#the one readmore. way more effective i think

[isaacathom]

ds9 yime, s2e4

jumping in for s2e4, its kind of weird that the three parter had the whole station evacuated, ends with everyone coming back, and then e4 immediately goes 'everyones evacuated' feels like perhaps this couldve been planned better. also the subtitles seem to have hanged styling now.

okay so now its weird again because quark has, once again, been forced to stay behind by dint of there not being enough space on the shuttles despite offers to pay, which is exactly what happened in the three parter. what is going on. this is like... deja vu.

oh good quarks pulling some shit (?) whats the deal with that

oh bashirs so delighted. love my excited funky guy.

ah. hmm. "is that supposed to be some kind of threat?" "they've got odo in there" "oh. i see :(" bashir you are a fucking delight

see my issue w/ st aliens is im looking at mareel and going... what... are you? we've got a klingon, we've got a trill, is she also a klingon?? but shes so pale. half klingon? like should i know what she is.

sisko asking if she knows the trill is like assuming anyone knows everyone else from X locale. she definitely does but ? still weird. YOURE HERE JUST FOR DAX? come the fuck on man. oh i see its a trill thing, understood.

verad's fascinating. oh come on man obrien hasnt done shit.

bashir is very good and i love him. hes very good. and very much doesnt want to be here. bashir looks fucking angry as shit at this whole thing. i love him for that. just resigned and furious.

ugh. gross. i hate medical stuff. that shits nasty.

oh boring shes motivated by love. snore.

sisko, folding his hands together: well now youre dax you'll be fully aware that me and dax are chill and cool.

hate to say it but jadzia talking about how empty and lonely it is without Dax is like. ooooh. i think i get it. and that feels unfortunate

oh this actor is having a BALL, getting to play a stammering awkward man and then walk back in playing for all intents and purposes a completely different character. yes!

i love that sisko knew he'd be able to fucking get into verads head off the bat because he knows Dax! he knows Curzon and Jadzia! he knows a lot of what he knows. he knows what theyre like. its so good.

mareel is 100% the most boring character here. motivated by love, immediately feeling jealous that her symbiont-ed boyfriend has a better relationship with Sisko than to her, snore.

"we are still friends, right?" "i hope so. come down the infirmary and prove it" sisko fucking rules man. and immediately going 'well, then we arent friends, fuck off' get his ass sisko!

fuck yea quark get his ass

... did they swap mareel and jadzia? cause she doesnt sound right and shes got a jadzia vibe. is that whats happening here. have i forgotten what jadzia's vibe is. like. somethings up. theres something going on here where like, theyre taking advantage of the fact Verad Dax doesn't remember Mareel anywhere near as much as he remembers Sisko, proportionally to lifetimes. SOMETHINGS going on here. okay no i just forgot what mareel sounds like but that wouldve been a fuck of a bit right, imagine that shit. i got overexcited about science bullshit

YES

JULIAN

YES

YES BOYS GET EM

julian just gets to be more competent in s2 i love that development for him

mareel is extremely boring but i commend the efforts being made, shes got some stuff going on.

get his ass benjamin! yes! yes! get his ass!

ohhh i understand the trill spot thing now, i see now why folks are wild for em, i needed to see them on more than just the temples and neck but i do think i understand.

well thats the only ep for the night (bc i was out earlier), that was nice! i liked it!

[entropyvoid]

Greater Sumeru Autism Polycule

This started off as a joke and sorta spiraled outta control just a teensy tiny lil bit. Honestly I would’ve liked to have slapped a bit more on there but uh. Paper space was limited. Transcript below readmore because I know my handwriting can be difficult for some to read? (Plus extra character interpretations/headcanons in italics.)

Disaster MLM half:

Cyno - Highly competitive, except towards Nari, who he practically reveres.

Tighnari - Designated mom friend. (Tighnari is a master of knowing when to be strict and when to be soft. He doesn’t take crap from anyone, but he’s also got a very kind and caring side that encourages others to open up/be vulnerable to him. He makes sure people are taken care of.)

