#that one post summarizing what he said that went around was basically it

[jefferythejelly]

full clip of sapnap talking about kick👍

[mixelation]

reborn au: actually i have no idea why i summarized context instead of just posting it

Tori was having a problem. Several problems, actually. 

“I’m not even allowed to submit a proposal without some idiot chunin co-signing,” she complained, pacing back and forth in front of Deidara. He was seated on his bed, rubbing ointment into the pink patches of his feet and legs that his medic hadn’t quite healed all the way. 

Deidara had… set a field on fire, or something, on his mission. Whatever. Kushina-sensei had gently hinted at Tori that she should go over and make sure he didn’t need help cooking or cleaning, as while Konoha hospital could fix up most things, he’d still landed himself three weeks leave with foot injuries. 

Obviously, Deidara had yelled at her and set a clay flea off in her face for even hinting he might need help. Convincing him to let her ladle the big pot of her mediocre curry soup she’d lugged over into his own tupperware had been a whole ordeal filled with yelling and a couple minor explosions. But once she had that out of way and a bunch of tupperwares in his fridge, she was taking his presence in town as an excuse to rant about her own problems in her new lab assignment.

“My new PI wants me on dish duty,” she went on, gesturing furiously with both hands. “I know every piece of research fuinjutsu better than anyone there, and I get dish duty? I wouldn’t mind cleaning my own dishes, or if everyone was cleaning dishes, but my ideas for projects just get ignored. Who cares that I’m a genin? I have more experience than any of the chunin in that lab.”

She’d complained to higher management and attempted to get reassigned, but it seemed she was being ignored. She was afraid she’d have to go through Kushina to get facetime with the Hokage. She didn’t want to play nepotism; she wanted to earn this herself. 

Deidara looked at her like she was stupid. 

“If it’s a rank problem,” he said, “then just go get promoted to chunin, yeah.”

Tori stared back at him, flummoxed. This hadn’t occurred to her. She was quite confident she could handle any task any chunin might encounter in a lab. She was reasonably certain she could perform better than some of the jounin in a lab, even, especially if she got to head her own projects. But… chunin were meant to lead missions. They had to be able to fight things, had to know some set number of jutsu, had to have all the rules and ordinances memorized. 

“Do you think I’m qualified?” Tori wondered out loud. 

She really only had a grab bag of jutsu under her belt, the product of only bothering to learn things that interested her. Her combat skills mostly revolved around hitting things with a stick, or irreversibly destroying flesh in an extremely slipshod way. It seemed like a vast overestimation that she might be qualified for a promotion. 

Deidara managed to look even more unimpressed with her. 

“What the hell do you think chunin are?” he asked. 

“Squadron leaders?” Tori tried. 

“Not the baby ones,” Deidara told her. “Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can make chunin. The only reason you’re not already promoted is that Iwa is filled with assholes, yeah.”

This seemed… wrong, somehow. She’d mostly just gotten as far as she did in the Iwa exam by relying on others. But, maybe, she could swing an internal promotion? 

Tori went and looked up the official minimum qualifications for chunin promotion. She did qualify, it seemed. Apparently you only needed the Academy three ninjutsu to make chunin, although more were recommended. And maybe she should review all these rules and internal structures she was supposed to know… 

The minimum mission requirement was also only one C-rank, which seemed too low. It also seemed like her various higher ranking missions maybe shouldn’t count. The Iwa fiasco had mostly just been her playing side-kick, up until she basically just lied through her teeth for a very stressful few hours. The Sasori fiasco wasn’t exactly a shining moment for her either. It all really depended on her being on a team with a bunch of monsters rather than her own talents, honestly. 

Oh well. It wouldn’t hurt to try, she supposed. It wasn’t like the Hokage’s office didn’t know exactly who she was and the details of her on-paper accomplishments. 

She filled out a form for promotion-by-mission and turned it in. Two days later she was called into the Hokage’s office. Minato was literally eating a sandwich while he talked to her, apparently on his lunch break. 

“Right,” Minato said, swallowing. He picked her application off a pile of papers and slid it across his desk to her. “I’m not approving this.”

“Okay,” Tori said, having expected as much. 

“Because I want you to go to the next exam,” he continued. “It’s in Kiri.”

“Oh,” Tori replied, surprised. So she’d have to prove her qualifications? Annoying. 

“I think you should aim to win the tournament,” Minato said through another mouthful of sandwich. “Make it flashy. It’ll be a good showing for Konoha.”

“Wait—” Tori started. “I’m not—”

“I’m going to okay you to reduce lab hours if you feel like you need training,” Minato continued, unperturbed by the madness he was spitting. He passed another form across the desk for her, brushing sandwich crumbs off f it. “You have six weeks. Kushina said she’d register you. Let me know if you need anything.”

He dismissed her. Tori wandered out of his office gripping her exemption paperwork in both hands. Less lab time was the opposite of what she wanted!

Deidara laughed at her when she reported what happened. There were, she noted, empty curry-stained tupperware in his sink. 

“I can’t win the tournament,” Tori bemoaned as he snickered. She was really more of a “promoted due to clever thinking” type of kunoichi. “Make it flashy? What is he thinking?”

“Probably that most genin actually just suck, yeah,” Deidara told her. “Do you think Kushina-sensei could convince him to let me go to the tournament?”

Apparently the idea of watching her fight was deeply funny to Deidara. He talked for a very long time about wanting to see her panic and melt a small child into goo in front of all their friends and family. Tori buried her face in her hands. 

“Oh, then you’d get a pay raise,” Deidara said, eyes suddenly brightening. “We could move somewhere better, yeah.”

“Deidaraaa,” she whined. 

xXx

The lab sink was already filled with dirty test tubes in the morning. The new chunin had mislabeled several samples the day before, and now the experiment was ruined, and Tori was in charge of clean-up. Tori listened to the chunin explain this, glaring at the sink. 

“So I’ll be setting it up again while you clean,” the chunin said. 

It wasn’t that Tori thought she’d never mislabel something. It was that she had enough experience to know to double-check, and if she screwed up anyway, she’d clean up her own fuck-ups. 

Plus, everyone had ignored that she’d pointed out their control for this experiment made no sense. There was a huge risk that whatever results they got, if this chunin could get it to work at all, would be totally uninterpretable. 

“Actually, I have an exemption,” Tori told the chunin. “I just came in to say I’ll be out for a while.”

She fled the lab. Kushina’s office door was always open. 

“Oh!” Kushina said when Tori knocked. “You’re getting started on training earlier than I thought. Donut?”

She had a small box of donut holes she pushed at Tori. 

“I talked it over with Minato,” Kushina said, twirling a pen in her finger as she spoke. “Basically, we think it’d be a good PR move if you sort of showed off that Konoha is basically the best at fuuinjutsu.” 

“Okay,” Tori said. She could do that, at least… probably. 

“You weren’t really flashy with it in the Iwa tournament,” Kushina continued. “So we’ll have to come up with something. Maybe you can work on giving some speeches about how your jutsu work like some weirdos do. Oh, but don’t show off you can use nonhuman chakra; we don’t want that getting out until it has to.” Kushina frowned slightly. “And I guess you shouldn’t melt any other genin. That’d be bad for international relations.”

“Okay,” Tori repeated. That just severely limited her combat capabilities. “Um, Hokage-sama told me to… win the tournament?”

She waited for Kushina to say Minato was being ridiculous. Instead she beamed and said, “Well, of course! I want my team to be three-for-three, you know!”

Kushina then made her take the rest of the box of donuts and shooed her out of the office, with a promise they’d make a training schedule. 

“It’ll only be like twice a week,” Kushina said as Tori gathered up her bag. “Don’t want to distract you from the lab!”

“But,” Tori started. She needed… more than that, if she was even going to pass, let alone win a tournament. 

“Bye!” Kushina replied. 

Tori walked out of Hokage Tower feeling completely unsure what to do. She could go… think about combat fuuinjutsu? Except, she’d moved all her materials to her desk in R&D in a bid for separate work and personal time, and she did not want to go back there right now. 

Well, she knew Deidara was in town and not doing anything. She went and asked him if he wanted to train. 

Deidara took at her in deep distrust. “Who are you and what did you do with Tori?”

“Come on,” Tori whined. “I brought you donuts.”

Deidara was walking with a slight limp, but he did accept the rest of the donut holes and then shuffled out the door.

“We can use my grounds, yeah,” he said, still sounding suspicious that she wanted to train at all. 

Deidara had his own assigned training ground, out in a field away from anything else. It was filled with half-made sculptures covered in tarp that Tori had decorated in fuuinjutsu herself, to reduce the chance of random explosions. 

The field was also completely riddled with potholes, blown into the ground by Deidara’s various experiments. Deidara wasn’t exactly quick on his feet right now, but he did spend the rest of the morning attempting to shove Tori into various holes and then close them over her, making fun of her the entire time. 

So probably she was improving at… something. Getting out of death traps, maybe.

