#the composition on this is kind of a disaster

[cidandy]

i think i need to be put down

[quirinah]

i! ro! ha! (six years edition)

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Day 21: bonfire

Masterlist flufftober 🎃

Reblog if you liked it!

It was strange that you attended school trips as a child, and you didn’t expect that to change in university. However, when your group suggested the idea of going to Prince William Forest Park to camp, you thought it would be fun.

In particular, because you had insisted that one of your classmates come along, eager to share more time with him than just the hours you spent at university. The guy was a complete nerd and, for some people, socially awkward, but the truth was that you found him quite pleasant. He was always willing to help you, and there was something about his shyness that you really liked. He was exactly your type.

The leader of your group had arranged to get a cabin in the park so that you could store some of your things, refrigerate food, have a restroom, and access basic services in case of an emergency, but the main condition was that you had to set up tents outdoors.

You had no problem with that; after all, you had spent a large part of your childhood doing that kind of activity, but your classmate Spencer didn’t seem very excited about the idea.

“You know that 20% of people are especially attractive to mosquitoes due to a combination of factors like the chemical composition of their skin, the levels of carbon dioxide they emit, and their body temperature, right?” the boy said while you were setting up your tent.

You were side by side because you had suggested it that way, and he was happy to oblige.

“No. I didn’t know that,” you laughed.

“Unfortunately, I think I’m part of that percentage. I’ve read that they can locate you from up to 50 meters away.”

“So, you hate camping because of the mosquitoes?”

“It’s not that I hate it, but there are definitely some downsides. Besides mosquitoes, there’s the possibility of encountering ticks that carry diseases like Lyme disease. I don’t know if you knew, but Virginia is an area where it’s relatively common. That’s why I always carry DEET repellent and a small first aid kit in case of bites.”

You chuckled softly as you watched your classmate open his backpack, revealing various items that would be useful in the hypothetical event of a disaster.

“Wow, what else do you have?”

“A high-performance flashlight, just in case we have to move around at night. Although this is a protected park, darkness in the woods can be dangerous if you’re not prepared; the chances of getting disoriented are high. I also bring clothes that can help keep me dry and avoid hypothermia, even if the weather doesn’t seem that cold. It’s better to be safe. Oh, and I always carry a thermal blanket. They might seem a bit excessive, but in an emergency... well, it never hurts to be prepared.”

“And is that all?”

“I also bring a book because, well, there’s always a moment when you need a distraction from the bugs and possible raccoon attacks.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the enthusiasm with which he had prepared for the occasion, and he looked somewhat shy in response.

“It’s good to know you’re so prepared. If something happens to me, I’ll know who to turn to,” you teased. He had already finished setting up his tent a while ago, and seeing you struggle with the task, he decided to help you.

Most of the group was setting up the area, and soon you found the perfect spot. You had left a circle in the middle, where you were sure you would gather once night fell and the classic campfire began.

It happened that several of the more muscular guys took charge of gathering firewood, probably to impress your female classmates and get something going with them that night.

There were beers (quite a few), some snacks, potatoes to stuff with cheese, bacon, sour cream, and green onions, some pizzas that you bought in town, and items to prepare skewers over the campfire. And of course, several bags of marshmallows for dessert were a must.

You grabbed a beer from the coolers around and then offered one to your classmate, who accepted it only out of obligation. There were a ton of people around, and you all laughed at the conversations taking place—some about school, gossip, others on sexual topics, and even a game of Never Have I Ever. It wasn’t so surprising when you found out that Spencer still hadn’t had sex with anyone, but it was a piece of information that distracted you for a moment.

Your friend gave you tips on the specific amount of time it took for your marshmallows to be perfectly golden and crispy on the outside but soft and melted on the inside. It was lucky to have that walking encyclopedia by your side.

“Why did you bring your own tent, Reid? I thought she’d be happy to host you in hers.”

“Shut up,” you said hostilely to one of your classmates. He could sense the tension between you and kept reminding you of it.

“If you don’t want him, Lacy is dying to host him. If you know what I mean,” the guy said, winking in your friend’s direction.

“I don’t... um... I don’t know.”

“Leave him alone,” you pleaded, rolling your eyes but blushing at the idea of another girl having her eyes on Spencer.

There were only a few people left around you since it was quite late, and most were looking to do precisely what your classmate had suggested. There would be too many condoms lying around in the morning.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” you murmured to Spencer. “He’s just joking.”

“Yeah, I know. I hope he didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. In university, everyone is horny and fuck with whoever, it’s never been a secret.”

The boy nodded slightly, and you thought the topic wasn’t to his liking. After all, Spencer might not like thinking about those things, and you weren’t sure yet if his sexual orientation was one where he felt attracted to women or maybe one where he wasn’t attracted to anyone at all.

You both fell silent for a moment, watching the flames flicker in the air, and then you realized that the last couple of people had already left the logs where you were sitting. You wanted to say something to break the tension in the air, but nothing came to mind.

“Did you know that in the Middle Ages, large bonfires were made with bones during festivals or to dispose of animal remains after ceremonies? That’s where we get the name from,”

“Really?” you expressed, surprised. You were grateful he had a subject to keep the conversation going.

“Uh-huh. It’s quite curious. Also, in ancient times, fire was used to disinfect tools and wounds since heat can kill bacteria and germs. Today, heat sterilization techniques are still used in medicine.”

“How do you know so much?” you murmured, glancing his way with a slightly enchanted look. He was wearing a white polo shirt, and you wondered if he was feeling cold.

“I don’t know. It’s just stuff I read.”

“You’re very smart,” you complimented him, smiling. “You always know what to say.”

“Not always,” he chuckled. “I’m really bad at socializing with people. No book teaches you how to do that.”

“What you need to do is relax. You don’t need a book for that,” you murmured kindly. “I like you just the way you are. And I think Lacy does too.”

The last huff sounded like a reproach, and he scratched the back of his neck nervously, analyzing the subtext of what you had just said. Silence fell again.

“I don’t like Lacy. I don’t even know why she likes me.”

“Anyone with two brain cells could see you’re handsome. Well, apparently anyone except you.”

“Do I look like that to you?” he murmured, almost confused.

“You have your charms,” you exclaimed flirtatiously, nudging him with your shoulder.

Spencer looked at you attentively, trying to decipher the lie on your face. But there was none; it seemed you were being honest.

The fire crackled in front of you, and you saw one of the logs burning down, a sign that it would soon go out.

“Maybe we should go to sleep.”

“Spencer, can I ask you something? It’s okay if you say no.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Why are you still a virgin? Is it a personal choice, or has the situation just... never come up?”

You saw the man turn the color of the fire, and for a moment, you thought you had crossed the line of trust.

“It’s not that I don’t want to. But there hasn’t been someone who... you know, wants to do it.”

You nodded in understanding, carefully considering the words you were about to say.

“Do you want to sleep in my tent? No sexual connotation, I swear,” you clarified, to avoid any misunderstanding. “It’s just that it’s colder than I expected, and you have that useful thermal blanket, so... huh, I thought it would be a good idea. If you want to, of course.”

“Okay,” he hurriedly said, as if he feared you would change your mind. You were so close to each other that you swore he would kiss you.

The fire had just burned out when you both got up to go to the tent, and once inside, you did what you had promised: just talk. As you went to sleep, you ended up in each other's arms, and a whirlwind of emotions developed in his stomach, while you felt your heart racing completely.

After that, he asked you out on a date, and then he realized how much he could be loved by someone.

And of course, the ideal situation soon presented itself between you. Spencer couldn't imagine a better scenario or a better person to share his first time with.

[somelazyassartist]

To go with my last post about Thistle acting capital-W Weird™ around Laios, it really does make perfect sense when you think about their history from Thistle's perspective instead of through Laios' like we actually see.

Imagine being Thistle, and you're like, I don't know, 14, and you're the royal court jester and adoptive son of your King. And you just got a baby brother and you're so excited about it. It is, without doubt, the happiest day of your life so far. While you're celebrating a few of your family's servants and guards come in to help. One seems somewhat confused about the situation but you probably assume he's just a new hire, it makes sense to bring in added security when there's a new prince around. You don't see this knight again anytime afterwards, but you're not exactly in charge of hiring or firing guards, so it's not really any of your business where he wandered off to.

You are Thistle, and you're now probably around 40 or so, still rather young for an Elf but a fine young man nonetheless. You're all dressed up to the nines and eager to perform your newest flute composition in honor of your little brother's wedding, and you're so, so proud of how far he's come. You helped your father raise him well. And just as the ceremony's about to kick up, and the people are starting to get drunk and make merry and dance, the King, your father, collapses. Poison, assassination, you hear people cry out. But as you run towards him you slam right into one of your guards- and have the extremely fleeting thought of "WAS that one of our guards? I haven't seen them around but they seem so familiar somehow"- but as soon as the thought occurs you're snapped right back into the present, and the fact that your father was murdered right in front of your eyes, and that you couldn't do a thing to stop it.

It's been a small time now, enough that you've had time to lay your King to rest, and to prepare your brother for the throne. It's his coronation day. You should be happy- you are PROUD, of course, of how far your little brother has come- but it is not the joyous day that you would have hoped for, and instead one of mourning for you. And looking around the room as the Kingdom's crown changes bearers, you see a guard, rather out of place. And this time, you have time to process why he feels so strange here. You've seen this man before. You KNOW you've seen this man before. This is the man who you have seen exclusively on the best day of your life and the worst, with no trace of him elsewhere in your life, and he is here, now, again. And for one who is clearly a Tallman, he hasn't aged a single day. There is something wrong with him, and with you, and you feel that if you keep crossing paths it will only end in disaster for you. So you try to kill him. And he disappears, right in front of your eyes. You don't see him around after this. You pray you never will again.

You are now The Mad Sorcerer- no longer, even, the false name given to you by your King. Only the title used by those who want to kill you remains in people's minds. It's been so long now. You can't even count how many years it's been, but you know your life has reached centuries upon centuries past what you were meant to live. And so has everyone you've ever cared about. In these years you have done everything you can to preserve the last bit of what you can call home, trapping yourself and your entire kingdom in an oasis of immortality. So what if the people may grow to resent you? You're protecting them. It's not your fault people may mistake your kindness for cruelty. Though many adventuring parties have tried, none have gotten through your defenses, so as long as you keep focused on your goal things will be fine. Except for this last week or so, where one particularly troublesome party has been making their way further than most would dare venture. And you swear on your Kingdom's throne, if this party includes who you think it includes, you are going to have a fucking aneurysm.

