the problem. It gives the book a kind of childish, YA feeling.

(33) “Kelsier turned with curious eyes.” I’ve written lines like this, but I almost always revise them because I write about eyes too much. The point is his eyes aren’t curious, Kelsier is, and it shows on his face. I can’t picture curious eyes, and I’m sure you can’t either. And I would cut the next line of dialogue - going to chastise my brother … we already know he was going to do this because he said so, and the line just isn’t very good anyway. A look of curiosity from Kell, and the promise from Dockson “it’ll be worth your time,” gets us out of the section better. Sometimes the best repartee between characters is a look.

(33-34) the scenes with Vin remain heavy handed, and affected. This section adds almost nothing to the story accept for the disappointingly narrow view of a fantasy underworld that the women in it are only ever whores. This from a world crawling with Smokers and Tineyes? I think not. The clumsy presentation of Vin’s awful life is what makes these sections particularly affected. With her particular ability to use her Luck, I can’t help but wonder why she’s even still here. That seems to be the story to me. Not the abuse, but why she remains when she clearly has the power to get out. She can smooth over deals with reps from the SM, but she hasn’t thought to calm some member of the crew and then just … walk? Go literally anywhere in the city and use her Luck to get work where she won’t be whipped and slapped. It seems like the easiest thing in the world, so why hasn’t she done it? This is what the story here could have been, and it would have been so much more interesting.

Obviously she has to be there so Sanderson can have terrible things happen to her so she can be saved by Kelsier just like he saved the other raped scaa girl (let’s all take a moment to roll our eyes) and then her character can have a trajectory from passive victim to active hero - but that’s an excuse, and excuses don’t make good stories.

That said, as is, these two pages could be cut entirely and with very minor revision to the next session, nothing would be lost. It introduces a hideout we don’t need to know about, abuse that is redundant, over the top and unmotivated, and then Camon says “it’s time.” It’s just a prelude, in which nothing happens, before the actual scene. So just cut to the actual scene.

(36) we finally find out what the Camon job was supposed to be, I suspect because Sanderson finally decided what the details were. It would have been much more interesting to know this earlier, just like it would have been more interesting to understand about the particulars of Vin’s brothers betrayal earlier, so we could understand the context of the story being told.

But a LARGER ISSUE continues to emerge. First Camon tells Vin nothing about his plans. She says she is apparently the only crew member who didn’t know what was going on. Then, as they sit in the waiting room, in the vey belly of the obligator beast, he tells her everything. Why? Because Sanderson wants us to know even though he never decided who this character was.

He wants her to be a passive victim of inordinate abuses by a group of irredeemable villains, who only avoids constant sexual assault through the exhausting use of her secret magic so she can be saved and then learn how to be powerful later. But he also wants her to be a smart, capable member of Camon’s crew who is considered as such, because he knows passive protagonists aren’t interesting and because he wants us, the reader, to know what’s going on, and also think that Vin is cool. She can’t be both at the same time. She either needs to be less of an abject, pathetic victim, or she needs to be less involved in this big important scam - and that means she knows less about it and does less to make it work. As is, he’s done too little with either idea of her character and both Vin and Camon are an unmotivated mess.

(42) steel inquisitor. Cool, creepy, disgusting - something straight out of hellraiser.

(43) “Besides, I’m not about to let a possible Mistborn slip away from us” Ah!

Ch3 (45) after the meeting with the obligator (that was a trap), is the first time Vin ever expresses any interest in getting away. Much too late Sanderson gives us a much too thin reason why Vin hasn’t run away (considering the conflicting versions of her character as mentioned before). It’s little more than an afterthought.

(47) in no more than 2 pages Vin goes from never thinking she could make it on her own to leaving for good, telling herself she’d survived sleeping in alleyways before, she could do it again and - “Reen had taught her how to scavenge and beg. Both were difficult in the Final Empire … but she would find a way, if she had too.”

So far, this is all based on a bad feeling. More motivation conflict - Vin has no problem telling Camon directly how his plans won’t work and that he should change the way the servants are dressed, helps him succeed with her luck in both plans, but sees no reason to tell him “I have a bad feeling about this. That was too easy. Why did that obligator suddenly agree. Doesn’t this seem weird to you?”