[curio-queries]

I think AYS definitely found its flow post-US trips. Compared to the later trips, you can tell their time in the US really was more spur of the moment, less thought out. I think that's probably why the editing and filming were better in the other places and they had product placement. I wonder if they originally had something else in mind for the content, such as making it just a bangtan bomb kind of like some of the solo adventures we got during chapter 2 (like jungkook's camping vlog), but then they decided to do more trips or pitched it to Disney or something so they put more money and effort into it.

About the behind the scenes content, I do think whatever was kept out of the main episodes was primarily for pacing reasons (despite the fact that I don't think the pacing was super great until Sapporo) and/or some content that was kept for the purpose of making money off the behind the scenes package. Weirdly I don't think bts cares at all about 4th wall breaks. I saw another blog complain about this a while ago, about being able to see staff in the background and ruining the vibe of AYS or messing up the illusion from a production standpoint, but I think bts themselves never try to put up that 4th wall. Obviously the content is supposed to stay focused on them, but the boys have never had a problem talking to their staff on the other side of the camera even during things like run episodes and even in AYS, the last night Sapporo, jikook are sitting around the table drinking and talking with their staff. Beyond what takes focus off the members or respecting that staff aren't public figures, I don't think the members ever care to create that illusion that they aren't filming something or surrounded by staff. I remember reading parts of bts' book and jungkook talks about jikook's trip to japan in 2017 and mentions how the company was worried about their safety if they went and when they arrived in japan, staff was already waiting for them. Even in a private trip that was meant just for the two of them, because of who they are staff were involved and they don't try to hide that.

Also side tangent, but their book was more interesting than I was expecting based on how I'd seen people talk about. A lot of it is summarization of events with bts' thoughts thrown in throughout, but there were some interesting tidbits I didn't know. Like jimin listening to Army sing-along of Young Forever and that's basically what made him come out of a dark place regarding the band's future and contract renewal tensions. Reminded me of Wembley when he cried and said that song had helped him a lot. Also the book and reading things as a timeline really emphasized how much jikook helped each other through that dark period from 2017-2019: the japan trip when they needed to get away from everything, then jimin showing up at a bar for jungkook and them both crying together (the crying together seems to be a theme for them LOL).

Anyway, back to AYS. For the title cards, we can see in Sapporo that they already edited most of the US trip, so the title cards were probably an idea they thought would be good when editing that, but then they didn't really fit as much in the editing of the other trips. Like the Sapporo vibes are just different from jimin's silly little title card recordings.

I really hope we get more AYS when they come out of MS. I expect group activities will be back in full swing, but since they seem to really enjoy traveling together, I think it'd be nice if we got to have future seasons. Its obviously still work, but I do think its on the more enjoyable end of work for them. I want to see them in Montana, US on a ranch riding horses, or in Venice, IT doing a romantic gondola ride, in the Australian outback where jungkook can finally fight a kangaroo.

Hi anon,

You definitely hit on many of the points we'd been discussing here through these posts so it's nice to see I'm not the only one with some of these thoughts.

After seeing the I Am Still documentary though, it's do feel more confident saying that this team's production engine likely gives very little control to their distribution partners. Again, I still need to do an album watchthrough of most of the Disney documentaries but for now, I'd wager that Hybe fully completes their product and then only sells it for distribution. Maybe there's some back-and-forth if there could possibly be any content censorship for brand cohesion but BTS content as a whole is already very low-risk on that front. I'd even go so far to say that the product placement sponsors had more of an impact on the actual end result of the content than Disney did. But that's purely supposition on my part.

Regarding the 4th wall breaks, I don't think i worded my viewpoint very well previously and I don't think i have much better to say here but I'll try. While I agree that BTS's content isn't trying to shy away from the fact that they have staff around them, I do think there are very specific methodologies behind how they've approached it in the past and likely will continue to.

Take Run BTS for example, at the beginning, they attempted to rely for more in on-screen graphics and having the members themselves deliver the necessary exposition. But...I've said this before and I'll say it again, their production actually really sucks at delivering content that needs to be informative. In my opinion, they realized they weren't doing a great job of this and it was a lot more effort to try to mask, when the episodes that they left in a disembodied staff member explaining didn't have any noticeable drop so they decided to just go with including it.

I know i haven't really talked much here about the Run Jin episodes (as I'm likely going to do review posts as well once I'm done with Run BTS) but one of the main things I've been keeping my eye on is how they're compensating for there only being one member. It's seemingly to fall into relying on guest cast and the staff to give Jin the necessary foil, sometimes successfully and other times less-so.

Anyway, back to AYS, it seems to me like they were absolutely still trying to find the line of staff inclusion. Honestly, I wonder if there was a version of the edit where them watching the first cut of episode 1 would have been only included in the bonus content. Without it though, that episode woukd have been much shorter so I think they kept it in the main release purely for time. It fits so well with the overall tone though and I'm so glad they included it.

Again, wondering about the future. I'm sure they will try to revive this show again after military service and I genuinely hope they try to stick to the format of several mini-trips compiled into one 'season'. It will take a skillful team to be sure there's cohesion though. These episodes worked because there is the overarching tjmeline of their solo projects as they prepare for their service that ties the little trips together. I still think my idea of scheduling trips while they're on tour could work but again only if the tour schedule is a little more relaxed than it has been in the past.

It's all theoretical at this point! I would love to see our guys traveling around to some of the less-dazzling destinations as well. I am from a very rural area in the western US and could not even comprehend what it woukd be like for BTS to even be aware of some of those places, let alone actually visit. That was some of the charm of the USA section. They were out in the middle of nowhere seeing just a little bit of Americana. (But I also completely agree with you and want to see a JK / Kangaroo moment as well!)

I'm remembering now another point that I'd wanted to delve into a little more with AYS, which was how they balanced luxury vs the simple life for this show. It's definitely something I noticed shifting over the episodes and I think that had more to do with those sponsorships as well as wanting to give JM and JK some comfortable experiences prior to their enlistment.

Sorry, i went on quite the tangent anon. If I didn't respond to any of the points that you'd like to further discuss, please point them out in another note. I've already rambled far too much for this one!

[ebonysplendor]

There's Something Wrong With Sunny Day Jack (Demo) Review🌤️

TL;DR: Sunny days, keeping the clouds awaaaaaay~! ... Okay, but like what if our cloud is the "sunny day", and it won't go away? Do we even want it to at this point...?

Game Link: https://snaccpop-studios.itch.io/sunny-day-jack

Game Link (classic): https://snaccpop-studios.itch.io/sdj-classic

Notable Features: Gender Neutral language, Self-Insert, Yandere LI, Voice Acting, Create a cup of froyo ... yo Spiciness: 5.5/5 -- Let me tell you! It's a whole scene going down in this thing, okay?! FULLY delivered. The literal only thing that would've made this any spicier is if you saw it. You kinda do, but it's just out of frame. LI Red Flags: 3/5 -- Manipulation, possessive, lowkey obsessive, implied violence and possession, but like, I'm pretty sure I can fix him, so whatever, ya know?

Wanna know more? Lmao naaah. Not if you aren't at least 18, and I mean that. There is a WHOLE spicy scene in here. This one's for the adulty adults. Anyways, if you don't care about my yapping and/or you're in the 18+ club, let's get into it!

Okay, okay, okay, I know, yeah, I know, but listen...I'm only getting around to making the review now.

Okay, okay, okay, wait, stop, listen. I know that this game is damn near two years old, but I didn't start getting into reading visual novels until last year, and I didn't start taking the plunge to make reviews until this year so... :P

ANYWAYS! I do have news that you may not know yet! When I was looking for exactly how old this game is, I stumbled upon a little news~

As of me typing this (which was on the 28 August at about 9:30pm, but who knows when I'll actually post this review lmao), the game was updated an hour ago. I'm talking this shit is fresh out of the box! So, naturally, I went scouring for a download button...but then it occurred to me that that message said that it was for the $12+ tier of their patreon supporters. Not gonna lie, the spicy scene in that damn game has got a girl tempted, okay? But the way my bills are set up...

Okay, anyways, getting back on track because I've started yappin'. I'm going to go ahead and jump into this thing because, let me tell you, if you're like me, and you're late to this game, you've gotta hear about it! Granted, the download to the version that I'm talking about isn't available anymore (at least for the public/non $12 patrons), but the classic version is! I don't know how different it is though ^^;

Admittedly, because this game is almost two years old and because there's not a download link available currently, I might spoil it just a little so that you're not left too much in the dark about the game, especially since, again, the download link isn't available. That being said, it may still be spoiler friendly because habit lol.

But you get it by this point. Let's stop talking and start summarizing. Let's get into it!

So boom.

Basically, we're being...haunted?, we guess?...by this very attractive, but frankly super cheesy, children's TV show host. How'd it happened? We aren't really sure. We just remembered that we got some weird tape and was like "Huh...okay", watched it, and boom, here he is. Speaking of "he" and "here he is", here he is!

Everyone, this is the bae, Sunny Day Jack, but he doesn't mind being called just "Jack", so refer to him as such.