You are the Lord of this Dungeon, and unfortunately for you, your house has just been broken into. Even more unfortunately for you, you know exactly who did it. When you step through your front door, everything is unsettlingly clean. You wonder why in the world the man following you for your entire life would take the time to tidy your house if he's here to psychologically torture you. And then a thought hits you like a punch to the gut, and you rush upstairs, and you see all of your diaries taken out of their hiding spots. And you know that if they took a look through them they would find roughly 200 pages of glittery pink gel pen writing out repeatedly,

✨ This motherfucker again ✨

[katuschka]

Usually Sexual

Josh Kiszka x male OC; a spontaneous little thing, inspired by "recent events" ;-)

2.3+ words This is a work of fiction, intended for adult readers, so if you're under 18, go find some other entertainment elsewhere. Warnings: oral sex, intense emotions and verbal fights, some violence if you squint, some voyeurism too, I guess. A few swear words here and there. Loud noises.

The song was haunting them for months. It started as a spontaneous jam at Jake’s house during one of their many after-dinner get-togethers. Later, they kept revisiting the theme on tour. There was just something to it. It felt like one of those tunes that had always been there in its own metaphysical existence, just hanging in the air, waiting for them to grab it and turn it into actual sound waves. It eventually evolved into a full-fledged composition and when Josh started humming to it and added his own melodic line on top, they thought it might be THE song: The song that you may manage to write just once in a lifetime, or never. Then, one evening in late January, Josh came to the studio with lyrics and it was then that they knew it was THE song. 

There was only one problem. Josh just couldn’t force himself to sing it the way he wanted to. It felt right when he wrote it. It sounded right when he was alone, sitting at his piano at home. But here, in front of the others, he felt completely naked. Bashful, even, which dumbfounded them all, but mostly himself. It was always either too forced, or insincere, or too timid. Unnatural. After six whole sessions filled with constant bickering, even Daniel was already losing his patience.

“I think that, maybeee, this is one of those cases when I should be alone in a soundbooth,” Josh said one day when it was increasingly obvious that their last session might end in a bloodbath. It was a legitimate suggestion, but they were already so used to recording the basics “live” to keep the sound natural and candid that his words just added more fuel to the fire. Danny just sighed, excused himself to take a leak and left the room. Sam opened another can of beer. Jake was livid. 

“Right Josh, but once we’re onstage, you won’t be able to crawl into a fucking soundbooth. What’s your plan? To sing it from your dressing room?”

They just didn’t get it. He was trying, really. But whenever he got to certain parts, certain words, certain notes, his throat constricted. He tried to explain it, multiple times, but even that fell flat, because how could he explain the meaning behind the words when he couldn’t open up about the feelings that inspired them. Only two people knew. One of them was not in the studio with them to support him, and the other one was seething, focused solely on the work they had to finish. At least Jake finally gave in and agreed to try it. 

Next day they played without Josh. They somehow managed to wrap up the instrumental part in just four hours. All it needed now was the closing guitar solo – already written – and, of course, the vocals. 

Josh arrived at the studio the next afternoon, outwardly calm and well rested, but still battling the same internal struggle. He holed up in the booth, put the headphones on, got ready, looked at the three faces behind the mixing console, and started singing. And it was a…disaster. Which subsequently led to a very loud and emotional verbal fight. 

“Just sing the fucking song, Josh! It’s not rocket science.” Jake really, really tried to stay calm and to stop himself from yelling, yet he failed miserably.

“Yeah, we don’t even know what the fuck it all means…,” Sam chimed in.

Jake cleared his throat, which made Sam roll his eyes in annoyance. Even now?

“...ok, so Jake here probably knows what it all means…”

“I do.”

“...’course you do, you fucker, but that’s not the point. Listen Josh, I understand that this is probably some kind of a confession or something, but could you just pull your head, or whatever else is there, out of your ass and…”

Sam knew he had crossed the line even before the bottle, previously resting in Josh’s hand, shattered against the wall right behind him,  just a few feet to his left. Josh stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him with a deafening blow. He didn’t return that day. Or the next. 

……………………

For several days, they barely spoke to one another. Then, one Tuesday night, during one of those early spring storms, Josh found himself sitting in an armchair in his dark, unlit room. Ha had spent the last two hours listening to the rain drumming on the tiles of his patio outside the sliding glass doors, trying to figure out what to do and how to find a solution to this “precarious situation”. No song was worth risking the relationship with his brothers. They had found themselves in similar situations many times before, but the current radio silence was a bit concerning. He knew what the song needed – the feral energy he hardly ever failed to muster onstage. See, Jake was wrong about this. He could imagine himself singing this song live just fine. This had somehow never been an issue in front of the audience. The untamed energy of thousands of adoring people often let him open to them, and to the world, with unaffected pleasure. He let them listen to him, to see him…to touch him…  And suddenly, he got an idea. 

……………………

Sam wasn’t sleeping yet, but seeing his brother’s name on a lit up phone screen annoyed the shit out of him all the same. 

“What?!” 

It was late, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk…to Josh, he certainly didn’t want to go out for a drink…with Josh, AND the very last thing he wanted was to talk about the fucking song again… so Josh’s suggestion that they should meet in the studio asap just made him see red. 

“Are you fucking kidding me? The studio’s not booked and everyone’s asleep. It’s nearly midnight, Josh!”

“Yeah…exactly, umm… That means the studio would be free and empty now, right? I’m sure it can be arranged. I think I got it, Sam! I…ummm, found a way to finish the fucking song. I need to try this one thing and I need your help. Pleeeease. And…I’m really sorry, Sam.” “Ok,” he sighed exasperatedly. Sam, too, was sick of the current situation, and if Josh thought that a night session with just the two of them, free of Jake’s scrutiny, would help, so be it. “I just need to make some phone calls. Meet you there in…90 minutes?”

“Perfect! Thank you.”

……………………

Eleven hours later

It was already almost noon when Jake and Daniel finally arrived with the coffee. Sam was still sitting behind the mixing console, having tried to add some more finishing touches to the mix before he felt it was ready to be presented to the other two. 

“So, what’s up? Why did you summon us here at this ungodly hour, oh ye little brother? You look like shit, by the way.” 

Jake was an ass, but he was right. Sam felt absolutely exhausted. He had spent the whole night at the studio, his eyes were bloodshot and his head was pounding. He had no energy to argue, he was hungry, and really just wanted to crawl in his bed and spend the next two days there. Maybe three. But he needed them to hear it first. 

“Well, I still need to work on this a bit, and you will need to add the solo, obviously, but we managed to record all the vocal parts tonight and the raw mix already sounds pretty good. Sounds great, actually…even though the ending might be a bit…unconventional.” 

They both looked at him in disbelief, but accepted the offered seats and urged him to continue. “Ok, let’s hear it,” Jake breathed out as he leaned in his chair.

When they finished listening, Daniel looked like a parent that should be scolding a naughty kid, but couldn’t because he was just trying not to laugh. Jake’s expression was unreadable. After at least thirty more seconds of complete silence, he finally spoke, his voice unnaturally calm, which only meant the storm was coming.

“And what the flying fuck was that?!?”

“Well, I think it was Josh sounding like…,” Daniel piped in, his voice muffled by his own hand. 

“I know fucking well what it sounded like! He’s my twin AND we lived together. No…no…nonono.” Jake stood up and was now pacing the room. 

Sam expected this kind of reaction. He was ready for it and he was also desperate to defend what they just heard. Because, above all, it was great. It was what they wanted…

“No, Sam, I didn’t want this. We cannot possibly release this. How did you even…? Was he jerking off in that booth or what?”

“Um, no, Thomas was here, too…”

Daniel spit out his coffee, barely missing the console, and Jake …Jake just had to sit down again. As soon as Danny stopped coughing, he looked at Sam, bit his lip and burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. “Oh my god…but…I agree with you Sam. It sounds fucking great,” he wheezed out, eyes still filled with tears. 

……………………

Nine hours earlier 

When Sam arrived at the studio, Josh…and Tom … were already there. It took them a little while to convince Sam not to turn on his heel and run back home after they had explained what they intended to do, but now they were all good and ready in their respective workplaces; Sam sat behind the mixing table, Josh and Tom crammed together in the small vocal booth, both already shirtless. 

“So, what do you want me to do?” Tom asked as he positioned himself right behind Josh. He felt a bit unsure still, but was willing to try his best. 

“You know the song, you know it’s yours. I am your instrument now. Play me.”

And he did. Sam dimmed the lights and told them to get ready. Josh was supposed to sing the whole song all in one take. They would try again if necessary, but this was the general idea. No pauses. Tom got his own set of headphones and as soon as they heard the initial chords, he hugged Josh’s bare torso, letting his hands roam free, caressing him gently. And Josh started singing. And it was beautiful. When the initial awkwardness subsided, Tom leaned into his role completely and started placing subtle kisses on his lover’s neck, which Josh translated into even more haunting sounds. 

When he was about to hit one particularly difficult high note, Tom grabbed him by the elbows, pulled his arms up and slowly ran his palms up Josh’s forearms until he reached the wrists, crossed them and held them tight, high above their heads. He circled his fingers around Josh’s pulse points, while Josh wailed into the microphone, his face contorted with all the intense emotions that he hid in the words he wrote. Now he finally let it all out. It was exhilarating. Twenty feet farther, separated from them by two walls, Sam punched the air in silent victory. 

The very first take was already more than good, but they tried three more times – just in case – Josh and Tom doing their intimate little dance within the confines of the small soundbooth. 

“Ok, I think we’re good, that was really wonderful, Josh…but, time to wrap it up,” Sam’s voice finally pierced through the intercom. 

Josh wasn’t so sure. True, it was almost three in the morning and they were all already beyond tired, but this was worth a shot. He might not have another opportunity like this and if it didn’t work, they could still use one of the previous takes. They were satisfactory, yes, but even though he finally managed to convey the contents of his mind with his voice, this song was a matter of the heart…and – let’s be completely honest – cock. He needed more stimulation. 

“Hey, Sam, do you think we could try the last chorus one more time?”

“Just the last chorus?” 

“Yeah”

“Ok, just let me go grab some munchies first. Be right back.” 

Tom was leaning against the booth wall with his arms crossed, watching Josh apprehensively. He yawned and tried a few neck circles to relieve his tense muscles. “So what’s your plan now?” 

Josh didn’t meet his gaze at first. He was looking at nothing in particular, toying with his goatee like he always did when he was deep in thought. When he finally looked at him, he spoke in a whisper, but it was a demand nevertheless. “I want you to suck my dick.” Tom’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Josh, you can’t be serious. Sam’s here, and….your voice will shake. What’s the point?” 

“That’s exactly the point, Thomas. And Sam won’t be able to see you. Now come here, get ready,” he ordered as he pulled down his zipper.

By the time Samuel got back, Tom was already on his knees, crammed in a tight space between the front wall and Josh’s microphone, his hands clawing at Josh’s thighs and his mouth full. Josh was taking long, deep breaths, trying to be in control of the situation as they heard Sam’s voice through the intercom again. “Ok, Josh, I’m not playing the whole song again. We’re starting at 4:37. Ready?” “Yeah, ready, just leave it rolling till the end,” he breathed out. 

