#the final presentation of this meme will probably change but

[randomthunk]

Decided I would give the color wheel meme a go, and red is for Riker. He jogs alongside Data as my favorite of TNG. Of all the characters I find him the one I relate to the most, but I also just love his charisma and personality.

[struggling-jpg]

Some Things About Ma Feima (Yanqing) I Learned

And it matters to HSR Yanqing only because some people have had what they heard about Ma Feima affect their views of him even though it really SHOULDN'T imo.

The underlying point I'm trying to get at is that when we hear about parts of a story or characters we aren't familiar with, it'd be fairer to at least try to look into it more before making final judgments, especially if we only hear see memes and short summaries from a person over the internet.

If you're also interested in this topic then this will be very long, so thank you for bearing with me.

And if not, especially because you don't care or don't want to read about 7S/HI3 Yanqing then that's also fair, Ma Feima and Yanqing are different characters, and I hope you have a good day!

(NOTE: CW for the mention/discussion of a notable age gap between characters in the story. There are details surrounding that but I'd rather place this here for convenience. Look out for yourselves and stay safe!)

It's wild how many different versions of what happened in the Seven Swords visual novel, which is understandable due to its lack of official translation + not being complete (as far as I know? I am open to corrections overall). But the amount of details that go missing or are incorrect is notably large and I find this situation interesting. As mentioned, anyone who knows better (content, translation-wise, etc.), please correct me on anything if needed.

I will use some screenshots from the videos that translated the available chapters (1-2 and part of the beginning/prologue of 3, I believe). The translations are not entirely accurate so heck, I might be wrong on stuff too.

From personal experience, there were two things I heard about Ma Feima from HI3 players:

He killed his master, Fu Hua.

He cheated on his wife.

Legit, the first time I encountered these points, it was as simple as that. And I took it at face value because it understandably takes effort to look into this stuff and a lot of players from HI3 were saying it. But over time, curiosity got to me and I wanted to see the context surrounding it, and here's what I found.

However, here are some things to know about Seven Swords and Fu Hua's disciples:

The Seven in order are: Lin Zhaoyu, Su Mei, Jiang Wanxi, Jiang Wanru, Cheng Lingshuang, Ma Feima, and Qin Suyi

The present of the VN is set in 1496 while the assassination of Fu Hua was twenty years prior in 1476.

Ma Feima, despite being the 6th disciple, is the youngest.

Ma Feima's original name was Yanqing but changed it to Feima when he got older.

Qin Suyi, the 7th disciple, is Sushang's mother in both HI3 and HSR.

Lin Zhaoyu, the 1st disciple, and Ma Feima are married.

Onto the points:

He killed his master, Fu Hua.

Yes, he was involved but some attribute the plan to him. BUT he wasn't. The person who formed this plan was Su Mei, the 2nd disciple.

Supposedly, all seven disciples participated though most, if not all of them, were reluctant to do so.

They were all bothered by Fu Hua's, effective but cruel way of dealing with Honkai-infected people (She would wipe out whole villages if even ONE person was infected).

The last straw for the disciples was when Jiang Wanru, the 4th disciple, got infected.

It was in that battle that Ma Feima got the scar on his face.

Also to note, Cheng Lingshuang, the 5th disciple, was the one to get the last hit on Fu Hua.

This is a straightforward point, a lot of people know this stuff, and is probably the point that's more elaborated on. But I still wanted to mention it because, oftentimes, a lot of the credit for the plan, and sometimes the last hit is given to Ma Feima. It erases the actions of other pretty interesting characters and is simply incorrect.

Onto the second point, because this is where things get really interesting and a lot is going on.

2. Ma Feima cheated on his wife.

This has given the idea that he had an affair, cheating on his wife, Lin Zhaoyu

No, he didn't.

It is true that he was in love with Su Mei but she never loved him back and was very clear about it so in a literal-traditional sense, he didn't have an affair.

Emotionally, yeah.

It seems that he had been attached to her since he was a child.

Lin Zhaoyu seems to have always been aware of that and still pursued to marry him.

BIG NOTE: This is where I'm going to cover the age gap stuff.

One thing that I have rarely seen anyone mention is the large gap between Lin Zhaoyu and Ma Feima in age.

It's said that Lin Zhaoyu is 15 years older than Su Mei.

Supposedly, Qin Suyi was around eight years old when Fu Hua found her.

Remember, Ma Feima is the youngest of the disciples.

I wouldn't have harped as hard about the age gap if they met/didn't know each other in Ma Feima's childhood, but the disciples technically grew up together so I found it to be questionable.

For reference:

In order, that's Lin Zhaoyu, Su Mei, and Ma Feima when they were younger.

At minimum and based on all the searching and math, at minimum, Su Mei would be thirteen there, and by the 15-year age gap, Zhaoyu would have been 28 years old.

Now, based on the writing, Zhaoyu and Feima most likely got married in the twenty years between the assassination of Fu Hua and the present of Seven Swords.

The youngest Feima would've been at the assassination was seventeen years old at that point.

For the present of the story, Zhaoyu, and Su Mei are 56 years old and 41 years old respectively. Feima is likely in his thirties.

Like I said, I'm making a big point to this because, like, what the heck. That's MAJORLY concerning even if you tried to reason your way around it. Besides any potential "normal in the era" type stuff and that they got married when they were both adults, it's still a huge yikes, isn't it? Also, I've seen barely anyone mention that, and the ones I did see it from, it was when I was looking into the visual novel.

It's mostly because Yanqing is the one in HSR, he's the character that gets the most eyes. And when people only know him as a "master-killing wife cheater" without any of the context surrounding it, it's a huge shame, albeit fair if people don't want to actively look into it themselves. But because a notable chunk of players have let those perceptions have weight over an unrelated by anything but appearance, old name, and the parallel of (potentially) killing a master.

The circumstances surrounding the two are very different.

HSR Yanqing has Jing Yuan to raise and guide him safely through his early life. He's still very young and while stubborn, has a good head on his shoulders, and has a lot of potential to grow into someone strong and stable.

7S/HI3 Ma Feima on the other hand, is shown to have grown very differently from his younger self.

He is far from enjoying life, and don't get me wrong, he isn't completely innocent.

But he's completely aware and is miserable.

There's a lot more I could cover in terms of Ma Feima, his circumstances, and the things about the characters around them, but my brain is so fried lol. All-in-all, his story alongside the seven, is very...complicated.

My main thing is that, hey, maybe we should be a bit more vigilant when we learn things about characters. Beyond fiction, misinformation spreads very easily because we, understandably, take things at face value. In terms of media literacy, we see it time and time again when characters get reduced to a singular trait or a ship or get heavily misunderstood by the audience because a simplified summary will never do the context justice.

[multiselves]

I had an idea what about like a cluster of selves based on the days of the week and each one is named after a different day and could only present on those days. What do you think?

- 🍭🌿

Okay, I finally finished this! Sorry it took so long, thank you for your patience. I tried to base them on things beings associate with different weekdays, and hopefully that'll come through. Though I really couldn't think of anything for Wednesday and Thursday, I'm still pretty satisfied with how they came out. Btw I never specified which ids are trans, because I really have no way of knowing your cisds? *cartoon gulp* Anyway I hope that's all workable for you :3 Without further ado, I hope you enjoy!

Monday

The basic concept was a very tired businessman, because everyone hates Mondays, right? He's chronically burnt out and just generally tired. He tries to be diligent but honestly he's in no state to be doing favours for other people

Pronouns: he/him and POSSIBLY black/grey/smoke as well if you want, but you cannot tell me a 30 something chronically offline office worker would be using neopronouns

Genders: male, masc, boy+, exhazic, tiredgender, dazegender, humanthing, cigsmokic, lonelygender, blackcoffic

Species: depressingly human

Age: 30 coded, 30-40coded, 30-40 agecluster, demiage

Race/nationality: indian

Xenoidentities: none. this guy has no identity. he exists for the grind

Body: his hands shake a lot, especially when he's nervous. He has eyebags and generally looks visibly tired at all times

Mind: somewhat apathetic, nervous, socially withdraws, "lets get it over with" mentality

Tuesday

I was inspired a lot by the "random Tuesday" meme. You know, that one joke where the most absurd things happen on Tuesdays? I wanted this self to embody a similar destructive chaos

Pronouns: she/he/they/it/that/shi/mew/meow/glitch/eye/spark/holo/rainbow/bark/bite/pink/decora/star/chain/burn/cut/bone/blood/fang/zomb/scream/weird/paint/neon/👾/👽/🦷/🎈/✨/🎉/🎭/🎨/👑/💎/🧩/🧸/🧪/💉/🩹/💊/⛓️‍💥/⛓️/🔪/🚬/🪦/🧮/📸/🪀/✂️/📌/🍕/🍔/🍟/🍖/🥩/🍧/🧁/🍭/🍉/🌷/🧷/⭐/🌠/🌈/⚡/❌/☢️/☣️/🗯️

Genders: girlboy, girl, boy, genderfluid, pangender, genderthing, bitegender, cautionthing, dangerthing, radioactivitan, hazardgender, candygorebodic, nonhumanlexic, glitchgender, electrigender, neonrainbowgender, xenoabominataion, rainbowtoxic, batteracdic, eyestraingender, acidgender, hazardcute, catgender

Species: panspecies but particularly ghost, catboy/girl, god, and eldritch horror. Pinks also nonhuman in a general "i could never be one of them" way

Age: agefluid, their age tends to change based on whatever is most convenient for them? For example if they need to get into an 18+ space

Race/nationaity: panrace/nationality, including xenic ids, though they're presentation fluid

Xenoidentities: decora kei/kidcore/scene inspired fashion. Chains, rainbows, glitchcore, speedcore, horror movies, candygore

Body: height/weightfluid, covered in scars of every type, probably has dyed body hair, rainbow heterochromia, rainbow hair, fangs, star and heart shaped pupils, claws for nails, abnormally strong

Mind: emotionally unstable but kind of just for fun? extra super duper autism (major symptoms are being socially unaware, blunt, extremely sensory seeking, obsessive, and having a disregard for social norms + rules), pantrauma, panharmful (but especially a noncon cannibal)

Other: they have the most insane lore. Genuinely the most insane backstory ever. Sharknado levels of insanity

Wednesday

Wednesday was one of those days that I just couldn't think of anything for, so in the end I decided to do something more unrelated

Pronouns: he (when masc) + she (when fem)/it/that/thing/rot/gut/blood/grime/🦴/🍖/🦷/🥩/🩸

Genders: genderfluid, genderloser, genderlame, genderweirdo, pathetigender, alonegender. Rot tends to present female even when masc, and it considers 🩸self a femboy.

Species: demihuman due to trauma, occasionally a cat kemonomimi depending on that things mood

Age: deathstuck 15

Race/nationality: transjapanese. Or if the primary body is already Japanese, disjapanese (primary race -> white -> Japanese)

Xenoidentities: meatcore, animecore, break/speedcore

Body: very skinny and pale, eye bags, big dark eyes and dark hair, terrible posture

Mind: autistic, self conscious, generally kind of a loser, addicted to the internet, overtly pessimistic. Grime has a very dry, and potentially edgy sense of humour

Other: this mf has NO FRIENDS

Thursday

Thursday is just another one of those days that doesn't have anything associated with it. Thursday is just.. Thursday (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

Pronouns: she/luv/heart/joy/kiss/cake/paw/bun/sweet/soft/cute/heart/cherry/hope/♡/🦑/🪼/🎉/🎀/🍥/🍦/🍧/🍰/🍪/🧁/🍬/🍭/🍡/🍮/🍒/🍓/🌸/🌺/🌷/⭐/🌈/🩷/💗/💖/💌/💫

Genders: fem, paragirl, nonbinary girl, xenogirl, cutegirl, angelgirl, pinkgirl, g♡rl, lacefem, dessertic, strawberric, strawberrycakegender, flanpuddinggender, strawberryheartcakegender, cakegender, chocolatestrawberric, cheesecakegender, creampuffgender, whippedcreamreix, sweetcloudic, pinkbandaidgender, idolfem, purelovic, strawberrybowic, strawberrymilkshakic, sweetiegender, sugargender, sugarcookiegender, genderfluff, fluffycloudgender, cutepastelic, cuteskirtic, lovelettercoric, lovergender, pinkcandygender, poromation, lovebodiment, cupidgender, pinkflux, magicalgirlgender, magicattic, maginurse, idolgender, angelidolic, hopegender, peacecuric, joygender, sprinklesgender, nursejoycharic, cakefrilled, sweetfrilled, sweetmaiden, ribbonfrilled, femfrill, pinkcloudic, cutefrilled, bowgender, cupcakecatgender, cutemelodic, heartcookiegender, pinkgender, pinkribbon, sweetgender

Species: angel aligned human

Age: 19

Race/nationality: white, race apathetic

Xenoidentities: magical cure loveshot, cats, book shops (she finds them cosy), idols, magical girls

Body: very fem cutesy mannerisms, always very energetic, smiles a lot, tends to always be slightly too quiet or slightly too loud, blushes easily, small and light

Mind: 🍡's super kind and sugary sweet, but surprisingly transharmful in the sense that 🍒's pro recovery. ⭐'s not malicious like most pro recovery beings, she's just very misguided

Friday

Friday is the day of the week everyone looks forward to. It's the party day, it's the going out to eat day, it's generally the day where good things start happening. I was really inspired by Aliyah's Interlude, especially her song IT GIRL because of it's confident, sparkly energy

Pronouns: she/zi/her/star/pink/glitz/charm/coral/citrus/lemon/orange/pineapple/cherry/sun/teal/aqua/🐬/🐠/🪸/🦩/✨/🎉/🎵/🍥/🍧/🍣/🍹/🍸/🥂/🥝/🥥/🍇/🍉/🍊/🍋/🍋‍🟩/🍌/🍍/🥭/🍑/🌸/🌺/⭐/🌟/🌈/🌀/🌊/💫 (primarily she because she is "HER".)