Jack has kind've been rocking with us for a few months at this point, and admittedly, it was very poor but really great timing. The reason why that is the case is because we had experienced something pretty tragic, and we were having a really hard time getting over it, but honestly? Jack's child-like explanation of working through problems and explaining emotions actually came in clutch, because we were lowkey able to get this far because of him. That being said...our relationship with him is getting a little blurred -- more than a little.

Ya see, things kind've...escalated between us, and we honestly aren't sure if we're glad that we got called into work or if we're pissed about it. Like, the undertones have been there for a while, but it was only today that those undertones became more pronounced and obvious. I mean, the man had his tongue-- ANYWAYS!

So, we go into work where our asshole manager ditches us because apparently the things that he has to do is way more important than us having a day off from babysitting and picking up the slack of our lazy ass co-workers. The only upside to this is that the day is likely to be slow because of the rain and that we're alone, meaning that we can openly talk to Jack.

Oh, now that I think about it, I forgot something super crucial -- we can see and hear Jack. More specifically, we can touch him, feel him, smell him, fuck him, the works, but, for whatever reason, others can't do the same. I guess it's like...medium privileges or being a ghost's host perks or something? Anyways, I'm getting off track. Gonna stop it there before I start spouting some stupid shit.

We kind've flashback to what happened right before our boss called, and whoo boi, does that steamy feeling come back full force. It's weird, because it's like Jack can read our mind about how we felt so comfortable and so safe and so protected and, frankly, so curious about him and what all went down in that moment. Jack basically reassures us that the feelings that we have are okay, and what would be best described as "love". Oh...oh, haha, uh...

"Nah, dawg, it's not love."

"Well...do you love me?"

AYO? I beg your finest pardon, sir!? Like, he's just gonna come out the woodwork with that shit?!

Regardless, he's still reassuring us that, "It's okay if you see me as bae" and we're just "We're roommates, dude, and seeing someone as bae is way more complicated than you're making it sound!" He pretty much just laughs it off and is like "Well, either way, I'll be here. Always. I'm not going anywhere. Ever. I'll be anything and everything that you need". Oof, that is...a bold ass claim, and one that we're not so entirely sure we should trust...but damn does it feel good to hear those words and have some support...anyways.

Our work day continues, we run into this awkwardly cute guy (I'll explain more later), our whore of an ex-boyfriend called and ruined our fucking mood, Jack lays down some more heavy words of reassurance, and the day goes onto the next.

Unfortunately, we land ourselves back at work, but fortunately without the "un-", we are alone and can freely talk to Jack again. Like mentioned, the guy is a ghost, but he's so very real, just not to others, which can be super disorienting sometimes; this is one of those sometimes. Jack wanted us to make him a yogurt and...oof, his reaction was...

...less than thrilled. Disgusted, even. Horrified.

Now, this doesn't sound like a huge detail or issue, but he actually got a bit scary here because, what is this shit that he's spouting about us "not being that type of person anymore" and "being better than that, now"? Like, when I say that this man -- clown? ghost? -- had a full shift in personality, and it was just...fear in his eyes, desperation in his voice? Like, he looked and sounded absolutely haunted and terrified of something. Like, this was beyond the horror in a cup that we apparently made him experience; it only triggered it.

Thankfully, although awkward, he easily moves past this saying that the combination of flavors just threw him off, and a customer walks in to provide a diversion for an extra layer of safety.

Oh! It's that awkward but polite cutie from the other day!

When we see him, or rather when we hear the door, we say our awkward ass, lame ass greeting, and it's kind've an opener for him to start some super brief small talk. He eventually takes the plunge and shoots his shot. Now, personally, I think the guy is damned adorbs, but at the same time, it's just...it's too soon. That mixed with this whole thing we've got going on with Jack...

We're pretty conflicted on how to answer, un-- Wait, huh? What did...?

Did-- Wait, Jack wants us to tell him that we have a boyfriend? And what does he mean that "it doesn't even have to be a lie"? ... He said the thing again, too. That thing about being whatever he wants us to be.

This is so anxiety inducing, too, because it's like, first off, we weren't expecting to hear him talking to us, and second, we can't acknowledge him in any shape, way, or form. Jack is quite literally looming right behind us, whispering in our ear, and we cannot so much as look his way without the guy in front of us thinking that we've completely lost our shit. Even still, our feelings for Jack have been complicated lately. Should we even take that plunge? Something about doing that doesn't seem right, though...

...We tell the guy that we don't have a boyfriend. Before he gets his hopes up too much, though, we tell him that we aren't really looking for anything right now, either. The guy leaves. The store is quiet, and we're left with alone with Jack with that awkwardness from earlier back in the air at full force; he's the first one to speak.

He apologizes and starts asking if he's pushed anything onto us that we didn't want. Before we can really answer though, he apologizes again. He explains that he thought that he was speaking in terms of what we wanted, but he keeps going back and forth like he's trying to find the right words but also figure out where he misunderstood; better yet, and more accurately, he's trying to figure out why he misunderstood in the first place. The poor guy is honestly so pitiful at this point, and we try to stop him from rambling and reach out for him... but our hand falls right through him.

Obviously, we start panicking, and Jack explains to us that he doesn't want to do anything that we don't want him to do nor feel comfortable with, and if it's him that we don't feel comfortable with and it's him that we don't want...this is what happens.

Okay, now, we're past the point of panicking; we're on the verge of tears because had we known us saying "No, I don't have a boyfriend" meant that Jack would start questioning if we actually wanted him around and fading away, we would've never said it. True to his optimistic nature, Jack reassures us that he's not "fading away" or "disappearing", and we're just like "Dude, piss off with that. Now, is not the time" because it's like, bro, this isn't a joke or us not wanting to get up for work; this is serious.

Jack chills with the reassurance and explains that he understands that we're serious, but that this isn't an issue that he can fix himself. Jack basically said that our words -- better yet our acceptance or denial of him -- are very weighted and that the only way to fix what's going on right then and there is to reaffirm that we accept him being there and truly meaning it, and that's only because he doesn't want to do anything that we don't want or need from him.

Even still, do we really trust him fully enough to do this? He's not the kind of guy to hurt us, is he? I mean, it's Sunny Day Jack. Then again, we also thought the same about---

"Hey."

"Yeah, Jack?"

"I know it's scary, I honestly do, but you can trust me. All I want is to be with you, protect you, and make you happy; that's what I'm here for."

All of that sounds so nice, too nice, but...

Can we trust him so easily...?

We really shouldn't...

But that horrible, heartbreaking moment...

That pain that Jack somehow made bearable, took away even...

That companionship he gave us in the place of loneliness...

His comfort...

His gaze...

What's wrong with feeling good? Why doubt him, and why feel like this unique and irreplicable connection is a bad thing? It's like Jack said: these feelings are okay; it's normal. There's nothing wrong with this.

...Right?

Y'all. You all. Guys. Gays. Theys. People. Friends. MY friends. SQUAD. (all right, enough...)

Hot and bothered, bothered and hot. Like, please allow me like 3 - 5 sentences of degeneracy. Between Jack and Ren (iykyk) ... Ren still laid down the pipe better but Jack?? Jack was a damned close second. Like, did you see the way that man was looking in our eyes and holding us? Then he's so big and masculine looking and ahhhhh~! That is BAE right there!

Anyways, getting back on track, when I had to go back and get those screenshots, what should've taken me like 5 - 10 minutes took me like 30+ minutes because I had to relive these moments. I had to relive this story! Like I mentioned earlier, the game is damn near two years old, but it reads like new, you feel me? The story, the implications, the art style, the scenes, the drama -- ahhh! I LIVE. I ASCEND. Like, when these developers hit the mark, they hit the damned mark with such precision!

I'm pretty sure that it's been mentioned at this point, but do you know what I loved the most about this visual novel (degeneracy aside, of course lol)? The subtle but oddly specific ass details that you're sure to miss or gloss over if you're not paying attention. I'm talking those details that you probably wouldn't catch until you've already read it once, seen how things have panned out, and then read through it again. Like, how it described us feeling cold whenever we thought about Jack leaving or fading away from us, or how the air would feel like syrup or cotton candy whenever he spoke to us, or how we'd get all warm in the most literal sense whenever Jack was near, or feel full, or completed, or -- the list honestly goes on. Like, there's a lot of allusion to being slowly corrupted/possessed by Jack, because this guy is a ghost, remember? Yeah, I had lowkey forgot, too.

Those specifically subtle details really made the story come together, and once I caught onto what was going on, I was just like, bro, the signs were there! I'd have to say that my absolute favorite "subtle" sign was when Jack always seemed to know exactly what we were thinking, almost like he was able to read our thoughts, but as soon as we started to "reject" him, all of a sudden he wasn't exactly sure what we thought. He went from responding to our thoughts to questioning what we may have been thinking about. Like, what? Go the eff off SnaccPop!

