#thank you for indulging my ramblings

[sheepmouse]

Thank you @pidayforpi for the tag

● 3 Ships:

-Alistarling (Obviously. It’s been over four years since those fuckers invaded my life. Slowly but surely, I’m getting closer to finishing and posting all the fics I’ve made.)

-Prohibitedwish (Went into Fionna and Cake expecting to focus on Gumlee and came out with a new favorite villain character in Scarab, a new understanding and admiration for Prismo, and an unexpected ship that for once is actually somewhat popular.)

-Stobotnik (The occasional obsession. While the Sonic parts of the movies are fine, I’m mostly watching just for their parts. I’ve enjoyed a lot of angsty fics and the clever ways fans redesign Stone to fit into other Sonic properties.)

● First Ship:

Tendershipping from Yu-gi-oh (I think it’s considered a somewhat problematic ship nowadays, but it was pretty common back when it was first airing in the US.)

If we count unknowingly shipping as a kid, it actually might be Baloo x Bagheera from Disney’s animated Jungle Book movie (they even joke about it at the end of the movie, how can you not?)

● Last Song:

-Swamp Thing by The Chameleons (One of my favorite songs)

● Last Movie:

-Some Like it Hot (My mother likes to rent old classic movies and I’ve been meaning to watch it. It was ok, but there were no English subtitles so I missed most the dialog which kind of spoiled it for me.

● Currently Reading:

-Old-fashioned Cupcake by Sagan Sagan. (It's about two guys who work in an office. One's used to just going through the motions in life, but is having a mid-life crisis about turning 40 soon. He's oblivious to a subordinates' crush on him. They start to hang out outside work eating at cafes to help the older guy feel younger. They both wonder about the other's feelings, etc.)

● Currently Watching:

-Nothing currently. I was going to start Loki season 2 but my dad was too out of it to follow so now I have to wait for his next day off.

I watch more videogame LPs than shows nowadays, so I guess it would technically be Barry Kramer’s LP of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright

● Currently Consuming:

-Hot chocolate with leftover baked chicken and roasted vegetables.

● Currently Craving:

-Mocha, but I had one too late in the day recently and ended up not sleeping so stuck with non-caffeinated hot choc this time.

9 people you would like to get to know better

tysm for the tag @alexmey-does-an-arts!

1. 3 ships; bowuigi, metadede, heavy/medic(I forget the name lol)

2. first ever ship; alphyne

3. last song; Ghost Cowboys by Louie Zong

4. last movie; Midsommar. That was…something

5. currently reading; Dante and Aristotle discover the secrets of the universe. Pretty fire

6. currently watching; JCS criminal psychology

7. currently consuming; nothing

8. currently craving; Iced Cream. About to go get it. I know there’s mind chip in my freezer (:

9 people to tag; @littlegreenwyvy, @garf-official, @d1nosaurpower, @tractor-inside-joke-fucker, @junkydoodlez, @seacrown, @neldu-nak, @darkcanid19, @stormyykat

[someawkwardnerd]

hi I went down a musical filled path recently

[yea-baiyi]

i keep thinking about the odyssey i am THINKING about wei wuxian as odysseus. you were dead. its been years since you’ve seen your family. the child you left behind is almost a man. you wear a face they don’t recognise, you sneak in through the back door. the dog gives your identity away. the world knows it’s you when you draw your weapon. the person you love recognises you by the original symbol of your love—a secret that no one else in the world knows about, still, because they kept it safe for all these years. you get the chance to go back and despite everything, you found home waiting for you; he kept your place and raised your son and he was still there waiting for you when you got back. tell me o muse, about a complicated man i am extremely not okay

[untimelyambition]

having a strong hyperfixation on dan and phil in the year 2025 is so interesting bc my brain is having the normal hyperfix urge to learn as much as i can abt them and gather new information and i have to sit down and be like girl youve been here basically ten years at this point you know everything theres not anything new for you to learn

[enquire]

A bunch of sketches and pen/marker doodles! Had a lot of fun drawing the inkling and octoling Yukis, which made me decide to post some of these other ones too. I don't usually post scraps and what not but I figured, hey why not do a big ol post for fun.

I actually really liked the results in attempting splatoon faces this time. One of my favorite worlds, very iconic art and music. If you haven't heard Splatoon music before, you're missing out.

Another older one. DRA1 Yuki sure looks like he's up to no good. I no longer remember any context that might have existed when I drew it lol

Haru and Yuki from even longer back, a moment captured when I was playing with a friend haha.

More doodles and au stuff below the cut

A sketch from a while back with the yukis again

Messy Yuki and Kinjo (you know I'm a pro artist with those eyes in the corner 😭)

On to some sketches and scraps!

Some httyd au sketches. In which Yuki raises a baby Deathsong. I can only imagine the others needed to be convinced on that one haha. Httyd species are kinda tricky to draw for me still, but dragons in general are a huge sp:in for me, have been pretty much forever, and httyd is close to my heart as well. If you are curious, in this AU, Kinjo has a razorwhip and mekaru's got a monstrous nightmare. Not sure about the rest, maybe someday I'll get into it more. I have considered writing/drawing for some of the other aus in my brain, because aus are very fun, but not until I wrap up some other things.