Genders: girl, stargirl, coconutgender, tropicalgender, hibiscusgender, candylipbalmgender, hellokittysunscreenic, tropicalcoregender, tropicalfruitemojic, fizzygender, lycheemarblesodic, pinkgender, cherryblossgender, gummysharkic

Species: human

Age: "i became a vampire to suck blood and fuck forever" type energy. Hot forever type energy. 🍋‍🟩 absolutely hoards xenoages

Race/nationality: racefluid between black and white :3 I could not decide between making 🍣 a nice regina george, or going full in with that Aliyah energy

Xenoidentities: IT GIRL, gyaru fashion (she takes a lot of inspo from it), the beach, fruity drinks, over accessorising, cute stuff :3 but in a bold pink bubble writing kind of cute

Body: tanned and tall. Charm has a few tattoos, but nothing big (just cute little stars, dolphins, peace signs etc) hidden away in places you're not likely to see away from the pool

Mind: confident :3

Other: she has a valley girl accent sometimes, and uses a load of slang when talking

Saturday

Saturday is the best day of the week in my opinion. You get to relax a little due to the lesser responsibilities, you get to actually have fun. I definitely associate feelings of leisure with my childhood

Pronouns: he/woof/bark/pup/wag/bone/🐶/🐾‍/🦴

Genders: boy, videogamegender, pikachugender

Species: shapeshifterkin

Age: 8

Race/nationality: aracial

Body: 🦴 has a lot of bruises from running around like a hooligan

Mind: very bookish and thoughtful, but unafraid to go do stupid things like climb a really tall tree, or go on a walk barefooted. Hey, both things can be true at once :3 🐶 has some pretty great problem solving skills

Other: If you prefer he can also be a tomboyish girl, or even flipflop between the two. I'm not totally decided on woofs gender

Sunday

The main things I drew on for Sunday were feelings of comfort, rest, and an almost reverence considering how Sunday is meant to be the day of rest. It was really hard to find good pictures for Sunday unfortunately, Pinterest tends to only have stuff related to younger beings :/

Pronouns: she/they/pie/love/cake/☕/🍪/🥛/🍫

Genders: girl, berrygender, warmgender, comfygender, autumncat, genderautumna, pastromic, browntabbycattic, hotchocoic, teagender, buttertoastic, chocopastry, cookiebuntoastic, pastrygender

Species: human

Age: late 50's-early 60's

Race/nationality: white, southern american

Xenoidentities: n/a

Body: nothing of note, really. But their faceclaim looks slightly older than what I intended. She does give good hugs though

Mind: a very motherly type for sure. She's a good cook, especially when it comes to pastries of any sort. ☕'s got a very calming, comforting aura

Other: christian, has a bit of a southern twang

[oldxenomorph]

can I be absolutely cuckoo bananas insane for a moment and ask, from one yapper to another, for ALL THE QUESTIONS from that meme 😤😤😤

CHARACTER ASKS.

as part of the national yapper coalition, i have to oblige. let me just put everything under a cut because man this got long. i yap and i am a sap. i love the reaper emperor so much 😭💕

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

originally, i played mass effect and mass effect 2 on my cousin's xbox 360. the series changed my life and the rest is history.

but eventually i learned that there's so much more joy and light when you hunt the original canon for sport and send it to the anatomical opera to be vivisected and experimented on. eventually the emperor and her version of mass effect became an outlet for me to be cringe, but free. everything i enjoy (mass effect, cthulhu mythos, alien, dune, wh40k, hellsing, hades) all gets thrown in there.

How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)

i think i made my first sketches of the emperor in 2012, back when mass effect 3 came out. so over 10 years. the difference between then and now is pretty drastic. she's had different iterations over the years, but eventually i shaped her and shaped her until i was finally happy with how she looked.

the things that have remained constant for all these years: alien pale skin, vantablack hair, black lips, red cybernetic eyes and scars.

this final version of her forms bring me a lot of joy. she is true to how i envision her, and she continues to be the entity/story i pour most of my time, energy, and inspiration into. she's my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time centipede. (she's the reason why it's so hard for my to make other oc's, i'm dedicated to her. i dream about her, i think about her.)

What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

appearance, probably. i thought it was very cool that you can make a goth shepard who looked even more cool in mass effect 2 with the renegade scars and red cybernetics in her eyes.

And reverse, which one of the four things did you struggle with the most?

personality. i think for a long while, as i was trying to adhere to the canon the best i could. renegade shepard as she is presented in the game didn't quite match how i envisioned her, she didn't feel quite right whenever i wrote her. for a long while she was a brutal hard-ass and a stickler for military regulations. i didn't feel creative, nor did i feel any real joy.

How did you choose their name and why? Was it simply based on vibes or is there any specific meaning behind the name? Are the reasons behind their name different in- and out of universe?

this would require you knowing what the emperor's true name is, haha. [i get yoinked into a vent by a xenomorph tail]

in-universe: only immediate family members and nyx know the emperor's true name. neither azathoth nor shai-hulud know how she got her name, other than it was probably given to her by the thing that created them. it was the sound they heard when she was born, it was the word seared into their minds. they don't refer to her by her name because they feel it is too sacred to ever be uttered so freely. hence why they refer to her as "precious extinction", "precious emperor", "o precious centipede", "o end of all things," etc.

out of universe answer: when you grow up in the 90s/2000s and your name is also the same as a very popular disney character and nobody your age believes you when you say that you were named after a character from shakespeare's the tempest (your mother's favorite play), you learn to hate your name. i think giving shepard/the emperor my name was a way for me to feel good about myself and it just stuck. very corny, i know.

(i obviously don't hate my name anymore. i'm also fairly certain that because of the source of my name, my brain internalized the idea of an immensely powerful non-human who has a love for humanity.)

What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?

well first came the renegade scars and red cybernetics, i loved those, but i wanted to redesign the way the scars looked so they were more.... mysterious. more.... brutal.

as i sent the canon off to the anatomical opera, i began to shape her to be something that i think reflects her strange nature, her connection to her family, and visually indicate that she is the mother of the xenomorphs.

i'm also someone that uses faceclaims as they help me visualize my own character better (when i have no time to draw). the emperor's gone through a couple (lady gaga when her hair was black, cate blanchett as hela) before i finally settled on rhea ripley as i think she best represents the emperor's facial structure, body type, and aesthetic.

for her true form, i had a slightly more eldritch version of a xenomorph queen in mind. ultimately i changed it when i received inspiration after seeing some cool centipede-monster-hybrid art on my dash and pictures of centipede mothers. so her true form is more like a colossal, 30ft xenomorph-centipede hybrid with her face. also thematically, it fits more in line with azathoth and shai-hulud as ancient worms. the youngest and most beloved and most worshipped sibling should be a beautiful centipede.

What is an aspect of their appearance that you like the most?

if i say everything, that would be cheating i'm sure.

aside from her face, i think what i like the most about the emperor's appearance is her second form’s body. i didn't want her to have a femme biomechanical body as it didn't really suit her, felt ill-fitting. her very masculine, muscular xenomorph-biomechanical body, making her 15 ft tall, giving her tentacles and a xenomorph tail feels right to me. i wanted both of her forms to be both very strange, but also very beautiful. i didn't want her appearance to adhere to any gender binary, she exists and operates beyond that.

What is the origin of their personality? And let's be honest - how much of it is projecting?

little to no projecting, lmao. our only similarities is our place of origin, our love for nyx, the xenomorphs, our families, and humanity? i guess?

but the emperor's personality is very different from that of canon shepard, because oh my god there are some things She Would Not Say or Do.

the origin of a lot of the emperor's personality is alucard from hellsing: arrogant, cruel, sadistic, but she is also unashamed of her love for humanity. she believes that the cycles of organic life should be as diverse as possible, that the stories of civilizations should be equally triumphant and tragic. the cycles of extinction are a necessity, yet she also revels in brutality, violence, and eating, eating, eating.

she loves deeply, with all her heart and all her soul. she will do anything to protect her wife and her daughters and her family. she hates deeply, with every every fiber of her being. she takes greatly enjoys eating stars and organic life and lesser beings. she loves who she is, knows what her purpose is, knows exactly what she is.

How big is their role in the story? Do they make a frequent appearance or are they a character with little "screentime" but big influence? Or are they just a favourite background guy?

shepard is the main character of mass effect, thus the entire canon mostly revolves around the emperor/shepard. the perspective shifts to the great family and nyx when she's asleep for 8 million years until her second shape (shepard) is born. it also changes when you get into different universes and worlds where the emperor is just an unseen force that shapes the way civilizations evolve and advance.

it's been interesting exploring different universes where the emperor is the latter, like in dragon age and warhammer 40k. i like exploring the idea of the looming dread of her arrival in a far future and the race to prepare the world/galaxy for extinction. also, i have a hard time making other oc's, so everything is connected back to the emperor.

What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

the emperor-as-shepard's time amongst humanity and organic life was to learn and develop a reason for why they must be harvested: to preserve the history and diversity of organic life, to make way for new civilizations and new histories. she could only do this by living amongst humanity, by enduring what she endured as a commander.

of course she gets a happy ending. she gets a second form that she loves along with her first one, the wife that she adores, the daughters she cherishes, the machines that were made for her, and reunited with the family that worships her. there are no sad endings here, that's just not my style.

Is there any existing character from other media that your character resembles? Was the resemblance intentional or was it a coincidence?

as i mentioned before, alucard from hellsing is the blueprint for the emperor. her appearance, her personality, her beliefs about organic life. it all goes back to him. even though she's not as sad as him nor does she wish to find a worthy opponent, most of what she is as an eldritch being that is equally brutal as she is empathetic all stems from him. underneath all of her horror and strangeness is a sense of humanity.

in terms of physical appearance, it also kind of goes back to alucard. hellsing was very much a core formative influence for me and he just immediately imprinted upon my brain. one of my oldest muses. i give him a kiss.

i think the funniest sort of resemblance i've noticed that the emperor of mankind (wh40k) looks like a healthier, more human version of her. or maybe it's the neurons in my brain activating when i realized that they both have long black hair. that's all they really have in common.

(maybe nyx can ask the mi-go to make the emperor a black and red crown of laurels with little young black holes scattered amongst them? but the little xenomorphs would probably yoink it off her head constantly to play with it.)

Do you have a playlist for the character? What songs do you associate with them and why?

i do have one, but it's in a perpetual un-finished state. i'm very picky when it comes to making playlists.

the genres i typically associate with the emperor are noise, experimental, dark ambient, dark techno, industrial. i like songs with harsh, unsettling, or unusual sounds. (i know people hate to see me make playlists because i put lorn in almost every single one.)

i mostly try to find things that would either sound like what it's like inside of a reaper, or inside the ziggurat. i also try to find things that give the feel of what high level indoctrination sounds like.

Do you have a voice claim for the character? What do you imagine the character sounds like?

when the emperor speaks, her voice is that of soveriegn's but deeper. it is an immense and cold sound, like that of a machine; alive, immortal, infinite, and eternal.

i also pull inspiration from the voice of magos dominus reditus from wh40k: mechanicus.

(i watched the venture bros. a lot on adult swim when i was a youngin' and dr. girlfriend permanently altered my brain chemistry. and maybe my perception of gender.)

Do you have any quotes tied to the character, either from the story itself or from another source that fit them?

from sovereign's dialogue.

"there is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. i am beyond your comprehension." "we are eternal. the pinnacle of evolution and existence. before us, you are nothing. your extinction is inevitable. we are the end of everything." "we impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. you exist because we allow it. and you will end because we demand it." "we have no beginning. we have no end. we are infinite. millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure."

from the reaper on rannoch's dialogue.

"you represent chaos. we represent order. every organic civilization must be harvested in order to bring order to the chaos. it is inevitable."

Have you ever made a moodboard for them?

i have a pinterest board for her! i'm not super active on pinterest (as it's become mostly generative ai slop) but i occasionally poke my head in when i'm looking for something.

Is there any memes or running jokes associated with the character, both in- and out of universe?

nyx likes to lightly tease her, which she doesn't mind. (anything to hear nyx's beautiful laugh.)

out of universe jokes? o great reaper emperor, can you help me connect to the wifi?

i do think that a kind of running joke/theme in my writing is that the great family seems to be in competition for who spoils her the most.

nyarlathotep can try his hardest, but doesn't come close to shai-hulud, who kills millions of little sandworms so it can send her crates of the water of life. which she has consumed ever since she was a baby and the universe was brand new. the old worm of eternity also sends her spice, in face she is the only being who it gifts spice to and is allowed to enjoy it recreationally.

Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?

puts my hands on my hips and exhales. man.

the sign of extinction - the symbol of the reaper emperor and her house. beautiful, sacred, holy, embroidered in vibrant red upon the black veil she wears to conceal her face when outside. a representation of her and her presence beyond the reapers. it is an eye, a gate, a mouth.

black holes - her imperial crown is formed from an ancient black hole and was placed upon her head by nyog'sothep and nyarlathotep, her stomach/endless appetite, her vantablack hair, the pull of gravity, event horizon, her black lips, her black teeth, her heartbeat, the mouth of god.

the black tar - annihilation, thick and viscous black liquid, bloodline, the material from which she birthed the xenomorphs and the tyranids, that which she fills nyx with every night, black ichor mixing with black tar to create new xenomorphs, new daughters full of stars.

tonalli, teyolía, ihíyotl - the head, the heart, the liver. the soul in three parts. each favored to be devoured by extinction.

death of the sun - her eyes, the death cycle, red giant, the end of earth.

tentacles - thick and black tentacles, strength, instruments of love and pleasure, home, safety, the horror her presence and beauty, the immensity of her presence and power, the reach of her influence. she holds her daughters close, she caresses her wife; writhing, dipping into flesh, crushing gravity.

machine voice/biomechanical body - the reapers, harbinger, indoctrination, cycles of extinction.

some of these overlap with each other and there's probably a lot more i can't think of at the moment.