This was a new and exciting experience, and when he finished the last chorus and the bridge leading to the closing guitar solo part started playing, he could no longer control himself. Josh’s short, high pitched breathy moans filled the air during the bridge part and when they finally got to the rhythmic piano segment that served as a foundation for Jake’s – yet to be recorded – finishing solo and outro, he let out a long and melodic warcry and filled  Tom’s mouth with his warm seed. As requested, Sam was still recording.

……………………

@its-interesting-van-kleep @fleet-of-fiction @thewritingbeforesunrise @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @takenbythemadness @edgingthedarkness @writingcold @lvnterninthenight

[gaykarstaagforever]

FREE ON YOUTUBE

...YouTube, I feel like your free animated movie recommendations have declined in quality a bit since the halcyon days of Osmosis Jones.

Yes, it is a blatant Kung Fu Panda knockoff, with an American voice cast that is clearly whoever was home at 11 am the week they called.

This is bad. Like, unfinished, I think I'm missing like half the movie, they forgot to resolve the main plot and it just stops, bad. There is a scene where the only character on screen suffers an animation error, and no one fixed it. The framerate of the movie drops every time the action picks up or the camera swings around too fast. Like...you made a computer-animated movie, and you don't have the hardware or time to do...you know...computer animation? The stones on the Chinese producers of this mess.

Not everything has to be Pixar or DreamWorks. CG is hard. I get it. But you gotta work to your strengths. In this case, the computers you are using can't even render the movie properly. Like...I don't know how you get around that. That's kind of a major issue.

Technical incompetence aside, this suffers from the usual bad CG animation problems of every character looking like they come from a different artistic universe, and most of the action is generic mocaping that doesn't take into account how any real bodies shaped like these bodies would move. And there are just things they didn't bother capturing. Like none of these dough monsters ever stands up on screen.

Shot composition is a disaster. Most scenes are a mob of creatures standing in a pack in an empty space, doing exaggerated facial reactions to someone else talking. It's like bad machinima made in the Skylanders games engine, except all of the character designs are way worse.

The plot, such as they attempted it, is supposed to be about a small, incompetent warrior who looks like Jackie Chan who gets transported to the mystical realm of Merryland by a magical jade necklace his grandfather gave him. There, he transforms into an anthropomorphic panda, for reasons that are never explained. There is a prophecy that a Panda Warrior is destined to save the realm, and our guy is apparently it, except there is a flashback to like a couple of years ago when the ultimate evil took over, and...there is ANOTHER Panda Warrior who was just there and sort of stopped it? But then didn't? Who the hell was that guy?!

Also the ultimate evil is one of the two sky-whales who guard the Dragon Ball (yes, literally) just turning evil because it absorbed too much power. Why did this happen? How are you going to stop it from happening again? Then that whale turns into a nine-headed snake after an evil mouse from the real world just...is there, and merges with the Whale. After the snake is defeated the mouse just crawls out of it and runs away, and no one says a damn thing.

Our panda warrior and his 7 legendary warrior friends kung fu fight the snake at least 3 different times, and never get close to stopping it. And the panda doesn't do anything special or lead them, he is just there, and then at the very end his necklace glows and that...helps? Somehow? The true hero here is, and I'm not joking, Jimmy Ginseng, a tiny ginseng man with an erhu who shows up whenever the warriors are losing, plays the erhu, the enemy gets soothed by the song, and then Jimmy gets tired and leaves. EVERY BATTLE ends like this, including the final one.

So...?

The panda has that cool green sword in the picture. And he does have it. It is just...a sword, thst someone randomly gives him. I think he ends up dropping it and it never comes up again.

Also all the warriors are animals, except for the one who is a talking tree stump...filled with lava. And he dies at the end by setting himself and the snake on fire. Because his master, a purple fox, told him to do that to save everyone. ...Except the SNAKE SURVIVED IT, and they had to fight it again, lose, and wait for Jimmy to show up.

The bull character also sacrifices himself, TWICE, to save everyone else, and both times that doesn't work, either.

The movie ends with Merryland being restored from the devastation of the snake...BEFORE the snake is defeated. It just...gets better, after they resuce an elf girl princess who does...something...? And then the regrown flowers shoot the snake with missiles of some kind. Which ALSO fails to defeat it.

The panda doesn't go home and become human again and nothing is explained. But during the credits there is a fight scene between the little human warrior and his general, in which they get drunk and wrestle and tons of fight animations repeat in a loop for 3 minutes. Is this part of the movie? Are these outtakes? What does this have to do with anything? If this is what happens after he got home, I don't know why or what it means.

...My guess is that the first panda warrior we see was supposed to be his grandfather, as a panda? That was probably the idea? But no one ever says that. The movie doesn't remember to explain that.

This was translated from Chinese. Perhaps the translation is terrible. Or they did a massive reedit of this for the US release. That could explain some of this. ...But then why didn't they cut out the glitch scene, or some of the shots with the bad framerate? There are literal 10 second sequences in this movie where there is no dialogue or music, just a camera sleeping over a scenery to ambient nature sounds. Who reedits a movie for the foreign market and cuts out vital plot scenes, but leaves in shit like that?

...Unless all those vital plot scenes had even worse technical problems. Jesus. That's a terrifying thought.

One positive here. While nearly all of the voice work is as boring and bored as you'd expect, the immortal Tom Kenny is good, with what very little he is given to do, here. The man is a professional.

And here is the weirdest thing: Rob Schneider is really good here as the panda man and Jimmy Ginseng. Like, shockingly good. Like, this is without exaggeration the best performances of this man's miserable life. He is funny, charming, nuanced, he feels like he is reacting properly during what were probably one-sided conversations recorded on different days in different places. It is shocking how good he is in this awful, stupid movie. My only guess is that he was somehow involved in bringing this over and it was going to serve as an audition piece to get him more voice work. In which case, like, fair enough, dude. You nailed it. He is genuinely very good in this very bad movie.

What an odd artifact from 2012. What a waste of time. Why did YouTube recommend this? What do any of us gain from being shown this? I am just flabbergasted.

You're on time out with these movie suggestions, Google.

Also there is a pig who flies who looks like this:

Those aren't ears, they are just gross misshapen tendrils that bob around as she moves. It's like someone was playing with a stretch tool and then...stopped.

I was gonna end with "Now let's have Jimmy Ginseng play us out," but I can only find this one bad picture of him, and it doesn't show his erhu:

Here is some nice erhu music from someone else. Something redeeming in this godforsaken post:

[shinmelodia]

Love & Process: blue (2002)

Hello to everyone reading, and welcome to a highly belated attempt to squeeze some of my thoughts and emotions through some semblance of a creative process and onto a page. Today, I want to introduce this blog by talking about a lovely film, blue (2002), directed by Hiroshi Ando and based on a manga by Kiriko Nananan.

Since I'm still somewhat new at diving into live action film, especially, like, uh, Japanese indie film, its helping to start with the yuri genre. Because like practically any other woman on this site, I quite enjoy lesbians. blue's manga original offers something of an alternative to the yuri norm, though, and the film follows suit. Both are definitely examples of the Japanese filmmaking trend I've heard of called "mumblecore," (or maybe mumble-komi for the manga equivalent) that most people know through the likes of Inio Asano's early work. Like Solanin or Girl on the Shore, blue is shoegazey, quiet, and contemplative, adorned with moments of subtle physical intimacy, layered emotion, and stunningly beautiful compositions of daily life.

My metric for these kinds of slow mood pieces, which I've previously tended to watch at random whenever the mood struck me, is that if my barely-medicated ADHD brain can even finish them, there's clearly something special going on. blue passed with flying colors; yeah, ok, it took two sittings, but I spent all of both enraptured, immersed, and invested in the mono no aware of silent, fragile love and messy asymmetry that formed this movie's emotional palette. blue is about love, of course, but its also about process and expression, both emotional and creative, and how processing things, artistically, verbally, non-verbally--is often required of real, human love.

In being about this, I think it did things for me that a lot of yuri often doesn't and gently hit me in a place that I really needed to be hit. So, let me get into it. This is going to be...very personal, and also obviously spoil the details of the film, if you care about that, although I'm sure there will be plenty of depth left in the text that I leave untouched. Whether you read it or not, I'll be happy I made it. Oh, and sorry if I come off as really New for being so struck by themes and aesthetics that are probably sort of standard for this type of film. I can't help what I feel like writing about, though.

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Kirishima Kayako lives in a small town by the sea, one much like dozens of other anonymous, disaster-prone exurban towns in Japan at the turn of the millennium. She rides the bus to her girls' high school every day, where she eats lunch with her friends and tries her best to learn something in class. Really, though, she's aimless, quiet, lonely, and introspective. She's trying, but its rare for others to be able to tell. She's also in love with her classmate, Endou Masami. When she confesses at the end of the first act, on a windy beach against the vastness of the ocean, Endou responds that she's glad, and the two become our lesbians for the movie. Kayako falls to her knees and cries in relief. Masami is different from the others--she sees how hard Kayako tried. Does that mean she loves her back, though?

Endou Masami has cool passions and interests; she collects American CDs, which she expertly critiques and describes while lending to friends. The mere view of her vibing to her American alt-rock while smoking a cigarette in front of her apartment window is album-cover worthy in itself. Kayako feels the same way: one of the most intimately gay scenes of the pre-confession portion of the film is when Masami lights a cigarette and asks if Kayako is shocked. The quiet girl declares without hesitation, "No, I'm admiring the way you lit the match."

The whole early film is such a delectable, lonely vibe. The slowly intertwining couple's solidifying dynamic is the kind that forms between an emotionally complex introvert and the perhaps even more unknowable yet somehow more confident object of their affection. The two are classmates, (there's no classic yuri kouhais and senpais here) but for the early part of the film we are seeing things from Kayako's perspective and Masami seems unmistakably older in spirit. There's something about the dense emotions conveyed in her gazes at her new girlfriend, the almost world-weary tinge of recklessness in her distant grins. She talks about music Kayako's never heard of and lends out books with Romantic-era paintings that she has well-formed thoughts on. Kayako even openly admits that if she could, she would want to be Masami.

I think we've all loved a girl like that.

It's a pretty typical experience in middle school or high school, for really anyone lonely who loves women, to be drawn to these sorts of sad, beautiful, oh-so-seemingly-complex femmes. I guess straight men have a similar thing going on with the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, but for us women (or, women-to-be, at the time, I guess), the phenomenon of these people to us often involves a sort of existential jealousy. I'm not sure what is so alluring to other people about the sense that the object of their love has Something Going On that they are working through, or a vast and complicated life beyond the scope of one's understanding, but it me it always felt like something I was missing out on for myself. Obviously, a lot of their experiences and interests must be interesting and fun and super cool, you think, but even what pain you think they convey must be somehow more edifying than yours.

For me, the edifying aspect was the mere fact of femininity itself. The idea of a girl who has deep and Real emotions, who feels Real love and Real sadness and can actually express that in how she looks, beautiful and imperfect, always threw into stark contrast my own inability to express myself comparably. I was depressed, I was growing up, and I felt things, too, but, as someone who everyone thought was a straight boy and who was too scared to admit to being otherwise, I lacked that sort of beauty, that means of expressing what was inside me through fashion, makeup, book or music knowledge or taste. Or at least I thought I did. Thus, my own emotions must have also meant less. So, I ignored them and belittled them, and entire years passed before I processed a thing correctly. I always wanted to be some other girl. That was the only thing that would fix me.