Sanderson has many of the right pieces, but he hasn’t been able to put them together coherently.

(45)(And, just as an aside, I’m not sure why a girl who has spent to book so far reiterating to herself that EVERYONE WILL BETRAY ME is going out of her way to tell Ulef she has a bad feeling and to get him to come with her. Sanderson says “if he would go with her, then at least she wouldn’t be alone.” But he has also up until this point defined her character by a near constant desire to be alone - when she is introduced sitting in the window of the hideout thinking her brothers word “Vin wasn’t on duty; the watch-hole was simply one of the few places where she could find solitude. And Vin liked solitude. ‘When you’re alone, no one can betray you’- (37) at the “It’s just another betrayal, she thought sickly. Why does it still bother me so? Everyone betrays everyone else. That’s the way life is … She wanted to find a corner - someplace cramped and secluded - and hide. Alone.”

(47) "Bringing Ulef was a good idea. He had contacts in Luthadel." These after the fact explanations are no good. This isn't Vin thinking this, it's the author coming up with more justification for Vin's action, but in order for her character to seem active and motivated, this needed to be revised into the section where Vin decides to bring Ulef. Now it's just tacked on - oh, yeah, and, by the way, if you weren't sure it made sense for Vin to do this, Ulef probably knows people. So, there.

It doesn’t wash. Who is this girl? Can she not stand the idea of being alone, or is it the one and only thing she wants? Is she strong and resourceful in spite of her circumstances, or is she a passive victim? Does she believe everyone will betray her, or does she desperately want to believe otherwise because she can’t live in such an unkind world? Sanderson doesn’t seem to have been able to make up his mind. Maybe some of these details were added in revision on the suggestion of beta readers and the result is a checkerboard character. I’ve seen that before where you make a suggestion to a writer and they add your suggestion but they don’t make the necessary changes to the rest of the book so that the new material earns its place, they just throw it in and dust off their hands - job well done, gotta stay on schedule to publish! But now I’m just writing fan fiction about Sanderson’s process. I don’t know.

(55) Vin’s “weakness” - the contradictions/inexactitude of characters seems to be an ongoing issue for Sanderson, at least for Vin. Is she weak and has to pretend to be strong, or is she strong and often chooses to pretend to be weak (so far she has seemed to be weak and act weak, other than her Luck).

Well, that's as far as I got. Kel shows up just in time to be the wrath of justice for Vin. He's the superman who will make everything alright for this feckless girl. Our hero. Did Sanderson lay it on thick enough? Did you get that these people were all so irredeemably and stupidly bad? Aren't you so glad this strong man has shown up to be Vin's vengeance, just like had been telegraphed all along?

Sorry, I don't mean to be sarcastic. This part of the narrative really isn't so bad, its just been so heavy handedly and clumsily lead up to that there's no thrill in it for me. It isn't a bit satisfying. I'm just glad I don't have to read about any of these shallow side-characters anymore. Except, I have no intention to read on, so I don't have to read about any of them anymore.

Is this book bad? Yes and no. I don't want to read any more, and only read as far as I did as an examination of storytelling, so for me its bad. You only get so many eyerolls before I have to say that. The sentences are very clear and coherent. On their own, they are coherent. Together, they fail to paint of picture of coherent characters who drive the action of the story. If you don't have that, at least in my book, you've got nothing.

The images work. The setting, in its broad strokes, is eveocative. I'd love to set a DnD campaign in a world of ash and a dark lord and all that (I'm not the least mad about the cliché of the dark lord, by the way. Who doesn't love archetypical stories?) But, as near as I can tell, there are no human beings in this book. No one is real. The characters are just that, only characters in a book. They are paper cutouts. They fall flat when the hand of the author isn't pushing them around and making them do things.

Fans often hold Sanderson up as the gold standard of a fantasy author who produces work fast. And having read this far into Mistborn, I can say this about it: It reads like it was written fast.

Yes, Mistborn was an earlier book of his, so I can't judge him by it alone. But it is a work that is so often held up as a favorite by his readers. That's why I picked it up, to see what all the fuss was about. There were many things I enjoyed, but what I enjoyed wasn't the narrative. The story and the characters who moved it were the thing that I enjoyed least. The unique magic and broad setting details and description of places and creepy Inquisitors were what I liked best. The proper nouns were fun.