Does the character have other characters connected to them? Do you have a family tree and "offscreen" connections made up for them or do they exist in a vacuum purely for the purpose of the story?

me, becoming the girl crying while drawing meme whenever i try to chart out the great family. (also this is by no means accurate to ol' howard phillips lovecraft's original tree and/or the additions made by authors after him. this is my personal real estate.)

azathoth - nyarlathotep - yhouneh (marriage) - slaanesh (consort) - lilith (child) - alucard (consort) - nyog'sothep - yog-sothoth - shub-gorgoroth (marriage) - cthulhu - idh-yaa (marriage) - ghatanothoa, ythogtha, zoth-ommog, cthylla (children) - kassogtha (consort) - nctosa and nctolhu (children) - hastur - cassilda (marriage) - camilla (child)

(not including all of the extra lovers taken and children sired by various members of azathoth's line because then this list would be stupidly long and my brain hurts.)

shai-hulud - sandworms (children) - chani kynes (granddaughter)

the emperor - the xenomorphs (children) - tyranids (children, as they were created from her blood) - nyx (marriage) - nemesis - celestial xenomorphs (children with the emperor)

(also not including the rest of nyx's children that she had on her own because they mostly are not involved with the great family)

What is your general favourite thing about the character? What is your least favourite?

my favorite thing(s) about her is that she is so beautiful and strong and she loves her wife, her daughters, and her family so much.

my least favorite thing is that i overdesigned her and now she has too many details i have to keep track of. i did this to myself.

Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about

continues to show everyone this incredible art of the emperor by @fatherentropy like i'm a beauty influencer.

a thing i want to write more of is nyx and the emperor interacting with other people, be the great family or other members of the house of hades. because i mostly write lemons and/or them being sweet, loving mothers of the xenomorphs and tyranids.

and mostly because i want to utilize the emperor's size more, especially in the gestures and touches nyx does in order to show everyone that the emperor belongs to her. (especially if she's wearing something nyx commissioned for her. hehehe.) oh look at all these ovomorph-shaped lemons i have acquired.

[madsworld15]

Why Queer as Folk (2000) Was Seemingly Forgotten

An analysis by a professional TV Critic

Let me start off by saying the initial run of Queer as Folk and its current resurgence can be represented by this mantra by Brian Kinney: There are two kinds of straight people. The ones who hate you to your back and the ones who hate you to your face.

The initial run of QAF coincides with the first half of the statement: hate behind your back.

So, recently I started thinking about how in the early 2000s, Queer as Folk seemed to be on a trajectory of going down in TV history. Then, seemingly just as quickly, people stopped talking about it. So much so that by the time I finished watching it in 2009, I only got a few good months of chatter on social media platforms (Twitter mostly) with other fans before it just stopped being talked about in a wide-reaching manner.

I will even admit that I stopped thinking about the show not long after that and wasn't reminded of its full impact on my psyche until late last year when it was back on easy-access streaming due to Showtime's merge with Paramount+.

But why is it that this show is only just now starting to pick up speed again? (I'm talking fan cams on TikTok, memes, etc.)

I have some theories about all of this, so buckle in.

To really get a grasp of what Queer as Folk was working against when it aired on Showtime -- a paid subscription channel back before the days of an overabundance of streaming services, you have to look at the climate we were living in. Also, how inaccessible a paid TV channel was for most people.

So, in the early 2000s, life in the United States, and probably the world, but I'm not fully educated enough to comment on that, wasn't the greatest for those in the LGBT+ community. It would be years before the President of the United States would pass legislation that Gay Marriage be legal nationwide.

Employers were able to fire people for being gay, and the employees couldn't fight it. Gay parents had very little in terms of rights to their own children; in fact, some couldn't even adopt the kids they wanted to because there were no laws against discrimination.

All of these things are depicted left and right throughout Queer as Folk, with Ted getting fired from his job, Michael being extremely closeted at his job, and Melanie not being afforded rights to Gus because of adoption regulations during that time.

So, for our community to receive a show that was by us for us, we were overjoyed. There was something so resolutely refreshing about the unapologetic manner in which these characters were allowed to present themselves and live their lives. And while the show gets dinged today for its lack of racial diversity, we were glad to see queer people represented in a variety of ways -- we got to see the Emmett's and Justin's of the world being friends with the Ted's and Michael's and Brian's.

Not only that, these characters got to love who they wanted, however, they wanted, and whenever they wanted. Characters like Michael and Emmett could go from wanting to freely fuck whoever to finding that special person and settling down. We got to see Ted find the right guy at the wrong time over and over and over again until it was finally the right guy at the right time.

But most of all, we got to see a character like Brian, who, in the hands of a straight person, might've actually gone "soft" and "domestic" just by being with Justin. Instead, we got to see him never change his opinion about what he wanted, but still finding love in his own way.

However, not long after the show ended (like around 2008), the climate in the United States started to shift more towards open acceptance of the queer community. So, people stopped needing an escape from the hardships of real life because things seemed to be on an upward trend toward love and equality. Therefore, Queer as Folk sort of fell off the radar of viewers because we didn't want more of the gritty, complicated, messy queer stories. We wanted our stories to be happy and lighthearted.

(Keep in mind I am speaking in terms of general viewers. There are always exceptions to the rule)

Then, in 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and suddenly, it was totally okay for people to openly mock us and hate us.

This is where the resurgence of QAF falls into the second half of Brian's mantra: hate us to our face.

Around 2016/2017, people started talking about this show again. And the love and fervor for it has only increased exponentially over the last few years, especially with the onset of COVID-19 and the merging of Showtime/Paramount+. Both events made the public more aware and able to access the show.

Now more than ever, we need something that isn't afraid to show queer people as we are, not as the media and those outside our community paint us. We need to feel like there is a media format that understands what we are like when we are with our closest friends. We say things that, in today's world, would probably get us canceled, and we judge those around us and have very biased opinions about certain people.

Brian Kinney's unapologetic "I am who I am and fuck anyone who tries to change me" attitude is the exact level of strength and courage we wished more people right now had. His biased, but not illogical, opinion of non-queers needs to be loud. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops because we now live in a world where we are hated just for existing as we are.

Even our rights that had been given to us just a decade ago are being stripped away from us once more. So, the fight for love and equality continues, and the hope that Queer as Folk gives us is important now more than ever.

So, people are seeking this story out and are begging others in the world to watch it and understand that we have always been here. We've always been these flawed but loving characters. We deserve to be heard.

In 2022, Peacock tried its best to create a redo of the series but failed miserably. But why? If we are desperately looking for queer media that is gritty, unapologetic, and real, then why didn't we latch onto this latest iteration?

The answer is simple. This new version was great at creating a more diverse image of the characters created for the Showtime series but failed to understand that recreating things almost note for note with entirely new characters isn't what we want.

It would've been better if the show stuck to broad-stroke themes and made these characters and their experiences their own. Queer today is different than queer in the early 2000s, just like queer in the 2000s was different than queer in the 1980s. Trying to put queer 2000s stories into a queer 2020s world isn't going to work.

We need to embrace this resurgence of Queer as Folk (2000) and give it the love and attention it should've always had. Perhaps finally giving its rightful due in the eyes of the history of queer media. Does it have its issues as the world changes? Absolutely, but we also can't sit here and deny the insane level of impact this show had on the queer media we now know and love.

We wouldn't have casually queer shows like Schitt's Creek, Heartstopper, and Our Flag Means Death if Queer as Folk hadn't broken down our walls and made us realize that we can demand stories for queer people by queer people.

[worrabei]

OKAY, hear me out before reading the text below: this blog of mine is just a place, where I can see my progress in many of things, and writing in english is one of them. the deal is - english is not my native language, and my way of writing can look very bad.

if you decide to read my little sketch, firstly - good luck; and secondly, if when you see some dumb mistakes - feel free to comment because learning stuff is fun!

(also I'm like probably need to do a disclaimer or something like this, but I don't know how :D)

well, it's just fluff (?), without any triggers and just something that was in my head for a while. also I'm using the real names on the dream team in this text. actually, all my thoughts slowly became a whole au (this is the right word for it, right?), so if I will be really confident, maybe I write something else....

UGH this is again a super long text, I'M SORRY.

imagine that you've been friends with «dream team» for an almost a three years.

originally you were an employee on a mr. beast team, something that others would call an errand boy (well, errand girl in your case). but despite your small position in a whole team, everyone was simply in love with you. you just were a little shining star, that everybody adored. and beside that, you knew how to do your job. and by one of these hard-working days, you've meet sapnap.

there were a small pause between shooting for a new challenge video, where nick was one of the judges, and it happend that you both had a chance to chat for a little bit. you two find in each other someone nice, almost like a soulmate. when you too start to speak about different topics, including hobbies and favorite things, something just clicked. after a shooting, y'all just spontaneously decided to go for a walk. you both just can't stop talking, and after a hour or so, you find yourself on a basketball court. the day slowly becoming an evening, there only a few people around, and you two with beer cans just lazily playing basketball.

and after that day your life just start change entirely.

after sapnap you've met sunshine with name karl, and then dream, george, even quackity. the boys was also amazed with your warm personality and you all pretty fast become great buddies. you start to show in theirs instagram photos, twitter posts, stories. you've slowly become an important member of their group. staying for a movie night, cook for them, give a ride on your car, making birthday presents, spending time in video games, and eventually joining the streams.

to be honest, chat was kinda aggressive by the first time and full of comments like "omg why are they even let this girl to join, she's just ruining all the fun" and bunch of other not-so-nice words. guys were super sorry that you have to deal with all this hate, but you honestly won't making a big deal out of that. you just continue to show up from time to time, and slowly but surely people realize that your "boring" side was actually a "super caring" side.

and only after this realization everybody understand how cool actually your character resonates with sometimes childish characters of the rest of the group. the memes start to full the internet, boys start jokingly addresses to you like "sweet mother of ours", and you were very audible and visible cringing at the name, but they're just unstoppable.

and after a two and a half years of your friendship, after george finally gets a visa and clay does a face reveal, four of you guys finally moved together.

and that simply become a golden era of your friendship.

you spend mornings with george, when you get ready for work and this man with no sleep schedule gives you company. at the moment that you start making a breakfast, this man just magically appears with his cute puppy eyes, and after the few times when your plate was getting empty for about a fifteen seconds, you just start to cook for you two. imagine: dark room with only one working lamp, you both eating some puffy pancakes, drinking something warm, chatting and silently giggling. it's a little foggy outside, and almost absolute silence. sounds really comforting, does it not? after you finished eating, you give george a small kiss on his head, maybe mess up with his hair and beg him to get some rest.

the days fly by really fast, when you making stuff with dream. join the stream for a moment? sure. what about the new idea for the video/song? tell me everything. maybe you want to go to the shopping together? get in my car, clay. you freely can go to his room when silence in your head gets too loud. often you just knock on his room door shyly, and ask if you can sit on the bed while dealing with work. and he never refuse. also you absolutely love to draw him in the moments when he really focused on something, maybe make him a few more knitted hats or something cute, but stupid. and he absolutely melts at every single touch. you just need to tell him that everything is okay, and he always can find a support in his friends. and he's so thankful for this.

and finally, you want the evenings to never end because you spend them with sapnap. he don't want to show it, but you just see it anyways - he cares about you. of course, that doesn't mean that other guys don't care, but sapnap do it in his own way and you really appreciate it. almost every evening he casually walks into your room, and if he sees how tired you look because of the work, all his appearance softens immediately. with his silent, raspy voice he asks how do you feel. and if your answer not satisfying enough, nick just casually says that he's going to wait you in the car. and that means - this evening going to be awesome. you both have no clue what are you going to do tonight, but that's just more fun, right? basketball court, just like in the old times? eating junk food in the car, while chatting and shouting the songs? skateboarding park, when nick trying to impress you, but just stupidly falls and now you need to bandage all his wounds, while you just can't stop from laughing? (he's trying to act offended, but inside he's all fluff, believe me).

but sometimes you decide to hang out in the house. sapnap picks up some random film, brings more pillows and blankets, you cook (or order) snaks, and you both just simply chilling together after a long day. and I don't need to tell that almost every time the rest of the group decide to join. maybe it's even spontaneously become a movie night? who knows. you can't even blink, and it's 3am already, the third movie silently playing on the back, all the boys sleeping and barely audibly snore. and only you stubbornly want to wait until the credits. and the movie finally ends, you trying to clean up a little, while you judge the main character in your mind. when you come back to the sleeping kingdom, you can't help but smile at the view of three big men just calmly sleeping, and unconsciously trying to hug something. you definitely take a few photos, and when you want to go to your room, suddenly dream wakes up and mid-sleep reach up to you, whispering that he want to cuddle. your heart was not ready for this, and you just can't say "no" to him.

and when you slowly falling into sleep, while warm big hands carefully hugs you, you just think to yourself - oh, how extremely lucky you are.

well, maybe you can skip the next day at work.

...you can't miss how nick and george all morning going to scream that they're absolutely-for a hundred percent-for sure-definitely didn't hug each other all night.

[myragewillendworlds]

I’m a 18 year old transexual male, have known about it since I was about 10 or 11, and have been struggling with a bad dysphoric episode this past month, so forgive the irrationality and how stupid this may sounds.

Lately I have been frequenting some ‘truscum’ forums online and, though I agree with most of their premises (main point being ‘you need sex dysphoria to be trans), I’ve found some ideas that have been making me feel ‘less of a man’. Though I’m not generally feminine in posture and habit, I’m highly introverted [bordering on shyness] and have some ‘girly’ habits and likes, such as still liking stuffed animals even at my age [please, don’t take it as infantilizing myself] and enjoying making colorful notes, with nice pens and nice titles as well. My friend group is mixed gender-wise, but the majority is made cis female. For some of these ‘truscum’ individuals, this makes me merely GNC, and though I am sure my dysphoria is real and I am caving the path towards my medical transition, it does make me feel weirdly insecure and intensifies, somehow, the dysphoria.