I assume that the teen (and, uh, sometimes beyond) existential pining experienced by some other people in real life usually lacks the fun bonus that mine had of a screaming void where my femininity should have been, but I'm not sure how much this actually matters to the crux of the kind of experience I'm talking about. That some kind of void is there is all that matters, really, and its there for Kayako in her relationship with Masami at the beginning of the film. She has nothing, Masami is everything, and just being close to her is enough, for now. Just being noticed, just sharing something with her, is all Kayako feels like she can ask for.

Of course, this incomplete way of seeing love can't last, which brings us to the next part of the film, which starts when the two are hanging out and Masami reveals through a guarded, distant grin that she had an abortion a while ago. This isn't something that shocks Kayako or is really meant to shock the audience, and it isn't the big moment where she forced to reconsider her feelings. Rather, she asks how it went, and Masami responds honestly. She mentions she felt horrible the next day and had to be picked up by ambulance from the nurse's office, prompting Kayako to recall silently what to us was the film's first scene, a view from her window during class of an anonymous ambulance, sirens turned off, discreetly rescuing a student.

That she had this ambiguously traumatic, and at least unpleasant and potentially taboo experience is something that could have made Masami feel even older to Kayako, her pain even more distant and obscure. It certainly already is a way that Masami herself feels distant from others. Yet, by considering her own special, observant view of the ambulance back when it happened, it becomes one that Kayako can in some small way assertively share with her. Rather than continuing to put her lover's experiences on a pedestal, Kayako in this scene makes a silent decision to turn a blossoming mutual acceptance simply that they happened into a moment of true intimacy between the two, a sleepover punctuated by smirking kisses and satisfied cuddles initiated by each of them for the other. Despite her remarks that Kayako is weird for unhesitatingly wanting to stay with her, its an intimacy that Masami is happy to accept. This is all an important turning point in Kayako's development because she begins to choose insight, closeness, and assertion over the distant admiration that trapped her earlier.

As we go on, we'll start seeing how blue's gentle impact comes from the way it doesn't glorify or sugarcoat that earlier kind of unhealthy and immature dynamic. Instead it subverts it by giving Masami depth and Kayako agency, before reaching an endpoint that reflects on how the dehumanization of that kind of depressed, pining relationship can be overcome. In that sense, blue is a yuri romance mostly about the couple coming to accept their own and each other's humanity and capacity for expression. Like any good mumble movie, its full of long silences and almost unrealistically hesitant dialog, and doesn't give any explicit internal monologues like a lot of manga do. The world of this movie is one where expression is an uphill battle, something that has to be worked towards and struggled through. It's the world that Kayako and Masami share, in their own separate ways. And that's why its such a triumph to watch Kayako finally find her voice, her passion, and her process, which all starts in this scene.

First, though, it's time to learn about the Something that Masami has Going On.

Things begin when Kayako is still sleeping. Masami gets a call on her house phone that she doesn't answer, but that sends her into a silent spiral of emotional dread. She spends the next day at school in the nurse's office, refusing to tell Kayako what's going on and confiding only in her friend Nakano. Then, when summer break comes along, she disappears, leaving Kayako alone at home, pouring silently over the book of still life oil paintings that Masami lent her.

It ends up being Nakano who tells Kayako why she left. It's the story Masami didn't tell about the source of her abortion: an adult, married man whom she had a relationship with and eventually a pregnancy from. She got things taken care of without telling him, alerted her parents and tried never to see the rotten salaryman again. That is, until he called. He wasn't getting along with his wife anymore, apparently, and she had some sort of attachment to him that made her come running back. Her taste in music originally came from him, after all. It seems that, for the time being, her devotion to this mysterious, abusive man is going to perpetuate a brutal cycle: she'll keep hurting both Kayako and herself all at once.

What really destroys Kayako and her relationship, though, is that she lies about it. When she comes home after some predictably rough interactions with this guy, she tells her supposed girlfriend that she was enjoying a vacation with friends, and even gives her some grapes, supposedly grown in the prefecture she was hanging out in, as a twisted souvenir. The more assertive Kayako enforces her boundaries without hesitation, though, in equally as blunt a tone as she complimented her love, as when she told her she wanted to stay with her, all those nights ago. "Why are you lying to me?" Its with that same grin, now tinged with emotionally oblivious deception, that Masami dares to at first first feign ignorance.

"Eh?" Her smile is shallower than its ever been.

So Kayako walks away.

Their dynamic has now become worse than just immature; it's entirely toxic. From an outside perspective, Kayako is working on her shortcomings, while Masami refuses to reconcile her past. This kind of toxicity, though, is sadly just as common in high school (and even sometimes middle school) as is the kind of misunderstanding, lonely pining I talked about earlier, just usually among different sorts of people. Appropriately, its often even that exact kind of beautiful, hurting, mature femme (in the eyes of disastrous, moody lesbians like Kayako) who is going through that sort of pain. Its that mysterious and tragic byproduct of compulsory heterosexuality that causes a lot of girls to seek validation in the love of an older man, and that I imagine becomes a sort of addiction to that validation that only masquerades as love. Hell, Masami attributes much of what made her seem so interesting on the surface, her love of music, to this guy. She feels like she'd be nothing without him, and the way Kayako praised her, at least in the way she interpreted it, did nothing to dispel this fear. Which I think is really why she decided to go back, even though it would mean betraying the very girl whose love provided her an escape from it all.

Its an ugly truth, and its one that yuri media usually shies away from portraying, but it is explored with refreshing frankness and resolved with astounding maturity by the end of blue. And I think its the source material's status as "alternative" (I guess in Japanese parlance, Garo-inspired) manga, not to mention the movie's simply as an independent film, that allows it to break with genre limitations in this way. There's been tons of writing done on how yuri definitely presents a fantasy of the sapphic experience. Mainstream yuri's origins in Class-S still to this day often cause it to portray romances between women as fundamentally different, and inherently more pure, than those involving men, trapping them in a bubble of unassailable innocence. While that kind of makes sense and seems extremely cool to those of us who celebrate having little interest in moids or whatever, it also has the effect of sugarcoating and sometimes even outright obscuring what real women, even (and sometimes especially) sapphic ones, go through.

There's already a decent amount of yuri, especially among those aimed at older demographics and those where its more of a secondary genre, that do deal with compulsory heterosexuality and the experiences that come with it. What are much rarer are yuri series where one of the lover's flaws more resemble Masami's than Kayako's. Not enough that I've read at least is willing to make its relationships messy, or have one of its leads just do straight up bad things like self-destructive cheating and lying.

Because, really, its the same as what Kayako went through, isn't it? The lonely longing for something more that feels like it can only be cleansed by denying oneself all one has and betting it all on being close to someone else. The only difference between the two's actions is temperament and perhaps socialization--one sought it from a cooler woman, the other from an older man. And somewhere out of sight, that sad, irresponsible, fucked-up adult was probably hopelessly lonely, too, just like Kayako had to accept Masami was. Maybe disaster lesbians, disaster bisexuals(?), and yes, disaster straights aren't so different after all.

Well, other than that Kayako has worked to process her feelings, while Masami went and ruined her relationship over them. That's an important difference. Still, though, even Kayako has some work to do about how she feels about all of this. Masami's pedestal has been smashed, whether she likes it or not, and now she's lonelier than ever. So where does this vampiric cycle of taking from others end? What substance can replace loneliness in this ouroboros of etropic emotional alchemy?

Kayako doesn't touch the grapes. Instead, she silently processes things, lies on the floor listening to the cicadas scream in the garden. The grapes go rotten, and her brother throws them out. She sulks for a while.

Then, she starts painting. A still life of grapes, inspired by the books that Masami lent her. At first, her drawing is lousy, as the school fine arts instructor later tells her, but the colors are gorgeous. The deep purples of the fruits are expertly layered to capture light and tell a story, one deeper than the instructor could possibly imagine. It's the story not only of the transformation of a relationship, but of the growth of one of its participants. As the hot, still air of the coastal Japanese summer cloys around her lonesome final vacation of high school, Kayako finally salvages a passion to call her own out of a floundering relationship. When school starts again and she picks up art classes, going to Tokyo for uni, a dream that was previously held only by Masami, starts to be within her reach. She has a future, an interest, and a way to process all has happened to her.

And then comes the time for Masami to try and return. She proves unwilling to address all that happened before, instead trying to kiss Kayako after school in the art room. Her undeserved attempt at intimacy is rejected with a shove, but so too is her self-pity that causes her to instantly run away. There's more that needs to be said that simply "I'm a terrible person." Kayako pursues her into the town's small shopping district as night begins to fall and neon crackles to life against a cool late summer night. Now the emotional climax of the movie begins.

First, Kayako starts talking. She tells Masami about the painting, about her summer, about how lonely she was without her, about all the places she wanted to go with her. She talks about how happy she was at the same time that she found something she wanted to do without her. This approach is new for her. She's never so far relied on words so heavily to express her emotions. When Masami points this out, Kayako says:

This is how she's choosing to process things for the time being. At first, it was being silent to carefully consider her emotions. Now, its speaking up to keep them focused on what she really wants.

Then, its Masami's turn, for the first time, to tell the truth. By now they're away from the small cluster of lights, staring out at the blackness of the beach where they first got together. Masami broke up with the guy, she says. But she also asserts that she came to his emotional aid to begin with because she felt his need for help was more important than anything else to her. She couldn't tell her girlfriend this before, because doing so would mean telling a truth she didn't think Kayako could bear to hear: that he meant more to Masami than she did.

Kayako already knows this, of course. And by speaking up to quell her justified anger, by weaving words like the deft strokes of honest color on the tip of a paintbrush, she's gotten herself to a point where she can accept it, too.

I mean, think about it. Masami is broke now; Kayako needed to buy her a sandwich so she wouldn't be hungry on their impromptu date. Her sabotaging drive to be validated and her inability to accept love from the girl willing to give it has, by all accounts, ruined her life for the time being and harmed those around her. Even though she broke up with the guy out of necessity, or out of some fleeting impulse to run back to Kayako, she still feels like nothing without him. As she says to Kayako later, now the envy runs in reverse--Kayako is passionate about painting now, while Masami will still amount to nothing. Despite it all, though, Kayako is willing to love her. She's called Masami out on what she needs to be, then decided to stay nonetheless.

"I always come second. You broke up with him, so the number one spot is vacant. When someone else comes, you'll put him there...