Alhaitham - (He is often misunderstood by others as looking down on them and does nothing to correct their misconceptions or to try and make friends, so I imagine he may have been a bit surprised to basically wake up one day and find himself surrounded by people who look past that and see him for who he is, given that he is probably Teyvat’s most introverted person. He tends to analyze and pick apart the people he likes, like he’s examining them in a petri dish, and if he cares for them he will go out of his way to do silent favors. Not one to express affection verbally (I don’t think he knows how to communicate in a way that isn’t biting and critical,) he lets his actions speak for themselves, and if the other person doesn’t pick up on it, then whatever.)

Kaveh - (An emotional wreck who gives and gives and gives and gives and gives. The people who really stick in his life in the end though are the ones who support him, rather than the other way around, even though Kaveh does his best to try and keep his multitude of problems to himself.)

Kaveh and Alhaitham: Friends to enemies to roommates to lovers? (It’s complicated.) (Tsundere x Kuudere. Teyvat’s messiest gays, hands down. There is so much more to say about them than I have the room for here.)

Cyno and Tighnari: Anthro guy and his furry boyfriend, sweet and spend as much time together as possible, co-parenting Collei. (They’re very domestic with each other. Cyno lowkey lives for competition and usually bonds with others through it, but he doesn’t really do that so much with Nari, their relationship seems to be the exception. Perhaps because Cyno thinks so highly of Tighnari and has such a tremendous amount of trust for him that he just sort of believes Tighnari will succeed at whatever he does.)

Kaveh and Cyno: Met through Tighnari, and like each other a lot. Unbeknownst to Kaveh though, Cyno sees him as a comedic rival. (And thinks he’s very pretty.) (Kaveh is unaware of this. Both the Cyno thinking he’s pretty bit, and the fact that Cyno sees him as a comedic rival. Kaveh doesn’t even try to be funny, his rants about his roommate just sort of are by default.)

Cyno and Alhaitham: Like two tomcats having a standoff (homoerotic edition.) (Haitham is not typically a competitive person, but his respect and admiration for Cyno makes him sort of an exception, and each of them r e a l l y bring out the fight in each other. I think of their relationship as being much like the one between a shounen protag (in this case Cyno) and their rival (in this case Alhaitham.) They challenge each other, bring out the best in each other and have fun in the process, and form a close bond built on a deep level of mutual respect. A.k.a if Cyno is Yugi-coded, then Alhaitham is his Kaiba.)

Alhaitham and Tighnari: Met through Kaveh, lowkey awkward and shy towards each other in a way neither really expresses. They don’t quite fully know what to make of the other, but they do like each other. (Could become something more…?) (They seem to interact the least in the group, and Tighnari’s perception of Alhaitham is probably effected by Kaveh’s endless ranting and venting, but they’re both friendly towards each other and seem to like each other. But I’d like to see them interact more directly with each other. Plus - sometimes Alhaitham needs to be told he’s being a prideful idiot - and I think Tighnari’s the only person in his life who would be able to calmly break down and explain why he’s being an idiot, and Alhaitham would be very likely to listen to him.)

Tighnari and Kaveh: Long time besties, Nari is Kaveh’s designated venting buddy and his last anchor to sanity. (Tighnari is also particularly gentle with and supportive of Kaveh.)

Wholesome WLW half:

Dehya - Tripped and ended up with three girlfriends, and brought them all together. (Dehya probably gets propositions from a lotta starstruck swooning ladies, but it’s always while she’s on the job, and she’s a professional. Plus, I hc her as demiromantic, I just get the vibe that she’d only really want to date people she already knows well. She has a very tough reputation, but is very tender with her three weed smoking gfs.)

Dunyarzad - Is very active during her Elezar recovery and often travels to visit her various girlfriends and likes to bring them gifts. (I think she loves nature, and once she’s able to more freely move and explore without the threat of being locked away, I think nothing could stop Dunyarzad from going to see as much of Sumeru as she can. Dehya often accompanies her.)