I’ve seen you are somewhat of an specialist when it comes to topics like this, therefore I wanted to have your insight, if possible.

Thank you for reading this and forgive me for any mistakes regarding the English language, it isn’t my mother tongue.

It took perhaps mere months before the word "truscum" began being used by underage morons who had neither the maturity nor the general desired level of intelligence to be speaking for an entire community in trying to convince outsiders of its need to be taken seriously. And it was a meme word before then too, one that I always warned against using for the very reasons it almost immediately became a problem. Point being: it means nothing to me that someone calls themselves "truscum", other than that it makes them sound like an immature asshole. I have never used that label.

That being said–

I don't think behavior alone makes someone transsexual or not transsexual. Sex dysphoria does.

The only relevant question is: do you experience sex dysphoria because of the sex of your body? And because people have severely watered that definition down over the years as well, here are some follow-up questions; which, no, aren't specifically covered in this wording in the DSM or ICD, but any diagnostician worth their salt would ask you:

Is the level of distress you experience life-debilitating?

Have you experienced this at least since the onset of puberty?

Looking back at your childhood, can you (with hindsight) recognize that your male gender identity was in fact present then as well? For example: did you feel a familiarity/kinship towards male family members, did you prefer playing with boys, did you prefer boy clothing/toys/items, did it feel natural to identify yourself with male characters, did you feel you didn't belong in groups with girls/women, etc.

Does a future in a female body seem impossible, surreal and/or utterly agonizing and miserable to you?

Do you experience sex dysphoria over all your natal sex characteristics; meaning, including the actual sex organs? There is no such thing as a transsexual male that lacks dysphoria over having female sex organs. Then you're just not male, therefore not transsexual.

Finally: are there no alternative explanations that could believably explain your dysphoric feelings, such as relevant trauma or mental illness? Do you wish to transition for the sole sake of changing your sex, and not for any ulterior goals or beliefs possibly linked to trauma or mental illness?

You should be able to answer 'yes' to these questions if you are transsexual.

The things you're mentioning aren't typical in guys your age, no, but those are taught things, not biologically innate things. Chances are, if you were raised as a boy, you likely wouldn't have done or enjoyed these (as much) as they would probably not have been encouraged, either by your parents or your peers. On the other hand, if you had been born male and still had these interests, you probably would've ran into the exact same sentiments from your peers that this makes you less of a guy. You'll find that many cisgender men have similar experiences with having their masculinity questioned.

Most transsexual people, I would say, do 'outgrow' most of these social behaviors as they fully embrace and live as their desired sex (and HRT may play a role in these changes as well). Perhaps you will too, when/if you start HRT and grow up into a man. Or perhaps you'll be a man who likes coloring pencils. It's hardly the deciding factor. Not like men have to trade in their cocks the moment they're ever found guilty of pulling out a glittery marker.

[kinokoshoujoart]

mini post: rock being a meme in response to the blue feather in AnWL - WL for girl

fig. 1: cool collected sane and popular guy who can’t stand the idea of being tied down by marriage and stuff

So for AnWL Natsume rendered Rock’s response to the blue feather simply as “Aha!!” which doesn’t even capture 10% of how insane he sounds in JP, especially given that he Definitely Isn’t Into Marriage And Stuff

(…unleeeeesssss?)

(screenshots from taison_ch’s playthrough of AnWL, which is extremely funny and i highly recommend it)

When you present him with the Blue Feather, Rock screams “KITAAAAAAAAAAAA!” which is literally “IT’S HEEEEEEEEEEEERE!” but a feeling of like. “it’s finally happening!!!!!!” like. a pretty mid 2000s memey dying-of-excitement for-something-long-awaited sort of thing to say. It became a Meme Phrase because of actor Yuji Oda yelling it in Sante FX eyedrop commercials in the 90s, if you want to hear the kind of energy Rock likely exuded out loud:

And he reprised his role for the 20 year anniversary!

I’m not sure how you’d localize it in English in 2005… One suggested modern translation was YAAAAAASSS! which… yeah, matches the idk manic dated-meme cringefail wife vibe

also, it doesn’t actually appear in the final version of the remake, since the blue feather response was changed for everyone to give you a yes/no option, but it’s still leftover in the game’s files! and xseed rendered it “Oh, man, FINALLY!” according to Rock’s dialogue file)

Anyway, i wonder if it’s the same energy as doing this (there’s probably a better example)

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

Translation of q!Cellbit's final monologue

The tribunal is this wednesday, 24/05. Cucurucho has no interest in the Creative blocks and revealed that when it didn't even think once before accepting Bobby's negotiation. 

It will not accept to give the blocks for armor and every information we try to extract in exchange for the blocks will be processed and mitigated so that it means nothing to us.

But if we had a new surprise, that not even our side expects, maybe things will change. Cucurucho made a mistake amidst the chaos and the fights. Maybe that's the secret.

The plan is to try to use Forever's breaking of the rules as currency exchange to create a direct conflict between ME and FOREVER, surprising Forever just as much as Cucurucho in the negotiation, and asking for Richarlyson's paternity as a form of "treason", showing that I'm willing to join the Federation and don't have a problem with antagonizing my friends to protect Richarlyson and have him only for me.

After this, the idea is to purposefully distant myself from everyone for a day, create something like an evil castle of darkness far away from everyone just to see the reactions from the Federation/Cucurucho, the codes and any possible impostor among us.

If anyone decides to join me, they could be a possible suspect or someone that wouldn't be trustworthy for the Order.

[ UPDATE - DAY OF THE AUCTION ]

Things went a bit differently than expected, but the main plan went well. Instead of surprising everyone with the treason at the auction, I used as an excuse the fact they lied to me and tried to blackmail me with the Vivo meme to make a scene.

Took the opportunity to change my skin of defense attorney to district attorney to add to the drama

It's a positive point because it makes it look like I have a genuine motive/grievance in relation to my friends and diminishes the Federation/Cucurucho's  suspicion towards my intentions. It doesn't look like I betrayed them "out of nowhere".

Considering that the Federation watches the streams canonically to acquire information, I think it was the best option to make a whole narrative arc to have a big twist later.

As proof that the plan wasn't a lie, I left only one signed book for Richarlyson revealing my plan, and didn't want to risk it by showing it on stream.

It's still risky, considering the Federation still has access to the items of the eggs, but honestly it broke my heart to see him sad and disappointed like that. I hope I don't regret that.

I also blocked the access of the others to Sofia to see how Max reacts. I don't want to suspect him, but everything in relation to both of them is weird. I'll avoid mentioning her existence to the Federation, and if they bring the subject up, I'll try to bypass it. 

IMPORTANT - CODES

THE CODES attacked me not long after I "joined" the Federation.

"01000011" - C

A code made exclusively to kill me? It practically ignored Richarlyson

It strengthens the theory that the codes attack those that seek to keep the others on the island

WHY DID THEY ATTACK MAX?

FINAL PLAN

With luck, the Federation will also wake me up at the hospital Max woke up on. I'll try to persuade them the best I can to acquire new information.

Continue the plan with the members of the Order and try to charm the other members of the island with explanations on how I realized that the life and the people on the island are better than what I had before and I don't want to lose that. They don't need to involve themselves with this.

Use the eventual tribunal of Richarlyson, where everyone will probably be present and watching, to reveal all the information of the Federation I managed in front of everyone.

Thus, if they kill/arrest me, I'll become a martyr and all those present will know the truth about the Federation.

[stillness-in-green]

Favorite Characters of 2023

Saw this meme template by @limayde and had to drop anything more productive because I Love Character Memes. I tried to focus on characters who particularly signified 2023 in fandom for me, not necessarily just my favorites in any given fandom, and certainly not my favorites of all time! So consider it a reasonable representation of what I read/was reading/was still thinking about last year.

(I'm also relatively sure I could fill this out entirely with BNHA characters, but if I were to do that, it would be with the goal of representing how much I was thinking about said characters in terms of Fix-It Fic(s) Brainstorming, rather than simply how much I like them. Yoichi would be prominent in the former and not present at all in the latter, for example.)

Anyway, after much painstaking cropping, here it is!

(A full list of who all these people are and a blurb apiece of my thoughts on them, as well as the meme template, can be found beneath the cut!)

Most Favorite Blorbo(s) of 2023

Lord Glück and Macht of El Dorado (Sousou no Frieren) – Macht's was the arc that turned me around on Frieren's treatment of demons—he’s so interesting, and so tragic, totally set in his ways while also yearning to change them.  Glück, meanwhile, is so devoted to his word, blunt in his assessment of Macht’s character but wholly sincere about trying to give him the knowledge and environment he needs to change.  My BF asked me for the spoiler-free version of what I liked about them, and the best I can sum it up as is, “A mutual acceptance despite the parts of each other they can’t understand,” and, “They’ve made each other promises that go all the way to end, to the goddamn end.”  Thirty years of that!  I am once again begging on my hands and knees for Frieren to get a second season, and also, if the universe really loves me, to end the first season with a tease for the Golden City.[1]

(I cheated a bit here; the central square is intended for a single supreme fave, not center-mounting one's OTP. I am, however, entirely incapable of picking one of those two above the other. Also, putting them both there does bring the character count to a nice even 50.}

1: A second tease.  There’s actually been one already, a reference to Macht’s enchanted jewelry, squirreled away in some on-screen text—one of the anime’s many additions to the background detail compared to the manga.

12 Characters vs. 12 Months In A Year. Coincidence? Probably!

(Starting at the top left corner and moving clockwise.)

Shigaraki Tomura (BNHA) – 2023 was the year Shigaraki Tomura got his groove back, thank heavens.  While he didn’t get much material in which to speak his own mind—really just Chapters 379 and 411, a full year apart (the latter didn’t officially come out until just a few days ago; we just got the leaks a week early).  We’ll see how he holds up going forward, but even those few scenes effortlessly demonstrate just how profound a waste of time handing AFO the reins to the end game was.  Here’s to not letting Heroes off the hook in the new year!

Iguchi Shuuichi/Spinner (BNHA) – Spent a lot of 2023 worrying about this guy.  Still am worried about this guy.  But him turning the tides of the war at the end of 2022 shifted the whole course of the battle, and new we’ve got Shigaraki invoking The Horizon to finally give us incontrovertible evidence that Shigaraki and Spinner have talked about more than just video games!  2024 is shaping up Spinaraki!

Yotsubashi Rikiya/Re-Destro (BNHA) – I provide fanart for this man because, of course, he was in the actual canon not at all last year, absent a single flashback panel from Hose Face, not at all making up for what a caricature that character was otherwise.  All the good Re-Destro content I was getting last year was thanks to @nickfoo’s wonderful, wonderful fanart of him.  Thanks for continuing to give this guy love, foo! (full art here)

Geten (BNHA) – Himura backstory reveal!  And that revelation accounted for the only fanfic I posted last year at all, as well as being super satisfying in terms of largely clearing Todoroki Enji of the responsibility for the heteromorphobic microaggressions perpetrated by certain of his children, as well as giving us some more hints about Geten and Re-Destro’s relationship.  Exquisite. (Now just let him have something to say that isn’t mostly there to Contextualize Dabi.)

Vamirio/Anne from Management  (Helck) – I reread Helck last year in celebration of its anime, and just to reiterate this again, Vamirio and her determination lead her to make firm stands and fiery declarations about her combat role and priorities that Deku has never even fuckin’ thought about.  Vamirio a best; vote Vamirio for Head of Management.

Samuel Murphy +Hal and Nobu (Canis: The Speaker) – Sam’s my favorite of another inseparable trio, probably because, at least as an adult, he’s the most vulnerable—not simply because he lacks the firearms or goons that his partners’ positions allow them to call to hand, but also because of his struggles with insomnia.  Whip-smart, observant, and well-spoken, and I always have had a preference for the smart ones.

Jasper (Steven Universe) – I started reading @faelapis’s post-canon Jasper exploration fic Something Better last year and absolutely fell in love with it.  It reminded me all over again how much I love Jasper, and how much I wanted a story that gave her all the time she needed to change.

Somei Yoshino (Yakuza Fiancée) – Last year saw the anime announcement and Yoshino’s totally amazing bathtub fight with Azami, which I guess there are cowards out there who didn’t like?  RIP to them but I’m different, I guess!  I’ll watch Yoshino break her terrible suitors’ fingers any time!

Wolfgang Grimmer (Monster) – Reread the back half of Monster last year solely because I love Grimmer and wanted to read his material again.  A perennial favorite, manga and character alike.  I love a man held together with scotch tape, stitches and good intentions.

Boutarou the Pirate (Golden Kamuy) – Probably not my actual favorite character in the series, but I finally got to see him in anime form last year after a maddening wait thanks to the delay in 2022.  Shiraishi’s best ship and a feral merman (look at the way he uses his hair and tell me I'm wrong) that someone unaccountably let walk around on dry land. A+ character.

Sailor Cosmos (Sailor Moon) – Speaking of characters with a huge wait on seeing them in the anime..!  God, I’ve wanted anime Sailor Cosmos since high school, and I’m thrilled to finally get her (and the merch that would accompany her).

Mitaka Asa (Chainsaw Man) – I read the first half of Chainsaw Man a while back, largely on the basis of @robotlesbianjavert’s enthusiasm, and while I enjoyed it well enough, particularly Denji’s assorted travails, I never got super invested in it because, not having to wait week to week for releases, there was never really enough time to get attached to most characters before they got unceremoniously offed.  Whether it’s the week-to-week wait or just that I like Asa as a character more, she’s really done the job of getting me interested in the series.  I love this loser failgirl and I want only the best for her; while I doubt that’s what she’ll get, at least I can watch her torture logic to make sick weapons and have affecting scenes about her own crippling inadequacy issues in the meantime.

36 Others

(As before, starting on the top left and moving clockwise through the BNHA Zone.)