But proper nouns don't make a story for me. So I did not finish Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

If I were looking for a light fantasy read that I didn't have to take seriously and I could pick up and put down whenever I wanted because it was never that exciting or particularly witty or clever, but managed to string along one event after another and kept them going, more or less, whether it made much sense or not, until the end, I think Mistborn would be a fine book to dip into. Lots of people have read it. But then, that seems to me to be its major appeal. It’s a book you can talk about with other people.

It's not enough for me, though. There's lots of fun fantasy books out there that feel more coherent, and, well, INTERESTED in the story they're telling. Interested in violence and revolution and crime in an oppressively totalitarian, dystopian world. Interested in the plight of a young girl who only wants … well, what does she want? To be safe? But the only way she finds she can be safe is to go toward danger and realize how very strong she is? Maybe this story would like to be that, but it hasn't been for the first 60 or so pages.

Sanderson's novel felt more interested in the large and vague story shapes around the characters - a city, a dark lord, slavery, soot snow, bad mist, some kinds of magic, and (I cringe to say it) rape and thieving and beatings - but not in the world of their lives.

I've heard good things about The Way Of Kings from people who did not like Mistborn either, but its safe to say at this point that I have reservations about my reading tastes being a good match for Sanderson's work, at least at this point in time.

If I'm looking for fun I'd rather read another swanky, noir fantasy by Douglas Lumsden any day, or the next gothic gaslamp fantasy mystery by Morgan Stang, or discover my next favorite author, indie or otherwise.

I don't think Mistborn was terrible by any stretch of the imagination. Sanderson has delighted readers for over a decade now! He's prolific, hard working, and he delivers what his fans want, and he and they continue to be richly rewarded for his efforts. He is a Name in the genre, often listed alongside the greats. And why not? Isn't pleasing readers what this is all about? Taylor Swift has oceans of adoring fans, and she's no less deserving of her accolades. Brandon Sanderson is the Taylor Swift of fantasy, you could say. I just don't like her music either.

[froggychair05]

Hello, my friends!!! @jelo-boi and I have been cooking the past few days working on our MCSM Enchanted AU (AKA Minecraft: Enchanted Mode), a re-telling of the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted but with the funny blocks.

Putting a cut here because this is a bit long 🫶

Characters:

Jesse as Giselle

Lukas as Robert

Petra as Edward

F!Jesse (Jessica) as Nancy

Ivor as Nathaniel

Reuben as Pip

Romeo as Narissa (the disguise he uses is Vos)

Nell as Morgan

Olivia as Sam (the secretary)

Axel as Arty (the construction worker)

Isa as Robert’s boss

Milo as the other divorce lawyer

Jack as the guy singing in the park

Nurm as Clara (the old woman on the bus)

Cassie Rose as the bus driver

Ellegaard and Magnus as Phoebe and Ethan (the couple getting a divorce)

Summary:

Things start out in the fairytale land of Beaconlasia, where Jesse lives in a house in the woods until she’s saved from the Prismarine Colossus by Princess Petra and the two are to be married.

However, Petra’s stepfather King Romeo doesn’t want to give up the crown (he’s been trying to keep Petra from meeting a boy) and he disguises himself as an old man, tricking Jesse and pushing him down a well.

At this point, Jesse ends up in the middle of Manhattan. He wanders around the city, lost, until he quite literally falls into the arms of a divorce lawyer named Lukas and his younger sister Nell, and he goes to stay with them.

Meanwhile, Petra and Jesse’s pig friend Reuben venture to the real world to find her, and shortly after, Petra’s valet and Romeo’s servant, Ivor, goes through to try and stop her from finding him.

Lukas is engaged to a woman named Jessica, but shenanigans happen and he winds up falling in love with Jesse, and Jesse winds up falling in love with him as well. Ivor tries to poison Jesse a few times, and then eventually Petra finds him.

Except Jesse doesn’t want to go back because he loves Lukas and he likes being around Nell, but he agrees to return to Beaconlasia after going on a date with Petra.