Speaking of aus, this one was after a Promare rewatch haha. I have a lot of little aus lying around in my brain I guess. If you're curious, Akane, Yuki, and Utsuro were all mad burnish members here, with them being in the same position as Lio, with Gueira and Meis. Meanwhile, Tsurugi's probably aligned with Freeze Force or Burning Rescue, but is actually also secretly a burnish too. Which I'm sure he handles in a very healthy and not self destructive way, ofc. /J

And finally, one last Yuki for the road. I wonder if I'll ever get tired of drawing DRA1 Yuki...? He's pretty much a sp:in now so hopefully not (and probably not). His hair used to be such a pain but at this point it's kinda relaxing, even if I sorta draw it 10 different ways lol.

Side note this is like the most non-pony art I've posted here in ages isn't it? I didn't expect for this to become a blog solely focused on my pony au but I won't lie I'm pretty invested in it at this point, art and story wise.

[lady-harrowhark]

hello, can you explain to me in more clarity your “waxen” theory regarding Ianthe? I’m not picking up on what this implies but it’s making my brain itch.

Sort of! Totally fair question, I just don't have a lot of clarity myself in that I don't have a fully formed theory lol. There's definitely some links and parallels in verbiage that are pinging on my radar, so I do think something's funky, but I wouldn't say I'm fully on board with this yet. I'm just playing in the sandbox Tamsyn has provided us, tossing out ideas and thinking out loud. But I can go into some more detail, and add some more thoughts that have occurred to me since I posted that last night.

(Here's a link to the post in question, for context)

Anyway! So let's first lay out all the times we get someone described as some type of wax. At various points in HtN, we get the descriptions "a shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture," a "wax figure in a pink dolly dress," a "wax figure in pale purple chiffon," and "waxen face" for Ianthe. We also see that descriptor used a few other times for other people throughout the series. In GtN, Harrow's parents' bodies are called "waxy" and the first introduction of Protesilaus (as the beguiling corpse) says he was "waxen looking in the sunlight." In NtN, Kiriona's skin is said to have a "weird, waxy quality," then Naberius's skin is called "waxen" when they first meet up with Ianthe, and again a few pages later it again references the "waxen, handsome face". What I'm getting at here is that every time this sort of description is deployed, it's in reference to a dead body that's been preserved, manipulated, and is essentially masquerading as a living person... except for Ianthe.

We also know there are a multitude of times that she's described as looking like a poor copy of Coronabeth. There's that "shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture" line, her first introduction calls her a "starved shadow" of her sister ("or the first an illuminated reflection [of Ianthe]," and actually, off the top of my head I don't know that we ever see their descriptions framed that way again... I'd have to investigate this more later, but this might be the only time that Corona is described as a "better" version of Ianthe, rather than Ianthe being a "worse" version of Corona, which is interesting), there's a point where it says "The second twin was as though the first had been taken to pieces and put back together without any genius. She wore a robe of the same cloth and colour, but on her it was a beautiful shroud on a mummy," etc etc etc. I know there's more, but I'm too lazy to go pull the rest of the quotes and you get the picture by this point I'm sure. So nearly all of these situate her, at least visually, as a copy or approximation of Coronabeth, and one that doesn't quite live up to original at that.

So now let's pick apart this snippet of conversation we overhear between Silas and Ianthe at Magnus and Abigail's dinner party a bit. Ianthe says she was born via "surgical means," which I'm assuming is referring to a C-section delivery (or whatever the necromantic equivalent is) and notes that Corona is a few minutes older. Silas seems surprised (or perhaps concerned?) that they "risked intervention" and Ianthe says Corona had "removed [her] source of oxygen". At this point Silas says, "A wasted opportunity, I'd think." I had always taken this for him just being a dick and implying he wished she'd died in the womb, but coming back to it with this new angle... well. She says "Corona's birth put my survivability somewhere around definite nil." And I'm wondering if that doesn't tie to Harrow's comment about infant deaths generating "enough thanergy to take out the entire planet." Basically, could Silas have been implying that the Tridentarii's parents wasted an opportunity to use the thanergy from baby Ianthe's death to power up Corona?

Harrow says that twins are an ill omen, but the text hasn't come back to that as of yet. Given the difficulty necromancers experience with pregnancy, I'd imagine twins would could be especially dangerous and that in and of itself could be considered an ill omen. Ianthe's comments certainly suggest that their mother carried the pregnancy, although I don't think we know for certain whether she was a necromancer. I am so intensely curious about the Tridentarii's childhood and their parents; we get so many gestures towards some really twisted family dynamics, but very little in the way of concrete explanations. Particularly relevant here, I'd love to know more about their father wanting a "matched set" and how that came about. Did they intentionally plan for twins from the start? Was it only once they knew they were having twins that that became a factor? What's the significance there?

