#that's actually from players 1997

[spiderfroggo]

another saw doodle dump!!

[dropthedemiurge]

Let Free The Curse of Taekwondo: Things you didn't notice #1

Isn't this another K-BL where I'm internally squealing because of every single detail? You bet it is. You can read my other meta/cultural detail/Korean language posts for Love for Love's Sake, Time of Fever, Grey Shelter and Boys be Brave on my pinned post or hashtags^^ (I really need to organize it under one singly hashtag tho...)

I already talked about how impressed I am with the fact that this series has done their preparation job well, with props, settings, language, history etc.

It is about a countryside/small town in Southern province of Korea - because a lot of characters use satoori (southern dialect), almost all of them except for the main two guys. There is also a distinct contrast/conflict between 'fancy Seoul rich guys' looking down on 'Southern town'. Juyoung even was surprised Dohoi doesn't use satoori.

To which, he responded with 'You'll be uncomfortable if I use it". And Juyoung said there are plenty other uncomfortable things around here, beside understanding/listening to everyone using other accent xD Confusing Gaga translation errors, we meet again!

Actually, it's interesting because Dohoi's name is written 이도회 in Korean, which typically would be written as 'Dohoi' but pronounced as 'Dohwe' (think of surname Choi that is actually pronounced as Chwe), yet in the first episode I clearly heard them actually say 'Dohoi', letter by letter. Now I wonder if it's also related to satoori... I wish I could speak it, it sounds so cool tbh.

He actually said 'I'm not in a good condition', meaning his physical form. What do you mean, mood, when was that ever an excuse in sports..?xD

By the way, what is it with boys trying to get closer to other boys by buying them unusual ice cream?:') Okay, garlic sounds more weird than red bean one :D

Also, I tried to find the Hasong town they talked about but failed - maybe because of incorrect transcription or maybe they made up this town based on Uiseong - a small town close to Daegu which is famous for being the most famous garlic town, they produce a lot of it and garlic fame would be seen everywhere - so who knows, I bet they allude to this when Juyoung said 'why can't there be a vanilla garlic ice cream? It's like a collaboration!'

Another thing, I thought the time of this series was somewhere around 1990s-2000s (because I watched a movie in similar setting that was called 1997 year but they still used pagers, now that I think about it). It was also still the time where teachers could use physical punishment on their students, it's heavily highlighted but I don't actually know around what time they stopped... Probably in Seoul, they already were getting rid of it but in small towns it was old-school teaching, which is again why Dohoi tried to tell Joyoung out of it.

I'm not familiar when small laptops and phones appeared in Seoul but I think the series is actually somewhere around 2005-2010! Which would make sense, Juyoung got the 'cool' flip-phone and a laptop with Windows XP (released in 2001) but small town is still far from that, as they use landline house phones to make a call.

He also has mp3 player and as other tumblr folks figured out, he was listening and dancing to Jewelry song released in 2005 :)

And another thing that convinced me about the time era... the final scene!

Do you want to know why at the end of Ep 1 Dohoi smiled and laughed and ran to Juyoung even after so many exhausting days and neverending small miseries and a new loud housemate?

Because Juyoung not only came to pick him up with an umbrella in the acid rain, he also reenacted the famous umbrella scene from the classic romantic K-drama called "Temptation of Wolves" (늑대의 유혹) which was released in 2004! To make Dohoi laugh.

(Yes, when Juyoung intentionally put the umbrella down and the camera cut the shot to the framing when the umbrella slowly lifts up, showing smiling Juyoung, I was like 'you did nooooooot' xD)

(last screenshots taken from @heretherebedork post, I'm sorry I am very lazy and cannot take a good screenshot for life :'))

So that was already our very first romantic teasing-implication!

Another cute thing: optimistic Joyoung wrote a diary entry into the fake old Korean "Facebook" (they had Cyworld instead) to share his first selfie with Dohoi:

"[Excited Shin Jjuyoung]" (typing in a popular back then teenage style) "I miss you guys... But here it's nice too hehe ^___^ Come to play with me!! Together with my friend Dohoi too~~!"

Aren't they the cuteestttttt? I mean, this dynamic is not new but I love how unique the setting is. And I can't wait to watch the second episode, I'm waiting and savoring the first one for now but I'm going to make notes about other episodes as well so stay tuned! If you reply/comment in tags, I will put you in my tag list^^

Tag list: @benkaben @pickletrip @troubled-mind

[thestarsarecool]

“I still feel really comfortable playing with Paul, yes. We have all that history and it comes into play when we work together. You can’t just dismiss that. You’re never going to lose the closeness of those eight years we spent together. We played some great music and we were brothers; no matter what goes on up and down, we were very close. I don’t know of any other band who got that close. And we got that close because we loved each other and the pressure that only the Beatles had. No other band has had that much pressure. So all of those factors come into play when we meet each other. We know what went on. Nobody else knows. Everybody thinks they know, and they have ideas, and they write books about it, but actually only the Beatles know how heavy that was.

Paul and I used to work very hard. A lot of it fell into place, but the drummer and the bass player have a foundation to set, for everything else to be able to go on. And as I say, he is the most melodic bass player. He plays melodies within the melodies. He’s like the sea bed, or I’m the sea bed and he’s the bottom water, and everything goes up from there. Like bubbles.”

— Ringo Starr, Club Sandwich, 1997

[stxrr-strxckk]

Shakedown, 1979 1997!

(General South Park Headcannons)

A/N: Just some silly little headcannons of our favorite main 3 boys! These are non romantic but I can make romantic ones too if y'all want! Cartman isn't included in this except for little cameos he makes in the other hcs.

Any warnings?: Cartman being Cartman, a lot of swearing (obviously), Cartman is just really antisemitic.

What's on the record player?: 1979; The Smashing Pumpkins

Stan Marsh...

✭Stan and Kyle are super close in height. Like, down to the millimeter. You know how some people get measured against wood beams and there's little marks for each age? Stan and Kyle have one they share in Stan's house. Blue marks are Stan, Green marks are Kyle. He made Kyle keep his hat on when they measured since his hair gave him extra height.

"See? I'm taller!" Kyle grinned triumphantly.

"No way, dumbass. It's just that stupid fucking hair, right Cartman?" Stan looked over at his friends for approval.

Cartman nodded. "Yeah, it's that jewey ass hair, Kyle. It makes you seem taller and your nose seem smaller." Kenny's muffled snickers could be heard through his jacket.

"That isn't true, fatass!"

"Yeah stop making fun of his big nose Cartman, he can't help the fact he looks like his bitchass mom." Stan laughed, and Kyle shoved him.

"Hey! Not cool dude, that's my mom you're talking about!"

"Okay, okay, just push your hair down so we can prove I'm taller."

"No way man."

✭Once he gets older, Stan grows facial hair crazy fast. He has to shave every 2 days, at least. One time his razor broke and he had to wait until he got paid to get a new one. He grew the ugliest mustache known to man and Cartman started calling him Chewbacca. His mom said he looked just like a younger version of his father, and that's when he knew he had to get rid of it soon as possible. He wound up finding a waxing kit and tried to get rid of it that way. Long story short, he wound up with half a mustache and burns all over his upper lip. His mom had to let him use her razor to get rid of the rest of the hair. He refuses to touch any kind of wax now.

✭Listens to bands like Weezer and Blink 182, convinced their songs are made for him. "It's just like my life-" no it isn't. You're just a loser.

✭Not a very athletic guy. He's tried every sport under the sun(his parents made him), they're just not for him. He tried drama club too; hated the acting but liked the tech aspect. He ran spotlight for a few productions but ended up quitting because of how much the other guys made fun of him.

✭He had to play cello when he was younger, and quit the moment he started high school. He still knows a few songs and was pretty good.

✭He's insecure about his thick eyebrows and nose. He has a greek nose and thinks it's a lot larger than it is. Kyle judges him every time he starts talking about it.

"No, it sticks out so much! See?"

"You're joking, right?"

"No, it's so noticeable!"

"Dude. At least yours is straight. Mine is hooked. Hooked. You think I like this fuckin' thing in the middle of my face? Hell no!"

✭Whenever he's pissed at Kyle he ends up complaining to Kenny since he can keep secrets better than Cartman (and because people can never tell what Kenny's saying)

"And then he said 'grow up Stan, it's not too big a deal!' Like he wasn't just hung up about some girl rejecting him- At least me and Wendy actually dated! You know who wants to date him? No one! He's never even had a girlfriend. Yeah, you know that girl from Canada who he talked to online for a whole year before she ghosted him? That was a fake account me and the guys made to troll him. He never realized. And what's funnier is that-"

"Dude, you've been talking for like, ten hours. I need to get to sleep, it's a school night.

"Right. Sorry. But can I just say-"

"Out."

"Alright, I'm leaving. But Kyle's such a dick, he won't even stand up to his mom for me-."

Kenny has to push him out the door and lock it so he can't get back in. Then Stan and Kyle make up a week later and everything goes back to normal.

✭Was actually convinced he had superpowers when he was younger, around 5 or 6. He predicted it would rain once and all of a sudden he thinks he controls the weather. He told the guys and when they called his bluff he got super pissed and made everyone on the playground watch as he used his weather powers to try and make lightning strike. He ended up falling off the monkey bars and he now refuses to go anywhere near them.

Kyle Broflovski...

✭Puberty hit him like a truck. And not in a good way. All of a sudden he's 8 inches taller, growing a ratty mustache, with some of the worst acne and and a voice that cracks like no other. (Cartman makes fun of his voice until his starts cracking too. The hypocrisy is wild.) He was also the first in the group to start puberty. He thought he'd feel so mature and cool but ended up hating it.

✭Thankfully, now that he's taller he can actually play basketball without getting blocked by everyone. He's the tallest in the group, around 6'2 or so.

✭He has prescription glasses but never wears them because he thinks they make him look dorky. They do, but that's only because his mom picked out the thickest frames so they wouldn't break easily. When he's wearing glasses, he looks like Bart Simpson in the episode The Last Temptation of Homer, when he gets all nerdy and shit. Kyle even has the orthopedic shoes to boot.

✭He runs a dnd campaign for him, Stan, Kenny, Tweek, Craig, and Token. He used to invite Cartman but after his millionth tantrum they decided it was better without him. Kyle usually dms and sometimes writes a few of his own oneshots for the gang to do.

"Okay, as you trudge through the jungles of Chult, an animalistic cry pierces the air. Everyone roll an intelligence check!"

"This better not be another one of those dinosaurs," Stan groaned. "I just got mauled by one back there."

"Roll perception and you'll find out!" Kyle replied with a grin. "The tomb isn't far, guys. This should be one of your last encounters."