They wind up going to a ball and Jesse dances with Lukas while Petra dances with Jessica, and then when it’s over, Petra and Jesse go to leave, but Romeo shows up disguised as the old man again and poisons Jesse with an apple. Petra finds out and tries to give him true love’s kiss, but it doesn’t work, so he has Lukas kiss him and he wakes up. Then Romeo turns into a dragon and captures Lukas, but Jesse saves him and Romeo falls off of the building and dies.

Jesse and Lukas have their happy ending while Jessica goes back to Beaconlasia with Petra and they get married, and Ivor writes a book and Reuben also writes a book and they all live happily ever after.

Important Details:

—> In the animated bits in Beaconlasia, they are Minecraft blocks.

—> Nell is Lukas’ younger sister, not his daughter. She’s still six, but with some of the mannerisms and attitude that Nell has.

—> Jesse cuts Lukas’ curtains to make his clothes—the suspenders are the patterned bits.

—> Instead of the running gag of Giselle’s wedding dress getting stuck in everything, it’s that Jesse’s suspenders keep getting caught on stuff.

—> Aiden is Lukas’ ex who left, causing him to have a sort of sour view on love (Aiden is also Malvina from Disenchanted. More on this later.)

—> Jesse and Jessica are long-lost siblings. Back when they were still babies, Jesse was more of a stubborn, adventurous type prone to wandering, while Jessica was a bit less stubborn and more reserved. Their mother was strolling them through Times Square on the same day maintenance work was also being done on the sewer, particularly the manhole that leads to Beaconlasia. When the stroller was just in place while their mother wasn't paying attention, Jesse crawled out while people were crossing the road. He got lost in the crowd, and eventually crawled all his way to the manhole and ended up stranded in Beaconlasia. Baby Jesse first wound up in the entrance to the wishing well inside the castle walls, but some parts of the walls had cracks that were big enough for him to crawl through. Eventually, he kept going on and kept roaming until he reached the forest, and there, the animals found him and took him in as their own. Ever since that day, Jessica grieved the loss of her brother, and as years went by, she wound up hiding those feelings inside her. Then, when she meets Jesse for the first time with Lukas at his apartment, she's initially jealous-angry at Lukas, but when she rides the taxi, she realizes how Jesse looks eerily similar to her, and she's like, “It can't be him, can it? It was so long ago. That's impossible.” After that, Jessica is less bothered by the notion of Lukas cheating on her and moreso by the notion that the person Lukas was with may be her long-lost twin. When she calls Lukas after receiving the flowers post-That’s How You Know, Jessica also asks for Jesse to come along with him to her workplace. Right after the scene where Jessica is awed by the flowers and thanks Lukas for the ball invitation in person, she calls for Jesse to have a talk with her. They have a heart-to-heart talk about how Jesse may have been separated from them since they were babies, and both confirm that he really is Jessica’s sister. Then they hug and they both cry and comfort each other as they realize they’re both family.

—> Dewey was one of Jesse’s friends back in Beaconlasia and he comes to the real world with Petra and Reuben, finds them while they’re at the park, and then stays with them when Reuben goes back to Beaconlasia

Relationships:

Green Suspenders Jesse and Lukas

They meet when Jesse falls off of a billboard and Lukas brings him back to his and Nell’s apartment to stay the night. After some initial misunderstandings with Lukas’ fiancée and coworkers, he begins to truly care about Jesse, and Jesse grows reluctant to return to his own world after realizing his feelings for Lukas.

Female Jesse and Petra

Jessica falls for Petra while they’re at the ball. Taken by surprise by Petra’s completely straightforward and earnest nature, she’s swept off her feet after Lukas falls for Jesse. The two return to Beaconlasia together and get married.

Ivor and Romeo

Ivor is entirely devoted to serving Romeo, but Romeo couldn’t care less about him. Once Ivor realizes this, he turns on him and helps Petra and Jesse defeat him.

Magnus and Ellegaard

A couple who were going to get divorced before Jesse stumbled into things and re-ignited their spark.

If you’ve never seen this movie, PLEASE check it (and the sequel) out! They’re both so good!!