Outside of those "waxy" descriptors, Ianthe tends to be described as much more sickly looking than even other necromancers. We know that necromancers on the whole tend towards a phenotype of physical weakness, but even still, there's an emphasis on this with Ianthe beyond that. This might be due in part to narrator bias (coughGideoncough) or the direct juxtaposition between her and Coronabeth's vivaciousness, but what really jumps out at me as contributing to this effect is how frequently she's described as being colorless, pale, washed out, bloodless, pallid, anemic, etc etc etc. It very much makes me think of the way the color drains away from Colum (and even the rest of the room and the others in it) when Silas is siphoning. Silas himself is also often described as colorless ("mayonnaise uncle," "milk man") but not so much in a way that implies frailty as much as I read it as implying a stark coldness, in line with the very black-and-white moral authority he presumes to wield, a purported "purity", much different than Ianthe's colorlessness. With Ianthe, you get a sense that her palette ought to have been or perhaps was closer to Corona's, but the color's been drained away; where Corona's hair is described as golden, Ianthe's is "canned butter", for example. Almost like the life's been siphoned out, one might say.

So to kind of circle back around, do I actually think Ianthe is dead or a corpse like the other "wax" figures we've seen? Nah. Between Harrow and Palamedes, and especially Palamedes's medical necromancy, I think we would have heard about it by now if that were the case. But I do think it's entirely plausible that she's had a bit of a brush with death and that perhaps she's never quite fully come back from, and I do think she's being intentionally positioned as somewhat adjacent to death. If their parents were wanting twins from the outset, perhaps they used necromantic means to encourage the conception. Or if the pregnancy was as high-risk as I suspect it was, perhaps she'd died or nearly died at birth and been resuscitated. Their parents may have gone to extremes to keep her alive, to maintain their matched set. Given the themes of this series, I do feel it's necessary to draw a distinction between "resuscitation" and "resurrection" although they are curiously adjacent to one another. For all the text has grappled with dying and staying dead, dying and coming back, dying and choosing whether or not to return... we haven't touched on what something like a "near death experience" would look like. I'd imagine having that sort of experience, even at an incredibly young age, might lead one to be fascinated with, to use Ianthe's own words, "the place between death and life... the place between release and disappearance."

[javierduffy]

Just got struck with a thought for a mildly canon au: what if after saving Kieran from the O'Driscolls in ch4 Javier sleeps with his head on Kieran's chest so the first thing he hears when he wakes up is his heartbeat, reassuring him that Kieran is alive and they got to him in time

oooyuggg oooohhh …. oouuhhh … this is so sweet … oouuhh javi absolutely would be petrified to lose kieran after already having nearly done so once … not like they don’t both know that this lifestyle means that they could lose each other at any given moment, but to be directly confronted by the rush of wind on your face from a right hook from grief that just barely missed your skin … javier feels a little more emboldened in his endeavors regarding protecting and generally indulging in kieran and his wellbeing.

he’d be like “dutch, i’ll protect him. i’ll watch him. i have time, the others are working on something big, they don’t need me. let me take care of him. (not gay. no homo.)” and since kieran sleeps on the floor of shady belle, they both move in there to try and stave infection off and every morning the girls have to shuffle around them while they’re intertwined together on the floor. it’s like javier is a coat that kieran can’t shirk— he keeps the fever down. and javi always wakes up first. it’s like he’s got a sixth sense for when kieran is about to wake up, and he always wakes up first, even by mere moments. which is funny because up until then, kieran would be up before the sunrise and that be about the time that javier was laying down to sleep. love affects you down to your biology 💔 anyway yes and javi always always always lays there, opens his eyes, sees kieran’s resting face, will sometimes raise a hand to smooth a worried crease off of kieran’s dreaming face, and then will indulge himself in laying back down and listening to kieran’s strong heartbeat. for however long it takes for kieran to wake up, or at least indicate to javier that he’s awake. sometimes he knows javi is awake and will sit very still for a while, just because he wants to stay like that just a little longer. (sometimes, especially later into these endeavors, javier can tell by the way kieran’s breathing changes. but he will never let kieran know that.) i think there have even been times where kieran would sleep too deep and his heartbeat would get softer and javier would suddenly hear gunfire and smell blood and hear the lap of the water against the wood of a boat like he’s losing it all all over again and he’d end up shaking kieran awake just to make sure his eyelids weren’t meant to home coins just yet. kieran knows he would do the same and also be 10x worse so he doesn’t really mind but this isn’t to say that sometimes he’s not like “javier. my sweet lover. my desert sun. i am going to be okay. please let me rest. go rob somebody or something before dutch kicks us both out for being useless.” just so he can get some peace LOL ouugghh they’re so sweet i got off topic but yes this idea is SO good and i agree so bad and also i think that they were already obsessively tactile prior, just behind closed doors, so now, it’s just … embarrassing how touchy javi is. not that the rest of the gang doesn’t understand, like they haven’t clung to a body and basked in it’s warmth because they knew it could very well be cold tomorrow, but … man. he’s very. brazen with it. LOL ohh i lov them ok ill be quiet but thank u so much for sharing that with me i adore the idea. i would love to expand sometime on javier’s thoughts and fears in an au where kieran lives … and kieran’s thoughts and feelings as well ….. as well as draw them all cuddled up with javi listening to the steady tempo of kieran��s heartbeat and how it sounds like a song that he only wishes he could play on guitar because it sounds like the greatest love song ever written uughhh ok ok ok thank u i have to leave or i’ll cry

[espressoristretto-patronum]

My MC Tori and I if we were in the same room 🙃

[superherotiger]

YO bestie gonna require you to ramble more about those kids and parents from the outsider pov fic thanks

AHHHH BESTIE YOU BETTER LOCK IN BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO GO FERAL-

If there's one element of the Outsider POV that owns my soul, it's the X-23 kids and everything surrounding them. Like look at this list- LOOK AT IT!