Scarecrow/Spinner’s Number 2 (BNHA) – Scarecrow’s big speechifying moments would have been back in autumn of 2022, but I still loved him more than enough in 2023 for him to make this grid.  He was reduced to a shallow caricature and still had to get knocked off a roof because no one could actually out-argue him, and through all of that unendurable authorial laziness, his potential still shines through for me.  Stan the MLA, MLA 5Evah.

Toga Himiko (BNHA) – The only Villain whose Hero foil plotline is working for me on any level, though a lot is hanging on whether or not she, y’know, lives.  She definitely should have gotten to stab the bejeezus out of Hawks, and Ochaco should definitely go on the run with her once Apple Cheeks realizes that the HeroAca justice system could not possibly be relied upon to do anything other than throw Toga in a hole for a few years before executing her.

Gentle Criminal (BNHA) – The only redeemed villain whose regard for Deku functions at all thematically.  Lady N’s return is hogswash on multiple levels, but I will defend Gentle’s without reservation.

Kunieda + Aoyama Yuuga (BNHA) – Consider these two to be a stand-in for all the thinking I did last year about Fix-It Fic scenarios for this whole final arc.  For example, Kunieda in the canon speaks far too knowledgeably both about and to Aoyama for them to be total strangers, so why not plant some seeds for their confrontations earlier?  I ask the reader to consider this:

In a version of the Edgy Deku arc that allowed the rest of 1-A to get out into the world to help out with relocation efforts, they one day come across a scene of dread: a neighborhood full of corpses and Kunieda’s flowers.  Aoyama has a noticeably shaken reaction, which he plays off as just horror to his similarly horrified classmates, but the truth is that he’s got prior history with Kunieda—AFO didn’t plop corpses in front of his parents to intimidate them (because that’s ham-handed and silly), but bodies were still involved.  They’d turn up buried in the family's fancy gardens sometimes, always heralded by those vivid red-black flowers…

Frieren (Sousou no Frieren) – I was relatively neutral on the title character until the anime came out and I had to suffer through The Discourse about her attitude towards demons (arguments on both sides tending to be poorly considered and ignorant, both of canonical details and real-world relevance).  That made me a bit more defensive of her, but even setting my contrarianism aside, I was also very pleased with how she navigated the manga’s most recent arc.[2]  She’s maybe the first character I can think of who I have actively wanted to write Asexual Representation fic for, if only because my answer to, “Does she Romantically Love Himmel?” is much more complex than just saying, “No, she only saw him as a friend,” or, “Yes, and now she’s going to be sad about her Tragically Lost Love for the rest of her life and we need to write all the fix-it fics about that.”

2: She wants to go home!  Her feelings for Himmel, whatever they are, are of less importance to her than going home!  Despite everything we know about how she perceives time, she still values her “now” more than her lost “then”!  My gloating aside, though, I was far more affected by the sword scene than I was the wedding attire or the near kiss.  Being trapped in a wedding illusion?  Trite, overplayed.  Being trapped in a wedding illusion yet still being able to wrap your hands around your partner’s arm and faithfully guide them into drawing the sword neither of you can perceive?  Now that’s intimacy!

Heiter (Sousou no Frieren) – While I had little overall use for the aforementioned most recent arc of Frieren, I did very much enjoy my favorite member of the Hero Party getting a moment to demonstrate what being The Priest Of The Party That Defeated The Demon King actually means in practice.  Grausam being unable to put him down with an illusion?  Being the only one who could defend his downed companions?  The sheer level of trust he has in Himmel?  A little bit of vulnerability where he’s bare seconds away from getting gibbed by Grausam?  Heiter is the member of the party that we get the least amount of in on: Sein didn’t stay with the party long enough to serve as a point of comparison, and despite Heiter raising Fern, she didn’t assume his role in the new group, like Stark did Eisen’s, nor do her reminiscences about him get anywhere near the amount of screentime that Frieren’s do of Himmel.  So for real, you guys, Chapter 118 was so good.

Edward (Shadows House) – *bangs fists on table*  WORST BOY WORST BOY WORST BOY!!  Anime Edward is pants, but Manga Edward is where it’s at, always keeping Kate scrambling, always coming out on top of his maneuverings against his peer group rivals, just flappable enough that his victories doesn’t look effortless, and engaging enough that his smugness feels earned rather than intended to turn the reader against him.  I have no idea how the story is going to deal with the adult shadows, who are after all still just as brainwashed and wronged by Grandfather’s workings as the kids are!  If anything, they’re worse off, having already been manipulated into losing the “faces” they must once have loved dearly.  Thus, while Kate and her allies certainly approach the conflict with a very Us vs. Them, Adults=The Enemy mentality, the screentime Edward’s own affairs get, fully independent of how they intersect with Kate’s, along with an avowed desire to improve the House that parallels Kate’s, make me hopeful that the authors have something a little more nuanced in mind than, “Free the current victims by wiping out all the previous ones.”

Melinda Desmond (Spy x Family) – The main cast are all perfectly fine, but Melinda is interesting.  Super curious to find out more about the Desmond family dynamics, and I love Melinda bouncing around with Yor. (I swear, though, judging by the collective response to the most recent chapter, the fandom is going to turn me into a Donovan Apologist yet. Only one member of that family has visible scars suggesting brain surgery, folks!!)

Anti/Knight/Gridknight (Gridman Universe) – Always my favorite single character from both Gridman and Dynazenon, and he was characteristically great in the movie as well.  His scene with Akane at the end was only my second favorite beat because, while it’s wonderful emotionally cathartic (more fanservice like this, please!), it’s also kind of muddled thanks to the idea of Gridman!Anti and Dynazenon!Knight being two separate entities. Churlish to hold that against it, though, when it's so heartfelt.

Minami Yume + Asanaka Yomogi (Gridman Universe) – Such a great pairing in their own show—I once saw someone call them forced, which has always struck me as just being too high on Bashing The Hets to see that Yomogi and Yume have a great arc towards getting together, actually.  Seeing them be unabashedly together and happy about it in the film was 100% delightful and deserved. Yume swooping down out of the sky on Dynarex to scoop up her wifeguy boyfriend is my actual favorite beat in the movie.

Hyura (Helck) – Firstly, the dry humor around Hyura is fantastic.  (“Something like an arm grows back simply enough.  That’s just common sense.”  “It doesn’t, right?”  “It does not.”)  Secondly, she’s the biggest badass in the secondary cast.  Thirdly, she and Edil have the designated rival ship dynamic (incredibly rare to see across gender lines in shounen manga), and Hyura holds her own all the way to the end.  Hyura is great.

Mikaros (Helck) – “Yes, we may have lost some assets and I personally shattered the mind of one of our strongest soldiers, removing him from the playing field.  But the important thing is that I personally overcame my trauma, so overall it’s a win.”  What a slimeball.  What a total heap.  And what an excellent example of the end-stage stakes driving the title character's choice in the epilogue! I love Mikaros unreservedly.

Harold Aldo Hughes and Iwaki Tadanobu + Sam (Canis: The Speaker) – Transformation, reinvention, the fierceness of devotion and the ruthlessness of rebirth—I don’t love them quite as much as I do Sam, but they’re also both great.

Hera (Lore Olympus) – Lore Olympus is one of those series I read more because it’s interesting enough while also being blisteringly gorgeous than because I’m deeply invested in the characters, but the plotline about Hera and Kronos really has pulled me all the way into active, character-specific interest.  Great, tense, painful stuff.  Can’t wait to see where she goes following recent events.

Redcloak (Order of the Stick) – His last really insightful and heartwrenching scene was in the year before last—that fantastic exchange with Oona!—but for as long as I’m reading OOTS, Redcloak is going to be a favorite.  God, the Law Elemental summoning is so funny.

Hyness (Kirby franchise) – This one’s entirely on my sis-in-law—like another character further down the list, I am not remotely “in” the Kirby fandom.  But what can I say—tell me about a warped cult leader who started in a bad place and only got worse who still managed to get saved by the Hero taking a leap of faith that paid off, and tell me the fandom calls him a horrible abuser?  Sorry, but I Have No Choice But To Stan. (full art here)

Lafcadio Boone (The Sexy Brutale) – Replayed this again last year, and it’s still great.  In a sense, despite its sizeable named cast, it really only has the one character, and his story is such that I want to make every single person on tumblr that gets hyperbolic about the forgiveness and redemption of fictional wrongdoers play this game.  “Time to move on, old man,” indeed.

Sissel (Ghost Trick) – Finally got the remaster of this and replayed it, and it’s also still great.  Knowing The Spoilers about Sissel seriously make replays such a scream, but also man is this game really sitting on some completely over-the-top darkness not at all far beneath its candy apple red and Matrix-text green surface.

Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India (Across the Spider-Verse) – Strictly in terms of character writing, he’s very fun, but I don’t think he’s as strong as Spider-Punk or Miguel O'Hara, but on the other hand, he’s so much fun, especially to simply watch in motion.  Most of the rest of the leads, however varied their artstyles might be, still feel like they move in basically the same ways, just with varying levels of grace vs. power, intent vs. controlled collapse, but because of the way Pavitr uses his thread, he moves completely differently, and it’s just a ton of fun to watch.  The first character I went hunting for fanart of when I got out of the movie theater.

Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Across the Spider-Verse) – I have outstanding affection for Spider-Gwen from reading her comics back when, but that opening Vulture fight, the fantastic look of her dimension, and all the trans signaling kept her right at the top, too.

Brutha (Discworld: Small Gods) – @codenamesazanka read this and a few of the Watch books last year, prompting me to do some rereads as well, and Brutha and Small Gods remain very dear to me.  I only wish more artists would draw versions of him that remotely resemble “fat, simple-looking young man from a desert country in fantasy!expy!Middle East” rather than “suspiciously trim and Benedictine.”

Sam Vimes (Discworld series) – Ditto on Nal’s read above, but also chatted with foo a lot about this guy, and he’s been my favorite single character in the series since high school.  It takes very little to prompt me to reread his books generally, but last year was the first time I’ve had it in me to reread Snuff, as it was previously a little too tied up in my feelings about the last few books prior to Pratchett’s death.  Regardless of anything else, though, Snuff is the book for Sam/Sybil.

Mina Murray (#DRCL: Midnight Children) – Discovered this lush chonk of horror phantasmagoria last year and I’m kind of in love with it.  Its take on Mina anchors it well—she’s smart and fiery but up against ingrained sexism and classism in her setting, and not too Anachronistic Grrl Power to not be hurt by that sometimes; she’s stubborn, but vulnerable to the supernatural horrors in the way any child would be.  An unreliable but intriguing and sympathetic narrator.

Capone Bege (One Piece) – The other character I got onto largely without getting into the series he hails from, nickfoo—whose art I again use to illustrate—does great work with this guy, a once-jovial monster shocked back from that moral brink by marriage and fatherhood.  Still gets a bit Into It at work, but tries not to bring it home, at least as much as that can be avoided when carrying both family and crew around in the same heart/sub-dimensional space.  (Also, foo’s version of Bege is great, but her rendition of Chiffon is—speaking as someone who doesn’t read the series and can only gauge by image search or skimming the wiki—borderline miraculous, accurate to Oda’s lively caricature design, but so much more sensitive, expressive and human.)

Prince Kazu/Lady Chikako (Ooku: The Inner Chambers) – On the occasion of the Netflix anime, I finally tracked down and finished Ooku last year, and when I tell you that I laughed more and harder in the final arc than I did through the entire rest of the series combined…  The Kyoto cast members are a big part of why,[3] and none more delightful than the stuffy, prideful, possessive, and deeply impetuous Chikako, one of the most singularly human characters in the whole 19-volume melodrama.

3: Catty ex-male prostitute turned head of the Inner Chambers Takiyama is the other part of this equation, by the way.

Gao Shun (The Apothecary Diaries) – Long-suffering stoics are my absolute favorite type, and that holds true even though Gao Shun's stoicism has been largely a humorous beat thus far.  I want this guy to get more attention, but until then, I will continue to enjoy his weary exasperation every time he has to deal with Mao Mao’s eccentricities/Jinshi’s enthusiasm about same.

Mao Mao (The Apothecary Diaries) – Best female character of the season, for sure, but I’ve been reading one of the manga for a while now, and she’s a regular delight.  Eccentric and ruthless by turns, painfully aware of the limitations of her position and yet wholly willing to make her own decisions and exert her own agency within those limitations without ever concerning herself with whether she should ask permission from or report to someone above her rank.  Mao Mao’s mercy takes the form of knowing when to speak and when to demure, and every time I see some stuck-in-their-own-ethical-framework commenter complain about her moral compass, I appreciate it harder.

Accustomizer Stud/Tiffany (Angelic Acceptor Alouette) – Enthusiastically resourceful teenage girl who would probably be super into transhumanism if she hadn’t fallen in with angels (sic) instead, transforming into the gloriously nonbinary pile of muscles and amazing hair that is Accustomizer Stud, Tiffany’s ultimate expression of her inner self.  Stud is magnanimous, gracious, and well-spoken, and they are also VERY LOUD AND FIGHTY.  My absolute favorite character in a game wall-to-wall with great characters.

Yuunagi Tsubasa/Cure Wing (Hirogaru Sky PreCure) – The first Official Boy Cure with absolutely no provisos or qualifications or ways to wiggle out of it, and the show gets him just right by playing him basically completely straight.  Has a costume no one would look twice at in a magical girl line-up, wastes no time on masculine embarrassment at his frills, with the only nod he/the show make towards his gender at all being to frame his role as being a knight to a princess, rather than simply a guardian to one, but it’s not really what he’s about.  His actual character is driven by knowledge, studiousness, and a desire to overcome the limitations placed on him by being a human/pudgy flightless bird fairy.

Kei Miyama (Go With the Clouds, North By Northwest) – Something of a stand-in for his series generally, which I read the two most recent volumes of last year and fell in love with all over again—particularly the most recent one, which switches deftly between depictions of shattering, world-hollowing grief and the beguiling intimacy of the rhythms of life and nature.  But my love for the manga itself aside, Kei’s a great protagonist, full of little contradictions and snags that make him feel much more fleshed out and grounded than your average animanga male lead, even as he’s running around doing very Animanga Male Lead Things, like solving mysteries by using his Strange Power to get information a normal person could not.