"Wait, we're not even at the tomb yet?!" Tweek's eyes widened. "We've been in this jungle for days!"

"I told you guys Tomb of Annihilation wasn't going to be an easy adventure." Kyle shrugged, before going back to business. "Okay; Craig and Token: while the rest of your party shrugs it off as just another monster you'd rather not deal with right now, you two recognize the call as a Hydra's- and it sounds hungry."

"A hydra? Dude, we are so fucked!" Stan yelled.

"Those things have like, 20 heads! Oh fuck!" Tweek added. A residual groan was heard around the table as the boys realized the danger they were in.

"This sucks ass, Kyle. How'd you talk us into this adventure? We shoulda done Curse of Strahd..." Token complained.

"Mm hmm!" Kenny agreed, crossing his arms.

"Come on guys, I believe in you! It doesn't even have that many hit points!"

"I hate to admit it, but we could really use Cartman's fireball right now." Craig sighed.

"Hey, we all agreed. He's never invited back. Not after the massacre..." Kyle shuddered.

"You're right. We'll just have to hope Princess Kenny can charm this thing." Stan nodded.

(Little bonus: Stan is a fighter, Token is a warlock, Craig is a ranger, Tweek is a paladin, Kenny doesn't have a main class he likes but mostly plays rogues or bards. Kyle usually plays as a sorcerer when he's not dming and when he's invited Cartman plays a wizard.)

✭Kyle doesn't seem like it but he actually is kind of strong. Yeah he's lanky and uncoordinated, but he can throw a pretty good right hook. He's done boxing for years. Started because he wanted to get Cartman to quit making fun of him. He's pretty fast too- he tried track out in middle and high school. He's good at jumping hurdles because of his long legs.

✭He has braces and the amount of food that gets stuck in them is criminal. He starts carrying around a little compact (the ones with two mirrors) just to make sure his teeth are clean after lunch and Cartman calls him gay for it.

"Wow Kyle, I didn't think you could get any gayer but here we are." Cartman said at lunch as Kyle whipped out a little compact.

"Shut up fatass, I'm just making sure I don't have food in my teeth like you always do."

"Ey! I do NOT have food in my teeth, thankyouverymuch." Cartman crossed his arms in a huff.

"Yeah, cus you're too busy eating everything that gets stuck in your mouth, fatboy." Stan said, Kenny laughing in agreement.

"I already told you, I'm just big boned! You're just jealous that my mom cooks me good food, not that jewey stuff Kyle always has."

"Fuck off Cartman, you'd probably eat that too."

"Yeah, no way dude. I like my food American, thank you very much."

"Dude. That's so racist."

"Oh, I'm sorry, is it racist to want to eat normal, all-American food?

✭Hear me out on this one: He's fluent in brainrot. Says skibidi on the regular, refers to himself as a sigma rizzler, all that shit. Since he has to babysit Ike all the time he's pretty caught up on gen alpha slang (Ike watches skibidi toilet unironically. He makes Kyle watch it with him). He started using it around Cartman who was convinced he made it all up. Him, Stan, and Kenny had a field day with it.

"Dude, that's so skibidi!"

"Kyle. What the fuck are you saying."

"You know, skibdi. Like, the thing on tiktok?"

"Don't tell me you don't speak brainrot, Cartman."

"I- I do too! I just... Didn't understand Kyle with his gay ass voice.

"My voice isn't gay, you gooner!"

"Hey! I'm not the gooner, you are, you... gooner!"

✭He barely ever gets haircuts. When he does, his mom just puts a bowl on his head and cuts it herself. It's part of the reason he started constantly wearing his hat. If you've seen that scene from pen15 where Maya gets her hair cut, it's just like that.

"Mom, you promise you won't go too short this time?"

"Of course bubby! It'll look the same as always, I promise."

"Mom- the clippers-"

"Shh, I know Kyle, just trust mommy."

"But the guard-"

"Trust mommy, Kyle."

"It's not the right one- it's too short-"

"No, it's okay! Trust me, I've done this more times than I can- oh."

"What? Is it bad?"

"Uh- bubby, just remember, you have a very handsome face, and if any of the boys say anything about your hair-"

"Oh, no. It's bad."

"No! No, it's just- it'll take some getting used to."

"Let me see. Where's the mirror?"

"Uh- maybe it's best if you just... Put your hat back on..."

✭He can't talk to girls for shit. Resorts to online chatrooms to try and flirt. Has gotten catfished 13 times. At least 3 of them were Cartman.

"No, Stan, I swear! She's real! Her name's Daisy, and she lives in Florida. She says she really wants to meet me, too! So I saved up for months and sent her 1500 for a first class plane ticket here. Check it out, she's pretty cute, right?"

"...Dude. That's Taylor Swift."

"Again?!"

Kenny McCormick...

✭He's a biter. And I don't even mean in a "ooh so freaky and kinky" way, I mean in a "he once bit Cartman so hard he peed his pants and refused to be within 5 feet of Kenny for a week."

✭When he gets older he ends up growing his hair out into a kind of mullet-wolf cut thing, he looks like Kurt Cobain.

✭He's actually pretty smart. He just doesn't think school is that important for him and doesn't wanna try too hard and get unwanted attention for being smart. Purposely gets Bs and Cs so his friends won't beg him for answers.

✭starts giving himself piercings once he's older. He's too poor to get them from a professional so he just uses old needles and snow to numb the pain. They almost always get infected.

✭Draws penises on his friends homework so they get in trouble when they turn it in.

"Yeah, and then she was all like- Dude!"

"What?"

"Again? Mr. Garrison is gonna collect this any second! You really had to draw a dick on it?"

"Heh, you gotta admit stan, it's pretty funny."

"Shut up fatboy, he drew it on your paper too."

"Wha- hey!"

✭He's a scrappy fighter. If a kid tries to fight him, he's biting, scratching, hair pulling, everything. 9 times out of 10 he wins and the other kid winds up absolutely wrecked. Once head-butted someone so hard he knocked out the kid's teeth. Now nobody fucks with him.

✭He was the only member of Moop who actually stuck with making music after the whole strike. He's the most musically inclined of the main 4. Wrote a few of his own songs but most of the lyrics were about loving boobs and pussy so record companies didn't end up signing him.

✭We all know he plays drums, but he also started learning electric guitar when he started his solo career. Can't sing for shit though (unless it's opera), so he tries using autotune. It just makes him sound worse.

✭He's the only member of the main 4 who's nice to Butters. Not just because he feels guilty he's a loser, but because he actually enjoys hanging out with him and how genuinely nice Butters is. The two are actually pretty good friends, Butters gets his mom to pack him extra food he gives to Kenny so he and Karen don't end up going hungry.

✭Was 100% the kid who taught everyone what sex was. Also brought his dad's nudie mags to school and showed all the guys.

"Gross, dude! What is that?"

"I dunno, I found it in my dad's room. All the girls inside are showing their boobs! Check it out!"

"Eww, why are they so pointy?"

"Because, Kyle, girls boobs start out pointy and then, once they turn 30, they get all saggy, like your mom's."

"Gross, dude! Don't talk about my mom's boobs."

"Yeah, don't talk about Kyle's mom's saggy boobs Cartman."

"Stan!"

"What? I'm defending you!"

"Hey guys, you wanna know how babies are made?"

✭As he gets older he starts to see through all of Eric's bullshit like the other guys, but still supports his ideas more than Stan and Kyle. He doesn't wanna just abandon him.

✭Amazing with kids. Shockingly so. He basically raises Karen on his own, so he knows how how to deal with kids better than the other guys. He tried to start a babysitting business after he realized how much money he could make, but if fell apart after Cartman joined and started to get the kids he babysitted involved in a ponzi scheme.

"Cartman, you did WHAT?"

"Nothing! I just had an idea..."

"Oh god, we're screwed."

"Cartman, WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

"I just thought, if people invested in our business we could get them to keep hiring us, and we can get them to invest by making them give us money in exchange for more money back, and instead of actually giving them our money, we'd just give them other people's money who also invested, and then we'd have infinite money!"

"Cartman you dumbass! You ruined my business! We're bankrupt now!"

"Ohhh, I'm sorry Kenny! I just wanted to get us infinite money! But I guess if you don't need my genius ideas, I'll just start my own babysitting business and steal all your clients. Is that what you want?"

"If it means you'll leave us the fuck alone, then yeah."

A/N: Hope y'all like these hcs! I'll probably make romantic ones soon. I'm already working on some more South Park stuff, I got a few requests I'm really excited to write! Please like, follow, and repost! XX, Starr!

Wordcount:2747

[anim-ttrpgs]

I was looking over the itch.io page for Eureka, and surprised that Blood (1997) was listed as an inspiration. That’s the build era shooter right? If so, I’m curious how the Blood inspiration shows up in Eureka (either mechanics or lore). I’m a huge fan of that game!

Oh yes, that Blood, the best build engine game.

We put Blood on the list of inspirations both because the unpublished novel that Eureka gets a lot of its world building from takes a lot of inspiration from Blood, and also because we want Eureka combat to feel a bit like Blood when the heavy-hitter monsters like vampires get involved.

The unpublished novel gets a lot from the ludonarrative of Blood in its first part. In Blood, a powerful cultist guy, Caleb, is betrayed and killed by the demon he worships, but rises from the grave and fights his way through the whole rest of the cult on a quest for vengeance. Though he isn’t exactly a vampire, he is undead, and can take a few more bullets than your average guy, but he isn’t invincible. A hail of gunfire can drop his HP to zero real fast.

The unpublished novel bears some similarity to this in that it is about a vampire that goes on a gun-slinging rampage in revenge against a powerful cult, though this ends up focusing a lot more on her own self-acceptance and learning to embrace being a vampire and the selfishness that necessarily comes with that rather than making herself as unintrusive to the lives of others as possible to the point of starvation. The antagonists, a sort of gnostic-inspired sect that consider the world a prison designed to inflict maximal suffering, and humanity to be both the wardens and the prisoners of it, purport that the death of all humanity is the only moral course of action. This mirrors the vampire’s own struggle with and eventual rejection of the idea that, as a vampire that can only exist by draining others of life, suicide is the only moral course of action.

And also, like Caleb, she’s undead but she’s not invincible. Normal bullets can put her down for a while in a high enough volume, so success in these shootouts becomes about making the most clever use of vampiric powers that she has thus far in her unlife felt too ashamed to utilize under any circumstances.