I love this visual novel, I love this visual novel, I love this visual novel, I love this frickin visual novel. I could ramble and geek way more but I'm gonna start wrapping it up before I start yappin' too, too much. Just allow me a few more sentences, a paragraph or two, please.

I. Cannot. Wait! For the full and official release! I am so excited to see how the team is going to mold this story and how things are going to pan out. I'm excited to see how and if we're able to get away from Jack because, at this point, he has a damned strong hold on us, but I'm speculating that our horror movie fanatic and director friend is going to come in clutch for this one.

If it was not obvious (and honestly, if you were somehow later to this game than I was) 100/10 would recommend, and I am recommending. It is so good, and I really hope that I'm not over hyping it, because the foundation that has been built for this story is so damned solid. Like I mentioned way earlier, unfortunately, you can't play the (free) updated demo anymore, but you can still play the classic one; I just don't know how different it is compared to the new version. Either way, I'll give you the link to both just in case (Update | OG). If you're able, definitely give them that monetary support and play the updated version. Hell, tell ME how it is because...I really don't want to put off my bills but, at this point, Jack has me in a fucking chokehold all over again. What's an extra, unplanned $12 at this point? Also, if able, visit the game's page and give SnaccPop that ever so encouraging but thirsty "NEED. MOAR. I mean, you take your time because perfection can't be rushed, and I know you all are people with a life and other responsibilities and such, BUT I NEED. MOAR. IT'S SO GOOD. STAND AND DELIEVER. ...please UwU I beg OTL"

Meh, that was highkey three paragraphs, but I'm not gonna split it so it can still be the two paragraphs that I requested. Lol sorry for pushing it there, but I'm done now! Promise. No more yappin'. The yap has been concluded, and I'm gonna go ahead and head out.

Big preesh for getting this far, and please, remember to drink water, don't be dumb, and hope to see you around~!

Something's Wrong with Sunny Day Jack (Updated; download not available to public)

Something's Wrong with Sunny Day Jack (Classic; download available)

[franzkafkagf]

me sitting down to discuss asoiaf with targaryen criticals, sansa understanders, theon enthusiasts, elia lovers, rhaegar haters, cersei scholars, stannisdavos girls and infertile conqueror truthers

Sorry if I already sent this in but forgot, but do have any posts/links about infertile Aegon?? I haven't heard that one before.

i have no specific post in mind that isn‘t mine but i summarized some thoughts here

But basically, the text implies that something weird went on. Aegon was married to two women, both did not get pregnant for a long time, even when Aegon was said to dote on at least Rhaenys a lot. You'd think the last of the Dragonlords would make sure there is a heir for their dynasty before they began their extremely dangerous and bloody conquest (a conquest that did indeed kill one of them).

Only seven years after the start of the initial conquest did Rhaenys finally get pregnant. Rhaenys was also the one who was said to spend an inordinate amount of time around bards and actors and singers— you know what people say. Aenys was a sickly and small child, after his mother's death some even thought that he would die. Leaving Aegon without a heir.

As luck (or blood magic) would have it, Visenya would fall pregnant soon after her sister's death— Maegor was Aegon's second son and the complete opposite of Aenys. He was aggressive, strong (Visenya is said to have put a sword into his hand hand at the age of three) and so Targaryen. Maybe too much.

I believe that Aenys is a bastard, sired by some actor from Lannisport, a final attempt to finally gain an heir for Aegon. When it seemed like Aenys would die, Visenya decided to create Maegor, using old blood magic, spells that were long forgotten.

Every Targaryen claims to be the Conqueror's legacy, yet all of them descend from a bastard. A bastard sired by a simple traveling actor.

[flower-boi16]

"I Wanna Dance With Some Ollie" Is a Good Episode, Actually (A Response to The Alphajay Show)

Before I start this post I want to say that I am a fan of The Alphajay show, I really like watching his content and I think he makes good videos. That being said, however, the TGAMM segment in his "Ranking The WORST Episodes Of 2023" video is awful and just gets a lot of shit wrong to the point I especially have the motivation to debunk what he says in the video. So... let's just begin.

He starts off the segment by saying this:

"I Wanna Dance With Some Ollie is one of the worst episodes I've seen this year. And it's one of the most disappointing episodes I've ever seen since making this channel. And to basically summarize my video on it, the first season of Molly Mcgee builds up her character perfectly. You have the girl who moves from town to town. Wanting to build strong memories in her now forever home. Even if she was cursed by a ghost. Her positive aura radiated the otherwise miserable town and her ambition combined with her amazing musical sequences and solid comedy that took her do gooder attitude, and gave her a very much welcome edge for an amazing character who I rooted for to save the town and was ready to watch season after season of it....she threw all of that away for a boy named Ollie"

....what? No she didn't. I really don't know what Jay's talking about here? Molly didn't throw away her goal of enhappifying the town for Ollie, all she ever did was just get a crush on him. Saying that she threw all of that away for a boy seems kinda disingenuous to me. It just looks like he's mad because...Molly got a crush on a boy. Like, is she not allowed to have crushes or something? After this he says this:

"However this isn't just romance shifting a person into doing things that they otherwise wouldn't do because that's natural that's understandable. This is about a show, brut forcing a romance that otherwise wouldn't have made sense without understanding why people clammer over the ones done right. I brought up Spider-Verse earlier and that's a great example of romance done right. Gwen has her own life own motivations and her own cool aspects that are not connected to Miles. Likewise, as said in my video about Molly Mcgee, Luz and Amity from the first season of The Owl House worked because Amity had a life, motivations and cool aspects before liking and meeting Luz. Also the Grom episode wasn't the like the 5th episode that they went to. They actually built up the tension of wanting to see them get together."

Wait...does Ollie not have his own aspects that aren't connected to Molly too? Like, he's a kid who was taught to hate ghosts and became a ghost hunter, and he got a whole episode where he went through character development over his guilt about hunting ghosts, not to mention the whole conflict of his parents finding out he's friends with a ghost. Ollie also does have aspects about him that are not related to Molly, are the ones I just mentioned somehow not enough?

Alphajay is saying this as if Ollie's entire character is just about his romance with Molly and that his whole character revolves around her, but that's just objectively false. After that he complains about the episode "Beats you over the head about how much it wants to you spread the ship" which really isn't worth talking about so lets talk about the thing he says after that:

"You'd think the girl who went to the ghost world and defeated the chairman to free all ghosts would be a little bit more quick to explain why Ollie shouldn't be discriminatory towards all ghosts, especially Molly's best friend who is a ghost who gets caught and trapped at that very same concern"

Ummmm...

Alpha. Didn't she literally try to do that in Book Marks the Sprite? Ya know, the last episode these two interacted in before this? She did try to explain to Ollie that ghosts may not be evil but she wasn't able to convince him.

So after that he ends the segment and moves on to talk about an episode that I am assuming is from modern Spongebob. Again, I do like Alphajay's content but a lot of the stuff he said in this segment was just straight up objectively wrong. 

[finisnihil]

I read your post from 4/10 and wanted to double check: you mentioned that Sunday took Sparkle up on her offer to pose as Robin, but I don't remember a time when that happened? He mentioned the family had a plan + the emanator post by hyv basically says they can take on the form of other family members. If you mean the convo between Aven/Sparkle couldn't that have just been Aven's misconception? She never confirms it in that convo as far as I remember. Loved the post btw just curious

That could very well be the case as well! It's all very vague so I went with what I thought made the most sense based on context clues, which was Sparkle replaced her.

Looking at it from a meta perspective I don't see why the writers would have Aventurine say that unless the statement/question held some genuine weight. When writing you wouldn’t typically introduce the idea of Sparkle replacing Robin by her demonstrating her ability to do so believably, having her offer to do it for the Family to upkeep airs, and then bringing it up again later as Sparkle being the culprit if that’s a plot line you don’t intend to actually upkeep as it would be redundant and take up time and space.

Speaking of Sparkle not confirming it, it’s in line with her character. Sparkle as a Masked Fool lives to invoke chaos. Just because she didn’t confirm it doesn’t mean it can’t be true, think back to her conversation with Aventurine some more. She doesn’t lie to him but she doesn’t reveal her hand enough to help too much. Basically her attitude about it all can be summarized by a quote from her character trailer: “Let me tell you what foolishness is, pretending to be smart like you do. Then what is a fool? Knowing when to act clueless, like I do”.

It’s only when he’s found the right questions to ask he’s able to push her for more details, and even then she’s cagey about the information she shares. Sparkle enjoys watching everyone run around trying to manage the disaster because that’s Elation to her. It would be more out of character for her to give a clear yes or no on the matter, hell the closest she gets to giving one is implying that’s the answer by saying “…and if I say ‘no’?” Adding to this she only gets this close to giving a clear yes or no because Aventurine entices her with the idea it will cause further chaos.

But then again, 2.1's writing decieved us in a lot of ways so like you said, it could've been a misconception. This is just my take on the matter based on what we’re given.