I've thought about them so much it's unhealthy 🤣

I tried to keep it as accurate to Logan (2017) as possible, using all the kids names I could find on the wiki and then added a couple extras to make it to the lucky number 23. The extras are shown with a green square and have some fun little references included! Alex is named after Riptide's actor Álex González, Theresa is Banshee's daughter in the comics, January is named after Emma Frost's actress January Jones, and I chose Ace for Gambit's kiddo because PUNS okay? I needed at least one hahah!

My memory is a little rusty but I believe the bolded names meant the parent was still alive, but that could change if I saw an opportunity to include more of the parents that never got to be.

Anyway, I'm about to ramble hard about the kids so I'll chuck it below the read more to spare some of you 🤣

Okay so straight off the bat, I wanted to explain why Laura is X-2 not X-23 she normally is. I knew from the start that I wanted Luna to be younger than Laura so that meant if Laura was X-23 and Luna was a later number, it wouldn't exactly be the X-23 program anymore. To get around this I thought the in-universe reason for it being called the X-23 program would be because they successfully cloned only 23 subjects using the limited amounts of DNA they had in store. Some DNA they had more of (hence Nature Girl having multiple clones) while others they only had small amounts to work with, which is a reason why the doctors were hesitant to get rid of Luna considering she was all that was left of Pietro (and as a result Magneto's) DNA. And that's how Luna became X-22 and Laura became X-2 (in a sort of half reference lol).

I love the idea of the older kids looking out for the younger ones. We see in the movie that they clearly had tight bonds despite their horrible treatment and I really wanted to play into that for the fic, showing how they really relied on each other to get through and were still normal kids at the heart of it all. The more I write about them though the more I wish some of them had survived because they're all so sweet and deserved so much better (yes I know I'm the one that wrote them dying, it was for the plot hush 🤣)

I’m not sure if I’ve explicitly mentioned it before but the Avalanche in this AU is based on an older version of Lance Alvers from X-Men: Evolution. As heartbreaking as it was, I loved writing Lance’s reaction to finding out that Rictor had died. I think he would’ve been so proud of his son for being such a strong leader for the other kids, and he’s very similar to Peter in that he doesn’t hesitate to consider Rictor his own child. It’s interesting because Peter and Lance are kind of parallels, with the main difference being that one of their kids survived and the other didn’t. We’ll get to see a bit more of Lance in the next chapter which I’m super hyped for!!

I touched a bit on Sabretooth’s feelings towards having a clone kid in my last ramble, but Gambit is also a really interesting one too. We’ll see it briefly in the next chapter, but I imagine there’s this deep sadness in Gambit that he prefers not to think about. While Sabretooth acts abrasive and dismissive, Gambit puts on a sort of “I wouldn’t have made a good father anyway” vibe so he doesn’t have to tackle just how much the situation hurts.

I’m really excited to show Storm and Jean’s reactions to learning about their kids and how they grieve in different ways. While Jean is desperate to know as much as possible about Joey even if it’s painful, Storm can’t bear the thought of all that Delilah went through and gets angry that they were so close to saving the kids but not fast enough.

This isn’t one we’ll touch on for a long time, but holy shit FABIEN FUCKING CORTEZ having a clone is one of my favourite details. Like bro, I haven’t even written the Fabian POV yet, but I think about it all the time. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the Fabian POV takes place years before anything else that’s been posted for the series and includes an event that changes Peter and Erik’s dynamic in a detrimental way. Like ongoing trauma kind of way. Changed the course of their lives kind of way. And I just imagine Erik seeing Fabian’s name as the DNA source for Jonah and being like “What the FUCK” whereas Peter is having war flashbacks like “cool cool that’s going in the vault 😀”. If I ever did touch on this plotline, I’d want it to be an older Luna trying to learn more about the other parents of the kids and realising oh fuck there’s actually beef between their family and the Cortez’ and how she reconciles that with the memory of her beloved friend.

I would talk more about Laura and Luna, but I don’t want to spoil all the fun things I have in store for their characters!!! So thank you for letting me ramble again, it’s been a blast and my brain has been going BRRR in the best way possible!! Love you dearest!