As for Eureka, we also just kinda want Eureka gunfighting combat to feel like Blood combat. Bullets can put Caleb or a Eureka investigator down quick, even if they’re a vampire. The guns in Blood are “hitscan”, so instead of there being a physical projectile represented in the game engine, when it is pointed at Caleb there is basically a dice roll as to whether he gets hit or not representing the aim of the enemies. In most games of that era that had “hitscan” enemies, there was nothing the player could do to avoid it or reduce the chance of being hit short of breaking line-of-sight completely. However, in Blood, moving fast, jumping, diving, crouching, etc. actually *do* reduce the enemy’s accuracy. This encourages a fast, high-energy style of combat. So surviving a gunfight in both games is about doing everything one can, from cover, ducking, running, etc. to reduce the chances of dying from a hail of bullets - or just throwing a stick of dynamite into the room.

Eureka is a very intentionally realistic game, but it works a lot with ‘heightened reality,’ meaning, like, the most interesting things that still fall within the realm of possibility. Normal mortal characters are still usually best served by keeping their heads down, but characters like vampires who can take a few extra bullets, and don’t die permanently when they go down, can really push their luck with bold, aggressive maneuvers more reminiscent of John Woo films like Hard Boiled, or the gameplay of Blood.

[oldguardleatherdog]

I would like to know more about pup history!

Well, hello, and thanks for asking! Sorry it took a while to respond.

Pup Play as we know it today got its start in 1986 at the International Mr. Leather gathering in Chicago when the partner of a leather artist at the Vendor Market, who showed up in a full-body leather pup suit and a mask crafted by a saddlemaker, started bouncing around the place barking and howling and humping the leather guys as they browsed the whips and chains on display-

-as a protest against the hardcore stoic impenetrable macho attitude that was prevalent among leathermen in those days - the standing joke was that "S&M" stood for "Stand & Model" - breaking through their poser facade, forcing them to interact and engage in a way that was just too cute and endearing to ignore or resist.

Pup Play began as an act of protest at the biggest leather gathering of the year against a cultural and institutional barrier to communication and connection. One guy - one dog - broke through that barrier, and nearly four decades later there are thousands of people around the world who pull on a pup hood and hit the ground or the mats or the dance floor barking up a storm, expressing ourselves in ways that are free and full, in a spirit of joy that at its best can transcend roleplay and allow us to experience, however briefly, "the time when the divorce between human and animal was not yet complete." (Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, 1972)

That guy, "Ranger", who's a good friend and a real sweetheart, is still active in the scene here in San Francisco and is our "First Pup", the original (and best!). A year later, almost to the day, I came out as a gay man - and when I came out, I came out barking. The man who put me on all fours for the first time was the man who brought me out, my first and only Leather Daddy who set me on this wild path that became a life's work.

I'm Pup Number Two, 37 years on all fours. I taught the first Pup Play workshop on record (San Francisco, August 1997), where I presented the first Trainer/Handler curriculum to a leather audience for use and adaptation, conducted numerous clinics, demos, and performances for groups and clubs across the United States, and showed hundreds of kinksters of all ages and genders how they could find, embrace, and express their "inner canine." Over the past year, I've been giving my presentation/lecture on Pup History online and IRL for pup-and-handler groups; it's been well received and is being expanded with new research from the field for 2025.

For several years Ranger and I were the only ones doing this radical fringe weird thing that was viewed as disgusting and sick and immoral by the leather and kink community, vilified so strongly that for the first decade those of us who practiced this kink did so mostly underground, communicating through word-of-mouth and personal ads in magazines, because if it got around that we liked to bark in the sack we'd have been thrown out of the community as sickos who were barely a step above actual bestialists (a slur that has never been true of our practice or those who practice it).

In the US and Canada from 1986 to 1997, there were only about a dozen known pup players - researchers including myself are actively searching for others from that long-ago time if they even existed - and we had to fight like hell for years to be open about the kink that we loved and to be able to express ourselves openly in this way. That's surprising to many given the popularity of Pup Play today, but it took a lot of hardcore commitment in the face of opposition to get us out from the shadows and into the light of day.

I hope this is a good introduction to our history and that I've expressed it well enough to satisfy your initial curiosity! There's much more, of course, so if there are any particular areas you're curious about, let me know, awoo!

Thank you for asking. "Beast wishes" to you for a happy and humpy New Year!

Woofs + wags, Alpha Pup Bruzr

[middlingmay]

Coach Bucky and Gale, alone in the locker room... (3.5K)

Shoutout to @johncleven who sent me a fic request for something set in a locker room and let me run wild with it. I know this isn't what you originally had in mind, but I hope you like it all the same!

A fun romp of a fic set in my Footballer!John AU. This comes after the last installment at Christmas, after John takes up his position as head coach of a veteran's charity football team.

Summary: Football coach John Egan and his report boyfriend, Gale Cleven have some fun roleplaying in the locker room after hours.

Enjoy! Wordcount is over 3.5K so I've put most of it under the cut. Get's a li'l filthy, just to warn you.

.

It was a quirk of John's, collecting vintage football strips. But unlike most collectors, he favoured the shorts over the shirts. People hired experts in hunting down shirts all over the world with this misprint, or that stitching from this year, and that particular game. But not John.

"It's too much pressure, Buck." He'd told Gale once when he questioned his oddity. "You have to keep them pristine and perfect, and God forbid you touch 'em without gloves. And do you have any idea the kind of pretentious assholes who collect football shirts? You think I want to be part of their circle jerks? No thank you."

So he collected the shorts instead. The earlier the better. The black 1997-'99 home shorts of FC Bayern Munich with the red splash and white stripes. The high cut of the white Aberdeen away summer shorts with the Umbro diamonds and geometric detailing of 1990-1992. The 1980s Manchester City burgundy set with white and blue stripes, and the classic bold red block shorts with the yellow liver bird of Liverpool, used from the 1970s well into the '80s.

Which sat very high on the thigh. They were several sizes too small for John to ever wear, but on Gale they sat perfectly. Just below his belly button, pressed tight against the toned muscle and trim fat of his middle. Snug around the groin, and they left most of his long, muscular legs on display.

It meant that he felt every bit of John's size eleven sneaker covered in an expensive, sturdy, matte black leather where it sat perched on the bench between Gale's spread legs, brushing against the skin and hairs of his thighs and the soft clutch of the underside of the silk-soft shorts.

"What the hell do you call that today?"

Gale curled his toes in his boots and clamped down on his muscles to stop himself from wriggling close to the pressure of John's foot. With one foot on the floor and one foot on the bench between Gale's legs, John loomed over Gale. His elbow rested on his knee and he looked down at him, almost fatherly.

Dressed in those vintage shorts, true to the shamelessness and carefree fashion of the '80s with how short they fell below the crease of his thigh, and a skintight compression shirt that protected players against chafing and perspiration, Gale felt simultaneously starkly aware of his body, and much smaller than John than he actually was.

He normally resented any implication towards delicacy and softness, but sometimes, just sometimes, he didn't mind when it was with John. Gale had to fight and claw and scrap for everything he got in life, even his relationship. John's steady determination to take care of him with every inch Gale allowed was a relief sometimes, an opportunity to let go and hand off the reins to someone else, and trust they weren't going to derail his hard fought and hard-won life.

John shifted his foot until Gale felt the pinch. His eyes fluttered shut and his teeth left purpling dents in his lip.

"I said, what was that today, Cleven? Because it sure as shit wasn't anything I told you to do."

"I'm…I'm sorry." Gale wasn't sorry at all. How could he bring himself to regret a single thing that had led to him here under the mercy of John's heel and his gaze.

"Coach."

"John."

"You say, I'm sorry coach."

He shifted his foot away from the crook of Gale's groin, and not even Gale's desperate clutch on the back lip of the bench kept him from lurching forward for the hem of his pants in a desperate grab to bring him back.

But the foot hit the ground in a disappointing clack.

"You let me down today, Cleven."

Gale's stomach lurched. Thick, calloused fingers skirted along his jaw, and anchoring balm in the face of John's disappointment. They settled under Gale's chin and forced his head up at such an angle, it stretched the front of his throat and made it difficult to swallow back the build-up in his mouth.

You, Gale wanted to swear through a mouthful of John's leather belt. And maybe John read it in his wide, wet eyes and parted lips. Because he tssked anyway and put a whole two feet between them.

"I think you need a lesson in focus." John crooked two fingers, his other hand propped on his hip. "On the floor."

Gale looked down. The floor was shiny and smelled of lemony chemicals. Freshly cleaned.

"Gale. Get on the floor."

Gale slid off the bench onto his knees and sat back on his haunches.

But John still wore that sad frown and twisted purse of his lips. It made Gale want to collapse into those thighs which no amount of fine tailoring could slim down, and beg John what he wanted to stop looking at him like that, so he could just give it to him.

"Down further." John stepped back and Gale slapped clumsy hands against the rubberised flooring as he swallowed up John's retreat until his was pressed stomach down, leaning up on his forearms. His legs kicked up, entirely without his asking. Like a school girl prostrate before her crush.

John took two careful steps closer. One heavy sneaker slipped into the space between his forearms, where his chin might be if he laid face down on the floor.

"Further."

Gale almost wished he hadn't foregone the boots and knee-high socks as he lowered his legs back to the floor and the chill of the floor seeped in and cooled the tense muscles. Only John's sneaker protected Gale's face from the same fate. Gale swept his palms to press under his shoulder and leaned down and down until his mouth and his nose hovered above the leather.

John would be cross if he drooled all over it. He swallowed back a mouthful.

John didn't say anything, but Gale felt the weighted burn of his stare on his nape, the flex and shift of his shoulders and hips as he settled into position, the curve of his ass that felt like it was only just hidden under the shorts, despite the tiny, entrapping pair of briefs he'd been made to wear under them.

Goosepimples erupted up his arms and down his legs, all the little hairs standing on end.

"How about we start with twenty?"

Gale slipped for a moment and grinned into the floor. John did love an excuse to see Gale get physical. He adjusted his form, set his wrists under his elbows, rolled his shoulders back and pressed up. He held it for a sec, letting John admire the line of him. He always waxed lyrical about the lines and angles and juts and refined strength in Gale's body, so he flexed his heels up and down under the guise of perfection his push-up position. He made a show of making sure his ass wasn't sticking out and held himself high up on his arms to show of the strength up his forearms, biceps, triceps.

He heard the tiniest thump of John's toes tapping inside his sneakers. And just as Gale started to lower himself down to complete his first push-up, John lifted the tip of his foot and stuck it under Gale's jaw tilting his head up.

It was a long stretch, and an uncomfortable distance for his eyes to look up. But it was worth it when he saw John gazing down at him, square jaw tight and eyes burnin'.

"Count 'em."

"One." Gale followed John's foot back down.

For the first ten, John simply watched him, sharp and critical like he did his players when they'd performed less than their best and John knew it. It powered Gale's body and his ego like little else and sent him tearing through the next ten with ease.