Lord El-Melloi II/Waver Velvet (Fate franchise) – Waver is possibly my favorite character of all time in any medium, so it takes very little to rekindle the love.  In last year's case, it took the Fate/strange Fake special!  Love to see my boy continue to wrest more narrative space for himself than he was originally allotted by virtue of being a run-away audience favorite of the Fate/Zero anime!

Ivan (Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still) – Got the remastered Blu-ray last year as a gift, and guess what?  I still love Ivan in all his cartoonish mini-boss villainy layered over the pathos of tragic loss and resentment.  Honestly, I can only assume he’s as well-adjusted as he is because Alberto is so inspiring to work in close quarters with (mood), because otherwise I’d think it pretty unfair that the sole surviving Bashtarle national in the story gets so little to say about/to the people who blew it up.

Isurugi Camice (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans) – I was a bit too preoccupied with BNHA meta last year to think much about my prior fandom phase, but I still made time to rotate Isurugi in my mind from time to time.  As one of my beloved long-suffering stoics, I can always make that kind of time for him.  (Image source is from the cover of a doujinshi I have, because melancholy BL doujinshi is definitely more the kind of tonal zone my mental rotations were occupying than they were canon’s!)

And, finally, the blank

(If anyone reading this wants to give it a whirl, I reccommend blowing it up to x2 size; makes the small squares easier to work with.)

[duckapus]

Since splatfest is it's own thing in the squid meme au what teams was Meggy?

(so I'm going with the North American Splatfests for this since in SMG4 canon the Mushroom Kingdom and Inkadia are in the US for some reason)

Splatoon 1

(since this would all be before she met Mario I can only base them off her pre-character development personality and Vibes. I have explanations for a few of them but for most I'm kinda-sorta picking at random)

Cats (since she eventually gets a cat in canon)

Roller Coasters

Marshmallows (we saw how that one food fight episode went)

Autobots

Art

Planes

Ninjas

Burgers

Naughty

Future

Pokemon Blue

Snowman

Spongebob

Costume Party

Early Bird (She would be a Morning Person, wouldn't she?)

Marie (I HC that she used to have a celebrity crush on Marie. Because I Can)

Splatoon 2

Cake

Ketchup

Flight (Mostly because she picked her team right after getting home from Mario's Challenge and was thinking that flight would've made some of those floors a lot easier to get through)

Vampire (This one's just for me ;))

Sci-Fi (the Fest started the same day she did a Matrix scene for a movie audition, it just makes sense)

Sock (honestly she kind of just picked one at random since she was too worried about Paige to really care. she almost didn't bother going at all)

Action (duh)

Money

Egg

Soccer (anyone notice a pattern developing?)

Leo (okay losing streak aside I genuinely think Leo would be her favorite of the four)

Mikey

Raph

No Pulp (the texture just feels wrong to her)

Octopus (She ended up in matches with Desti a few times and it was awkward being on the same side)

Fork (FINALLY A WIN! Just in time for Waluigi Time...)

Skipped (she was a little busy being the first victim of the Waluigi Apocalypse)

Treat

Salsa (she may or may not be allergic to avocados)

Hero

Friends (considering what I've implied Meggy and Paige's parents are like compared to the NSS and Glitchy Gang is it really surprising?)

Pancakes (she might have just flipped a coin for this one)

Skipped (she doesn't have time for Splatfest there's TRAINING TO BE DONE!!!)

Skipped (kind of hard to participate in Splatfest when all your weapons are stolen)

Skipped (both because she wouldn't have had time with the Tournament going on and...you know...the whole Being Kidnapped Thing)

Narwhals (after Mario's pep talk part of her getting back into the swing of things includes doing Splatfest stuff)

Chaos (she probably would've picked Order before she met Mario, but...)

Ketchup (a lot of things have changed for Meggy. her preference in condiments isn't one of them)

Treat

Super Mushroom (apparently she likes how they taste)

Splatoon 3

(I know she doesn't live in or even near Splatsville but thanks to the DLC we know that Inkopolis participates in Splatsville Splatfests and I figure that by this point there's be a large enough population of Inkfish living in the Mushroom Kingdom that they would too. Plus Meggy's still at least part inkling and is still culturally an Inkling so...)

Rock

Skipped (since her very existence happened to be illegal at the time and she and every other OC dropped dead the exact same day the Fest started)

Grass

Sweet

Milk Chocolate

Aliens (in honor of Greg, of course)

Courage

Skipped (depending on how the timeline works out this is either during or immediately after everyone being stuck in a simulation for about a month. no way they're bothering with an ice cream Splatfest of all things)

Love (time changes a person)

Big Man (she did feel a little awkward picking between people she considers friends by this point. that being said, BIG MAAAAAAAN!!!!!)

Skeleton (I know this happens at the same time as Heist WotFI but she isn't even in that episode (I don't care that she was credited for the song that was her voice actress not Meggy herself she was not physically present and had no idea what anyone was doing that night))

Hug

Friends

Friday

[We interrupt this broadcast to bring you PUZZLEVISION!!!]

[And this one too!]

Save the World (obviously)

[lampmanliveblogs]

Announcement

(+ sneak peek of chapter 3 of the Vee fic)

I mentioned it in the tags of the incorrect quote meme thing I made yesterday, but in case anyone missed it: My liveblog of Watching and Dreaming, the finale of The Owl House will be published this upcoming Friday.

The plan is to publish it in three parts over the weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The time will be… whenever I get to it. Turn on notifications if you wanna be there in time. Or just read it afterwards, nothing wrong with that.

In other news… I’ve been staying up too late writing fanfiction again (especially considering I’ve got work tomorrow…). So below the cut is a little sneak peek of chapter three of the Vee fic, Yesterday’s Lie, Today’s Truth, Tomorrow’s Resolve.

(the chapter title is a placeholder, I'm probaably gonna change it... provided i think of something better)

Lamp Entertainment presents…

With the threat of Jacob still on their minds, Vee and Masha agreed that it was probably for the best if Vee didn’t spend the night alone in an empty house. It took some pleading, but Masha was eventually able to convince their parents to let ’Luz’ stay over for the night, even though next day was a school day.

It probably helped that ’Luz’ was such a well-mannered and well-kept girl; Vee showed up looking closer to her old disguise, with the addition of a scar across her eyebrow. It was strange to see her slip so effortlessly and fluidly back into that role. She really was every bit the same girl from camp. Masha’s parents certainly never suspected a thing. They bought her every lie like it was on discount.

Thus Vee ended up sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in Masha’s room. Exhausted after everything that had happened during the day and the night before, the two friends both drifted off to sleep quickly.

Some hours later, Masha woke up, sitting straight up in their bed, blinking in the darkness. Something was wrong, but being disoriented and groggy, it took them a few seconds to figure out what it was. Vee was crying.

In the dark, Masha couldn’t see what was going on, but they heard Vee tossing and turning, her whimpers and incoherent mumbles.

”Vee?” Masha said, trying to speak soft enough to not scare her, but loud enough to wake her up. They fumbled in the shadows, trying to reach her. ”Vee, wake up.” They found Vee, grabbing her shoulder. They felt her scales against their palm; she had transformed back in her sleep. ”Vee, you have to wake up,” Masha said, louder this time while gently shaking her.

Vee groaned and mumbled something. Masha could just barely make out her movements a she turned over and sat up, making the air mattress squeak.

”Wha-where?” Vee mumbled, clearly disoriented.

”You’re here with me, remember?” Masha said. ”I think you had a nightmare.” They fumbled around their bedside table, grabbing a box of matches and lighting a candle. Because of course they had a candle on their bedside table.

In the flickering light of the candle, Masha could just make out Vee, tangled in her borrowed blanket. Her eyes were wet and blank. She breathed heavily.

”Yeah…” she said finally. ”I had a nightmare. I-I dreamt I was back in the Demon Realm with Luz and mom and…” She paused for a few seconds, taking deep breaths. When she started talking again, the words all came at once. ”Something happened and they got hurt and I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t help them.”

”It was just a nightmare,” Masha said, trying to come up with something to say that to comfort Vee. ”It’s only natural, you’re worried about Luz and Camila.” Keeping one hand on the bedside table, they leaned forward to keep the other hand on Vee’s shoulder. Even if their words weren’t good enough, at least they could be there physically for her. ”But you said it yourself, they’re both tough, I’m-I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Masha was nowhere near as good a liar as Vee. How could they say that when they had no idea?

”I know,” Vee said, her gaze lowering towards a dark shadow on the floor. ”But… I keep thinking I should have gone with them. What if they need my help? What if-?”

Vee was interrupted when Masha cursed violently. The candle fell over, right onto the deck of Hexas Hold’em cards, setting one of them on fire. Vee reacted quickly, snatching the card and smothering the flames with her bare hands. Masha blew on the candle, extinguishing it and plunging the room back to darkness.

”I’m so sorry, i must’ve knocked it over,” Masha said. Foregoing the aesthetics of the candle for the practicality of their phone, Masha turned on the flashlight. ”You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”

”No,” Vee said, showing her unharmed palms. ”Those were just small flames, it’s fine. The card looks a bit worse for wear though.” She handed Masha the burned card. It was The Light, almost entirely burnt. ”I’ll get you a knew one, I’ve got a few decks back at home.” She blinked and rubbed her eyes in the light. ”Could you turn that off?”

”Sure,” Masha said and turned the flashlight off. They heard Vee moving around, trying to untangle herself from the blanket and lying back down. Masha also laid back down.

A couple of minutes went by where Masha wondered if they should say something more. They didn’t need to.

”I couldn’t go back,” Vee said quietly, almost whispering. ”I just couldn’t go back yet. Not with him there.”

Him. Philip Wittebane. Emperor Belos. Once human, now something else. The shambling, rotting corpse of a tyrant and bigot, a genocidal maniac, a murderer.

”I don’t like to talk about it,” Vee said, her voice just barely audible. She took a deep, unsteady, shaking breath. ”But he hurt me. He hurt all of us. He and his guards with their knives and needles. They’d force us to eat and steal magic from defenseless creatures. It was all we knew. When I was little, Number One was still kind, but over the years… I watched them turn her into the monster they thought we were.”

Vee sniffled and Masha heard rustling as she dried tears from her eyes.

”The cages were always cold,” she continued. ”They kept us in cold cages so we’d be docile and not try to escape. I remember when I was little, the happiest day of my life before I came here, was when they moved us to a new place. It was the first time I saw the sun. And I remember it like it was yesterday because… that was the first time I felt alive.” Vee sighed and Masha heard more rustling. In the dark they could just barely make out her big, bright yellow eyes. ”I’m sorry you had to hear this,” Vee said.

”It’s okay,” Masha said, even though they were struggling to hold back their own tears. Every word Vee said was like a knife to their heart. These poor creatures, locked up and experimented on, not even given proper names, only numbers. How could anyone be so cruel? ”I just wish there was something I could say to make it better.”

Vee reached out, taking their hand in hers. She ran her thumb over the back of Masha’s hand. The scales on the palm of her hand were softer, almost indistinguishable from human skin. Just a little colder.

”It’s enough that you’re here,” Vee said.”I couldn’t ask for more.”

They held hands for some time, how long they didn’t know. In another room, a big grandfather clock chimed, but neither of them bothered to count the chimes.

”Masha?” Vee said after a long silence.

”Hm?” they hummed in response.

”Can I… sleep next to you?” Vee asked, hesitating. ”It’s cold on the floor…”

Without a word they let go of Vee’s hand and moved over to make room for her.

Vee slithered into the bed with Masha.

”Thank you,” she whispered.

Chapter 3: Clara’s Tide

Morning came too soon, its arrival announced by the blaring ringing of an alarm clock. Masha’s eyes snapped open and they tried to sit up to quiet horrible cacophony the little noisemaker was making. However, they found themselves unable to move much at all. There was a moment of panic, though it faded away quickly as they realized the predicament they were in.

In the morning grogginess, they had somehow managed to forget they were not alone in their bed. Now, that bed was not meant for two people, but Vee had maybe taken things a bit too far.

Facing each other, Vee’s arms were tightly locked around Masha’s body and her tail tangled in their legs. Their back was against the wall while Vee’s was out towards the room, almost like she was shielding them. Her face was nuzzled against Masha’s shoulder and she was beginning to slowly sir, groaning as the alarm’s incessant yowls invaded her dreams.

”Foul screaming demon,” she muttered.

”No, that’s just the alarm clock, ” Masha said.

This got Vee’s attention. She opened her eyes, sky blue and sunshine yellow meeting Masha’s earthy brown.

”Good morning,” Masha said, a smile playing on their lips as they watched Vee’s face turn a deeper color.

”Uh…” Vee quickly let go of Masha and did her best to untangle her tail from their legs. Finally able to move properly, Masha sat up and turned off the infernal alarm.

”S-sorry about that,” Vee mumbled, avoiding eye contact. ”I, um… constrictor instinct?”

Masha narrowed their eyes.

”I’m beginning to think you’re making that up.

”Maybe~” Vee said with a sly smile.

There was a moment of silence before they both burst out laughing, instantly dispelling the awkward tension between them.

The mood shifted from jovial to sheer panic when their laughing fit was interrupted by a knock on the door.

”Masha, Luz?” Mom’s voice sounded through the door. ”You two awake?” She asked, as if she hadn’t heard them laughing.

”Eep!” In what must have been a record, Vee managed to, in under two seconds, roll off the bed, transform mid-air, and land on the cold hard floor with a ”thud.”

Masha’s mom opened the door to find Masha sitting in their bed, looking confused, and Luz sitting on the floor, eyes wide and with a distinctively panicked expression.

”G-good morning mrs. Smith!” ’Luz’ said with a nervous smile.