-Superherotiger

Send me an ask about the backstory of any of my fics and I’ll ramble!! ✨

[persephoneprice]

Persephone eating with Mizzen when she visited him in that zoo. Mizzen probably looking up to the camera in the arena to plead for help to Pippa. They're so mother and son coded. I'm actually going to die. If he had won, Persephone will spend half of her life looking for forgiveness from him.....

i’m going to be sick…the two of them…

mizzen bonded with pippa. he trusted pippa. he placed his life in pippa’s hands.

at his lowest moments in the arena- he was comforted by the thought they she was out there doing everything she can to help him.

but coral dies and he realizes just how alone he is. he realizes just how little pippa can help him. he starts to question how much she even actually cares.

does she care about him? or does she care about the attention? he wants to believe she cares about him.

and he wins…but for what? he’s miserable and he feels terrible and he’s hurt and he doesn’t know how to cope with this.

he wants to talk to pippa. he wants her to help him.

but he only gets a short time with her and she looks way too happy for his comfort. does she really not realize how horrible winning the hunger games is? does she really not understand how mizzen is feeling?

and then…she doesn’t visit. he wants her to visit district 4. he expects her to visit district 4.

mizzen is left to deal with everything alone while he catches glimpses of persephone being praised on the capitol television.

and he questions everything again. and this time, he leans towards her caring about the attention. not him.

and when he’s dragged back to the capitol- she’s still not there. not the first time, anyway.

he wishes he never won.

and as time goes on and he hears the whispers of the price family secret from his clients…

he wishes he never met persephone in the first place.

[navybrat817]

Lovelies, thank you for indulging in my nonsense ramblings and ficlets this weekend. I appreciate you all and hope I didn't annoy the hell out of you. ❤️

[nopanamaman]

Heyo. Sorry if I'm doing this wrong but i downloaded Tumblr because of you and your PAFL series. I've never been a fan of vocaloid songs but i listen to yours at least once a week. I was wondering if you took inspiration from anything when your songs lyrics?. I'm aware the setting is somewhat based on stalker but some of your Lyrics are honestly amazing. Ones like

"I've got no ammo but an ambition to fight"

Are so perfect. And they way your songs flow to seamlessly is great

Aaaa thank you so much! I'm really flattered you enjoy my lyrics:')

It's difficult to pinpoint specific inspirations, since I tend to simply write things that sound cool and roll off the tongue easily hahah

I know I spent a lot of time picking apart Pink Floyd lyrics in middle school, there's just so much unique and memorable imagery in them. They're smart, but never feel overly complicated or obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. I respect that a lot! There are lots of other bands that influenced me of course, but this is one of the first ones that come to mind.

There's also literature. I don't read as much as I used to, but whenever I do, I try to make mental notes on the cool turns of phrase I come across, unusual comparisons, meldic wordings. Same goes for movies, documentaries, Wikipedia articles - man, anything.

It's really banal, but I think just reading and listening to a lot of different stuff is the number one way to get a sense for metaphors and other types of expressive means. Literally anything can become lyrics material if you bend it into shape.

Personally, a lot of my lyric writing is working backwards from having a cool turn of phrase or reference in mind and figuring out how to work that into the lyrics in a way that makes sense. There's still a lot of Rhymezoning and Thesaurusing involved, but those won't help much if you don't have a certain library of ideas and expressions to pull from.

And sometimes even if you have plenty of reference material, nothing will come out sounding right. This was the case with the PAFL song I'm currently working on - I had a clear idea of WHAT it should convey, but everything I wrote sounded so trite. It's like my library ran dry or just didn't have the resources for this particular subject.

So I took a break from the song, consumed a shit ton of different media, took more mental notes - and whadya know, actually found the words I was looking for! And after I got the first couple of phrases down, everything else gradually fell into place as well.

It's a slow approach and is neither necessary nor applicable to every songwriter, but this is what I've recently figured works for myself.

[orionshounds]

I'm making this post WAYYYY later than I thought I would but I am still NOT OVER part one of the ii finale, and I just wanted to gush about why I think it worked so well (long post + spoilers ahead, everything here is just my own personal opinion!)

And to start talking about the episode, I'm not going to talk about the episode at all, but rather THE BUILDUP

as has been said many times by Justin and Brian, Mephone4 creating the contestants has been something they've planned for awhile (since 2015 if my memory is correct), so they have had plenty of times to sprinkle in little details building to this reveal. But what I find fascinating is how well they hid the clues to the reveal because they all were hidden in plain sight

Fan glitching and saying he doesn't know who he is outside the show

Cabby struggling to remember her parents

Anytime a character is asked (in FFF or an exit interview) about their past they reply with "for as long as I can remember"

Characters describing how the show can feel like it's taking over their lives

Looking back over everything I almost feel stupid for not catching onto it before, but the clues were made by design to go over viewer's heads. Because in almost every case, there was a second, "more reasonable" conclusion the audience could take away from these moments.

For Fan his whole arc had been about his unhealthy attachment with the game, it made sense that he would struggle with his identity outside of it (we just didn't know how LITTERAL that struggle was). And him glitching was in response to being beamed up by the Prime Shimmer, at the time it was safe to assume it was probably something to do with the alien tech and not Fan himself. For Cabby's scene, god I love this scene, everyone (including the characters themselves!) assumed that it was just Cabby's memory that was at fault because that's what her arc was centered around. Every clue was so well hidden because they used our own assumptions against us

And now I want to talk about season 3 a little more because in my opinion, the twist would NOT have hit as hard without it

I know there were a lot of real world reasons why the crew made a season 3, but it serves as the perfect primer for the season 2 twist. First and foremost the Cabby scene again; since the objects' world is so different from our own and there is no universal "lore" on how such a world operates, Cabby's scene with Bot is soooo important for one specific reason; it plants the idea in the viewer's heads that, in this world, objects are supposed to have parents. Cob's specifically has a line taunting Knife and Suitcase about this (What did your parents say when they heard the good news?) that would not have hit as hard without this scene subtly directing the audience to expect them to have parents

Then there is Walkie's whole monologue at the end of iii's finale;

I'm gonna be real, when this finale came out I really did not understand this monologue at all. I didn't understand WALKIE at all. She suggests she wasn't made by Meeple, which didn't feel like a lie, but I just couldn't figure out what her deal was.....then the season was just over!