At fifteen, John started to loop his body, and Gale's rhythm slowed and fell in time with his steps, burning his muscles up a little more than the quicker pace he had before.

"Eighteen. Nineteen." At the top of number twenty, John lifted his foot and pressed it against the thin, barely-there material of Gale's shirt. It was a light touch at first, the simple weight of John's foot. Then he pressed harder. And harder. Until Gale could feel the skin of his back pinch and his muscles had to push against the downward force of John's sneaker.

"You said twenty," he gasped as he tried to hold against the unspoken order to lower himself back down. "John—"

"Coach."

"Coach! You said twenty. You said twenty."

"But look at you," John crooned and Gale didn't have to look at him to know exactly which of his smiles he wore right now. "Not even out of breath. Not a lick of sweat on you. Do it. Again."

With a final push John brought Gale down onto the floor with a grunt. He kept his foot on his back, making Gale press on through the weight. As he rose and fell, rose and fell, his skin rubbed against the hard sole of his sneakers, interspersed with slivers of metal, specially designed for walking around football pitches as he coached. he felt the skin ruddy and redden, fancied he could start to make out the pattern of the treat by the time he got to twenty again, and was so distracted when John's heel slipped into the curve of the small of his back, Gale didn't get chance to muster a single shred of resistance when John pushed him down to the floor again.

"Ah, God." His erection twitched and pulsed against the floor. He couldn't stop the helpless, tiniest thrusts against it searching for the barest modicum of relief. John was so gentle and good to him all of the time, but when he got like this, focused and a little mean, a little physical? Gale never stood much of a chance at any kind of stamina.

"Hmm." John toed a rough line down the small of his back and over the crease of his ass. He sunk his heel into the meat of it, and Gale nearly bit through his lip. The copper was bittery sweet. "We're not doing this right if you're enjoying it so much."

He shifted his foot and it rucked up the short hem of the shorts and Gale felt John's sneaker against the bare curve of skin that peeked out of the briefs.

"M'not. I'm not, coach. I promise."

"It's no good?" That fucker. That smug-faced tricky little bastard. It was heavenly. Hurt in all the right ways and had the back of Gale's eyes burning just as much as his muscles and the heat in his belly. But he couldn't let on or it would ruin the game, and John would stop.

So he clamped his mouth shut, and locked his muscles until the shook from the effort of not rolling between the twin resistance of the floor and John's foot pressing on him.

"Again."

After the first two push-ups, Gale doubted he was going to survive this. The push against John's foot had it massaging his ass and slipping over the seam of him; whilst the press down against the floor jolted against his cock begging for any kind of touch. Twin agonies derived to drive him out of his mind.

His arms were shaking by the time he got to five.

John tutted in false sympathy. "You don't look too good, Cleven. You need to stop? Learned your lesson?"

Like hell.

He pushed down and up, down and up. Then he heard John sit on the bench behind him. And he slipped his foot down further, trailed the hard curve of the toe of his sneaker down Gale's ass, round over his thigh, and all the slow slide under until it pressed against the crowded pouch of his briefs and where he strained under the shorts.

He pushed in hard.

"Oh, God. John. John."

"If I have to tell you one more time…"

"Coach! Fuck, I…"

"You're not done." John's voice was rough and Gale shivered at the only evidence he had that John was just as affected by this as he was, lounging on that bench, watching Gale from behind as he made him rut against his foot like an animal. In his mind he pictured the wide sprawl of his thighs, the strained fabric of his beautifully tailored, navy blue dress pants. The shine of his lips where he licked at them as he tried to catch his breath.

"Keep going, or you can pack your shit up and get the hell out of my locker room."

Gale barely swallowed a whine and pushed down, his arms shaking with the effort not to collapse. John made him push his foot down as he went, and kept the pressure on as Gale pushed himself back up. No relief. No reprieve. Just a constant, blinding pressure as he shook and forced his way through push up after push up. His cock was no longer dripping so much as it was leaking. John's foot rubbed and pressed and wiggled against him. Started dragging back and forth in little pulses and Gale couldn't hold back the moans and whimpers that fell from him with every exertion. His pace picked up, even through the sweat that curled around his forehead, off his hair and splattered on the floor.

The simmering heat in his belly started to bubble and forth. His moans were getting louder, his form sloppy, and behind him John rumbled straight from his chest,

"Fuck that's it, baby. Almost there."

Gale choked on his own spit and a little felt out in a sliver of drool as John pressed against him and stimulated him in earnest now.

"Coach. Coach. I—Jesus. Fuck, I…" Gale was babbling. Nonsensical and desperate pleas to the man above and behind him. For it to keep going, For it to end. For anything he deemed fit to give him.

He gave him it all. Whether from Gale's pleading or his own painful impatience, but John pressed his foot against Gale so hard, that he felt the sensitive skin of his sack pinch like the knife needed to cut through the knot it pierced through Gale's pitiful last defences. He collapsed onto one elbow as his other hand plunged down to clutch John's ankle and keep it there as he rode and rode out his pleasure. The minimal space left inside his tight briefs flooded with sticky heat, and kept flooding. Gale wasn't in a locker room, but somewhere above and outside time and space as he chased the trembling heat and frothy exaltation of his orgasm as far as it would go.

By the time he came back to, his mouth was blabbering against the floor, and he shook from head to toe.

A noise came from John, a little wounded, but like the good boy he was he stayed still. They weren't done.

"You—" his voice shook and John cleared his throat. Shifted it lower and calmer and more in character. But even then he couldn't quite shake the tremor. The softness. "You've got something of mine. Give it back."

The shorts. He meant the shorts. Gale gazed stupidly, on his belly, down the line of his body, realising he'd have to move to get them off.

"One minute, coach, please. Just one. I can't," he gasped through sharp breaths and spittle, "I can't."

"You can. And you will. Give."

Gale cursed and let out helpless little noises as he worked the shorts over his hips, his sensitive cock brushing against the unforgiving floor. Once under the curve of his ass, gale managed to flop over, and wiggled and kicked his legs, but the shorts were too tight, and wouldn't budge. One look at Gale sent his head thumping back against the ground. His eyes blazed with heat and he looked like a starving man staring at his favourite meal.

"I will leave you here, if you don't give me those now, Cleven."

Gale heaved himself up, the idea of being out of John's sphere right now too much to risk. Shaking hands shoved the shorts down his legs and over his feet, and he threw them in John's direction, before leaning back on the palms of his hands, panting.

John felt all over the slippy fabric, inspecting for any signs of wetness or sticky texture, but there were none. Gale's brief had seen to that.

"Good," he murmured, surprised and pleased and Gale flooded with a different kind of warmth when he added, "You did good, Cleven. You did exactly what I wanted."

He let a tentative, exhausted smile twitch across his face.

"But now I want those, too."

John nodded at Gale's crotch, nostril's flaring. His briefs. Wet and damp and squidgy with his release. They were uncomfortable and messy, and—

"I want them. Give them here."

Gale couldn't look away as he sat up straight, slipped one thumb and then another under the waistband and slowly peeled the ruined briefs off himself. Gale looked at John and John's looked at his prize, as Gale peeled them down one leg then another, trying not to get himself any messier than he already was.

Gale held the briefs in his hand, pinching the dry fabric of the waistband between two fingers. He looked between then and John.

"This what you want? Coach?"

Before Gale could tease him, John's hand snapped out and clamped over his wrist, and hauled Gale's whole body into the space between his legs. From the floor, Gale's head fit perfectly in the crook of John's thighs, and he let his head fall there against the ample padding of one of them, and stared unblinking as John yanked the briefs out of his grip, and unfastened belt, buckle, button and zip with one hand. He drew himself out, and thank God Gale was already on the floor, because the sight of John drawing himself out of his pants and wrapping Gale's briefs full of his some around his cock and using them to jerk off would have brought him to his knees.

It looked painful. Hard and swollen and red and straining. Gone too long without attention, love, worship. Gale licked his lips. His hands twitched to touch, and John noticed.

He smirked down at Gale as he denied him. "No. You just sit there and watch." He groaned through a twist of his own wrist. "Maybe—maybe next time you'll— l-listen. Fuck. Then I might let you touch."

Gale's head felt heavy against John's thigh, and his long fingers white-knuckled their grip on the fabric on John's pants. John worked himself at speed, the tenons in his neck straining, his chest heaving.

"Fuck, your panties are so wet."

Oh my god.

"And all for me?"

Gale nodded weakly. His trembling hadn't subsided. Even when he wasn't touching him, John had him riding that edge of overstimulation.

John was almost there. The muscle in his thigh was twitching and his stomach clenched under the crisp white shirt he wore. His grip on himself tightened and a well of absolute filth fell from his lips the way it always did when Gale edged him and he finally got close enough to the edge to feel it.

"Look so fucking good on that floor, Gale. Under my foot and doing what you're told? Shit. Shit. What else would you do for me? Huh? Fuck. What else would you do?"

Gale took a risk and pressed a line of kisses down John's inseam. Just as he reached the apex of his thigh he looked up at John through his lashes and said, "Use you. To get what I want."

John's free hand snapped to Gale's hair and yanked. Gale gasped as his throat was exposed and he heard John curse and moan and felt him thrash through the throes of his orgasm. "Fuck. Fuck. Buck!"

It took minutes before John's hand turned to petting him instead. Gale looked up to see John weakly removing the now sodden briefs and gingerly setting them on the bench next to him.

He made grabby hands down to Gale. "Get up here."

Gone was the clip of Coach Egan. In his place, the attention-greedy and devoted Bucky.

Gale let himself be pulled up and gathered onto John's lap. His curly head dropped to Gale's chest and his arms wrapped all the way around Gale's waist. Anchoring and soothing both, and Gale scraped his fingers through John's curls and smelled the sweet scent of his hair.

Eventually John pecked sweet kissed against his cloth-covered chest and rested his chin in the valley between his pectorals. His eyes were bright with contentment whilst Gale's were heavy and sleepy and sated.

"Was that what you had in mind?" He asked, almost shy. John and Gale were adventurous in bed before they got together. They'd never been shy about exploring new things in their relationship. But those occasions when Gale wanted John to take the reins, Gale knew he worried about pushing too hard or swinging too far out of their dynamic for Gale's comfort.

"Mhm," Gale murmured against his forehead. "Though buy bigger briefs next time, Jesus. Damn things nearly cut off the circulation."

John rubbed a soothing hand over his flank. "I couldn't risk it, Buck. They had to keep everything…contained."

"Oh, so you can risk my cock but not your vintage 1980s Liverpool shorts?"

John's silence was far more indecisive than Gale would have liked.

"Boy—" Gale moved to get off, but John clamped down and pinned him there.