”Morning Luz, you sleep well?” mom asked, though she was looking at Masha, looking suspicious. ”And you can call me Lena.”

”Yup, uh… nothing but sweet dreams for me,” ’Luz’ laughed. ”And, um… thanks for letting me stay here. I know it was on very short notice and all that…”

”Don’t mention it,” mom said. ”There’s breakfast downstairs. You go ahead, I need to talk a bit with Masha.”

”Okay…” ’Luz’ said and quietly hurried out of the room. Something about her invoked the feeling of a guilty puppy.

The silence she left behind was deafening.

”She is strange, that Luz,” Lena said after making sure that ’Luz’ was out of earshot. She leaned down (something that put visible strain on her, more than usual, Masha noticed) and placed a hand on the cold air mattress. ”Sleeps on the floor, does she?”

She walked over and sat down next to them.

Masha wanted to roll their eyes, but that involved a risk of meeting their mother’s eyes, and that was not happening right now. They were far too busy examining a seam on the duvet. Had that always been there? Fascinating stuff.

”Luz had a nightmare,” Masha said once they realized their mom was waiting for them to say something. ”She asked if she could sleep next to me. That’s it.”

It’s been said an proven by history that the best lies often have a bit of truth in them, and this was more than just a bit. It was almost the entirety of the truth. Really, there was only one word on untruth. One name a lie.

”Hmm…” Lena hummed. ”Do I believe that?”

”Luz has a girlfriend,” Masha said, starting to get a bit desperate for this conversation to end.

”Luz can have two… partners,” Lena said matter-of-factly. ”It’s called a polycule, don’t you know?” She could barely finish the sentence before cracking a big smile.

This time, Masha did roll their eyes.

”I know, mom,” they sighed. ”But it really isn’t like that.”

”I’m just messing with you,” Lena said with a mischievous smile, ruffling her kids hair, making it even more of a mess than it already was. ”I think I’ll believe you. You make people feel safe, I think. You get that from your dad.”

She glanced over at the clock and stood back up with a groan.

”You should get going too if you wanna catch the bus,” she said. ”And…” A brief moment of consideration. She placed one hand on her stomach, unaware she even did it. ”We do have something to tell you when you get home. It is, ah… something of a surprise.”

”Oh yeah, I can’t imagine what it is,” Masha muttered just low enough that their mom couldn’t make it out. Taking it as confirmation, she left.

Masha buried their face in their hands and groaned loudly. That was… that sure was something that just happened. The universe, it seemed, had decided that all the things were going to happen to Masha during the course of this week.

They grabbed the deck of Hexas Hold’em cards, shuffled them, and drew the first three cards.

The Raven. The Red String. The Two-Headed Snake.

…yeah, they were not gonna acknowledge that one.

”I feel like I keep getting the same cards over and over again,” Masha muttered and shuffled the deck again. ”What does today have in store for me?” This time they did get something different.

The Numbers, a card filled with equations. The Runner, a four legged creature galloping across the card. The Books, an uneven stack of thick tomes written in runes foreign to the human world.

At that point, Masha was starting to suspect a pattern.

”Number, running, and books…,” they said to themselves. ”In other words, math, PE, and English.” Accurate, but very helpful. Then again, maybe it was for the better. A normal, boring, uneventful day at school would do them good after the last few days.

xxXXxx

A normal, boring, uneventful day at school, that was all Vee was asking for. It would have done her some good after the last few days, but no, that was not to be.

Vee and Masha had just barely managed to catch the bus, and if that was the most exciting thing that happened that day, then that would have been perfectly fine by Vee, she’d welcome it. The little mundane problems, the things human teenagers are supposed to worry about, like school, homework, and asking their crush out. One of those weighed heavy on Vee’s mind.

All of them being older than Luz, none of the Cabin 7 crew shared a class with Vee, which was a bit sad. They’d have to make due meeting up at lunch, where Masha was sure to be bursting with excitement to tell the boys what they and Vee had discovered. They were not the only one with news to tell though.

She was first to the classroom and first sat at her desk, watching as the rest of the students walked to their seats. As people filled the room, so did the various smells Vee was used to by now. Mostly sweat, hormones, and cheap deodorant. It was a room full of teenagers after all. It was all rather normal… until Clara passed by Vee.

Instinctively, Vee took a deep breath, her body realizing before her brain that something was off. Unaware, Clara, who looked rather glum, sat down at her usual place, the desk right in front of Vee.

Clara Lambretta, how would one describe her? Who’s she?

[beantothemax]

@meme-boys-blog @snuurge ARE YOU READY?! iTS TIME FOR THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! Btw uh there's mentions of suicide and some strong language. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He has been looking ever since she vanished. 

Every free moment was spent chasing her. Speaking her Name and following the faint trail it set out. 

It always led to a cluster. Never a specific instance. It took less than a second to check if which one was the one she visited, but those seconds add up. And she moved quickly.

So it was a surprise when he finally caught up to her after all this time.

TOK-DEB-12211401, Instance #112511121519. 

——————

There’s a pair of students walking past a coffee shop. They’re friends, but not by choice. They talk about the project they’re working on, something about the history of Japan. A presentation is brought up, and one one of them offers to take most of the speaking role for it. Judging by the attitudes of one over the other, the presenter will probably forget this interaction moving forward, while the other will remember the kindness they shared.

The white haired woman smiles at this. It’s always the little things. The small tokens of kindness, the compliments on the street, the unusual acquaintance… Just as a butterfly flaps its wings, so too can a few words change the course of a story. It’s why Kuzé takes these nights out. To watch such mundanities; to be a spectator on the stage of life.

There’s a man across the street. He catches her eye from his… eccentric getup. An immaculate white suit, blonde hair in a small ponytail. A few people ask if he’s lost, but they don’t otherwise comment on his outfit. Interesting. If this is an Anomaly at work, she’d love to observe it before Darkwick gets their hands on it. 

Before she can drift to the next person, their eyes meet. Silver meeting abyssal black. His eyes go wide with an unreadable emotion, while she just smiles. It’s not the first time someone’s thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. But knowing Kaito Fuji, he would consider any girl worthy of that title. Kuzé goes back to her coffee.

There’s another passerby that catches her attention. A man in casual wear. He’s talking on the phone in an annoyed tone. At this time of night with that sway to his step, it’s certainly a drunken call about an ex-lover? No, it’s his boss. You wouldn’t complain about low pay to your ex. Or would you? Either way, a call like that is bound to-

“[]?”

It’s barely a whisper. A Name so arcane, so Other, it cannot be properly spelt with human language alone. It’s a collection of sounds and feelings, all for the listener to hear. The Name sounds like the soft chirps of birds on a summer’s day; the slight sting of the sun shining on one’s skin with the smell of fresh cut grass. A Name that paints a picture in mere utterance alone.

It pulls at her heart a little.

Kuzé whips her head around to the speaker- the white-suited man from earlier -and gives him a wide-eyed look before it sours into a scowl. He must have crossed the street a while ago. With his bright suit, it’s a surprise she didn’t notice. He’s standing a few feet away, his body still. 

He looks at her with such fondness; it’s enough to make her sick. A few moments pass before he cautiously closes the distance. A silent invitation accepted when there was none given.

Before he says anything, she interrupts him with a hiss. “Who are you, and where did you hear that Name?”

He stumbles a little when he takes a seat before examining her face with a shaky breath, “You- You don’t remember?”

“Answer the question.” 

A shaky breath, “I’m {}. We used to hang out between assignments?”

His Name matches the other in its otherworldly nature. It reflects the smell and feel of old parchment; ancient tomes of knowledge read next to a warm hearth.

A part of herself perks up in joy. Answering the question with flashes of memory.

His gray eyes light up into a shining silver,  “So you do remember. Where have you been Gabriel? I’ve been looking everywhere-“

“Do not call me that,”

…and dulled back to the shade of stormy skies. He searched her face, desperately trying to find answers to how his old friend could snap at him like a steel vise.

But yet, he persisted.

“…What happened?” 

“She found what She wanted.” She sighed. 

In the silence that followed, Kuzé could see the memories replay in front of him. Aged film reels spinning behind the curtain, trying desperately to find a certain scene. 

And when he found it. Oh, when he found it. The slight widening of eyes, the trembling of lips, that vacant look… He knows. He now knows what he looks at is no longer his old friend, but someone who embraced the Void in all its nothingness and majesty. 

Kuzé goes back to her drink. The conversation is done in her eyes. All he has to do now is leave in defeat.

“…I’m sorry.” He mutters. 

A sudden feeling of vertigo, like the world dropped out from her. Her cup falls to the floor. She meets his eyes with a harsh glare. A face of unparalleled focus. A stare where the contents of the soul is laid bare for the viewer to see. 

She knows, because she’s employed the same technique. Viewing every Name, no matter how small. Peeling back the layers and worming his way in like a parasite. Who does he think he is?

She ought to scar him, kill him, hurt him. The bridges were burnt. It’s only right.

But yet, she can’t bring herself to move. Why? Is it for her affection for the Ghouls? Possible detection? Condemning an entire instance and its people The Void just to kill {Rustling Pages and Hearthfire Warmth}… 

Finally, he withdraws, tears in his eyes and white as a sheet.

“You’re lucky we’re in public, {Rustling Pages and Hearthfire Warmth}.” And in this specific cluster. Though they wouldn’t mobilize immediately, Darkwick has eyes everywhere. She wouldn’t be surprised if a small force were to arrive in a few minutes if anything unusual happened.

Despite her bitter remark, he holds fast.

“Did you enjoy rifling through me? Did you have any fun?”

A breath in, then out.

“Find any fragments of her to cling to?”

 He wipes his face and composes himself.

“Oh come on, Uri. Was the truth too much to handle? Did you finally realize  your endless search was fruitles-“

“…Why did you try to kill yourself, [Birdsong And Sunlight]?” 

Power flows alongside the words. The force ushers commands to a person that doesn’t exist. It should have blown away, like ash in the wind.

But yet, it finds its mark. 

It digs into the deepest reaches of her and forces her to respond in a voice seldom used. It's soft and mature, but quiet. So unlike all the other women she prefers to imitate.

“Because there was no other way.”

{Rustling Pages and Hearthfire Warmth} leans down, meeting her eyes and speaking in hushed tones.

“...We need to go.” He urges.

She looks up. People stare at them. Her fit was enough to attract attention.

The wrong kind of attention.

—————

Leo Kurosagi was trying to crack the stupid passcode on this stupid program. It’d updated last night, and he’d been trying to figure out what changed besides the password fail message removing all mentions of that “High King.” 

Honestly, he could try brute forcing it, but the lack of a character limit would make it take forever. He’d rather not have his computer become a decorative fan for the next hundred years, thank you. The shadow wins yet another round. Ugh.

He opens a new tab and checks his inbox. His favorite illegal forum has been a bit quiet lately, but he’s sure he can find some “Anomaly” sightings to laugh at.

Cheap suit, bad editing, doctored recording, some actually good editing, AI generated image (ew), familiar glitches, bad audio, wait a second.

Looks like the video skipped the beginning part, cause the focus was covered in the visual bugs. He assumed the glitches were caused by emotions or some kinda aura bullshit, and whoever was there was having a moment. Audio was creepy to say the least. Loud and clear despite all the visuals. He watched it while pulling up another tab. 

…Huh. 

Should he tell Fuji that she’s cheating on him?

—————

“I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have done that. I just…”

“…wanted to know she was still there, yeah?”

“Look, I didn’t think she was there either.”

“I know.”

“Hm?”

“You should have seen it. [Birdsong And Sunlight] was… shattered, and you were eating at the fragments.”

“Sounds appropriate. I’ve hated her for centuries.”

“Hated? Why?”

“Dunno. ‘Was a part of that false narrative I had.”

“For the longest time, I was convinced that she wanted to leave. I was convinced that no part of her remained. But when you said her Name…”

“I see. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I know how much you- I mean, she- didn’t like looking at souls like that. I just needed to know for sure.”

“I forgive you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I think she would too.” “..Let’s start over, yeah?”

“Sure.”

“I’m {Rustling Pages and Hearthfire Warmth}, but you can call me Uriel.”

“Kuzé. Charmed.”

[They both laugh]

“Say, Uriel, have you ever learned to dance?”

“Haha… you know I never did.”

“How about singing?”

“I can do that.”

“Follow my lead.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GOD this was such a fun fic to write. I ended up recycling an old oc for this, and im so glad i recontextualized him. If you want some reference photos for him, i put together a couple picrews a while back: Picrew 1 Picrew 2 Picrew 3

Yes, his voiceclaim is KAITO the vocaloid, and yes, [Birdsong And Sunlight] is MEIKO. ^.^

:0!! vinegar fic!!! huzzah!!!

gonna be completely straight I am . not entirely sure what is happening here BUT your writing is crunchy as always. doing this to it

music too! yay! and picrews! double yay!

[ellieellieoxenfree]

Do you have a best quote/passage from a book of the year?

this is long, so i put it under a cut. :V

i had to go digging on the discord to find some of my faves from grafton tanner's the hours have lost their clock: the politics of nostalgia. that shit fucking suplexed me.

'as timeless brands, we might not change much, but it seems like everything else is changing all the time on social media. memes and discourses come and go quickly. when they leave our present awareness, they don't become anything like history or memory. they don't string together in any kind of comprehensible sequence, something we can look back and chart to make sense of the recent past. instead, when discourses disappear on social media, they are discarded and glom together to create a giant mass, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but for content: a gyre of internet debris that floats along, carrying the waste of the digital age. no one knows how big this vortex of discarded memes, jokes, ideas, and discourses is, or where it begins and ends. looking back over the brief history of the age of big tech, we can see a trail of detritus behind us, context-less, disconnected -- that's why it might feel like recent history didn't happen.'