By the by, which Emanator post do you refer to specifically? I don’t recall seeing the information they can take on the form of other family members on any Insta posts (I don’t use Twitter/X) or the big Emanator rundown the official HSR account posted on HoyoLab. If I missed it I’d like to know!

Tbh when analyzing media like HSR, which is constantly updating in real time, you're always running the risk of getting something wrong simply because you're working with an incomplete puzzle. Some of my analysis posts don't hold nearly as much water as they did before 2.1 and whatnot so if I am wrong on that I wouldn’t be too surprised. I try to keep up to date on the lore to the best of my ability as it’s the main reason I even play the game but until Penacony is complete and we have a full picture to work with I really appreciate people like you bringing possible holes in my analysis to my attention!

I’m really glad you liked my post and tysm for the ask! Have a great day, mwah!

[banamine-bananime]

preface: i was writing a list of my headcanons for funsies and got completely derailed with angsty grimmons shit that needs to be scooped out of that post because it’s stupid long. so here

grif worked in honolulu a couple years after hs graduation until kai was old enough (17) he felt he could leave. did a year at university before realizing he’s smart enough to be admitted to cornell but not to get the scholarship he realistically needs to not be in crushing debt on graduation, and also there’s not nearly enough regimentation to college life to prevent him from rotting in bed paralyzed by “oh my god i don’t have Responsibilities That Need To Be Done Right Now for the first time in forever and idk what to do now” and executive dysfunction. went through basic and stationed on the doomed outpost. That Whole Thing (a polite way of saying “sneaking off for a nap on duty, sleeping through a massacre, and waking up to find literally everyone else dead”) was the nail in the coffin that pretty much shot his last shred of motivation and hope to shit, and based on his behaviour and psych eval afterwards (best summarized as “learned helplessness that everything is shit always and he’s useless and never gonna be able to help anyone so 👍 fuck everything fuck everyone just try to eke some hedonistic joy out of life before you die”) he was reassigned to the sim soldiers.

meanwhile simmons tried to do university several times and had to drop out for mental health reasons (a very polite way of putting “rapid spiral into absolute disaster every time”. it leaves room for giving him the benefit of the doubt that this was a proactive “ah i should take care of myself and this is not working for me :) #selfcare #therapy” decision. this is not benefit of the doubt that anyone who knows him would extend.).

I go back and forth on whether to roll with the “that one throwaway line with a suspiciously specific hypothetical of being in a unit that was stranded and had to eat their dog to survive” thing or just say he was assigned straight to sim troopers. on the one hand, i really love grif and simmons having a parallel immensely traumatic first assignment that made them both Worse in kinda similar kinda opposite ways in line with the ways they were each already fucked up

(grif “life is inherently a garbage fire. i am useless. all i can do is look out for myself and save my own hide by absolute never trusting any authority, refusing to get attached to the other fuckers around here (they’d hate me anyways so just let them hate me), and obsessively hoarding any access to food and shelter and comfort because Maslow said I can’t work on health or belonging or esteem until i do :/ yeah i know, sorry, i’ve got a doctor’s note from him right here.” vs simmons “my life is a garbage fire probably because everyone around me is an idiot fucking something up but also because i’m not trying hard enough. i’m sure if i keep Performing The Maladaptive Behaviours even harder they will work and i THEN will feel respected and powerful and loved. you see you just have to keep repressing every feeling so you can suck up to anyone you detect a whiff of Authority Figure on no matter how little you actually respect them, and follow EVERY RULE and work and work and work. and you had better abandon any compunctions about things like eating a dog you loved or backstabbing a friend for brownie points from the CO who hates him or Literally Murdering your CO for a promotion. and if you ever stop desperately trying, fighting dirty looking out just for yourself, and instead just sit still for a moment and enjoy sincere zero-ulterior-motives connections with people, you will probably definitely immediately die of starvation or exposure (it is a metaphor you see. of exposure to the elements while stranded without resources. for the agonizing exposure of allowing yourself to be known.)”)

on the other hand i’m like whoa now. this boy’s got enough problems we really don’t need to be giving him any more or we’re really never gonna pry him free of the woobiefication fics.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I’m into the August 2015 episodes of the Robins/James radio show, John is broadcasting from Edinburgh (well, from Glasgow, because that’s where there’s a radio studio he can use). It’s quite interesting. I recently re-listened to some of the Howard/Richardson radio episodes that they broadcast from the 2007 Edinburgh Festival. Which I was inspired to do when I listened to the radio episodes that Lee and Herring broadcast from the 1994 Edinburgh Festival. I’m so interested in everything about what goes on at Edinburgh Festivals, it is really cool to have radio shows that act as an audio diary for people who were actually there in various years.

John gave us a diary from the 2014 festival, which inspired me to re-listen to his 2014 Edinburgh show, as he kept talking about it and it was really good. I’m thinking I’ll do the same with his 2015 show, since he keeps talking about that one and I want to hear again it now that I have some behind-the-scenes context.

Anyway, there’s this feature on the radio show called Winner Plays On. Where they each pick a topic, and then the other asks them five questions about their chosen topic, and the one who gets more questions correct gets to keep their topic the next week and the other has to change it. I’m on episode 80 and it’s still going strong, they’ve covered a lot. I hope it continues for a long time.

Around episode 30, John Robins lost a round but believed this was because Elis went too deep too fast with his questions (there’s a general agreement that you ask relatively basic questions on the first week with a new topic, and have them get progressively harder with each week that the topic stays on), got absolutely furious about it and had one of his hyper-competitiveness-induced hissy fits, and in retaliation, chose Elis James as his topic for the next week. Because he knew it would make Elis James genuinely uncomfortable to do something as egotistical-seeming as ask trivia questions about himself, which it did, and that was also entertaining. I really enjoy that they’ve built a feature into this radio show that will bring out John Robins’ hyper-competitiveness-induced responses every week. I sure hope that someday they have him on other shows that bring out the competitiveness in comedians. He’d be good value.

Anyway, that was quite a while before the point I’m at now, which is episode 80, in August 2015. I bring it up because we’ve had Elis James as the topic for Winner Plays On before, and now we have John Robins. Because he lost right before the festival started and had to pick a new topic, and said he was too busy and stressed with his Edinburgh show to research some other topic in order to pass a trivia quiz on it, so he said his new topic would be John Robins at the Edinburgh Festival, 2005-present. No one has commented on the fact that doing something as egotistical-seeming as answering questions about himself was so uncomfortable for Elis James that making him do it qualified as a good way to retaliate against him, while doing something as egotistical-seeming as answering questions about himself is something John Robins happily chose to do on his own.

It's been quite fun having John Robins as the topic, especially for feeding my love of comedians’ Edinburgh stories. It’s run for about three weeks now, because John keeps winning, because he’s answering questions about his own history. So every week, Elis James has to dig up old reviews and stuff of John Robins to see what he remembers about them.

Anyway, this whole post so far has just been explaining all the necessary context I can think of for this quote I’ve just heard, which I think summarizes several comedians quite well:

Elis James: After seeing a preview of whose show in July 2009 did you call me in a panic at 1 AM because you didn’t think your show had any meta narrative? John Robins: Daniel Kitson? Elis James: No, John Gordillo, with Divide & Conga. And I said, “Has my show got any meta narrative?” And you said, “What? God no.”

Right there, that's John Robins, Daniel Kitson, and Elis James in a nutshell. Respectively: one panicking because other people have better shows than him and he wants a more deep and structured and a proper festival hour, one ruining other comedians' lives by being so deep and structured that they get upset because they're not as good, and one very happy to write club-style sets with a few vaguely funny stories about missing trains that do not need a meta narrative. I don't actually know anything about the other comedian in this story, but I just Googled John Gordillo and Divide & Conga was his 2008 show, and Elis said it was a preview so it couldn't have been from a tour the following year, someone's got some fact wrong here.

Anyway, there's been a lot of entertaining stuff in some of the Winner Plays On rounds and I'd like to cut out some of my favourite clips and post them when I have time, particularly the ones with Edinburgh stories in them. But for now I just wanted to post that quote because I thought it was funny.

God, I can't wait to go to Edinburgh in 2024. So many meta narratives. I can't wait to go to Edinburgh and hear all the meta narratives. I fucking love a good meta narrative.