EDIT!! Check the reblogs for Jelo’s half of the post :D

[ghosts-and-glory]

I'm on a horror movie binge rn. Lmao I'd like to ask: what do you recommend? What are your favorites? (The one I'm watching currently is so mf boring but I'ma see it through)

I know I said I’m a film buff on Instagram and I know you saw it and I almost feel I HAVE to clarify that some of my tastes are like objectively bad. I like DARKSTAR (1974) But boy do I have recommendations.

Animated

9 (2009) It’s number 2 on my list of faves. Very very good movie

Mad God (2021) Absolutely a visual masterpiece, kinda lack plot, more vibe based.

The House (2022)

It’s a classic for a reason

The Exorcist (1973)

The Thing (1982) My all time favourite movie

The Conjuring (2013)

Parasite (2019)

Nope (2022)

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The Mist (2007)

Not a horror but still disturbing

Schindler’s List (1993) Had to watch it in two sittings cause I felt sick

Seven (1995)

American History X (1998)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Another movie I just personally love

Mid teir but I was entertained

Barbarian (2022)

Talk To Me (2022)

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Hereditary (2018) I’m sorry I laughed through this movie. The ending is really funny tho.

So bad it’s good

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Only slasher I like and I fucking love this movie.

The Invisible Man (2022) One of my favourite bad movies

Grimcutty (2022) Watched with family and lost our minds

Hell house LLC (2005)

The Decent (2005)

Tv show honourable mentions

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) It’s a anthology and very very good

Midnight Mass (2021)

The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

From (2022) Kind a thriller but the gore fucks so hard.

Hight On My Watch List

Movie I wanna recommend cause I’ve heard really really good things but have yet to get my hands on.

As Above So Below (2014)

Come and See (1986)

Skinamarink (2023)

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

If I think of more I’ll add them. Unfortunately I don’t really have any hidden gems, most of these are relatively mainstream. It’s probably cause my memory is shit and it’s either movies I watched recently or movies that really stuck with me.

If I’m missing a mainstream movie it’s probably just because I don’t like it or haven’t seen it. I’m sorry I don’t like midsommer or the witch, I think they’re boring and not really scary. I also mostly cut movies that are horror comedies like Tusk or Cabinet in the Woods, even tho I like them haha. And I don’t really watch/ like slashers, sorry Saw and Scream movies.

I also want to mention that some movies have more triggering content ie sa and animal death. I highly recommend websites like “Common Sense Media” and “Does the Dog Die” for relatively spoiler free trigger warnings for a comfortable horror experience.

[vikenticomeshome]

The Cyberchase Homepage Through the Years: part 3 (March 20, 2007 through present day)

Alright, let me pick up where I left off. So, as of March 20, 2007, the main Cyberchase website looked like this.

However, there was also a non-flash version of the page. It was made for users who couldn't process the Flash content. Here's the first version of it, as captured on October 23rd, 2006.

Yeah, they put up a placeholder page before the real thing was ready. I just thought it was funny that the Wayback machine managed to capture it. Here's the final version of this page, captured on January 8th, 2007.

This basic version of the page is not animated. I don't know why they took a freeze-frame with Nezzie's arms stuck like that.

I like their choice of the "Featured Send It", which would have been an excerpt from a fan submitted story.

'Oh no!' Jackie yelled. Her and her friends were in another Cyberchase mission.

Classic Jackie.

Unfortunately, it seems that this basic version of the site was never updated beyond this point. It was just this one freeze-frame for its entire life, which lasted over four years. The basic version of the page was eventually removed when the Flash version of the site was overhauled in late October of 2011.

But what do we care about the non-Flash version when we have the superior Flash version? Well, some time after that March 20th screenshot, they changed how the Flash version of the site was loaded. This change broke the Wayback Machine's ability to archive is properly.

So, between March 20, 2007 until the October 25, 2011, the Wayback machine gives us two types of captures. We either get a failure to load the SWF file for the Flash content...

...Or we get the main SWF loading, but the rest of the content doesn't load.

So, if they did anything special between March 20, 2007 and October 25, 2011, that history is lost.

The overhaul on October 25, 2011 is pretty cool though. We get a view of Motherboard's hangar with a big screen to announce what is going on. This version of the website selected one of three Flash animations to play over the background.