I was confused and a little irritated when they didn't elaborate on who exactly she was and where the hell she came from, and I think the crew wanted the audience to feel that way. They wanted us to keep the questions of "who" and "why" in our heads so that season 2's reveal would make it all click into place

iii's confusion doesn't stop there either, since after it ended probably the biggest question everyone had was how does it fit in the timeline? Because the crew always said it was canon, and the characters kept making references to how season two was "still going on", so when episode 15 aired I was really curious on how it would all fit.....

....what?

That was my reaction at least. There was no way season three happened in only half a day....right? And then I thought, "oh, ok, silly object show rules. They didn't want season 3 to intrude on season 2 so they're going to brush this off, just don't think to hard about it". Obviously, this wasn't the case, but we wouldn't know that until the finale. And again, I think the crew wanted this confusion. By leaving the audience with questions, you're helping to build tension towards that finale payoff (and to be clear, at the time of writing this we still don't know 100% HOW this timeline works, but no doubt Mephone's powers had something to do with it)

With all of these questions, and Brain running polls on twitter on how many characters we thought might die (thanks brian), finally it was time for part one of the season 2 finale...

and then the twist dropped like a bombshell; mephone made the contestants

the very foundation of my understanding of the show changed after that. Everything I had been prepared for was thrown entirely out the window, which I don't think was an accident. With how the crew teased about this episode, it felt like they were preparing us for everything except the twist, ensuring it could fully blindside the most amount of people possible

I want to talk about how brilliantly they presented the twist as well because honestly, building up to it is half the battle. With how important this moment is and how much of our understanding of the show it changes, it needed a ton tension and weight behind it, which the crew pulled off flawlessly. I still get goose-bumps watching that final scene

Kicking it off, Mephone finally answers the call from Cobs. As someone who is particularly invested in Mephone this was huge, it's the biggest thing we know he's been dreading and shows some significant growth from him as well (I don't think pre-iii finale Mephone would ever face his fears like this). Then Knife and Suitcase confront Cobs, Suitcase setting the mood by saying "It feels too easy, doesn't it?" and it does. We, as an audience, know that this is only part one. There is no way Cobs is about the be defeated....not to mention that he has some sort of grand plan we don't know about, so the audience is now on the edge of their seats wondering what is about to go wrong

As the pair confront him they have this exchange;

"Bored? You expect us to believe that??"

"I don't know, it is the truth though"

Since Cob's is known to be an unreliable narrator, to me this feels like Brian subtly signaling to the audience that whatever Cobs is going to say next IS going to be the truth, whether we like it or not

Cobs then nonchalantly confirms he's the one deleting the contestants, putting the audience on edge. I mean, who calmly admits to murder like that?? Then, he begins probing about the bizarre nature of the show. Alllll of the little things that might have bugged us, or things we brushed off because "its an object show" Cobs highlights. He builds the audience's tension by pointing out the same questions a lot of them have been asking themselves since the beginning. And then, he starts building the tension with the contestants;

(I really love this beat, how he takes a moment to think of just the right question to ask without giving it all away. It shows how much he's enjoying fucking with the contestants, really living up to being the final big-bad of the show)

The way he begins to lead us to the answer is so sick and twisted. Asking Knife and Suitcase seemingly innocent questions, going on about creative vision, answering Mephone's call and realizing with delight how even HE doesn't seem know the answer. Winding the audience up and up and up before;

"How'd you get an interview with him anyway?"

"What'd your parents say when you told them the news?"

"You'd think you'd remember something like that, oh wait, no you wouldn't."

"He made you."

...

To this day, Inanimate Insanity is the only show to leave me literally speechless after an episode. I think everything about part one was handled phenomenally, hats off to the entire crew

Finally, I wanted to talk about where this twist leaves the show. Let's be real, putting a "nothing was real" type twist into your story is risky. If not done properly it can leave the audience feeling like the story was pointless or is no longer engaging to revisit. I can confidently say ii's twist has avoided this pitfall

Not only has this twist been properly built up too, incredibly I think it makes the characters more interesting in hindsight. Many of them follow an arc about becoming more than who they are assumed to be at the start. With this twist, those arcs are suddenly much more meaningful because instead of overcoming a personal flaw, they are overcoming what they were literally created to be. It changes the status quo in a way that will alter your perception of earlier episodes, but in a way that makes you re-engaged with the show and excited to revisit it

All in all, I love this episode and I love the twist, and I'm really excited to see how it continues to shape the characters and world in part 2 :)

[xbraveheartx]

I was reading the post under your screenshots of Romeo. I'm curious. What is your theory on Romeo's death? Before he became a puppet?

Hmmm... I gave this some thought, so bear with me on this! Hear me out:

If we look at his skin here, prior to the explosion that burnt him... you'll see he still has kinda... dark spots on him? And his dialogue during the fight is very flame oriented.