[greyborn2]

Ok just because brain is buzzing - some more info regarding the Locked Tomb campaign I was gonna run that I posted the sheets for over hereee: https://www.tumblr.com/greyborn2/718444295287390208/custom-character-sheet-thingy-i-made-for-a-locked All the stuff under the cut because it be LONGGGG

-Was gonna be set in the 91st century of the first myriad. So during Nonius' time. Had planned for him to make a small cameo at some point. -Basic setup for it was that the Emperor and his Lyctors had 'gone silent' for a hundred to two hundred years. A blink of time for them (and besides, they were busy fighting resurrection beasts and dealing with losing a few of them) but enough time for things to slowly start descending into a shitshow in Dominicus. The houses wernt at open war, but tensions were super high and basically it was a case of nearly every house or powerful adept making a play for declaring themselves the stewards of Dominicus in the Emperor's absence. Political intrigue, infighting, a war of polite words, intrigue and assassinations. Big regency drama vibes. -Player characters were the Crown Princess of Ida, played by the player who had never read locked tomb but INSTANTLY grok'd third house when I described them and, with no input from me, straight up made a hellish combo of Corona and Ianthe; The Mistress Templara of the Eighth House; The lady of the Fifth house; aaaaaand a traumatized sixteen year old war veteran from the Fourth who went to war and got his leg blown off and narrowly escaped with his life. -Eventual plan was that at some point near the end G1dion would show back up to see Dominicus like that 'everything on fire and chaos' gif from Community. Like full on "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON THE EMPEROR UNDYING LEAVES YOU ALONE FOR TWO CENTURIES AND THIS HAPPENS?!?!" and at some point he and Nonius would fight (and fuck. Lets be honest) in the background. Probably just an event the players would hear about in passing but a lil' nod to the fact that Nonius and G1dion crossed blades. -Mechanically a lot of the system was a stripped back version of v5 WoD/Storyteller system with a bigger focus on narrative > strict mechanics because I just prefer systems to work like that. Less strict "Ah yes, I have this specific power" and more... flexible magic within the three disciplines of necromancy and the three-tier system I wrote within each one. Hard to quickly summarize but ye. -As mentioned in other post, was gonna make a map of Dominicus for it! If you've seen the maps of the Sol system for 40k where they are all sorta gothic and fantasy-y despite being star maps was gonna go for that vibe. Might come back to it at some point as an art project. -Ended up making the executive decision that '''powder''' as an off hand is a single shot duelling pistol. Big regency vibes, again. -Was playing around with the idea of making the Eighth player's cav into the BBEG. TL;DR is that she (Gris Ochtu, the Cav) had previously been cav to another necro. At some point her and her old necromancer had gotten into a life or death situation, her necromancer tried to syphon her to death, and Gris found a way of basically 'grabbing on' to the syphon tether, pulled her necromancer down to the river in a bout of panic and flight/fight and drowned her necromancer to death in said River. The whole event left her with a talent for basically shrugging off necromantic theorems directly cast against her, unraveling theorems that got close to her, and 'swallowing' up other peoples souls (or, well, it was gonna be a power she unlocked later in campaign as she became more of a threat and revealed herself as the traitor), casting them into the River, and then letting revenants take over their bodies. Anyways, she was reassigned after giving a false report that her necro had 'died trying to save her' and was biding her time/playing along before at some point she'd fucking crack and go Wake against the Empire while all the political stuff was also happening. Add a threat beyond politicking. Was an idea I was -toying- with, anyways. Also she was a silver haired milf with hardcore battle scarring because, well, ofcourse.

[dreamybasil]

I wanna catch up on the lore and get involved. Any way you can summarize it and any way I can join in?

Iii donnn't knoww what lore you want to get so.. ... I'll just- dump up two of them?? SOXIEDI and the OLIVE&ASH ones- about the SOXIEDI one, sadly can't but you can make up a random arc with it about OLIVE&ASH .. Ask zeteroxx i have no idea- SOXIEDI Ah yes, an OMORI au which has the classic stairs. Basil is the main character with an older sister, Yuki; Yuki's a lautenwerck player, and Basil is a flute player. Before their recital, Basil couldn't take it anymore and threw his flute downstairs, resulting in a huge argument and in Yuki's death. Basil had a slight panic attack and he had no one around to help him, so he just.. went to the secret hangout spot at the park and dumped up Yuki into the lake. Police found her and just said that her death was caused by an unknown murder. Lalala Basil locked up himself in his house for 4 years.. Aubrey knocked on his door and he finally opened- ... If you played OMORI ya'now whats next so I'll just.. skip, I guess? If needed I'll do another post which is like a whole fanfic for this AU. I write a lot.. Basil and others went to a sleepover in Basil's house. Though, once Basil took his gardening trowel and was about to 'erase himself from existence', Sunny interupted it and there was some kind of a fight. Basil stabbed himself into his right eye and left cheek :3 Panic attack yippee yahoo..- Sunny was barely even hurt but got a small scratch, so he was still at home. Basil, however, had to go to the hospital. .. That's the shortest I could do please don't kill me

OLIVE & ASH arc?? Olive and Ash are the brothers who went through a lot of pain. Mainly Ash. .. .. my mind just went blank- anyways They also had quite a lot adventures because of some 'people', and they were basically jumping around universes to find a safe place to stay in that's how they found about SOXIEDI. Basil surely was quite surprised, but he wanted to help and welcomed the two into his house. After that, Olive and Ash took their friends (Aka Aubrey, Hero, Kel, Basil, and.. probably Sunny?? I forgot) into the universe too so they also could keep safe and protected. If to be a bit more short.. SOXIEDI Basil somewhat turned into a parent figure for Olive & Ash even though they're basically the same age-

[rushingheadlong]

I’d be super interested to read your thoughts on Brian’s relationship with his father!

(always appreciate your insightful commentary, even if I am mostly a lurker in the fandom over here lol)

Mmm, so okay there’s gonna be a huge disclaimer on this post because I need to be very clear that nothing I write here should be taken as indisputable “fact” about Brian’s relationship with his father. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about things, just from spending the past few years consuming any interview with Brian that I can find, but at the end of the day this is all just speculation and it’s important that we all remember that. 

With that out of the way, a lot of my thoughts about Brian and Harold’s relationship revolve around the tension that exists between Harold’s role as a father and the friend-figure that he often was when Brian was a child.

To summarize what I said in my other comment earlier, Harold not only actively encouraged all of Brian’s major hobbies as a kid but participated in them with him. He was the one who got Brian into photography, music, and astronomy. He bought him his first telescope, showed him how to develop photos, and built the Red Special with him. The impression I’ve always gotten is that Brian intentionally chose to spend a lot of his free time in the evenings with his father, rather than being forced to do so, because Brian speaks incredibly fondly of those times. And we also know that Harold was an incredibly intelligent man in his own right and he pushed Brian to excel academically, which of course he did. 

So we start to get a picture of Brian’s childhood where his home life and a large portion of his out-of-school socialization is dominated by his father and their interactions, and on the whole Brian seems to think positively about this time… possibly because it’s a time where Brian is receiving praise and validation for pursuing interests that Harold already has and achieving all of the academic goals that Harold wants him to reach. Basically, you can make the argument that he’s living the life that his father wants him to live and so their relationship is good. 

And then Brian goes to university, and everything sort of goes to shit. 

Because once he’s at uni, he stops doing exclusively what Harold wants him to do. And suddenly Harold isn’t his quasi-friend, he’s Brian’s father trying to put his foot down - and Brian tells him no. 

Brian has said several times that the falling-out they had over Queen was exacerbated by their stubbornness, and that he was too much like his father to back down and reconcile if Harold wasn’t going to apologize too. They went nearly two years without speaking to each other and, genuinely, I think that did irreparable damage to their relationship on several levels even after they made up again. 

The first is obviously that Harold’s feelings about Queen… didn’t entirely change. In fact I would argue that Harold never accepted Brian as a musician, he only accepted that Brian’s choices were making him money. In the George Tremlett book from 1976, when asked about Brian’s future, Harold talks as if the band won’t continue and explicitly says that Brian should finish his thesis and maybe build a private research laboratory if he has the money. And Brian has talked in Queen in 3D about wowing his parents with the car he was able to buy, and impressing them with the Concorde flight to NYC with room service at the hotel and the whole nine yards even though he didn’t have the money to do that because he wanted them to think that he really had “made it” as a rockstar. 

That isn’t to say that Harold hated Queen or anything like that, but I don’t think he ever thought “Yes this is the best thing for my son to do with his life” and rather came around to a position of, “The music isn’t bad and as long as he’s earning a living off it then I’ll leave it be”. He clearly supported Brian enough to go to shows and track their tour itineraries on maps but he never gave up hope that Brian would leave music and return to his studies.

The second is that part of their rift wasn’t only over Queen, but over Brian’s relationship with Chrissie. They were living together at the time, and had been for several years, but weren’t married yet. Brian has explicitly said that Harold found that to be “immoral” and was extremely against it, and he's also made less-explicit comments about feeling extremely pressured to propose to Chrissie during this time.

Personally - and I have no direct evidence to support this - I suspect that Brian’s and Harold’s reconciliation process was a bit of a negotiation. Not in any sort of formal way at all, obviously, but I can very easily see Brian thinking, “If he can accept the band, the least I can do is finally make an honest woman out of Chrissie so he’s not upset about us living together.” and proposing from there despite the fact that his cheating would seem to suggest that he wasn’t entirely ready to commit to her.

The reason I suspect this is because Brian has talked before about feeling pressured to live up to Harold’s expectations of what a father and husband “should be”. Harold was an incredibly traditional patriarch and tried to distill those same values in Brian, without much success. Brian has talked about feeling like he was expressing himself, his masculinity, and his heterosexuality all “wrong” because he felt pressured to perform those things in a way that did not come naturally to him, and how he struggled with readjusting to family life after tours because he couldn’t be the head of household like Harold was. 