Jackie is the star of the show in the first one. The kids have finally realized that they need to do something to stop The Hacker from accessing their clubhouse. So, we get an animation of the Hacker showing up at the slightly open door, and we get Jackie closing it on him. His bowtie gets stuck.

The second animation stars Buzz and Delete. Delete knocks on your screen and writes "wash me" on it. Then, Buzz sprays the message and delete.

The third animation also features Buzz and Delete. This time, Delete has some donuts, and buzz is made to dance to get one as a reward.

This version of the website also gave us new bios for the characters. However, they aren't as detailed or interesting as the old "Meet the Cybersquad" bios.

We also get a page called "Find it!", which was a directory to different math topics.

We also get revamped versions of the pages for Games, Videos and Activities.

They let The Hacker introduce a page, but they don't have Matt introducing any pages. How strange.

The homepage was supposed to have a banner called "Motherboard recommends over the big screen, but it wasn't capture properly at first. Here's a good capture.

This version of the site also contained polls, some of which have been preserved.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any special holiday editions for this version of the site. It is possible that they weren't captured. However, I don't think they did them.

To make up for that, here's a capture from October 1st, 2017, where the poll screen glitched out. It just says "What". Hell of a question.

And then, on July 27, 2018, we got another revamp.

This is more or less the framework for the site today. They will put different backgrounds out sometimes. I'm happy to report that they started doing holiday theming again.

Here's a capture from November 2, 2018 with their Halloween decorations still up.

Here's a capture from December 2, 2018 with a winter theming.

Here's the one for today.

And with that, we've gone through the full history of the homepage. This was fun.

[oflgtfol]

finally read flatland for myself. read it in its entirety today during my free time on my 12 hour shift. really good book but maybe would have stuck more in my mind if i hadnt seen the janky 2007 animated adaptation several times before reading it. but then again my coworker saw me reading it and said they had tried to read it but it was too confusing trying to visualize everything, so i at least had a leg up there since all i could think of was the characters from the 2007 adaptation. anyway i think i’m going to rewatch it for the Nth time tonight <3

[rjalker]

[ID: Eight original designs for the Sphere from the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, drawn as circles against a grey background, with a long column of color palettes on one side, being crossed off as the images go. The first two images show two versions of the same design, which is black, with dark blue-green linesart. He has two eyes, and a cat-like mouth with his tongue stuck out. His eyes have black sclera, white irises, and black pupils. Above his eyes are small round eyebrows, and dark green markings like eye makeup. His tongue is dark green as he sticks it out. The second version of this drawing has a repeating pattern of many grey shapes against the black surface.

The second design is black with thin dark magenta stripes, with eight eyes arranged in a half circle, and two mouths with sharp teeth.

The third design is half white and half cyan, with round eyes with heterochromia. The right eye has a white iris and a cyan sclera, and the right has white sclera and cyan pupil. Around each eye are purple triangles pointing outward like a radiation symbol, and pairs of dark red lines between them, radiating out like sound waves. His chin has a stripe of dark green, with two thin red stripes on either side. The fourth design is pale yellow, with large dark blue eyes, and a dark blue chin under a jagged mouth like a beak. Sharp orange and black diamond shapes frame the eyes like fancy sunglasses, with orange, black, and dark blue spots on the forehead. The fifth design is horizontally striped blue, white, and dark grey. In the center is a large oval shaped light red eye with a diamond pupil, with the eye surrounded by smaller light red diamonds, with small heart shapes on the top and bottom.

The sixth design is pale yellow, with large oval eyes with pale blue-green sclera, matching large circles on the cheeks. The irises are the same yellow as the face, with dark blue pupils. Above the eyes are sky blue eye shadow, and in the center of the face is a dark blue triangle like a nose. The mouth is open in a grin, showing a blue tongue and darker blue inside.

The seventh is covered in thin horizontal stripes of pale green, yellow, and dusty blue, with sharply pointed eyes like a stylized cat, with triangle pupils and a jagged iris. The mouth stretches across the whole face, with a small black diamond in the center.

The eighth design is white and teal with diagonal curving stripes, with an animal-like face with sharp teeth, a large round nose like a cat or dog, and rounded diamond shaped eyes with dark blue sclera and green pupils.

End ID.]