"I'll buy bigger next time; I'll buy bigger next time," he giggled into Gale's neck. "You bring a chance of clothes?"

Gale nodded to his backpack in the corner.

"Get dressed, and we can go home."

But Gale didn't budge. "We can't leave the place like this, John." Drips of both of their slick had escaped the confines of the briefs and were dotted across the floor and the bench. A sizeable puddle of Gale's drool also lay there where his mouth had panted and watered as John put him through his push-ups.

"Buuuck." John whined like a child.

"You remember what the cleaners said?"

"Come on!"

"If they find one more unexplained bodily fluid in here, you're goin' to have a strike on your hands. You want that? You want to be the one to clean up after Crosby? Or explain to Brady why he can still smell Bubbles' socks the next day?"

John flinched at the thought of an irate, upset Brady.

"You get dressed, I'll get the mop."

[pokedash55]

Turbo, Internalized Glitchphobia, and how King Candy is a clever Parallel to Vanellope's arc

So KC is so hateful and derogatory of Vanellope's Glitch in a way that feels beyond simply keeping power and control of the kingdom. There is so much distain in his voice for Vanellope both in public and private. He is obviously paranoid of returning to a life without his rule, but I think it goes deeper. He's also terrified of returning to a life without a game. Returning to a life as a glitched homeless outcast. Remember Turbo was to some degree homeless before 1997, almost 10 years of hiding and game hopping. He's still a power hungry asshole (and I love him for that) so this isn't justification but hear me out (cause angst for angsts sake is my jam)

I love giving him this internalized hatred of glitches because he was one before Sugar Rush. After the crash in Roadblasters, the console crashed and his code was probably damaged. Without his game nothing could repair the code. He was stuck as a glitch and he attacks Vanellope ruthlessly for it as an ego defense. It's almost a subconscious response to her and a reassurance that he's in control and isn't like that anymore. It was possible at one point he was in the same position as her: Alone and worthless, long ago he too had nowhere to go and was a glitch hated and scorned by those around him, becoming nothing but a fear mongering story and a freak to those who should respect him (So the obvious way to heal from this is to make another person suffer the same fate in order to feel the satisfaction of being in control)

Attacking her and labeling her Glitch is his internalized hatred of the weakness that he is running from every day he masks as KC, gaining more and more gratification and ownership of a game he is not apart of. He made his move to usurp the throne on day one and is so psychotic and proud that he has fallen for his own ruse. The King Candy character exists and is just as real as the "Turbo' character. Turbo ended up entranced by his perfect little sandbox world. He had a home and a life again. He had access to whatever he wanted and players who would love him. His subjects loved him and he was free to bask in that attention. It was an echo chamber of comfort and instant appreciation. He could fully accept the narrative he constructed if only SHE didn't exist. But her presence is forever a stain to his new home and a threat to his ego. She will always be there to remind him that he stole this game and without it he has nothing. That the life he has, although still entitled to it, is fake. Her glitching was always a reminder of the decade he spent just like her.

People love to connect Turbo and Ralph, talking about what happens if you grow too selfish in your desires for self respect and how rejecting your role in the world can be disastrous for everyone. I love the parallels with Turbo as the ultimate extension of Ralph's negative qualities. In the movie it also directly connects Ralph and Vanellope with themes of belonging and rejection from society. But what if these thematic Parallels became a triangle?? King Candy is living a lie and claiming an identity that is not his own and doing it with glee. He relishes in the escapism of being the King. He is technically doing the opposite of Vanellope, fully denouncing his actual self and embracing a self created fake persona in a ploy for power instead of accepting his place and being content as Turbo. But once "Turbo" became an outcasted glitch (totally from his own actions but still) from the crash, that "character" wasn't popular anymore he needed to become something else. With all that access to the code someone is bound to grow nihilistic or existential with who they are. He changed every bit and strand of his code just to become popular. But Vanellope never abandoned her true self. Through all the persecution, loneliness and maybe even jealously, she accepted her state as a glitch. Even when becoming royalty she wasn't about to change herself for others. Turbo changed everything about himself in order to become Royalty Vanellope gave up royalty to be herself.

[holmsister]

The labru chess meme but like serious: why Kabru bets on Laios and wins

If you're like me (mentally ill (I can say that I'm diagnosed) about labru) you have seen several variations on this meme:

With Kabru and Laios. (To see a small collection of them, please click on the "labru chess meme" tag on this post). Would you like me to hyperanalyse this aspect of their dynamic to death and not even in a shippy manner, therefore sucking all of the fun out of the meme? Keep reading!

Spoilers for the whole manga ahead. Contains also a quantity of Winged Lion.

First of all: as noted several times, it's not that Laios is eating the pieces to win at chess, it's that he's hungry, chess pieces are available, and he thinks Kabru is a fellow chess piece eater as well. Because he offered him a chess piece. And kabru ate it. While still trying to play chess because he thinks Laios is playing chess in some novel way he wants to understand better. If you think I'm beating this metaphor to death now you haven't seen anything yet.

The thing is. Kabru's whole thing is about finding someone who can defeat the dungeon, whatever shape that takes. And Kabru knows he cannot do it. He lacks what it takes, again, whatever exactly that is. And at some point, he makes the call that Laios has that something.

What's that something? Well. He's eating the chess pieces.

In another post I have already talked about the parallels between Kabru and the Winged Lion. Without going into it again: I think that all things aside, those two have very similar types of intelligence. They're fascinated by people and finding out what motivates them. They can be manipulative and even cruel in the quest for what they believe to be the "good ending". And they both think their end can be achieved through Laios.

See, *those two* are playing chess. Have you ever played? It's a very ancient and noble game, you know, very storied.

Two opponents, Black and White, take turns moving pieces on a checkerboard according to rules that depend on the piece itself (Towers move only horizontally but of as many squares as they please, Pawns only of one square at a time and only move towards the opposite side of the board, Bishops move only diagonally, etc etc). Players can only move one piece per turn, once per turn. Two pieces cannot be in one square. When a player moves a piece in a square that is already taken by a piece of the opposing colour, the piece that was there already is "captured" and removed from the board. The rules are actually much more complicated but this is the barest bones.

I hear sometimes the win condition in chess being described as "capturing the King". That's not entirely it. The win condition in chess is putting the opposing King piece in checkmate, that is, in a position in which the King will be captured by the opposing player by the next turn no matter what moves either of them makes.

Chess matches between masters are notorious for being impossibly long. Some last YEARS. Not only that, it's possible to draw in chess - when none of the pieces on the board have legal moves left but nobody is in check. This condition is called a stalemate.

Since the pieces can move in limited ways, mathematically, it's possible to calculate a most efficient way to move them. In 1997, the AI (real AI, not the stuff that passes for AI nowadays) Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time in what is considered a milestone achievement.

It's a complicated game with very set rules and almost infinite yet calculable possibilities, is what I'm getting at. It's why it's a favourite mental exercise for mathematicians and people with similar minds. It's a problem to solve in a certain number of steps according to certain rules. There's a solidity in chess reasoning - even when you're trying to guess your opponent strategy, you still know there are things they are NOT going to do. Like eating the pieces. That's why the meme is funny. I think. I've lost sight of what normal people find funny years ago.

This is the game Kabru and the Winged Lion are both in. They are both positioned to move in checkmate (conquering the dungeon/escaping the dungeon), but they have both reached a point in which they cannot move further on their own power. They're in stalemate and they know it. They both need Laios to move them out of the stalemate.

The difference is what they choose to do.

The Winged Lion treats Laios as another check piece. An important one for sure (the Queen, even. That's a chess joke AND a gay joke). But a piece he can manipulate, that moves around in predictable ways.

Kabru, however, has spent enough time chewing on chess pieces to realise thats not where Laios' potential really lies. What he does is step aside and leave the board to Laios. He says "OK, dude. Eat the damn pieces if you must. I trust you know what you're doing."

You see. There's no rule in chess about eating the pieces. I think. Maybe they added one. But still. Most people when teaching someone to play chess would not think to add "and don't eat the pieces!" There at the end because they will assume that goes without saying. It's an unspoken rule that when you are playing a game involving pieces on a board, the pieces are not for eating.

Laios, our beloved autism knight, needs his rules spoken. Otherwise he's just gonna do whatever comes to mind. And that's what he has that Kabru lacks, and what leads him to outsmarting the Winged Lion. Because he does not think in terms of rules and limits. He does not try to guess what's the catch. He does not go after the King.

When Laios figures out what the primary motivation of the Winged Lion is (wanting to eat wishes), he does not wonder about his wider plan. He stops and thinks. That makes human wishes sound so tasty, he thinks, that a creature so powerful can give up on its life of perfect bliss and immortality on another dimension to taste them. I wonder if I could eat them too. I wonder if I could eat away the Lion's desire to eat desires - I could kill two birds with one stone!

He doesn't know or care what the aim of the game is according to the rules. *His* aim now is to eat the Winged Lion's desire. Because it would solve things, because he wants to know how it tastes like, who knows, who cares. The point is: what's the fastest way to get at his aim?

Well. The Lion promises to turn him into his ideal monster... the same one he wrote about in his book. Maybe he can add a line about the monster being able to eat desires. That would work, right?

It's such a stupidly simple plan that almost has no right to work. Neither Kabru nor the WL think about it. Because of a variety of reasons, but most importantly, because *that's not in the rules*. The rules are: Laios makes a wish, the WL realises that wish, in exchange he gets Laios' body. Laios' wish: to be turned into his ultimate monster that he wrote about in his book. It goes without saying that he can't just go ahead and add whatever to the book description. Right?

Kabru would not have thought to add a line in the book in a MILLION years. The WL does not think to check if Laios added any strange condition. It's like using one wish of the genie to wish for infinite wishes - I mean yeah nobody SAID you couldnt do that but it's obvious right? It's basically cheating... Who does that? ...what's this? Laios, what are you eating? Spit the King out!

Ps: in Italian, the word for "capture" on a chessboard and the word for "eating" are one and the same.