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For most of my life, I believed that artistic expression was primarily the product of unrestrained, innate, and self-indulgent passion. I thought it was just something people either have or don't have, and that when they do, its something that can drive them to great heights of accomplishment and happiness otherwise impossible for humans to reach. It was mostly Japanese otaku media that instilled this into me, I think. I grew up exposed to a dizzying array of diverse and often miraculous artistic products that captured my imagination in ways the safe output of my own boring, monolithic home empire never did, and most of them were made by people who literally poured their lives into working on them. From Eiichro Oda's future-destroying, decades-long devotion to making One Piece to Kentaro Miura giving his life to practically paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel in pen on page after double-page spread in Berserk, to all of the hyper-passionate, universe-shattering early works of Hideaki Anno and his animator cohorts, I thought that I lived in a world of weird and wonderful treats whose cooks had the work ethic of demigods and the talent to match.

And even on the lower levels of the medium, among fan artists, cosplayers, writers, posters, historians, I felt surrounded by people who lived and breathed impossible passion, whose lives must have been defined by a kind of information processing my brain simply wasn't capable of. They had some ability to inhale the miraculous vapors of an abundant artistic landscape and spew out works of their own that further decorated the texture of a fleeting age of impossible marvels. And all that time, there I was, left on the sidelines, interested in many things but passionate about none, and lacking the motivation to really work to pursue anything at all. It was (and, honestly, still is) a state of existential discomfort similar to that sort of lonely-girl-pining, but doubtlessly far larger in scale. Some people had passion, while I had nothing to show for all my years of being alive. For fuck's sake, there was so much stuff out there, and I barely could muster the motivation to even read any of it most of the time.

After a while, I started to feel like I was simply broken, like I was an empty person that didn't belong in the very world I loved living in. And while I think this might be a niche outlook and insecurity (although one represented, to my profound gratitude, in Masami), I think it's also how a lot of people think about love. Love is often portrayed as a feeling sparked entirely of instinct, one that, when a person truly feels it, will never cause them to make any mistakes or do anything fucked up to those they care about. Something that will drive those bolstered by it to impossible heights, improve lives beyond the sorrow and loneliness to which they are otherwise condemned. But, as Kayako learned and as Masami and I are having to find out, that isn't really the whole story.

Expression is love. Love is process. Therefore, expression is also the labor of putting love through a process, of rigorously trying to get your ass in a seat and put in the steps of putting your feelings into form. As this is required of art, so is it required of relationships. And so the two are a cycle. Creation requires emotions to process; relationships require emotions to be processed. And the love that creation inspires feeds itself into the love for others that inspires the emotion to fuel more creation. A Labor of Love. Again, I know I'm New.

But this is what Kayako has been working up to all movie long, first with her silence, then with some words, then with the labor of painting, the iteration of getting better, then with more words again. She has found a slow cycle that is elevating her above her loneliness, a cycle that Masami helped create, and is welcome within, but that can, if need be, exist without her.

Love, labor, process. Expression, creation, process. Creating, processing, choosing...in the end, to do it all again. To stay with what--and who--you have labored to love. And that is the choice Kayako has made.

I have not yet answered what, after thinking and writing about this movie for days on end, might be the substance that can replace loneliness as fuel for the alchemical cycle of emotional taking and giving. By the end of the lovers' reunion, sitting by the road under the slowly-illuminating blue of a haphazardly-clouded dawn sky, Masami doesn't feel like she has an answer, either. She feels small and hollow, manipulative and weak. She's jealous of the coping strategy her own girlfriend has developed to deal with the effects of her bad behavior. So, in the end, what is she? What is there even left for Kayako to love?

I'll be honest, this feeling is so fucking real I get perilously teary every time I think about it. Because, for as much as I mused about Kayako's feelings resonating with me as a former and sometimes girl-piner, when it comes to my current relationship at age 22, it's Masami in whom I see myself most clearly and brutally. It's hard not to when she is the only representation in romance, let alone in yuri, I have seen so far who is as much of a fucking brat as I am at times. Whose tendency to sabotage her own relationship makes it so asymmetric that what her girlfriend feels appears almost one-sided, but whose love is real all the same. If she lacks process, talent, maturity, mystique, if no one is ever going to be good enough for her, then what at all does she have left?

The answer to all of this is the thing that lies at the core of her being, that makes her who she is. The source of her potential to express herself, the starting point of a process yet to fully begin. It's hard to see, but it's there. Its what makes her Endou Masami. And its what Kirishima Kayako loves the most.

It's color. It's the thing at the core of creation that can't be described with words, that forms the motivation for any process. Its the vivid purple of a painted grape whose intentional creation transcends deception and nurtures discovery. It's the blue of a dawning sky whose light guides two girls in messy, lopsided love back into each other's arms. It's Kirishima Kayako. It's Endou Masami. It's what everyone has, and it's all anyone has.

It's the source of love, its process, and its object.

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Eventually, Kayako has to leave for Tokyo. That's the decision that's best for her, and its a decision that, for the time being, will leave Masami behind in the countryside, hard at work on the process of learning to love herself. At the end of the film, she sends Kayako one final piece of proof of who she is. It's a painting of sorts, recorded on VHS, composed not of oil but of compressed light and sound. Stylistically, as the camera zooms in, it begins to resemble less Renoir and more Rothko: at first, its the beach, then, simply the point of the horizon, the area where the sea and sky meet. Its raw, not quite processed, pure color, vibrant blue, filtered and compressed into chunky, washed-out 800x600.

By way of description, "this is all I can do."

For years, I've struggled to believe that my emotions, hindered by depression and self-sabotage, have any value at all. As someone for whom love, passion, and expression have always felt difficult, even putting my thoughts down on a page, let alone drawing, painting, composing, or directing, has always seemed impossible. Recently, though, I've grown a lot. I've found the beginnings of a process learned to accept its existence. Both this process, and all the loves that go along with it, are often uncomfortable. They are painful and brutal and blissful things into which to pour the labors of communication and the torments of understanding. I've learned to process discomfort for the sake of creation, to create for the sake of love. It sounds cheesy, but again, I can't help what I wanted to write about.

I hope you'll join me as I find more new things and tough feelings I love to process on this account. There's so much more I'd love to say about blue, just for starters. I could talk about my undying appreciation for the work of Mikako Ishikawa, or how the shots in this movie are so gorgeous and evocative that I'd seen many of them before in "Japan in the 00s" vibes compilations.

But, until then, this is all I can do.

[silentiaray]

Meet beautiful characters of one of the most talented artists of my community - Mussy_Zefirchik!

Masterpost

Lycoris / Cory A judge, who knows all laws by heart. Studied law prior to the catastrophe and is quite successful in his field on the Moon. Quartz's deputy. In his work he is cold-blooded and unemotional, he's all after justice and honesty, and exceptionally complicated cases attract him the most. Is good at psychology. He's often found at his desk with some paperwork or discussing with his colleagues. In his free time Lycoris prefers to read or to pursue his hobby - butterflies. This harsh at first glance judge has a passion for studying alates, he also has a small collection at home. His high level allows him to modify his wings from time to time, to mimic his favorite specimens. In communication he's calm, keeps eye contact and often straightforward, but tactful. If you're close enough - Lycoris won't mind smiling and discussing something fleeting and close to his heart.

Yukki One of the olds who survived the disaster. Kind, sometimes cunning and doesn’t mind helping with advice. The character of a ringtail often manifests itself in slight carelessness, but he is accustomed to approach his work meticulously. At the fourth level, he lost his mentor, but survived, taking refuge in the remote corners of the Glass Desert - the place of his birth. Remembering the landscapes of the Desert and the tall glass columns, he decided that he would become a glazier. Using moon sand as a material, Yukki created various glass items, wanting to lighten the mood of those around him with bright colors. For a long time it was just a game, but closer to the ninth level it became a profession. Now he creates glass for window frames and showcases, tiles, stained glass and many other products, helping in architecture. The hobby is not far from the business - Yukki often makes vases and small glass decorations, which he is always ready to give to those who wish. He has a ward named Maple. At first, the newly made mentor had a burning desire to pass on his skills “from hand to hand,” but their desires in choosing a profession diverged. Despite this, he is not angry. On the contrary, he is proud and glad of the independent choice of his ward.

Maple The owner of a small tea house called "Warmth". Despite the rather “noisy” composition, she has a calm and extremely friendly character. She always wanted to create a cozy nook where slimes can relax after a hard day or just have a peaceful conversation with each other. Some slimes say that they simply can't imagine her without a cup of strong brewed tea in her paw. The unusual look of her horns is her own unique fire mutation.

Pumpkin / Pum Since childhood, he was very curious and often hot-tempered. Because of his mentor’s hobby, he liked books and often asked to read them, even if they contained scary stories or abstruse phrases. Gradually this grew into an incredible rush to learn as much as possible. He can be called well-read, but this fact did not bring him much benefit. Pumpkin wanted to try himself in many things, to find something special and pleasant, but found it hard to decide what he really wanted to work with. Now Pum only helps his mentor on the night shift in the tea house, snacking on various sweets and talking with visitors. His relationships with others are very soft. He loves to listen and share rumors, and occasionally scares kids if they make too much noise. He treats Maple like an “auntie” and is a little jealous of her unusual horns.

Jasper Yukki's second ward. Extremely joyful kid, who likes to explore everything around him, especially his master's workshop. Loves to interact with slimes a bit older than him, because they know and can tell more. Already interested in joining community, making friends indiscriminately. You've definitely seen this bun at least once a day! Growing up he didn't receive any Fire or Boom plorts, because Yukki didn't want to repeat his previous mistake, so he let his ward pick his own path. But it seems those worries were in vain, Jasper questions his mentor non-stop about his workshop and glassware in general; frequently helps with little things in the workshop. It's not very hard to guess which plort he wants to get next.

[deepdreamnights]

Classic Comic Villains: The Unnatural Selector

Pinup scan from TyrannoMax #21, Cocytus Comics, 1977

Born in a lost corner of the cosmos, the cosmic demigod known as the Unnatural Selector has but one driving concern: life and its propagation. For millions of years he has wandered the cosmos, transplanting populations and terraforming worlds to seed life in new corners of space and in his time-accelerated Genesis Engines, where he can study evolution in all its forms.

Part of this study is the "Tournament of Life," a cruel experiment where champions of a given world face a series of deadly trials and battles against disasters and the Selector's prized monstrosities. The biospheres of those that fail are scoured in a mass extinction event.

The Unnatural Selector was a regular foe of TyrannoMax, and showed up in several Cocytus Comics titles including Johannes Factotum: Professor of Practically Everything, True Life Tales of Science Fiction, and Barton's Mix-Ups!

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A little sneak peek of a panel from an upcoming multi-page TyrannoMax comic I'm working on, reworked into a pinup. Bonus points if you can guess what the Selector is an anthro of (its not an animal, exactly.)

The Selector is a heavy edit, the main components of which are here.

As with most of my Tyrannomax stuff, the images are first composited, then reverted back to B&W lines, edited and inked, before being recolored from scratch.

I accidentally saved over the unedited background image, and Dall-E 3 is bad at archival.

I probably won't be going into this kind of detail on my process for the full pages, because this here is just one panel.