Not to mention his Ergo, the very reflection of his heart, is titled "Burnt-White King's Ergo" and while it feels sorta like a copout, I feel like just maybe Romeo was victim to a fire. Krat was kinda burnt to the ground in a lot of places, after all. Subject 826 says so himself! And I really don't think he just means the newly burnt Opera House.

There's also the fire in the main section of Rosa Isabelle Street. So what I'm saying is... maybe... Romeo, after Carlo's death, graduated and became a Stalker himself. Remember, Carlo gave Romeo his own graduation pendant, meaning... Romeo hadn't graduated yet! Is Romeo maybe a grade behind? Younger? Less experienced, and therefore, made to stay longer? Who knows... But in the end, maybe, perhaps, as his duty to the people, he was helping people in, specifically, Rosa Isabelle Street? And got overwhelmed by the puppets there and died in a fire/burning building? (Leaning towards burning building, because his face prior to explosion doesn't look charred... just kinda dusty. So maybe a building collapse?)

Also, I'm comfortable saying he died at Rosa Isabelle Street because it's there that we find the "Notes from an Experiment" document!

His body had to have been close enough to drag into the Opera House in secret to experiment on, y'know? So I'm thinking maybe it's definitely his resting place (twice over, oof). It'd also be really sad if he really didn't even realize he had died? Like the death had been instantaneous.

"When the boy opened his eyes..." As in, one moment he was okay, and the next?? He was... not where he thought he would suddenly wake up at. Kinda my take on that...

This was extremely long, I apologize for that!! But thank you for the question!!!! ♡ It's loving Romeo hours up in here, he died trying to do what's right, I'm standing by that!!! How he took it upon himself to use his new found power to fight against the disease and alchemists just says enough of his character to say he definitely died being a hero!!

[teddybeartoji]

MICKEYYYY IM HERE TO ASK ABOUT YOUR WIPS!!!!! FIRST OF ALL . I HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT KNIGHT SUGU ….. is it the same knight sugu from ihtctaot???? or different sugu???? does he like violence or does he resent it ???? how does he feel abt servitude??? does he reject it or fall to his knees willingly? WAAAAHHHH I LOVE KNIGHTS IM SCREAMING IM SO EXCITED

and for WEREWOLVES…….ARE THEY …. gulps …. BOTH WEREWOLVES ….. what are the dynamics are they both like completely overtaken by it is one of them more in control i’m SWKKCKENC D SWEATING IM SK EXCITED

also I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOUR WIPS KISSING YOUUUU

HELLO QUINN HELLO MY SWEETHEARTT:3333333 I HOPE YOU'RE DOING SOOSO WELL I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING THE LOVELIEST DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!

NO DEPTH, JUST FILTH

EEEEHEHEHHEHE I'M SO HAPPY YOU ASKED ABT THIS ONE I AM SO MUCH FUCKING FUN WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! okok but so . it is a different world and it is a different suguru (though i can't lie there are similarities between them both anyway lmao). he does not resent violence nor is he afraid of it, this suguru is a pretty cold one. he's definitely meaner than the ihtctaot suguru.

the thing is that suguru drops to his knees willingly and the reader is the one who doesn't and that's what makes them clash so hard. neither of them like each other, reader dislikes suguru because they think he's just a dog, doing whatever the king says with his tail wagging and suguru dislikes the reader because they're disobedient. they only reason the reader is trying to become a knight is literally just that they'll have a job, that they'll have a roof over their head and so in suguru's eyes, they're not worth it. they're just faking it and they need to be punished for it.

but the reader takes the punishment and just pushes through, never wavering for even a moment and that on its own makes suguru seethe. because in a way, this is devotion too. you're so hell bent on not giving up just to spite him and to claim the stupid fucking title even though you don't care for it.

don't get me wrong though, this will not be angst. bloody lips and bruised knuckles, it's a twisted kind of love.

SWEETER THAN EVER, THE SMELL OF FEAR

THE WEREWOLVESS AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is a sick one i can tell you that right now lmao i'm trying to make it uncomfortable i'm trying to make it suffocating. i am very into the prey/predator x fear play kind of thing so to ME this is still very hot ashdhgsahdhsaghdas

ANYWAY THEY ARE BOTH WEREWOLVES!!!!!! suguru is just kind of suguru like he is sick in the head anyway but satoru... it's so fucking exciting to be writing for rabid satoru oh my godddd he really reminds me of a hyena in this lmao they're just toying with the reader, scaring them and making them cry before playing a game with them:33333333333

OK SOO . i'm going my own way about them being werewolves here i'm taking more of a uhhh twilight kind of a way in the sense that they can turn into actual wolves whenever they want??? bc i thought it'd be fun to make a chase scene where you're literally . chased by two wolves like isn't that so fucking scary (i'm kicking my feet rn)

overall this is the perfect setup for smut but honestly... idk if i'm going to do that i just really wanna focus on the chase and the scary parts buuuuuut maybe one day.. i'll add the smut too bc i know that will be delicous nyehehhehehe

COME AND ASK ME ABOUT MY WIPS:333333

[desultory-novice]

who would be more traumatized?