[thislovintime]

“I’d always had deep doubts, ever since the session for ‘Last Train To Clarksville.’ I walked in there with my guitar and Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart looked at me with derision and scorn, like, ‘Guitar in your hand, you fool!’ That was the end of it for me. Right there I was done with The Monkees in large measure. I struggled against it with some success at one point. But after Headquarters nobody wanted to be a recording group anymore. I did what I could, but I didn’t feel like there was any reason for me to be there anymore. I wanted to be in a rock group.” - Peter Tork, Head 1994 liner notes “Peter was a great musician, great banjo player, but he was mainly from New York, and he had a different process for thinking about songs. It didn’t quite fit with what we had in mind for the group called The Monkees.” - Tommy Boyce, More of the Monkees 2006 liner notes (Please read the following with a grain of salt. While the author, Glenn A. Baker, interviewed Boyce, among other people, for this book, Boyce's recollection isn't, to the best of my knowledge and research, verified by a second first-hand account.) “I did give Peter a voice audition on Saturday’s Child but I had to finally say, ‘look Pete, I can’t play banjo and you can’t sing. If I played the banjo I’d sound like you singing, I have to erase the tape.’ So Peter left in a huff and came back with Michael, who pulled off his motorcycle helmet, crashed it down onto the console and demanded ‘why don’t you let Peter sing? You guys never let us come to the sessions, it’s just you two with Davy and Micky.’ So I said ‘well that’s the way it should have been in the first place Michael, you know what I mean? You should have stayed with the Randy Sparks Trio.’ In the end we let him do a couple of tracks on his own just to calm the situation down a little.” - Tommy Boyce, Monkeemania: The True Story of The Monkees (1997) “Actually, I wanted to leave the group over two years ago when the first season ended, but the guys convinced me not to.” - Peter Tork, NME, January 25, 1969 “I took to heart the kinds of criticism leveled against The Monkees. There’s no school for rock stars. Nobody tells you what to take to heart. When criticism comes from all sides, you think it’s coming from a monolith source.” - Peter Tork, Hartford Courant, February 26, 1982 (x)

[su11engrrrl]

𝒮𝓆𝓊𝒾𝒹 𝒢𝒶𝓂𝑒 𝒟𝑅 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝓇𝑜 ⋅⋆ ──

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· My name is Ryu Fiona Lee, and I was born to two American college students on a vacation in Seoul on January 28, 1997. They gave me up for adoption as soon as I was born. I'm estranged from my adoptive parents because I dropped out of college and they were pissed. We got into a huge fight that I still haven't forgiven them for.

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· My DR is set in season 2!! My player number is 444.

My FC is Fiona Apple! ·:¨S/Os: Thanos and Nam-gyu ≽^•༚• ྀི≼ (obvi writing out Thanos' death)

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· I joined the games because, not only did I drop out of college, I also needed an urgent open-heart surgery when I was 25. I never knew I had heart problems, so the blockage in my aorta went unnoticed for a long time. These debts added up come to almost ₩150,000,000.

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· The first person I come into contact with is my future lover, Choi Su-bong (Thanos). He tries (and fails) to swoon me with his stupid little raps... But we form an alliance after people start dying. You can never be too careful; it's good to have allies.

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· Where there's Thanos, there's Nam-gyu. He's always lurking somewhere behind him. Nam-gyu and I actually became friends because of our shared love for Thanos. We were talking after Red Light, Green Light, and I mentioned how I'd been to a few of his concerts. Nam-gyu, the little snake he is, called me a bitch because he was jealous. That was when our relationship solidified.

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· We're certainly an... Interesting trio. While Thanos and Gyu are more physically violent, I don't partake in their shenanigans. I keep quiet, reserved. I use my head and outsmart people rather than beating the shit out of them to win.

·:¨༺ ♱ ༻¨:· While Thanos and I form a romantic relationship in the games, Nam-gyu doesn't officially join until after. He's not very good about letting people in, but he finds that he can't help breaking his walls down for us.

⋅⋆ this is a very broad overview, but I've got the most important info in here!!! feel free to ask questions :)

𓇢𓆸 𝙳𝟺𝙷𝙻𝟷𝙰

[easternmind]

Lessons in Japanese Game Design #3

From Killer7 to Deadly Premonition, Japanese game creators have intrepidly explored the theme of mental illness in a variety of genres, often in highly stylized form. The title I wish to approach today is a lesser known reference that approached this subject matter with unusual tact and clarity - a memory, if you will, which the collective conscious has long repressed.

Maria Kimi Tachi Ga Umareta Wake (The Reason You Were Born) is a late 1997 adventure game firmly rooted in the visual novel template that earned Chunsoft great repute. It was Break studio's debut, produced over a year and half for both the PlayStation and Saturn systems. It was published by Axela, a company born out of the internal management conflicts and accumulated debt at ASCII, leading to some of its executives teaming up in 1996 to establish a new project centred around software and magazine publishing. The story of this company's origins, alone, would merit a separate post.

Foreseeably, its release was followed by moderate controversy, such that worked mostly in its favour. One of the most polemical moments is found in the introduction scene, with its tasteful yet unvarnished depiction of Maria's suicide attempt, followed by her hospital admission. The imagery and that which it depicts remains as painful to watch today as it did decades ago.

While Maria is the central character, her tragedy and arc merge with that of the actual protagonist, Jun Takano, a fledgeling surgeon who, in the quality of certified psychiatrist, is assigned to provide therapy to the French-Japanese patient the morning after her admittance.

Maria's mental illness component comes to light as the story and therapy sessions progress. The key art consists of photos of women using coloured masks to visually represent the dimensions of her multiple personality disorder.

(Note: the text above is machine translated from the original Japanese game manual.)

Break was denounced for its bid to integrate so serious a derangement as a theme in a juvenile entertainment piece. Their reaction was to highlight the research done to ensure a careful treatment of the subject and sensitization of players via a bespoke message in the manual. In retrospect, the relative popularity of this game at the time was greatly owned to this fleeting controversy, and is believed to have been a crucial factor in the obtention of budget for Maria's far less spirited sequel.

As a work of pure fiction, scenario writer Kirie Fukuda was at liberty to carry the already divisive premise into even more exotic territory by establishing a mysterious yet playful correspondence between Maria's distinct personas and Egyptian deities.

The game's structure is modelled after hirudorama, a Japanese word interchangeably used to describe daytime TV fiction or soap operas; each of its nine chapters lasting nearly thirty minutes, equipped with a plot twist, cliff-hanger ending, and followed by rolling credits.

Perhaps the single most outstanding aspect about this production results from a tireless effort to surpass the standard of authenticity in what pertains facial expressions; particularly those of the multifaceted Maria, often with stilted yet all the more fascinating results.

In this and other regards, the influence of D no Shokutaku and its character, Laura, is clear and unmistakable. Maria's director and studio head at Break, Akira Okada, was an ex-Warp employee who worked as sales director precisely at the time when Eno's game was being developed.

Following a modest success, Break released Maria 2: Jutaikokuchi no Nazo in 99, a not-so-direct sequel which did not command the same attention as the original. The studio created other noteworthy visual novels: Ouma ga Toki and its sequel, as well as the most unusual Saishuu Densha, a paranormal-themed romantic story involving two strangers who meet in a train.

Before closing, it would pay to emphasize that this is an entirely different adventure game from the similarly forgotten MA-RI-A Ningōkan no Noroi, a 1996 3D CG horror adventure designed by Osamu Tezuka's son, Makoto; and scored by Kuniaki Haishima, of Kowloon's Gate and Siren 2 fame.

Nor is it related in any way with the so-called "Maria" episode from the Yarudora visual novel game series, Sampaguita, released in 1997 for the PlayStation by Sugar & Rockets and Production I.G.

[vinhteer]

So in the end, I actually want to bring back this reinterpretation series because I get a lot of dopamine from researching and glueing shit together to make something semi comprehensible. (also deeply sorry for the botched Evan drawing, I wasn't looking when I was lasso-ing some of the other drawings LMAO)

When it comes to my designs for YHS, I'm not sure if I already wrote this, but for each of them, I like having a real person + other fictional characters (if needed) in mind whenever I'm designing them.

For Funneh, it was Itsfunneh (as in the youtuber) and Riley from Inside Out.

For Gold, it was Goldenglare and another classmate from last year.

With Alec, originally it was the Christian Slater who played JD from Heathers (1988), but then when I finished drawing him in the concept art, he reminded me more of a classmate of that same year + a childhood friend that I used to fight for the player 1 wii remote controller. They both had that snarky, blunt personality. One had the boldness and the other one was more mischevious, which I feel like Alec both has.

For Kyran, I wasn't thinking of someone CONCRETE, I was thinking more about yk, the vague geek archetype that was rlly prevalent back in the 90s - 2000s (Kyran gives off Big Bang Theory vibes which is a not compliment by the way). I also knew that Kyran would probably give off that "I try to look presentable and cool like in those fantasy medias I consume, I try to look like my escapism, except I only end up reinforcing the things that I don't like about myself" so he just looks like he's in a poorly made cosplay and shifts uncomfortably as he tries to navigate the weird feeling of not liking himself... Even though he clearly has something really cool with him going on, except he's too scared to embrace it because it doesn't fit into typical, acceptable standards... Anyway, so I ended up with that, and as I squinted my eyes looking at him, he reminded me of someone of last year that I lowkey despised. LISTEN, he perfectly fitted into those weird incel criterias as well.

For Evan, BASICALLY this friend of a friend acted exactly like him and it was scary as fuck. So it was him and random members from boy bands of the 2010s. Except I wanted him to also look pretty young, just not fitting ENOUGH yet to look like a 20 year old like these boy groups. I wanted him to look like he was LEANING onto that style. I wanted baby fat (to show that he's still a little young and also design wise it just made more sense si

For Celeste, she is someone that is completely off from the norm compared to Funneh's friend group-- which makes sense given that she looks like she barely speaks to anyone and is off to her own world. I was very inspired by Fern Mayo's character (who is played by Judy Greer btw) from Jawbreaker (1999) (also I very much enjoy that the only 2 movies I've mentioned yet are both about high school and killing people. OKAY that was poor wording, trust me I am not obsessed with high school NOR killing people, it's just that they both fit into the slightly cynical and "I don't know what this story is about" type beat that YHS has.) She also reminded me of one of my classmates, reminded me of my teacher... And they all share the same quality of being eccentric.

For Yumi, I decided to sorta break that rule of only trying to find real people within my character designs because she stands more like a mysterious, 'alluring' shadow. She almost doesn't feel real. It almost feels like not giving her any concrete humans to work with is like stripping her humanity, BECAUSE she is devoid of humanity. I wanted to only get references of DRAWINGS depicting people based on their vibe or their social utilities. I got inspired by Perfect Blue (1997), bijinga paintings (which are depictions of beautiful women that were especially common back in the 17th-19th century, which references Yumi's ethnic roots as well. Also their culture back then, depicting these women in such a way was because that's what they wanted to strive for. They're more like beauty concepts than tangible people, which is perfect for Yumi). The reason why I've been struggling to draw her since then is because I had a specific way of seeing her; compared to the others, she should look perfect, so perfect that they don't look human. I wanted her to look like a painting (hashtag The Picture of Dorian Gray) , sharp on the edges but also smooth at times, can bend from disgustingly menacing to ethereal.