The Selector is a character concept I've had for awhile, this is just the first time I solidified a visual concept. A mysterious space god with a taste for trials and tournaments is a classic comic villain archetype, after all, and the evolution-obsessed villain fits nicely with dinosaur characters.

Might do a whole Coctyus Character Catalogue entry for him if the druthers hit me.

Prompts:

A cobra standing on a chunk of rock floating in in the cosmic void, it is reared up, threatening, facing toward the viewer, comic panel by jack kirby and john byrne, 1977, angled view

a cosmic nebula in the vague shape of a DNA double helix, comic inks by jack kirby, 1968, trippy, in the style of syd mead

A robed creature stands, one hand outstretched, palm up, toward the camera, he has a lion's head with a mane made of green flames, wearing cosmic-tech gauntlets, imposing, mysterious, foreboding, standing on a rock floating in the starry void, wide stance, standing tall, comic panel by jack kirby and wally wood, 1968, in the style of 1960s marvel comics, eerie cosmic coloration, wide angle, full body. The mood is dramatic.

[superconductivebean]

UM YOU CAN'T JUST PUT IMELDA/CONSTANCE FLASHBACK IN YOUR TAGS AND NOT SHARE *makes grabby fists*

hee hee i think i can call this

imelda reyes headcanons post - 8

Imelda Reyes: >>>1 || >>>2 (nsfw) || >>>3 || >>>4 || >>>5 || >>>6 || >>>7

Once again raising my head from the Brainrot fog to share some character headcanons with the world. Brainrot is a fic I’m working on.

This one is incredibly Brainrotted though, so no fandom tags.

And it's a bit messy I think.

I'll start from a tad far away.

A few months ago, while working on Julia's 6th year and its events, I began working on Hogwarts Quidditch Teams' compositions. To be frank but also to keep it short, Julia's 6th year covers the aftermath of the Rookwood's downfall; it caused an international scandal.

So, in order To Repair And Strengthen Bonds between The Magical Communities Of The Western Europe, the Triwizard Tournament has been announced to be taking place at Hogwarts during the school year of the 1891/92. It evidently holds Lots Of Politics, therefore has very little to do with any kind of tradition lest it assumed to be a fist in the British Ministry's face from the French and the Northerners joint effort to, well, regulate the trade more effectively unless anyone likes a magical sea warfare under the noses of muggles internationally.

Anyway, Julia wasn't chosen to participate in the Tournament. The Tournament is Natmara's moment to shine (apparently Amara made her way in Julia's story as a rival character many months ago but then uh, she and Natty were having a blast to the best of their abilities; Ancient Magic that, Sebastian this, no and no, Natty will slay).

Instead, Julia was suggested to try out for the Quidditch Team.

This bit is very important because Quidditch is Imelda's domain. And because of the Tournament, Hogwarts needed an entirely new team to represent itself in the interlude event of the interschool Quidditch matches. I'm convinced the schools would totally do that when they have a chance. Imelda was naturally hyped up -- but it meant she has to meet her disaster lesbian past of Constance (and Charlotte, too!).

Constance and Charlotte were fierce beaters, they were enlisted to Hogwarts School Team; on a side note, Julia, too, she was a reserve Seeker in case Danny -- also made his way into all this! -- wouldn't be available due to the extensive studying regimen for NEWTs.

So about that.

Imelda's 3d and 4th years were the time of her accepting she 1) liked girls 2) but not many girls, if any, liked her back 3) and if she tried to meet their expectations, the rejection felt sharp and heartwrecking.

I mentioned it somewhere, that I imagine Hogwarts to view clothes and other contemporary things very differently from muggles. If to retell it shortly, Imelda wasn't judged for her attire. But everyone had noticed it, and all inherited notions from the muggle world sipped through the speech. Her girlkissing ambition stopped being a some kind of rumour, she had basically said, no men allowed to court her.

Was 4th year Imelda comfortable with it? No.

But had she received attention she began to crave? Yes.

Had she been told not to date a Quidditch player from the opposite team, for her own team? Multiple times. She didn't listen.

Constance was a challenge and anything but a first love; something Imelda perhaps wanted, but Constance, being also a year older than her, realised Imelda needed something she didn't have. Their volatile relationship -- much the same of Beater-Chaser dynamic on the Pitch -- ended in a heated argument after Imelda's query for going further with this or not, to which Constance replied with a rhetorical bladger; decidedly so, as she wanted Imelda to feel alienated and left with an impression she was only asking for minute things, nothing more, nothing less. it hurt Imelda of course. She was young and very impressionable.

Years later she understood the message, though. She needed to state everything she could want from the beginning. But she was yet to understand what it was, and asking Constance about it felt incredibly wrong; she only knew the expectation of another could be met within reasonable limits of her own, anything beyond that meant a goodbye.

With an idea of a concept of a gist of the wish for something in a relationship that grants butterflies in the stomach but doesn't require any consummations or sacrifices for bits of crumples of shards of love and appreciation, Imelda crashed into Charlotte Morrison in her 6th year (an important detail).

The Hufflepuff Quidditch Team Captain, also a beater, and far less forgiving and playful than Constance, Charlotte was demanding.

She had certain expectations of the kind Imelda felt one could've been only born with. It alone was exhausting, and realisation people of her liking actually existed made Imelda jealous of them. Yet, she was only beginning to realise while there were limits, sometimes, that limit didn't have sense because nobody measures density with rulers.

The only similarity between them was competitiveness. Anything else could've been described as Badgers Eat Snakes; Eagles Hunt Snakes, by the way.

But unlike Eagles, Budgers leave the carcass.

Imelda was rejected again, and it felt horrible. Instead of a journey Charlotte required someone… ready for commitments, their own character, someone equal. It'd be incorrect to call Imelda inferior, but Imelda certainly felt that of herself when Charlotte left her around the final of the Quidditch season, in April'92.

I don't know how to tell it short, but uh

Imelda exploded with her pent up feelings at Julia, accused her of many things, all on Julia's birthday, and only stopped, realised she just told her bestie to fuck off and go seek out her Peculiar Special.

Julia, under a lot of stress due to being a less trained player and told mean things near constantly, didn't have it in herself to calm Imelda down or her what else she had to say, and just left.

It's important because after Julia left and was later found half-alive because A Certain Someone Mr De Vries Attack Her, Imelda had a mental breakdown because 1) she was accused of causing all of this 2) Julia told everyone to shut the fuck up and leave Imelda alone 3) Julia never rejected her but called out on calling Poppy a name , it was rude, Poppy was their mutual friend 4) The Lesbian Tragedy ensued because neither has left her stranded and offered a company understanding Imelda didn't mean all of this, made mistakes, it was alright, she was safe, she could stay for as long as she needed -- and the rest was history.

Somehow it became The OT3 Origin Story but Constance and Charlotte were important in Imelda's character development.

They shaped Imelda's understanding of what she should want from a person and a relationship as a whole. But she never knew she'd end up in a coven??? (wizworld's legal system would probably call it that and in the press, will be OMG LOOK THIS FORM OF LIVING HADN'T DIED OUT? GO GIRLS SHOW 'EM TELL 'EM TRADITION OF OUR WORLD HAS BEEN REVIVED!!!)

[cherrylng]

2001 'Origin of Symmetry' Interview - Matthew Bellamy [CROSSBEAT Muse Special Book]

"You're playing mellow songs all the time, and then suddenly you can't help but explode and play the heavier stuff, because you keep doing the same thing and you get bored of it."

2001 interview revealing the background to Origin of Symmetry. Interview by Akiko Mima

The quality and scale of the songs on 'Origin of Symmetry' have improved dramatically. Some of the songs were already performed live when you came to Japan last year, so the songwriting process seems to have gone smoothly, but what was the most difficult part? 「For this album, it was difficult to manage the equipment and decide on the recording method. There were so many options. We ended up mostly sticking to a simple three-piece band format, because we got confused with too many instruments and equipment. 'Megalomania' and 'Space Dementia' are big, heartfelt compositions, and we struggled to find a good way to reproduce them with just three people. Especially as we did most of it on piano and the harmonies were quite complex.」

Yes. This time around, you made a new attempt in terms of sound-making, actively incorporating synths, piano and strings. Is this because you wanted to broaden your sound without sticking to a three-piece rock band? 「We want to break the limits of a three-piece band. Especially when I write songs, I'm half piano, half guitar, and I want to somehow incorporate that into the album. Of course, I also love bands like Ben Folds Five, and I want to show that a three-piece doesn't necessarily have to be guitar-oriented.」

What do you think is the difference between the first album and the new one? 「Well, I think it's that we're more confident. We've become more sure of our skills as musicians. Overall, we're sounding more like a three-piece band.」

The combination of your emotional vocals with the overall intense guitar sound of "Bliss", "Space Dementia" and "Plug In Baby" is impressive, but what is it that drives you to such intense emotions? 「Maybe it's that……. Uh, what's that? (laughs)…… Ah, yes. I think that people today have a vague fear that something is wrong with humanity, compared to people in the past. They have a premonition that in another 100 or 200 years there will be fatal environmental destruction or disasters, don't they? Young people are using all kinds of things as a medium to connect with other people in this situation. I also have the feeling that I need to be more connected to the world, and I think I'm driven by that. I'm not very good at conveying messages, but one thing I can say is that using too many words can be intimidating. So I'd rather stimulate people with music than with words. I want to make people realise the connection between people through sound.」

But usually artists want to express themselves first. Is that not quite the same thing? 「I don't think I can give you a definite answer, but the name of the band "Muse" was also given with the intention of inspiring people to be creative in the world…… Maybe (laughs). For me, music is a way of expressing what I can't communicate in my everyday life.」

What is it that you wanted to achieve with this album? 「It wasn't a very difficult idea. I just wanted to make life a bit better (laughs). I just wanted to make a better album than the last one, that kind of thing. There was no big concept, just a constant expansion of our knowledge of what was going on around us. Especially making this album, I learnt a lot about music and myself. Touring and meeting new people has also been very informative. I just want to keep absorbing information.」

What does the album title 'Origin of Symmetry' mean? 「It has to do with the artwork. There are about 15 artists involved, each doing something in a different form. It could be a two-dimensional painting or a three-dimensional statue. But they are all given a common theme. That's 'bringing order to chaos'. In other words, finding symmetry in chaos. It's the same with the songs, there are different styles, but the basic idea is the same. The title also ties in with my idea of "consciousness". For me, "consciousness" is the evolution of all elements. When objects are broken into incredibly fine particles in the Big Bang, they eventually make up the nucleus. When the nucleus becomes conscious, it becomes an atom. The atoms go back and forth violently with each other and eventually build elements. This process repeats itself and eventually evolves into planets and stars. The countless stars in the night sky were originally one star that exploded a long time ago. When you think about it, you realise that in the very beginning all the planets and stars were united under one consciousness. That's why, I think, humanity is in a violent collision with each other, i.e. in a state of chaos.」