The final reason I think their falling-out did lasting damage to their relationship is because Harold didn’t give Brian any explanations at first for why he had been so eager to build the guitar but so angry about Brian actually using it. It was only much later on that he finally admitted to Brian that he had wanted to be in a band himself after he got out of the RAF but Ruth was already pregnant so he had to set aside the musician dreams in order to support his new family. To quote Brian directly here from this interview, “I realised then that he’d found it hard to accept my choice because it was a dream he’d been forced to reject.”

So now we have several layers of Harold living, or trying to live, vicariously through his son. And while I don’t want to accuse Harold of being a bad man or a bad father… it’s really not great that his reaction to Brian getting to live the dream that he couldn’t was to not speak to him for nearly two years. That’s such a huge and abrupt change in personality and opinion that it probably fundamentally changed how Brian viewed the support he had gotten from his father up to that point. (Like, if Brian didn’t realize then that Harold only supported him when he was doing what Harold wanted I would be shocked.)

Also in terms of changes in opinion, I want to add in another quote from Brian from that same interview about talking to his mum after his father died: “Mum told me they’d had a difficult relationship. But as a kid I had no idea, it just felt like a secure and loving home. She felt she’d just submerged herself in Dad, as wives did in those days. She made up for it much later, getting a job in a chemist’s and turning into this great, social person.”

Ruth wasn’t allowed a license or a job while Harold was alive, and Brian’s phrasing of her “turning into this great, social person” here is… concerning to me, tbh. I really do not want to accuse Harold of being abusive because we have exactly zero evidence that he was - but he was absolutely a product of his time and held very deep-seated opinions about gender and familial roles. And once Brian became aware of more of the ways in which those opinions manifested, I think he struggled to reconcile that against his foundational image of his father which is probably rooted more in their shared hobbies than his conservative views. 

I think Harold May was probably a man who, thanks to the time period he grew up in, viewed Brian and Ruth as being “his” and expected them to do what he wanted them to do. I think that as a child Brian was largely unaware of this dynamic, due in part to the fact that his own interests aligned heavily with his father’s, and so I think Brian grew up very much loving his father and wanting to do anything to make him proud. 

I also think they never had that sort of relationship again after their falling-out. I think once Brian saw first-hand how stubborn, possibly even controlling, his father could be that it fundamentally changed their relationship even after they reconciled - but like with a lot of people, I think a large part of Brian kept trying to make his father proud of him anyway. And I think Brian did that by trying to demonstrate his financial security and by trying to be the husband/father that Harold expected him to be, even to the detriment of his own marriage and mental well-being. 

And I think that as Brian has aged himself his understanding of his father has changed in ways that are often messy and difficult for him to articulate. I think Harold left him with a lot more questions than answers, especially as Brian has made several comments over the years about wishing that Harold was still around to ask him about things. I think in some ways Brian struggles to balance an understanding that Harold was a product of his time with just wishing that Harold had been in some ways a different, or better, man. 

I think Brian has spent a large portion of his life chasing his father’s approval, with varying degrees of success, and I think he regrets a lot of that when he looks back on things now. 

But underneath everything else is still the seven-year-old being taught chords on his first acoustic guitar and the twelve-year-old helping to develop photos and the sixteen-year-old hand-carving an old fireplace mantel into what will be the Red Special… And I think that largely Brian considers the friend who was there for all of that to be a different person to the father he fell out with, and that Brian has spent the roughly 47 years since their reconciliation trying to fit together a coherent mental image of Harold again.

[ultraviolet-ink]

Hiii idk if it's still relevant BUT

for the choose violence ask game: 3, 10, 12 ! 😁

Hello!! I'm always down for asks, thanks for sending this one!! (o^▽^o) 3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr Oh god there's this one take I've seen a year or two ago that still makes me lose my mind lol! Basically it was a post talking about how no one understands the point of the joke "Dead Dove, Do Not Eat" and how it's not supposed to be "what's on the tin" but the absurdity of someone putting a dove in a fridge, and THAT was why it was a joke. Fam, do you not know the next line? "I don't know what I expected", dead dove note on a bag -> dead dove in the bag! That's the joke!! That's why we use it in fic to be an extra label (Aka, mind the tags, product may contain peanuts, etc.) tbh, funniest bad take I've seen in a while tho

10. worst part of fanon Found. Family. It went from one of my most favorite tropes ever, to the one that makes me roll my eye the hardest. People can be close without calling each other family, they're allowed to be friends (Like hell I'm calling one of my old professors my "dad" or "weird uncle", or "mom" or "vodka aunt" we're JUST friends). I also don't like how it all just defaults to a nuclear family set of roles, like there has to be two parents, some kids, and then everyone else is somehow a cousin. I've been getting into GOT/HOtD lately, and damn THOSE family lines are easier to follow than some of the shit that gets passed off as "FAMILY DO NOT SEPARATE OR WE WILL SEND DEATH THREATS!!" And to harp on that second point, it just brings so much wank! I have a friend who made a super SUPER niche DGS ship, and no one ever said these characters were family before they started posting about it-- but one of the characters is often headcanoned to be a lesbian (which, yeah, I'm basic, I also hc the same), so when this "rival" ship came about, it was suddenly "fOuNd FaMiLy". Mostly, I just roll my eyes now at this trope, which is sad because it can be so beautiful. Family really can be a bunch of people you find, and it doesn't need labels!! to summarize: Fuck the concept of the nuclear family, all the homies hate the concept of the nuclear family

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Seishirou Jigoku, he's big and dumb and beefy, pure babygirl <3 But in all seriousness, he is such a fascinating character to me! He really seems like the kind of person who could have done good things in his own little sector, totally inconsequential and mundane, but good. I think he shares a lot of the same characteristics as Genshin and Yujin, optimistic and a bit patriotic. I like to think that he was pretty close with Yujin, it was HIM that convinced the latter to go on the trip after the death of Ayame after all! I just love to think about him so much, how he is with those around them. When it's just him as the judge, he's calm and collected, serious and gets the job done. With Yujin (And I presume with Genshin as well), he's jovial, a little bit goofy and all around enjoyable to be around However, with Stronghart, he twists in on himself, and he leads himself to hell. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I think that really does describe his character so well! He wanted to change the court system in his home, to make it brilliant, but he had to eventually do the unthinkable that fateful night in the cemetery <//3 At the end of the day, he's a small and bitter man... See, he's so interesting!! Prompts here!

[shayanapraia]

Week 8 (Amazon) Recap

Holy moly, what a trip. The Amazon was insane. I won’t be able to put it all in one post but I’ll summarize and leave it to the readers to ask further questions

So basically I flew to Manaus, which is a big, modern, 2 million person city in the center of the rainforest. I have a friend Lucas who is born and raised there (we met while he was on vacation in Salvador) so I spent the first day and a half with him. It was really cool to hear from a local person about how the Amazon region plays a part in their culture there. I assumed that people living in the city would be completely modernized and detached from indigenous roots, but actually they have very elegant bits of native culture within their city lives and they are very proud of amazonas. For example, Lucas said a typical Sunday for his family (like many families) is fishing in the river and then grilling their fish for a big family meal. He also knows a TON of fish species and plants, and I think that’s just a naturally ingrained part of their life there.

So Lucas convinced me to go on this day trip tour thing with him that takes you near the city and you visit a native tribe, go fishing, swim with the pink river dolphins, etc. I took one look and was like wtf this looks so touristy and cringe, but since I literally had an indigenous local friend wanting to go for his own personal interest, I thought ok well it must be legit. Well I thought it was super cringe and touristy. But Lucas said it made him emotional because he’s connecting to his “nature roots” LMAO so I really don’t know what to think

Lucas saying he’s “bored” after we literally saw a SLOTH because he’s “used to” seeing sloths all the time lmao

River dolphin, not in captivity but lowkey being exploited in my opinion

The native dance thing seemed really performative and kind of fake and commercialized, but Lucas said it’s real, so I really don’t know if I’m just being racist

Okay and THEN I went on a 4-day jungle trip. From Manaus it was a car, boat, longer car, longer boat to get there. The guide, Liel, has a little lodge that he has built on his family’s property that he runs with his wife and kids. There were also French and Spanish travelers there.

We spent the days doing different activities: rainforest walks for wildlife, lots of canoe rides, fishing, and visiting the community. We saw beautiful nature and wildlife but for me, the coolest part was seeing the lifestyle of the locals.