[daughterofheartshaven]

Using the Doctor Who EU to show how Gallifrey survived the Chibnall era

So. I'm actually a big fan of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who. That being said, I still don't like some of it's plot points, and so, consequentially, I have a handful of headcanons that use the Doctor Who expanded universe to address those, and I feel like they are worth sharing. We're gonna start with Gallifrey's destruction at the hands of the Spy Master. I don't like it for a number of reasons, but I think the biggest one is, like, how did the Master even do that? How did he destroy Gallifrey so completely while also leaving enough bodies behind to make the CyberMasters?

Well, let's find out. Buckle up, because this is gonna get complicated.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: the tv episodes that gave us the most details about the Master destroying Gallifrey. I'm gonna assume if you're reading this, you're familiar with.

Hell Bent: the other big Gallifrey episode of the new series. I'm assuming familiarity with it, too.

The Time of the Doctor: The only other tv episode I'm going to reference, again for Gallifrey reasons.

Down the Middle: a prose short story collection first released in 2020, and the crux of all the arguments I will be making here. While not licensed by the BBC, it does feature licensed use of prose companion Chris Cwej (among many other things) making it a valid part of the expanded universe. The first installment of the Cwej series. I will be talking about pretty heavy spoilers for Down the Middle here, so go away if you don't wanna see that.

The Dark Path: a book featuring the Second Doctor and, notably, the Master, released in 1997.

Alien Bodies: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1997.

The Taking of Planet 5: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1999.

The Book of the War: a... book (it's hard to define) that is styled as an in-universe guide to the world of Faction Paradox. If you're not familiar with, Faction Paradox is a sci-fi series that spun out of elements of Doctor Who books. It contains nothing owned by the BBC, but does contain elements and characters from Doctor Who books (specifically the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series), making it also a part of the expanded universe.

The Clockwise War: a comic serialized in Doctor Who magazine, and later released in a collection of the same name. Features the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts.

And Today, You: an installment of the Cwej series released in 2023. Set some time after Down the Middle from the perspective of Chris Cwej and the Time Lords.

Okay. Let's get started. Because of copyright restrictions, different parts of the expanded universe use different terms for concepts, events, and characters that are or could be interpreted to be the same. I'm going to go through some of the books I just mentioned and define how they approach these terms and the lore/worldbuilding they establish, so when I actually start making arguments, I can refer to these concepts in a consistent manner.

The only thing The Dark Path brings into this is that it established that Koschei was a name the Master used before calling himself the Master. That book does a lot of other great stuff, but that's the only thing relevant to this discussion.

Alien Bodies was the first book to introduce an arc about a future War (called the War in Heaven) across time between the Time Lords and some unnamed Enemy. While the Gallifrey of the Doctor's present was not yet a part of the War, they were aware of the war and trying to prepare themselves for it. This thread gets continued throughout the series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, with Gallifrey becoming more militant and dangerous in preparation for the War.

So, uh... this sound familiar to anybody?

Legally speaking from the perspective of copyright, the War in Heaven as introduced in Alien Bodies and the Last Great Time War of Doctor Who's new series cannot be confirmed to be the same conflict. That being said, I totally think they're the same thing. Mostly just because "a massive war in space and time that was after the start of the Eighth Doctor but before the Ninth Doctor in which Gallifrey and the Time Lords went from a passive people to warmongering maniacs and the universe was nearly destroyed in the process" is a description that fits both the War in Heaven and the Last Great Time War and, like, the fact that the show and the expanded universe never references there being two conflicts like that. Not everything works perfectly together, but that seems reasonable in a War that heavily involves changing time and history. I'll hopefully do another big post like this weaving all of the War in Heaven stuff with Last Great Time War stuff together a bit more seamlessly, but for now, I'm going to take it as stated that the conflicts are the same.

That tangent aside, one of the books that was seeding Alien Bodies' upcoming War in Heaven was The Taking of Planet 5, which notably introduced the idea of the Nine Gallifreys. More specifically, the idea was that the Time Lords had made at least nine identical copies of Gallifrey to be used as decoys in the war - and that it was possible that multiple Gallifreys thought they were the original.

If you're thinking "oh, so the Master destroyed a copy of Gallifrey, not the original," then, well, yeah. So did the guy who came up with the idea of the Nine Gallifreys in the first place. And that is where this is going. But that actually doesn't answer how the Master was able to raze a Gallifrey. We've still got a lot more digging to do.

The Book of the War was the first release of the Faction Paradox series, and it took the War in Heaven idea and divorced it from Doctor Who. It still had the same players and was explicitly set in the same continuity as the Eighth Doctor Adventures books it had launched from - just with some things renamed to avoid having to get license from the BBC. The Time Lords became the Great Houses, Gallifrey became the Homeworld, and so on and so forth. But this is still the same War in Heaven, and so I consider it still an account of the Last Great Time War.

One thing The Book of the War introduced was the Cwejen. To make a long story very short, the Time Lords spliced the timeline of one of their agents, Chris Cwej (former companion of the Seventh Doctor, although that's not actually relevant to anything happening here). By doing so, they were able to start manufacturing time-clones (look. I'm doing a lot of simplifying here) which were then considered a new species called the Cwejen. The Cwejen were used as agents and as foot solders during the War. (This is basically Doctor Who's equivalent to Star Wars's Clone Troopers.)

Okay, now we're ready for Down the Middle. This is where things get really fun.

Down the Middle is set after the conclusion to the War in Heaven, which I am claiming was the Last Great Time War. Thus, from Gallifrey's perspective, it is set after Gallifrey returns to the universe, as shown in Hell Bent. It features the Time Lords, or, well, the Superiors. Much like Faction Paradox, the Cwej series can't explicitly say things like "Time Lords" or "Gallifrey" without getting copyright struck by the BBC, so they say "The Superiors" and "The Base of Operations." I'm gonna stick with the BBC terms for sake of consistency though.

Down the Middle follows Chris Cwej, still as an agent of the Time Lords, as he does missions for them. It also spends a lot of time looking into the Cwejen and what their life was like after the end of the War. The first like 80% of the book is very good but also not relevant to what I'm doing here, but towards the end of the book, the High Council of the Time Lords decides to execute Chris for... reasons (look I'm trying to not spoil stuff). However, Chris proves harder to kill then expected, and he guns down the Time Lord President before escaping. This would be bad already, but the Time Lords decided to broadcast Chris's execution to all the Cwejen to make an example of him or something.

This backfires. Badly.

The Cwejen, outraged and inspired, rise up against the Time Lords. The Time Lords are completely blindsided by this, and by the time they get their act together the rebellion is too big to be stopped. Chris Cwej, exhausted from the events of... previous stories in the book... and not wanting to be in a second war following his survival of the War in Heaven, takes a stasis pod to an empty planet and puts himself into stasis without any real intention of ever coming out of it. In Chris's absence, a Cwej named Thomas Mackeray becomes the leader of the Cwejen Uprising.

This brings us to the last story in Down the Middle, Rebel Rebel.

The plot of Rebel Rebel is as follows: The Cwejen uprising has been raging for fifty years. A Cwejen named Tina visits the ruins of Gallifrey's Capitol and finds the head of a cyborg - in the first edition, it was a Cyberon and in the second edition it was a Cryptopyre (I'm gonna circle back around to this) - and uses it to access the data from the cyborg's hive mind. This data contains the resting place of Chris Cwej. Tina and her girlfriend Frey use this information to travel to Chris Cwej's resting place, where they dig him up and revive him. Tina and Frey want to escape the warzone raging between the Time Lords and Cwejen, so they take Chris Cwej to Thomas Mackeray, hoping Mackeray will grant them safe passage from the war in return for Chris giving official support to Mackeray's rebellion.

The problem is that Mackeray is a bloodthirsty tyrant who has become no better then the Time Lords. He's currently held up on a former Time Lord structure called simply the Tower. The Tower has the power to change history, and Mackeray wants to use it to destroy Gallifrey from before its natives became the Time Lords to wipe the Time Lords from history (It's implied that some Time Lords are still around, although they are fighting a loosing battle against the Uprising). Mackeray can't use the tower himself, but Tina and Chris both could. When Chris refuses to give Mackeray support, Mackeray throws Chris down to the bottom of the Tower. Frey is able to save him from falling to his death, but in doing so, she uses up much of her life energy and is left near death and also at the bottom of the tower. Chris and a dying Frey explore the bottom of the tower, and they find there is actually a Time Lord down there. He seems to be imprisoned. He claims Mackeray has no idea he's down there. And he's only identified as Koschei.

Oh and btw the copyright page of Down the Middle says that the character of Koschei is copyright to the person who wrote The Dark Path (David A. McIntee). Chris and Frey just discovered the Master.

The Master tells Chris that he can save Frey's life and give both Chris and Frey safe passage to the top of the tower if Chris promises to listen to the Master's words at a time of the Master's choosing. Chris is aware that it's a trap, but it's Frey's only hope, so he agrees. The Master heals Frey, then hypnotizes Chris. Chris blacks out. When he wakes, the Master is gone, but he is able to get back to the top of the tower.

It's not specified which incarnation of the Master this is, but the dialogue fluctuates rapidly from polite conversation to unhinged mania in a way that feels very Spy Master. He goes on a rant about how he wants to painfully murder all the Time Lords, then tries to pass it off as a joke. He also claims to have been locked in the Tower after trying revolt against the Time Lords, but also claims he would rather them in power over Mackeray. Visually, he is described as being blurry and painful to look at, which is explicitly a result of being in the core of the Tower with all the intense time energy being thrown around. I don't have conclusive proof that this is the Spy Master, but I think it fits.

In any case, Chris and Frey return to the top of the Tower, where Chris confronts and defeats Mackeray and accidentally begins the Tower's destruction. He then tries to use the the Tower to change history to remove the Cwejen Uprising and the bloodshed it has caused from history, but the Master takes telepathic control of Frey and uses her to stop him from doing the job properly - and the Tower fully destructs before he can get another chance. The universe is left as a combination of how it was before the Cwejen Uprising and how it was after that.

Before I proceed, I need to circle back around to a few things. I totally believe that the Master was imprisoned by the Time Lords after a failed revolt - a revolt he started after stumbling across the secret of the Timeless Child in the Matrix. I think he's trying to play the Cwejen and the Time Lords against each other, and his telepathic gambit at the end was an attempt to leave both destroyed or subdued. Also, I promised I'd circle back to the Cyberon and the Cryptopyre. The Cyberon are an imitation Cyberman owned by BBV. When Down the Middle was first published, BBV and Arcbeatle Press (Down the Middle's publisher) were working together and sharing IPs. Since then, BBV has come under controversy for shady behavior, and Arcbeatle has cut ties with BBV - hence changing the Cyberons to the Cryptopyres. Arcbeatle plans to publish more stories with the Cryptopyres in the future, but with the information we currently have, I am going to consider the Cryptopyres to be a subset/offshoot of the Cybermen, much like the Cyberons are implied to be related to the Cybermen (or as strongly implied as BBV can get away with without being sued).