'social media is the most powerful digital engine of nostalgia today. this is partly because it encourages users to remain fixed as themselves, so that they're more legible to mechanisms of corporate and state surveillance. but as mark fisher wrote, 'it's miserable for anyone at all to be themselves (still more, to be forced to sell themselves). being yourself, as jenny odell writes, means branding your identity clearly so that algorithms can advertise to you. it means turning your 'habits, desires, and drives' into 'units of capital.' the horrifying result is that you will 'never [be] surprised, challenged, or changed.' but because social media is an archive of the self and encourages users to be as 'monolithic and timeless as a brand,' it also invites them to chase after themselves as they were. look back at an old post, an old picture, and see how you used to look, what you used to do: you will probably be filled with nostalgia. you might try to recreate yourself as you were, thus further preventing change. and with a command, it can all disappear -- deactivated, deleted. will you yearn still?'

'unlike analog media, the digital technology of the twenty-first century allows us to outsource as many of our memories as we'd like and then carry them around with us. unless memories are deleted in a variety of ways -- account deactivation, losing or damaging a device, the disappearance of online sites -- they follow us wherever we go, relieving us of the burden to remember, but also keeping terminal memories alive in the present, forever. the result is that 'loss is itself loss,' as mark fisher wrote. these memory outsources contribute to the perpetual present of the digital age: nothing forgotten, everything now. our technologies are even programmed to forget for us, thanks to the popularity of ephemeral content on social media. a consequence of this memory outsourcing is a kind of widespread amnesia. my smartphone remembers to unlock, but i have forgotten why i picked it up.'

‘as a concept, the home is associated with nostalgia as much as ‘the past’ is. that’s because nostalgia is partly an emotional abstract for physical security. home is where you’re supposed to be safe. if nostalgia provides a makeshift comfort away from home, then home is the place to which you could return to let down your nostalgic guard and finally relax. home for many people is a familiar haven, untouched by the harsh reality that made them nostalgic for it in the first place. and the yearning for a home is strong both for those who have a home to return to and for those who don’t. but if the home becomes tainted, if the harsh reality on the outside penetrates the home’s interior, then there will no longer be a safe place to return to.’

sarah vaughn's ruined was uhhhh.....not great (sorry, sarah) but i loved the line 'what if i, myself, am a terrible thing?' and immediately poached it for a fic title. oops.

others i have found on my phone:

'following the direction indicated by the [detached and undead] left arm, the two headed northwest. they had to play a duet of 'rest' every day to temporarily pacify the arm's killing intent.' -- mo xiang tong xiu, grandmaster of demonic cultivation vol 1

(detached undead murder arm u will always be famous to me. fave MDZS character still)

s/o as well to qian qiu's thousand autumns for castrating a guy and just mentioning it in one line as a throwaway 'well, that happened' and moving on. it's literally like 'and then he knocked the guy out and castrated him and then kept traveling.' i cannot find my cap of it but i did send it to like four people the second i read it.

from tv, i apparently felt the following were worth saving:

'oh, really? you're not going to drink the piss test piss?' -- aunty donna's big ol' house of fun

'if i die, who’s going to teach the children about bo diddly?' -- wkrp in cincinnati

'what’s that, pods? the blob is very fat?' -- space ghost coast to coast

'he’s living on the couch, with the urine.' -- ditto

'god, that was violent. i blame the sea.' -- ditto x 2

'i am a foul and degenerate creature. i will now play the music.' -- ditto x 3

i cannot for the LIFE of me recall what these are from but i am 99.9% sure they are something australian i watched:

'it’s hard to tell your kid, when they’re going to school, ‘you don’t need a chinese gong.’'

'he’s making dolphin sounds and i’m getting deported.'

as usual, i clearly contain multitudes, many of them inexplicable.

[tabletofruination]

Ohhh, wonderful! It looks like I've got this thing working, finally.

I did tell you that reading up would prove helpful...

Yeah, I probably could've done that. But, well, here we are, partner! I'll go first on the introductions!

You guys can call me Juliana--or Juli, for short! I've been a student at Naranja Academy for a year and a half now--and it turns out you can do a lot in that time! I wound up accomplishing a lot! Champion, beater of Team Star, a-and other stuff... Though you'll find I'm waaay more interested in learning about history, nowadays. I think I've got all of Naranja's library read by now...alright, your turn, partner!

Really? Must I? ...I suppose I've little choice. My name is of no importance, but you may call me 'Green' if you wish to designate a name for me. As Miss Juliana has stated, I am something of a partner to her research into the legends of Paldea. It is a pleasure, I suppose.

We'll be talking a lot about our findings and hopefully posting a lot about what we can find--we're especially interested in finding out more about the Treasures of Ruin in this region, and finding out more about their history! But we're also down to battle! So feel free to talk to us!

HELLO welcome to another ~bad sable decision~, this time presenting: an AU Juliana who has been living rent free in my head for months! Time to pay-up and become an actual blog girliepop.

Anyway. As for how this Juliana is AU? It's very simple: girlie here got fused with Wo-Chien after shit went VERY decidedly awry during The Way Home. I'm going to hopefully reveal the details very slowly, but this Juliana is actually a little more villainous in nature, though in a very innocent sort of way. She's already freed Wo-Chien and I'm sure you can all figure out what's going to be the gimmick of this blog a bit. :3c

Some ground rules!

Juliana is a minor. If I see even a singular anon getting weird I will utilize the block button liberally, so don't be weird.

Juliana's circumstances are...I'll be honest, they're a fair amount darker because she did technically fail to stop the Paradise Protection Protocol herself and basically told her world's version of Nemona/Arven/Penny to run for their lives. And it haunts her. Oh does it haunt her. But while she technically lost, Wo-Chien basically won the rest of the fight and got Juliana out, though nobody is really aware of the whole. Fusion situation. As a result, some things have changed--particularly the Teal Mask, it plays out VERY differently here, and Juliana received no invitation to go to Blueberry as a result. And yes, she's basically kind of a villain now. :3c

Any description of the fusion and stuff will be kept minimal but uh. Just a general warning for body horror if you do decide to ask. Please do not fuck around and find out without proper prep. 🙏

More details of her canon circumstances will come out in time as she answers asks, and I ask simply for no godmodding! I may let some details slip OOC early but don't bring them up until I feel the time is right please!

Let me know if you're not okay with Juliana or Green interacting! Green is going to be keeping up a facade as a Totally Normal Human, but I imagine it's not going to take rocket science to figure out what Green is hiding. But I am treating canon like silly putty here, and Green will interact with people of their own accord. If you're not cool with that, let me know. Or if you want Green and not Juliana, or neither, just let me know!

Yes there are two Koraidon on the trainer card. Juliana does not fight with either of them despite Bitey basically being that one meme with the cat on the stairs going "FATHER I CRAVE VIOLENCE". And Buddy is basically still scared shitless of battle! So she basically only fights with three of her Pokemon, but she is pretty strong despite the handicap.

Juliana herself can tap into Wo-Chien's moveset. She absolutely HATES doing so, though. She pretty much only ever uses Protect in a panic, usually, but uh. I figured I'd bring that up in case anyone asked!

Pelipper Mail/Malice on, as is Musharna Mail/Malice! Please just fuck the girliepop up.

I. May also do some regular RP on here? I do not know how tumblr RP works but I have brainworms and want to RP the girl. If anyone wants to RP I guess hmu???

idk what else to put here. i'll think as i go??? but yes. this'll mostly be juliana's daily life stuff and expedition logging to try and find more stakes and more research!

[criptid-specter]

I finished Metaphor reFantazio (metaphorically fantasy!)

Wow, short review: a solid 8/10

It really does feel a game where the journey is more important than reaching the end.

This game in short feels like a love letter to RPGs plus other Atlus games.

Gameplay wise, is a pretty balanced game it takes the best of SMT and Persona to built upon it (god I don't writing this) the turn icon system is one of my favorite things because it can be pretty well abused by the party and enemies alike specially in higher difficulties and the cherry on top the bad weather condition is there to give it an extra spice in exchange for better reawards, I like the freedom of making your characters whatever class the player wanted to make solid to meme stuff like at some point I used an all brawler line class team).

As for the calendar system, while it was nice pressure implementation BUT I'm not really good with it, because it felt like doing too many things at the same time and little time to do them (just like in real life!) I'm the type of person who like taking their time to do things or at least a small extra action after being done with dungeons, but I guess it was a me problem.

As for dungeons, I like them but I feel like they were a bit easy just have your eye peeled for extra stuff and it'd be that wish had more puzzles on it, the only dungeon I had difficulty was the Royal Palace but at that time I had like 99 finisher noodles so the frustration comes more from me mistyping than anything else, also most of the dungeons feel like the same over and over and the MP restoring items were so scarce... even if I tried my best to manage it there were time I still ran out of it. As for the big attacks being reserved to synthesis only I wish they were more like, extra spice aside from SEVERE and nothing else also there's not much incentive to use them once you get Eupha, summoner is stupidly broken..... Despite all of that I still had fun with it entering combat didn't feel like a chore or something else.

The presentation is fantastic, easy to read, accessible and colorful but not in a way that makes your eyes strain, still wish the combat menu combined certain actions to make less cluttered, but that's me.

As I said from the beginning, this game is a love letter for RPG and Atlus games in general, there's a lot of tidbits you can catch by paying attention like Seeker's final class being Soul Hacker or the more straight out laid Persona class and Summoner or Virga Island being an entire Ethrian Odyssey reference with the name changing ti Eht Ria at the end of the arc feels very sweet.

The characters

I think everyone is pretty lovable even the ones I ended up not liking because of reasons they all in a way feel pretty human with good and bads.

Strohl is probably what I'd call the sidekick n°2 in the end he is someone who's pretty hotheaded but with a kind heart, he feels like an overprotective big brother but by the end of the game he butts in and ruins things and ended up making me mad and wish he'd just shut the fuck up, despite of that I still liked him.

Hulkenberg (CV Saori Hayami knight lady again? I need my 2 cents I miss dragalia lost...) I like how steadfast she is, despite of feeling pretty rigid she still managed the fine line between serious and silly, I enjoyed her because the strong conviction of saving the prince AND doing the right thing, she kind of disappears once Junah joins but still manages to have her moments.

Heismay is batman, figuratively and literally(?) I was expecting him to be the butt of the joke once he joined but surprisingly he ended up being an excellent narrative of mourning and moving on and what dwelling on the past can do to some, he still sympathizes with the "villains" yet still calls them out, he is really one of my favorites.

Junah..... I think out of the party members I think she's one of my least favorites, she has her good points on art being an expression of oneself and how it affects people around us and she's really a kind person to everyone even the ones who wronged her, she really idolizes Rella and liked how cold the water was dropped on her when they finally learn who actually cursed the prince, but in general once she joins the party it feels like she took over everything and lampshading everyone else, I have the feeling of her being a dev favorite because holy shit there were moments that were like "can you please let others talk????"

Eupha is a really cute person and very stubborn she is the smarts (?) regarding magic, but she kinda fell off with the whole "I like the MC" she's the fish out of the water and very silly but despite the game doesn't make fun of it.

Basilio.... I still suffer because I ddin't had enough time to do his rank 8 story locking me out of very important stuff -cries- EHEM tragedy aside, he is my top 1, something I would like to talk about is the game putting independence and developing your own ideals and it's seen with the Cygnus, Eutoreika and Magnus siblings the elder siblings are really protective of their own little ones, the most extreme being Fidelio with Basilio, because in some way I understand what they went through and not trusting anyone and joining a madman because meybe they'll have a less shit life, Fidelio protecting him to the point that Basilio feels at loss on what to do once he's gone, but he's strong willed and he still holds pain and inseciruties on his story, but that strength makes him move on pretty nicely.

As for the "main villain" Louis he's an elda on disguise who suffered almost the same terrors as the MC, he feels pretty weak, I understand the whole "there will be sacrifices to build our utopia" but he feels like a kid lashing out to a world he can't understand and refusing to listen to the people who lend out a hand, even realizing what he's doing is stupid but not hitting the brakes because he feels it's too late. He could've been better honestly.

now for the big meat: the story, I will mention spoilers.

The beginning is quite simple, you're the Prince's best friend going on a journey with your critter fairy Gallica and need help from the resistance to undo the curse that is threatening his life and actually spend 3/4 of the game trying to do that! It was a fun ball passing because the narrative insists on Louis being the perpetrator and actually the source of all evil and bad happening on the game's world and the main reason for the protagonist to actually *gasp* kill him!

Despite of journey being quite simple, this is where things start to pick up, because like I said, the game's story isn't about the reaching the end it's about the journey, I like how despite of the premise being quite simple the MC ends up roped on the world's politics and cruelty to save his best friend and it ends up being quite brutal, to the racism the MC is target of to the political sphere and I like that the racism is pretty in your face and well executed even if I think it kind of fell towards the end of the game.

The twists were something else you could see they were carefully planned, some of them were seen a mile away like Grius dying and others like who actually cursed the prince was a fun ball tossing that ends up being quite sad.

AND the most mind blowing of all was the MC being the prince's will to live in the form of his OC, because the seeds were planted a bit before the second battle with Louis as Gallica drops "huh was it like that, oh never mind lol" and then like 2 hours of roller coaster info drop that honestly left me pretty dazed.

Which solidifies the themes of fantasy and dreams being a fuel for our expectations and hope.

Going for world building I enjoyed it a lot, Magla being negative emotions expelled from the people and magic being something like imagination + the strength of overcoming anxiety made everything pretty solid, the royal scepter being the recipient of people's worries and troubles...

This game is really a fantasy version of this world's politics and problems, someone has to shoulder them and the rulers are only humans(?).

Talking about that, I like despite of all idealism the game tells they still tell you actual change takes time to happen that not everything is magically fixed with MC taking the crown, things will get better with him on the throne, but it might take entire lifetimes.

In conclusion, this game is nice portrayal of real life issues and having fantasy leads us to have dreams to make us move forward (I'd like to speak about the importance of the arts but this looks long enough already), there's no perfect system, but as issues take time AND support of everyone to resolve, so does change.

there are so many things I want to talk about but I will one day do another review(?)