Marx who literally was to the verge of death <like this close 🤏>

or

Magolor who got possesed with an acient artifact? <he wasnt as close as Marx to dying tbh>

In strictly canon terms, Magolor went on to build a theme park and literally invite the Master Crown (riding Landia) to come play and Marx seems really gleeful to be Marx so I'd argue neither of them!

^_^

.............

:psst psst: ...But if we're talking Dess's very particular brand of Kirby-verse, and I assume you wouldn't be writing me if you didn't want to hear my very specific Kirby worldview...

...Okay, so, the first time I rolled this answer over in my head, my heart immediately spat out: "Marx."

Because Magolor does have his theme park! He has his ambitions. The crown manipulated him in a lot of horrible ways, but he has something outside of that, which he is slowly regaining. He also has friends - though the degree of friendship was in doubt for about 10 years. Yes, I'm certain that having your warped and twisted body, practically bursting with power too great for you to possibly wield and puppeted by a malevolent artifact while you're not even free to scream about it is an experience beyond horrible...!

But...let's look at Marx here.

Marx has no friends.

We GIVE him friends. We say he's friends with the Wave 1 group and we see no strong reasons he shouldn't be. (Even if we don't know what they have in common...) But a few of us have tried to advance the cause of Marx + Animal Friends + Gooey = good pals! We also say he's friends/found family with Gryll, a character he's never been on screen with! We say he's friends (and some of us say he's more than) with Magolor - who he also hasn't TRULY been on screen with!

The closest thing he has to a friend is Kirby. And some of that stems from the fact that a very "...distinctive..." looking gag manga made up The Most Believable Backstory for Marx in his 25 years of existence! This isn't the first time people have assumed Marx and Kirby had a complex friendship, however. (And I'm incredibly fond of reading a lot into their having something, with or without any canon backing.)

But...

...While Magolor remembered HIS wish, Marx never did - if he even had one. We won't know until further evidence is provided if Marx was manipulated into wanting control of Popstar but if he did, then he was just as much a victim as Magolor...

And if he wasn't manipulated... well, he's just empty, isn't he? And isn't that more sad, in a way? The silly clown just wanted one star. One star, all for his own. And it's a wish he'll never, ever get...

Marx is considered by some to kind of an empty character. I would say to be so "empty" is actually really tragic...

(You don't even have to get into HC territory, about Marx's lack of hands or Marx's resemblance to a Noddy or Marx sharing a few design elements with Nightmare but if you do, it gets WORSE.)

Back to canon, we have no idea how long Marx was floating through space, in a state of near/undeath, unable to move. We only ASSUME Magolor picked him up in the Starcutter. But if so... when...?

And you know how 'everything is a MF Jojo's reference?'

I made a slight note in a random post last year about Marx's heart theming reminding me of Dio, but I gotta say, the JJBA villain that Marx reminds me of the most is Kars. His "death" just gives very "Eventually he stopped thinking" vibes. (I suppose there's a chance that actually factored into my "Clockwork Marx = Marx Can't Die" theory, now that I put it all together like that.)

And even though Marx is back again, one has to question what the overall effect of his experiences was on him? We don't see if Magolor has crown scars under his silly tophat. But we know Marx bleeds Fecto Green and can do other scary tricks. Does he love them?

He seems to. But just as a lot of people DO headcanon Magolor to have those scars, just as many people have HC'd that Marx can...lose control of his body horror tricks. And the results aren't pleasant.

Of course, ju~st as soon as I had settled on Marx's personal and unspoken tragedy being kinda more sad than Magolor's, well...

...I remembered The True Arena...! DAMN YOU, TRUE ARENA MAGOLOR...!! :sobbing endlessly:

Because we can't just stop at "had his body puppetted against his will while he was forced to watch" now can we?! Noooo! Because Kumazaki won't give us anything nice! (Just kidding & thank you for all the good angst food every time, Director, sir! Love it!)

Because Magolor is literally crying for help. Have you listened to "Supreme Overlord's Coronation" recently?! God... the sounds he makes... He can barely get out Kirby's name amidst his gasps. The Master Crown has rendered him blind, having Stolen His Eyes along with everything else, so that Magolor can't even visualize whether there is any hope; whether "he" has killed Kirby or Kirby is still fighting for his sake (and can he HEAR at this point or is that gone too?) but he never.stops.calling.for.him. Let me say that again:

He never stops crying out for Kirby to save him. Can you imagine being in THAT much pain?! That's hurt and fear and death all in one. But he doesn't even have the mercy of dying...?! He's carried away from us, out of reach, still a victim of the crown, his haunting cries echoing in our ears. Where has he gone? Will he ever be free or will Magolor's fate linger in our nightmares for another decade?

Of course, True Arena Magolor may just be out of the running for this whole argument because, again, as we don't know if he shall ever be free, it's hard to talk about how traumatized he is if the trauma is actually unending/still present. But if he is ever rescued alive from that fate worse than death (else he may just suffer until the Crown has finished absorbing the last bits of his soul and he ceases to be "Magolor") I would think the mental scarring from that experience is probably going to be as near to permanent damage as you can get.

So, from least traumatized to most: Game Marx < Game Magolor <<<<< Dess's Magolor < Dess's Marx <<<<<<<<<< True Arena Magolor