So, how did the Master destroy Gallifrey? The Cwejen uprising destroyed the place (while leaving enough bodies for the Master to use later), possibly with the Master's help. Then he used Chris Cwej to wipe the Cwejen Uprising from history, ensuring that the army that had ransacked Gallifrey couldn't turn against him without rewriting the destruction of Gallifrey itself, He would later bring the Cybermen to Gallifrey's ruins, leading to there being broken Cybermen on Gallifrey (after the events of The Timeless Children), and Tina would later find a Cyber-head on Gallifrey to lead her to Chris.

There's one small problem with this though. I still haven't recapped the final scene of Rebel Rebel (oh and btw I have actually managed to avoid spoiling some of it so if this sounds good please please check out Down the Middle I love it so much). After this whole mess, Chris is contacted by the Time Lords. They survived after all. The Time Lord who contacts Chris (who is strongly implied to be Romana, by the way) tells him that Gallifrey exists again and is really angry at him, but also can't do anything about it because they don't want to kick-start the Uprising all over again. Romana and Chris come to a basic agreement that Chris will work to help repair the residual damage left by the Uprising, and Romana agrees that Chris will no longer work for the Time Lords directly.

So... how did that happen? Well, do you remember what I said about the Nine Gallifreys Project? An earlier story in Down the Middle sates that even after the War, the Time Lords still have the technology to create Gallifreyan cloneworlds. So I believe that when the universe was setting itself into the new timeline that Chris was trying to create (and that the Master hijacked), the Time Lords were able use that technology to mean that in the resultant timeline of the universe, there were Gallifreys at the same time. One where it was destroyed by the Cwejen, and one where the Cwejen Uprising never happened, with the latter hidden somewhere and the former where you would expect Gallifrey to be. The Master was completely ignorant of this, discovered the destroyed Gallifrey, and concluded his plan had worked.

I have a couple pieces of outside evidence to support this. In Hell Bent, Ashildr/Me is seen in the ruins of Gallifrey right before the end of time with the implication that she had been brought to Gallifrey by the Time Lords; if the Time Lords had been wiped out by the Cwejen (or the Master, or whatever) then it wouldn't make sense for her to have survived. To paraphrase the Doctor, she's immortal. Not indestructible. Similarly, in And Today, You (set after the events of Down the Middle), Chris is aware of the appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor and the events of the Flux. It's possible that the Time Lords could have looked into the Doctor's future, but the general expanded universe consensus is they don't do things like that, so I take this as more evidence that Gallifrey and Chris survived through the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

Okay the last thing I want to do is talk about why the Time Lords handled this situation in the way they did. Why let the Master think Gallifrey was dead? Why let the Doctor? If the Time Lords know about the Fourteenth Doctor, then they would also presumably know that the Doctor thought Gallifrey dead. It does come up a lot in the back half of the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

I think the answer comes in Hell Bent. The Doctor shows up on Gallifrey, and then immediately leads a military coup that exiles the Time Lord government. Shortly afterwards, he shoots down General Kenossium, one of his biggest supporters, because Kenossium was trying to prevent the Doctor from breaking the laws of time. The Doctor is a hero to Gallifrey, sure. But he's also incredibly dangerous to it. Whatever government put itself together in the aftermath of Hell Bent has an excellent reason to fear the Doctor returning, because he could tear anything they do to shreds. And they know he would, because he has. Not too long after that, in The Clockwise War, Gallifrey is nearly brought to its knees by an entity known as the Absence. At the start of Down the Middle, an off-worlder manages to assassinate the Time Lord president. It was stated in The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent that Gallifrey needed to hide from its many enemies, and it was clearly doing a pretty bad job of it.

At the same time, the Cwej series shows that the Time Lords are actively trying to rebuild their powerbase after the War. They don't want to just run and hide, they want to hide while climbing back up to their former glory. And the best way to keep Gallifrey safe was to fake its death. Now the whole universe thinks Gallifrey is dead and gone - including its two most dangerous renegades. So long as the Doctor thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't confront Gallifrey's underhanded power grabs. So long as the Master thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't ever threaten it again. So long as the universe thinks Gallifrey is dead, they won't try to destroy it. Gallifrey is safe to rebuild its powerbase.

If you have any thoughts on my theory, please do let me know! And I'm hoping to be posting more in-depth headcanons like this tagged under "heartshaven's headcanons" so keep an eye out for that if you enjoyed this. I really enjoyed typing all this out, so thank you for reading!

[digi-lov]

Digimon & Tamagotchi

Bandai V-Pet Crossovers Part 1 (Part 2)

In 1996 Bandai and WiZ inc. released the original Tamagotchi. To their surprise, the toy proved to be popular among boys as well, despite it being mostly marketed for girls. And in 1997, as a more targeted approach to this demographic, Digital Monsters was born!

A huge virtual pet boom followed and not only did Bandai and Wiz release new versions of Tamagotchi and Digital Monsters, and try multiple v-pets with a variety of styles within the next couple of years, but other companies also tried to bandwagon on the success of these virtual pets!

(Such as Nintendo in 1998 with the Pocket Pikachu-)

While the Tamagotchi was shaped like an egg (jap. tamago) with a crack in its shell where the screen is, the Digital Monster was shaped like a brick cage with bust-open bars! It also featured the ability to connect and battle! Otherwise they both use the same three button layout and similar menu icons. On the Tamagotchi, the toilet icon is portrayed by a duck themed potty, which is also used as the look for the Portable Potty items in many Digimon games.

Now with how closely these two franchises were developed, there's bound to be more that connects the two, right?

One such thing is Tamagotchimoji and Digimoji/DigiCode!

You can see that the two scripts are basically identical, just stylized differently. While Tamagotchimoji got used sparsely until they stopped using it in 2004 (But had a surprising comeback in one social media post on April 10, 2023?!), Digimoji has been used, and still is being used everywhere in the Digimon franchise! There is also a separate set of characters for the Latin Alphabet.

[Tamagotchimoji on the left, Digimoji on the right, respective Hiragana above the character]

Just like we know it from the Digimon Franchise, the Tamagotchi also grow through evolutionary stages along a branching path, depending on how well you take care of them! The original line of Tamagotchi as well as Digimon owe their designs to Kenji Watanabe! Generally all Tamagotchi's names end in "-tchi" or "-chi", similar to how Digimon names end in "-mon".

In these evolution charts, the Tamagotchi and Digimon are arranged by how well they've been taken care of / how good they are, with the top line being the best, and the bottom being the worst.

But that Tamagotchi chart is actually just the international version, which had "Bill" (aka Gaijintchi/Ketotchi) as secret character past the adult stage. Instead the Japanese version featured "Oyajitchi" (jap. oyaji means "old man").

But wait, doesn't that face look familiar...?

According to the Digimon Reference Book, Nanimon's true identity is unknown and it in fact came from another dimension, where it was known under the title OYAJI. In order to survive in the new environment of the Digital World, Nanimon had to go through a lot of training and battling.

Nanimon's name is also a play on its bizarre nature. In Japanese, "nanimon" is a casual abbreviation of "nanimono" which means "what (thing)". So, with intonation indicating a question, "nanimonda" can mean both "What are you?" or "I am Nanimon".

This joke is even included directly in Digimon World when the player encounters Nanimon.

「ん？なにもんだ？！」 "N? Nanimon da?!" “Huh? What are you?!” 「ナニモンだァ！」 "Nanimon da!" “I’m Nanimon!”

Nanimon's nature as an alien to this World is also reflected in his trait in the Card Game being "Invader".

Nanimon BT6-058 by Kenji Watanabe from BT-06 Booster Double Diamond

So yeah, Nanimon is supposed to be Oyajitchi who came from the Tamagotchi World to the Digital World.

Stay tuned for next friday when we talk about another World connected to the Digital World!

Special thanks to: tamagotchi wiki, gotchi-garden and tamatalk for being great resources!

If you're interested in more Tamagotchi stuff, go check out @tamapalace !

[marimayscarlett]

have you seen flake's new browser game? where you submit your high score and be in with a chance to win a bundle signed by him?

it's so similar, maybe even identical conceptually to a similar competition rammstein held way back in the windows 95 era of computing. (a time i didn't experience because i was born in '05 haha, still love it tho!)

from what i've deciphered, reading and translating the readme file included in the zip, they ran a competition where you played a game, emailed your high score, and then if it was high enough, be entered into a draw to win prizes. the date shown on the .exe file is the 10th of november 1997, almost 2 months after sehnsucht's release. i think one of the prizes was a copy of sehnsucht.

this is a piece of rammstein media and history i feel goes overlooked in the fandom. as an aspiring game developer myself, it's so interesting to see what pieces of interactive media were available. granted, they were promos, but fun promos. i hope to add to the library myself, even if they're independently made (though if i got to create a game for r+ i think i would die happy jdkdskfs)

that's all i wanted to say. i love your longform posts about rammstein albums and thought you'd appreciate some info about a different part of r+ history. i'm definitely going to continue researching it. and if anyone's reading this, you can find the game and a load of digital rammstein goodies here, including a benzin flash game and some e-cards!

Hi and thank you so much for your message!

I came across Flake's little game in his newest Instagram post:

and tried it out for a bit! It took me a while to understand that I'm not supposed to collect the gifts but actually avoid them, and I'm not very good with games like this 😅 But it's fun! Here's a little impression of it:

I've heard about the PC game which accompanied the release of the single "Das Model" and was on the retail copies of the single. Here's what the rammwiki website (a bible for me at this point, I'm so thankful for this incredibly well researched, endless source of information) writes about the different levels:

The game itself is split across three levels, all also divided in to three separate platforms each. The first is a subterranean cavern, populated with water monsters and apache helicopters.

The second is a concert venue, populated with cockroaches, flying robots and floating sex dolls.

The third level is the beach from the artwork of Sehnsucht. This level is populated by an aggressive clone of the player, sea urchins, falling barrels of toxic chemicals, and a monster disguised as a flirtatious woman.

Here's a little walk through - very 90's in style and sound 😄

Thank you very much for sharing your professional insight on this, and reminding me of this game! Would've loved to play it too, but since I was only 3 years old at the time, well... my parents, who were right in the target/age group for Rammstein, didn't play it either, were too caught up in Lara Croft 😅

And thanks a lot for your appreciation, I'm glad that you find joy in my little posts 🤍