We were in a super rural 20-family community on the river where all of the people are native by blood but they are culturally Brazilian (aka they only speak Portuguese, they’re all Christian, don’t actively have any indigenous culture). There are zero streets, zero cars, bikes, or any land travel whatsoever. Only boats. Below are Liel’s kids getting on their “school bus” in the morning

Which raised soooo many questions for me…police, firefighters, postal service, population, education, food supply chains, etc??? Well, I got them all answered so if you are curious too, we can discuss

My favorite night was spent staying with another local native family, liel’s cousins. We helped them cook dinner and hung out with the kids. I learned to scale (?) and clean (?) fish for cooking, and we also harvested cassava root and herbs and sugar cane from their garden. Everything you plant just GROWS crazy there. We all became friends by the end and it was a sweet little goodbye

My other favorite part was spending a night living ~survival mode~ in the rainforest. The only food we brought was rice and eggs basically, so we had to hunt/fish if we wanted a substantial meal. We ate piranhas and I slayed fishing

Beauty all around all the time

Some of the wildlife we saw included: many many many birds that looked like they could come out of a David Attenborough movie, lots of butterflies, a monkey, some alligators, little frogs, a lot of river dolphins, spiders, tarantula piranhas obviously, giant ants, etc

Well, that concludes my Amazon time. It was very special for me but I’m so happy to be back in moderate temperatures, away from mosquitos, and in clean clothes. Eating non-fish related food. Back with my host fam. In 48 hours I’ll be on a flight back to the city of angels 👼 baby!

Amazon thorns

The most mosquitos I’ve ever seen in my life, relentless

So so so hot and sticky

I had this smell on me that was like a combo of my filth, sweat, mosquito repellant, and fish guts that I couldn’t get off until today

The French guy with me on the tour was annoying af

I missed my flight on the way home

[aaghht]

in reply to tags from @deyasworld

Actually, I can answer that! You're basically right that they share some common nerdy inspirations which are complete happenstance. As Gobbochune says above, animation takes a *very* long time, with both having been in development way before actual production began.

Juniper Lee and Jake Long both had one shared influence among their different creators: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here's inteviews from JLee creator Judd Winick where he mentions how Buffy and Simpsons were the main inspirations for the show originally: From the Newsarama forum: https://web.archive.org/web/20070929105136/http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?threadid=34655 and on the old Fanboy site: https://web.archive.org/web/20060118093258/http://fanboyplanet.com/interviews/mc-juddwinick1.php - I'll just leave this oft-quoted snippet from the Newsarama interview here.

"True story – my wife and I went out, got hamburgers and got drunk, and kicked around what would be the most fun. We just asked ourselves, what would make for the best show; keeping in mind there would have to be some educational component…somehow.

I love magic, I love monsters. I love Hellboy, I love Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, so my first thought as to do something like that. My wife, who’s Asian, came in with the idea that we should have Asian protagonists. She said it should be about sisters, about Asian girls, and Asian family that are actual Asian-Americans. None of this ninja crap. No woodwind instruments and no stereotypical Asian nonsense. They’re American kids of Asian descent, just like my wife, who was born in St. Louis and raised in L.A."

For Jake Long, I couldn't remember where I'd originally seen it but I'd found this forum thread with behind the scenes from creators Matt Negrete and Eddie Guzelian, mentioning that HP and Buffy had been influences, as well as Star Wars (the original site is gone, but here's a web archive link): https://web.archive.org/web/20160612082145/http://www.intrepidentertainment.co.uk/index.php%3Ftopic=1085.0.html - also summarized very nicely by @neopuff here in this post: https://neopuff.tumblr.com/post/52333145485/american-dragon-jake-long-behind-the-scenes Here's another Buffy detail noticed by Jake Long fan All-that-jazz-93: https://www.tumblr.com/all-that-jazz-93/654181619482165249/check-it-so-matt-negrete-and-eddie-guzelian-have?

Basically, although they went different routes in looks, story and feel, they had one over-lapping influence* and anything else was probably pure coincidence. BTVS had a very big shadow over pop-culture during the late 90s and early 00s so I'm not surprised and glad that there are old interviews left from when these shows were still new that mention Buffy being that influence, because it just shows so clearly how hard it is to be 100% original, especially at a time where so many things were changing on the kids media landscape.

*for the most part. you can see that both shows have some nerdier similarities too, but that's probably a more general thing between all american cartoons from that period - the superhero parodies and double-life stuff, the star wars/star trek references and so on)

For Chinese influences, well, Juniper was inspired by Winick's wife and what they both talked about a good show being. I can't remember if they had a cultural advisor, but even if they didn't, I'd chalk it up to "they had family insight" - just my own guess, but being married with an asian person, you start to learn more about their culture as well. JLee often tried to avoid a lot of the more cliche aspects of having an asian protagonist. It never quite gets into the chosen-one lore as much as some other shows would get, but on the other hand, it was something fun and different for that. There's seems to be a hint of some lore or mythology references in some of the lore-heavier eps, especially the final episode, (there are eight magical elders and this reminds me of the eight immortals from chinese mythology, as well as eight being an auspicious number in china) but as a fan, all of that is really only my guess based on the show.

Meanwhile, American Dragon: Jake Long explored an action-comedy hero more from the angle of a half-chinese protagonist in a big city. To me personally, Jake looked more like the crew had taken some aspects assigned to many asian protagonists before and sorta played around with them. Jake wears red and yellow, his hair is spiky and has a green sheen to it in light and he's drawn with smaller eyes than many other characters on the show. But when you actually watch the show, you see the effort put into his character and the relationships between the cast and that it's not that surface-level as on first glance. ADJL gets into its own lore with the dragon stuff and that's interesting as a viewer.

Anyway, both shows are good and I just that these interviews would be an interesting addition! It would be interesting to get lorebooks or artbooks of both shows one day :D I'm sure if there had been more shows with asian protagonists at the time, these coincidences between the two would have been hand-waived by more people than just the fans who continued to watch them.

Did anybody ever notice how similar “The American Dragon Jake Long” and “The Life and Times of Juniper Lee” were??

I mean just look at it:

Both have the initials J.L.

Both are Asian-American teens who fight supernatural forces.

Jake has a younger sister while Juniper has a younger brother. Both just as annoying and have similar powers to their elder siblings.

Both have an elderly grandparent who is their mentor (Jake = his grandpa; Juniper = her grandma).

Both have talking dogs. (Fu-dog the Shar Pei and Monroe the pug)

This really made me think about both shows….

[tamaharu]

can you do an aita post for haruhi "AItA for marrying a mutual friend that my gay best friend has been in love with since he was 14"

i dont know how funny this is going to be btw. tried to craft it into an actual post haruhi might make and. well haruhi is fundamentally very boring.

necessary context for this is a situation me and my friend reuben ramón came up with when we were both more into ouran: an unhappily married tamaharu go to their high school reunion where they meet up with everyone else, including kyoya and renge. tamaki and kyoya share some heated moments but also think Its Far Too Late For Any Of That... meanwhile haruhi fucks renge in a janitors closet and they break up. you can read some of the stuff i wrote about it here

r/relationship_advice

Posted by u/FHNatural 4 months ago

Feeling conflicted about my marriage of five years.

Me (27NB) and my husband (28M) met by chance in high school. We started dating during his last year of high school, and got married a little after I completed undergrad.

For the actual issue: I love my husband, but more and more frequently, I've felt as if I love him like I love a friend. Intimacy and basic affection between us seems off-putting, I've been spending more time away at work just to achieve solitude, and I just feel like I've grown into a person too different from who I was when we began dating. He clearly wants more. He's not demanding anything of me, but I know it upsets him to see me pulling away. Or, he wants kids, and that's something I've always been reluctant about.

We've spent so much of our lives together, and I'm sure that's coloring some of my opinion. I've never been the most adventurous, and I'm confused if I still love him, if I want to split but my own passiveness is holding me back, etc... I'd appreciate some outside perspective on this, but all of my friends are his friends as well, so.

TLDR; How do I deal with feeling like I've fallen out of love with my husband?

UPDATE: I want to start this update, four months after my original post, by thanking everyone who spoke with me through comments and DMs. Some of it was unhelpful, but for the most part I was pleased to find honest, sincere advice. Which makes me feel bad because I probably did the exact opposite of what I was advised to do. The full story of what happened is a bit long, so I'll do my best to summarize:

1. Was looking into both marriage and individual counseling, but was unable to find the time or courage to pursue further with husband.

2. Me and husband were invited to high school reunion with most/all of our mutual friends, including his best friend from middle school. Best friend has been in love with husband since they were fourteen, I was unaware until a little before we were married. This becomes relevant.

3. Re-encountered old friend from high school whom I had lost touch with, found our short connection to be more fulfilling than the one me and my husband had been sharing for some time.

4. Had an affair with said lost connection during the reunion. Husband found us.

5. On impulse, made it worse and handed over my ring. Went and stayed at her house for the night, felt horrible in the morning. He stayed at best friends house.

6. Had actual conversation about everything. Began official separation. I stayed at her house, he stayed at friends house. From what I can gather, this is around the time best friend spoke about his feelings for him, (ex-)husband reciprocated.

7. We're doing better! Things are still fairly uncomfortable, and I admit that I did not make good choices, but I think we're both going to come out on top of this. Again, I want to thank everyone for giving me such kind advice. Sorry, I didn't follow any of it. 😊