I think the vibrant and dynamic sound of the new album is the result of repeated live performances. Muse is a band that places a lot of importance on live shows - what is the stage like for you? 「It's where I can feel myself as I am. I'm also happy to be able to present myself to so many people. Especially when you live in a city surrounded by a lot of people, you tend to become closed off, don't you? So it's fun to be able to expose myself freely on stage. Especially when you have friends close to the stage, you can be more honest with yourself. I think everyone does something similar in their own way.」

Yes. I also think that Muse's music is characterised by 'strange contrasts'. Within a single song, movement and stillness, hope and despair, light and shadow, heat and cold coexist. When you write songs, are you always aware that there are two sides to things, or multiple sides? 「Maybe I am. I don't know if it's completely conscious. At least not intentionally. But I do think that life is always about how you reconcile between the poles. In any case, I'll be playing mellow songs all the time, for example, and then suddenly I explode and I can't stop playing heavy stuff. Sometimes I mix mellow and heavy in one song. If you keep doing the same thing, you get bored of it.」

I see. And one more thing. I think there is always a sense of "pain" behind the intensity of Muse's sound. 「It's not "pain", it's me in an extreme state. Otherwise, it's the result of pushing my body to the limit using my emotions. Some people might see it as "pain", but for me it's the greatest pleasure. Well, it's not so much pleasure, it's more like a great emotional experience. I can't say it well. No, I can say it, but I'm embarrassed. For example, let's say I'm having the ultimate sex (laughs). It's the greatest pleasure, but if a child who doesn't understand sex sees it, it's just pain. What you see in music is also an extreme state of enjoyment for me.」

Yeah, yeah (laughs). Even in the song structures, many of the songs start off calmly, but then change key and become hard. Are you trying to express that kind of worldview in these songs too? 「I don't know. I wonder if it's just a quirk? (laughs) It's true that it's something that's inside me. In the end I'm making a sound that I find interesting, and that sound is somewhere between calm and extreme.」

Well, you go from calm to angry quite often, don't you (laughs). I wondered if it was the same for you, by any chance. 「Yes, of course, there are times when I feel limited by my physical condition or social situation. I just don't know the specific cause. I'll have to think about it next time (laughs).」

Considering when you started out in music, how do you think you have changed as a songwriter? 「Hmmm. I think I've gradually become more open than before. I'm no longer ashamed to be honest. In the beginning, I was worried about whether what I was sending out was reaching listeners in a meaningful way, but now I'm more satisfied with myself as I am.」

With the saturation of various technologies and methodologies, the concept of 'rock' is also changing, isn't it? Radiohead are a band who have found a new way of life for rock by dismantling the conventions of rock, what do you think of their kind of methodology? 「In the end, we're all human beings in the same way. Some of them use music as a tool to communicate their thoughts. But it doesn't matter what technology, equipment or style you use to communicate. What is important is the emotion in the music. People create different styles. Not only music, but also religions are very diverse. But the reality is that the world is now integrating so many different cultures that categorisation is becoming less and less meaningful. Whether you are a Christian or a Hindu, you are looking for the same thing. It's the same with music. Even if a band's style of music suddenly changes, you have to understand that it's still the same people who are making it.」

As for Muse, are you aiming to create a sound that will be ahead of its time? 「(laughs) I'm still too afraid to talk about that. Hehehe.」

Or is it always the individual listener that you are aiming for? 「Yes. I want to value the individual. I just want to keep making good music, but I don't want to be famous for it. In any case, any band that says they want to make a sound that's ahead of its time is going to be ridiculed by their listeners.」

"I genuinely believe that there can't be a new sound, that we're just taking what's been ingrained in us for thousands of years and mixing it with what's old."

Hahaha. But artists are all about "new", aren't they? They want to keep evolving, rather than going back to tradition. 「I think the 'new' is just a mixture of the old and the modern. Tomorrow, a new pianist might emerge and people might say that his style is innovative, but in fact it's a style that's been used for hundreds of years. Of course, it's important to keep learning new things to feed yourself. But I believe that there can never be anything genuinely new. I think it's always just a mix of old stuff. You're inheriting something that's been ingrained for thousands of years somewhere. If you try to trace the origin, it will be chaos, a big mess.」

Translator's Note: I've spent 2 days scanning more magazines to be uploaded onto my hard drive. Still quite a lot to go through, really.

[zephywolf0]

Very Long update!

hi to esteemed followers and (mostly) mutuals!

looks like i've done one of those things again where i leave my blog for months, convinced i'll never post anything again, only to return later with my art vastly improved. the only thing different this time is that i'm openly discussing it and not just quietly slipping an image onto someone's dash.

if you followed me for art - firstly, thank you kindly, secondly: how!? god some of this old stuff looks downright terrible!

and thirdly, you can expect at least some crumbs!.. unless i start forgetting to post again.

in my last personal update post i announced making this an "everything blog" which in hindsight was aributary because i still draw... mostly just greasers and psychobilly stuff with a few exceptions. i think when i posted that i was having one of my annual Vampire - the Masquerade fixations and expected most of my art to be centered around the game for much longer than it actually was. in the end, this remains The Blog of What I Was Gonna Draw Anyway.

i even actually got into making the comic i've been wanting to make forever (since like 2021 lol) and it's super exciting! i actually got the story kind of ironed out and i feel like i can maybe really stick to it this time? back then i constricted myself too much w composition and also just didn't have the skill to pull most of it off and now i actually can!!!!! i'm seriously surprisngly proud of myself! look at this compasion of march vs a few days ago!

march on the left new on the right lol

now into some actual personal stuff - mostly just because i seriously need to get this off my chest and for anyone interested in why i've been gone to get a little context, so tread the next couple paragraphs carefully as it is just a whole lot of complaining. unless you love reading internet strangers' woes it's not for you hahaha

things for me for the past couple of months aside from a few bright spots have been whatever the opposite of rock n' roll is (stand still and shuffle maybe.)

i graduated - obviously this was a lot of stress; i'm an animation major and crammed an about two and a half minute music video into a couple months, which was uhh hard. the band subsequently left me on read which i'm both mortified by and also can't blame them for cuz it did turn out ass. the entirety of my time after graduation was spent trying to find a job: as a non-citizen, getting into university didn't exactly seem in the books for me if i can't pay for it myself as i seriously didn't wanna put that additional stress on my parents. this was mostly fruitless as the job market is in the absolute crapper right now.

then i finally got covid after avoiding it for literally the entirely of the pandemic; the illness itself went surprisingly fine, but what came after is the actual disaster i live today. my immune system was completely destroyed and my chronic illnesses spiked. this caused me to lose the job that i did manage to get (let's go somehow below minimum wage!!!!) as i had an inflammation in my spine and was fired cuz i couldn't go into work.

right now my time is spent being sick ever since i got covid in august and also trying to get some documentation sorted. i need a citizenship and i need a disability status cuz if my health keeps on going this way i seriously can't see how i'll have a "real job" and even the measly hundred coin that the goverment can provide would be a massive help.

now this is where we circle back to one of the reasons this blog was started in the first place: being an immigrant really sucks! while yes, every day i'm grateful i'm here and not back there there are still some major fallbacks that can't exactly be ignored - mainly the fact that my current country may not want to let me in while my home country may not want to let me go. this is not something i have control over.

and speaking of my country, some big changes have been happening here that have definitely affected me hard. i mentioned in a previous textpost some long while ago that i'm no stranger to xenophobia and being stereotyped, and that has lately been blown way the hell out of proportion. PEOPLE ARE GETTING MEANER. PEOPLE ARE GETTING MORE CLOSE MINDED.

i don't really wanna disclose where i'm from in this post, i think i've mentioned it before, but if you're familiar you'll catch on.

yes, i understand this is an issue that affects all immigrants everywhere. yes i understand i'm super lucky to be where i am. but i am human and i can hurt and by god i am hurting right now. there's been a massive effort on my country's behalf to remove my first language from media; all schools that taught in my first language have been transformed to, well, not do that; there's a massive stained hole at the main train station where a sign in my first language was hanging. and i feel it. a child born here will no longer be of whatever family they belong to but they will be of the country and it hurts me.

again, i understand that this is a universal experience for migrants but to see it happen in real time is terrifying and absolutely discouraging. people see this change as a nice excuse to become absolutely horrible to those around them, and it's separating us instead of one country into two communities - "us" and "them," and i don't see the benefit. nobody i personally know sees the benefit, and yet somehow nobody who chooses to actually speak out on it seems to find this objectionable in any way at all - in fact, most outlets and spokespeople, whether they are from here or not, see this as a good thing, that those like me should just suck it up, "be more like them," that this is common sense. sure, in the vacuum of historic context, it might be, but we aren't living in history, we are living in the present and real people are affected and hurt by this. our great-great grandfathers don't give a shit. they're dead.

i'm alive and i breathe and i have a family i want to speak to and celebrate with in the way we are comfortable. i can keep moving, i can keep going, but i can't outrun my face which i feel gets more and more foreign the longer i look at it in the mirror.

all of the things above combined have been a massive strain on me psychologically and social media was seeeeeeriously the last thing on my mind. i gotta be honest i don't know WHAT force is holding me together rn but it's doing a damn good job because recently i actually started enjoying existence again. maybe it's cuz i learned not to be so depressed indoors; usually i couldn't go a few days without going outside without completely breaking down, but now sometimes i completely forget that going outside is something you Need To Do and just enjoy indoor hobbies. i know people usually say the opposite but i'm very sporty and active and enjoying being inside the whole day is kind of nuts. i've been loving my space more and more and i guess found a way to adapt my energetic nature to a constricting situation. i'm proud of myself for that too.

thanks for reading if you stuck it out this long and look forward to more drawings, hopefully.

[taraljc]

So while the continuity in the films is an absolute disaster, there's a fair bit that can be handwaved. but Jean Gray being born 10 years earlier is not really one of those things. However I do wonder if Charles saw more of the future than he ever disclosed when he read Logan's mind in 1973. maybe that's why he goes off the absolute fucking rails by the time we get to Dark Phoenix. like he is so desperate to change what he saw in Logan's mind and yet instead he ends up doubling down and fucking up even harder which is kind of endearing in a way. but I'm not entirely short counts as character development. And it's still annoying that Charles and Hank are more fully realised characters than any of the female leads including Raven.

Also I find it vaguely fascinating that Hank apparently created his serum, and was using it for a solid decade before the timelines branched, and yet Kelsey Grammer's Hank in Last Stand acts as if he hasn't seen his own skin before when he's exposed to Jimmy's powers.

Hilariously, I care less about the cure from Last Stand turning out to be only temporary (and what makes it worse is that Bobby and Kitty apparently still get together even though Marie took the cure) then I do Charles' complete disintegration from reality being only temporary.

Considering that we actually see Jean reverse the Phoenix effect that she used to basically disassemble people to their composite molecules when she starts to dissolve Scott and then puts him back together, it makes sense to me that Charles would eventually be able to get enough power to bring back his original body after using Moira's coma patient as a timeshare.