More public domain designs for the Sphere, free for anyone to use for anything, and modify however you want. Please either use a public domain design, or create an original design for the Sphere rather than making fanart for the 2007 film by notoriously racist, misogynistic, transmisic, classist bigot Ladd Ehlinger.

pro tip: put a blank line of text at the top of a post before adding images because tumblr's obnoxious and won't let you add a title after you make the post without moving every single picture manually....

Repeating pattern for the 2nd image:

[ID: a repeating pattern of grey shapes against a white backgeoubd. There are rings, circles, pentagons, and lines, either solid or made from dots or thin lines. End ID.]

you can also just scribble and simplify it

[shiro41]

Summer of 2007

Sypnosis: When you say you love summer but sometimes, you mean Summer of 2007.

Note: WHAT EVEN IS THIS😭😭 if this gets 50+ notes im writing a part 2🙏

You look at the birds that chirped from a distance, happily engaging in an activity on a branch of a tree then, you look at him.

His soft blacks, so endearing and warm, so bright despite the dark hue. So soft, full with care and love that you cannot reflect, so genuine and alive. You love him.

"Suguru, look! That's us as birds!"

You pointed at said animals, he chuckled. Bubbles of laughter escapes him, smooth and silky voice agreeing with you as the both of you walk down the streets of Tokyo in a mundane summer with your uniforms. It's 2007, where everything is young and anything is trendy, where love is born from curious teenagers. Where you walk with Suguru after school.

"Look, that's us as cats."

He soon joined your small game of matching pairs of animals, leaning down to your height as you cooed at the walking animals from the rooftop of a home. You turn to him, telling him he'll be the black one and you'll be the orange tabby. The warmth of his hand never left you even if the hot summer breeze hit you from time to time, he didn't mind the sweat that's running down his neck nor the heat of the sleeves of the uniform and the hotness of your intertwined hands.

The sun was almost drowning, teasingly showing the burning stars and the peeking moon from the sky as it left with orange and pink splatters of colours on the canvas. A walk home towards the dormitory, still with Suguru who hums and listens to the words that spills from your mouth and an occassional reply from him that you absorb like sponge.

"Hey, Suguru?"

A hum.

"Do you think we're together in another universe?"

A silly question, you conclude. But, you can't help the gnawing itch in the corner of your mind, wanting to hear the boy's reply that you know will only melt the beating organ in your chest and the butterflies to only flutter more inside your stomach. You see the distant stars, close to one another, burning brightly as it could, as if telling the other a simple confession of feelings.

"Well,"

He stopped.

"Hmn?"

He cupped your cheeks, gentle and careful as if you were a fragile and valuable object in the palm of his hands. Puffed cheeks, you muffled a voice of complaint but was silenced with a smile on his face and a peck on your lips.

"I'm sure we're together in all universe there is."

The Summer of 2007, in which he who swore to be with you until death do you part, in which he swore to love you even if you're no longer Suguru Geto and (Name) (Last name).

The Summer of 2007 when he told you he loves you in a way no one have ever done.

"(Name)?"

"Yes?"

"If I die, please do me a favour and take care of yourself."

He placed a stray lock of hair behind your ear, leaning on the palm of his hand as he admired the beauty of your face that has been made with centuries of love and sacrifices.

"Find your happiness even when I'm no longer there, drink water, take care of your body, find yourself."

"Suguru, don't say that as if you're going to die anytime soon!"

The Summer of 2007 when he told you he'll love you, up to a point where death cannot do you part.

....

"Hey, Sensei?"

"Yes, Nobara?"

"Which is better, Summer or Winter?"

You pondered for a moment, placing the brown cup of coffee down the table as you thought of the pros and cons of the opposite seasons. The Room was quiet, Nobara and Itadori were anticipating about your answer that surprisingly took quite a time.

"I think..I think I like Summer more."

You answered, giving them a smile as Nobara lightly slapped the wooden table out of victory as Itadori slumped on his chair.

Summer is great, in your opinion. Beach and ice cream was always tapping your shoulders, the view was also enticing especially in foreign countries unlike winter, stuck in your house sometimes freezing and always a struggle to go out.

Summer, in your opinion, is better than winter.

But maybe you don't like summer, sometimes, you mean the Summer of 2007.