I am glad that they finally in Days of Future Past show Raven fighting because that is one of the things that it defined Rebecca Romjin's Raven. Although the decision to put Erik in jail just so they could have a giant set piece of breaking Erik out of jail is weird because it means that Raven was actually only with Erik for like a year and a half maybe before they parted ways. and I am always going to wonder in the original timeline how they got back together.

(Also it makes me wonder how Wolverine first met Peter Maximoff, and how long the gap between The Wolverine and Days of Future Past is actually supposed to be.)

Although I will say one thing I have never understood about the choices that these films make is they already fucked up the Dark Phoenix storyline once why in the name of all that is holy did they try to do it again? Also it really doesn't work if they push the storyline back to 1992 compared to 2003 because then you have removed Logan completely from the picture and The only thing that worked in that whole stupid Logan/Jean/Scott triangle was giving Logan as a character something to be grounded in even if it was as flimsy and tenuous as it was.

I've also really been weirded by the fact that he apparently regained his memories at one point and it's just never referenced again. Like, he remembers sleeping with a mobster's daughter many times in 1973. and he knows in other universes that he's like 200 years old so he must have recovered his memories created by the traumatic brain injury Stryker gave him.

I need to watch Logan again because I think some of this must be answered in there and I just don't remember or they just didn't care. I think the second option is probably a heck of a lot more likely.

[ithaquasbbg]

Type: Matchup

My name is millie and I go by she/they. I would like an Identity V romantic matchup with either a male or female (leaning male though! ^.^) I have quite a few hobbies, including classical piano & violin, bass guitar, sewing, and programming. But I am also very anxious & insecure so i get anxiety/panic attacks and cry easily (imposter syndrome moment). I am also chronically ill and narcoleptic, which leaves me out of commission every once in a while. Thats all! Thank you and I hope you have a great day! :D

Character limit: any! :>

Hi! I found both a survivor and a hunter who I think would be cute : D so I wrote little drabbles for both!!

MATCHUP 01

#1 Antonio

- Antonio really enjoys listening to music and since you play multiple instruments.. he’d be more than happy to sit by you and listen while you practice

- He seems like the type to be quite good at comforting people. Antonio really has a talent with words and does a good job soothing your anxiety

- More of a “take life as it happens” kind of guy, so if there were days that you felt exhausted or ill and couldn’t do much, he’d be game to sit or lay down with you and rest

- When it comes to things like programming, he’d be a little out of touch when it comes to that.. though he’d probably be interested!

- He’ll watch and attempt to program as well and show you.. though it would likely be a disaster, it’s the thought that counts right?

- On days you were stuck in bed, he’d be able to play you music or tell you stories, he’s probably the type to hold his s/o tight in order to make sure they’re safe, though if you don’t like that, he’s good with quality time as well

#2 Frederick

- As a musician, he’d really appreciate your talent when it comes to playing multiple instruments, even going as far as to begin making compositions for you to try and play (might not all be good.. since he specializes in piano and not violin or guitar)

- In terms of mental health struggles, he also has his own struggles and would probably have an idea of how to help you through it better, sitting there with you for comfort, ect.

- To be honest, I don’t feel like he’s the type to be super active during the day so if you’re out of commission every once in a while, I doubt he’d mind. More time to rest and be with you

- He’s probably a little afraid of you not believing in him as well like his family, but once he gets past that he’d be the most attentive person in the world

- on rough days, he’ll bring food, water, anything you need.. even if he’s tired himself, he’ll try his best to help you however he can.

.

That’s it! Sorry for the long time it took to upload this, hope it is okay :]

[lunar-lair]

oh my god i never told you guys abt my disaster twins competitive pkmn players concept. one sec ill put it under a cut for you bc this might get long lmao

so basically. gen 9 came out, and the boys, in their recent-switch glory, were like omg hell yes. game time. donnie and leo both get violet and mikey and raph both get scarlet (theyve got their own games bc they would tear each other apart if they had to share physical copies trust me) and generally trade around exclusives and chill etc etc. also while im on this leo picks quaxly, mikey is a toss up between fuecoco and quaxly, raph picks fuecoco obvs, and donnie picks sprigatito, as does april when she gets her own copy of violet later (which she honestly only chose for the loyalty points lmao she likes karaidon better)

anyways i was saying. donnie is one of those nerds who like perfectly iv trains his normal ass in-game team and builds perfect compositions around typings and looks up the gyms types n stuff and he was SO excited when he learned abt tera types and how they impacted team comps

leo on the other hand has the messiest type crossover and team comp EVER but still manages to thrash his opponents bc he uses really good movesets and strategies

the twins get into watching competitive videos while they play violet in silence together (hashtag parallel play) until donnie eventually starts commenting on weird stat spreads and leo eventually bursts out about shitty move choices and weird sets, or leo starts showing donnie videos abt odd pkmn getting high in latters, and then they start watching showdown battles...

and they lightbulb.

donnie loves building teams more than anything else, loves making them efficient as humanly possible.

leo loves showing the potential of odd pokemon and would kill for a good strategic challenge after all this time (hes been protecting against nemona and using electroweb against gym leaders, poor guy).

and, well, its not like you need anything special to get on the ladder in violet...

they start out simple, donnie building a basic team and leo reviewing it before going at the basic gen 9 ladders.

they kind of wreck house.

they just start going at the ladders with that team in their free time, then a different one when they get bored, then one with a few oddballs when donnie decides to ask leo what pokemon he wants to use, then they get kind of bored of just paldean pokemon so donnie gets to work understanding showdown...

but while its fun, they dont have anyone to brag to, because their brothers have no fucking clue what theyre talking about.

donnie has experience with youtube, right?

so they set up a little joint thing; a channel called disasterx2, no webcam, just videos about ladder battles. they end up specializing both in unique teams and movesets and in just vids about breaking down walls in ladders with a normal team. what makes both nifty is that donnie explains the whole team comp in a separate video to the battles, and the aesthetic quality is improved by donnies sensibilities and mikeys input (he was absolutely excited when they asked him to help with it. leo was no help. so much offense, actually, i have a feeling his fashion sense is good but the moment you try to make him make something look good visually on its own hes screwed.), and leos strategies are batshit, and ofc the boys are the boys, they go on tangents sometimes when they do real-time audio during battles and sometimes they just. dont cut them out. raph and mikey make guest appearances sometimes, april cheers them on on occasion, her and raph are very relieved bc its finally something non destructive they can spend their time on, its all great.

leo very often picks pokemon and movesets out and then donnie provides the pokemon (through breeding and stat spread tweaking, because god knows hed love that nerd shit). donnie likes it because 1. how leo uses those outlier pokemon is very interesting and 2. it gives him an opportunity to think about how to apply the right stats, natures, etc to apply to the pokemon and moves leo chose.

one of my favorite ever headcanons is that leo gets quiet when he focuses. like, dead quiet, and terrifyingly quiet. hes well known in their fandom for being very chatty over voiceover and then pretty quiet whenever hes playing challenging battles. donnie doesnt understand the strategies all that well so when leo gets too focused he just talks a lot abt the stat spreads and they add extra text to the video lmao. sometimes they utilize their clueless family members to have them ask questions they wouldnt have considered due to their knowledge in videos, sometimes donnie snags mikey while leos too quiet when theyre doing real-time audio, etc the fam knows theyre just glad theyre having fun

looks around flips through my mental notebook. nods twice. thats it i think! basically i think itd be fun if the twins played competitive but donnie built the teams and leo played hehe. i thought of it one day and it just stuck with me. anyways thanks for sticking w me through this long post that i need to end before my phone glitches out oops

[brooklynislandgirl]

What gets your muse in the mood instantly? (Mischa likes to think the answer is 'him'. And he's not talking coital relations)

Body of Evidence || Accepting There's a myth that a shark can smell a single drop of blood from a mile away. The truth is that they have the same sensitivity as most other fish. They can also detect smells at between one part per twenty-five million, and one part per ten billion, depending on the chemical composition and species of shark. Or roughly one drop of blood in a swimming pool. Another truth is that Beth is neither an actual tiger-shark though she can adopt the form and the abilities when she wants to hunt free of guilt or needs a breather from the human world. Neither is she full Rokea like her cousins, most of whom tolerate her only because she Kanaka Maoli, and some only because her grandfather's deed names carry weight even outside the Beast Courts of the Emerald Mother. What she is, though, is observant. Calculating in a way that her brother could never understand, and committed to her beliefs just as strongly as he is to his own. In her estimation, what she is doing now is a Public Service that will go unsung except by their shifting-kin, other Verbena, and no one else. She knows Mischa sometimes worries about feeding off her exclusively though in Grandmother's grace, she seems created entirely for that purpose, and she respects his mostly unvoiced fears. Secretly engaged with Kindred and Kine can be problematic for both sides. Her Tradition often sees his kind as an insult to the natural order, and her kin see him as an agent of the Wyrm. They don't know him like she does. They don't hear the dreams in his poetry, they don't feel his longing for the days he had been alive and able to walk in the warmth of the sun. They don't know the good he does against an increasingly strangled reality, and do not know that he is just as willing to help her correct the balance. And then...then there's people like Todd. Possibly the douchiest of haole types. Thinks that it's okay to call women 'sweetheart', 'toots', and the like, and subscribes that a man can put his hands on one anyway he likes, regardless of her opinion on the fact. Todd comes to her attention via a request to partner with Riley Steel to promote some new blah blah blah. She didn't read the whole proposal, not when it involved land in the Dakotas, oil, and had the Endron logo. They're still digging themselves out of the whole they dug ten years ago, when they were involved in a huge scandal from a pressure pump exploding off the coast of Scotland, killing thirteen or so people and causing a huge oil spill that covered large parts of the coast. The five billion dollar penalty and public discredit was not nearly a just punishment to make up for the disaster. But of all the company's disgusting acts, the two that are the most criminal to Beth and Jay, is the fact that they are investing heavily in hydraulic fracking and trying to build a mega-pipeline in Egypt, which they are currently calling "Apophis." There is a laundry lists of crimes that Todd-Actually-I'm-a-Top-Exec is guilty of and Beth has not a single qualm when she invites him to a secluded spot out by the old lighthouse she knows. He's only too happy to join her and it takes almost less of the five minute walk from the car to the lighthouse before his hands are already on her shoulders, her back, her other places. She isn't quite faking the elevated pulse, the soft gasping breathes, or even the flood of warmth in her most delicate places, but they aren't for Todd. No, those belong entirely to Mischa as he seems to the mortal eye to materialise from the darkness itself. She isn't so full of herself that she thinks the look on his face has anything to do with jealousy, but in her own fantasy, it's nothing but. That someone would dare presume to manhandle his Sprite. His fangs gleam as he flashes as smile at her, pristine white if only for the moment. Sure, Beth could have disposed of Todd all on her own, if she put her mind, and her not inconsiderable talents, to the task. But nothing stirs her quite the way Mischa does in all of his glory, sating his hunger.