Nilou - This is what punk looks like in Sumeru. (Local artist down to overthrow the government at the drop of a hat, is stuck in a constant struggle against the Akademiya to have the right to exist as herself publicly. Nilou’s incredibly badass, actually.)

Candace - Calm and comforting, Candace herself is like an oasis in the desert to those close to her.

Dehya and Dunyarzad: Lady and her knight romance. (Their adoration for each other is clear. Dehya’s too professional to date her employer, but all bets are off once she quits.)

Dehya and Candace: Two of the desert’s toughest warriors being ridiculously cute and wholesome together.

Dehya and Nilou: Dehya not only has a lot of respect for Nilou’s nonconformity and resistance, but also finds her adorable. Takes her out often.

Dunyarzad and Nilou: Long standing friends, now go on trips together often. (Nilou’s schedule is very flexible, so she’s often down to travel with Dunyarzad at the drop of a hat, where Dehya is sometimes preoccupied with a job. Plus, they totally both end up planning future Sabzeruz festivals together.)

Dunyarzad and Candace: Met through Dehya and quickly became close. Dunyarzad has a type, and it’s sweet yet badass women.

Candace and Nilou: Nilou’s always the most successful at getting Candace to step away from her duties in Aaru village and go have fun with everyone. (The others really don’t know how she does it.)

Aaaand the couple of bridges between:

Kaveh and Nilou: Unbreakable bond of the only two art kids in Sumeru. (Pls hoyo I need them to interact in canon.)

Alhaitham and Dehya: Alhaitham has a one-sided crush on Dehya, (and occasionally invites her to TCG nights,) while Dehya thinks he’s the weirdest friend she has. (I hc Alhaitham as the kind of bisexual guy who’s 99% attracted to men with like One Buff Woman thrown in there because. Frankly. I think it adds a really funny extra dimension to their relationship. Haitham has never met anyone as forthright and honest as Dehya, and admires that about her. Dehya would never reciprocate his feelings in a million years, she values him as a friend, but also finds him snooty and insufferable at times, and struggles to understand him largely because of the vast cultural/communication style gap between Akademiya scholars and Eremite mercenaries, though this is somewhat bridged by the fact that both of them are extremely honest, blunt, and upfront about what they think. Despite their differences, they are a fun duo.)

[grandlinedreams]

You’ve done an aged up quirk story, could I request one one where the Heart Pirates get hit with the opposite, and suddenly reader and Law are frantically taking care baby everyone. And there’s something about seeing reader handling babies that stirs…something in Law.

Hiya!! I actually haven't done a story like that before so I think you have me confused for Coza who did do an aged up thing, but I hope I can do this justice for you! But also hey i made it a week on this blog before devolving into my law based brainrot also most of this is under a readmore bc it's LONG pulling in at about 2.4k

[!]: MINORS DNI. AGELESS AND MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED.

[Heads up!: devil fruit effects, fingering, reader is not gendered but there is usage of termed genitals(clit), unprotected sex, breeding kink, piv, i think i have my bases covered]

All in all, you’re really not sure this situation can get worse.

 But on second thought, you amend it ㅡ things can always get worse. And so, correction ㅡ things could get worse, but you’re desperately hoping that they won’t.

“[Name]?” You look down at the tiny redhead, his arms wound around your leg. “Can you hold me?” 

“Of course.” You bend down as he reaches up, your hands hooking under his arms to lift the small boy into your arms, situating him against your hip. “Careful though, don’t wake Bepo.” 

The mink, now reduced to a small cub, is fast asleep in the cloth you’ve tied around yourself as a makeshift carrier, his head resting against your shoulder. Approaching footsteps make your attention shift to the newcomer, your eyes locking with familiar gold. “Any luck?”

Law shakes his head. “I didn’t figure that he’d hang around long afterwards. Baㅡ” Your eyes narrow in warning and Law looks away, jaw clenching as he surveys the mess that’s been made of his crew. Besides you and himself, the rest of the crew’d been the unfortunate victims of a devil fruit effect that’d reverted them to children ㅡ and without their current, adult frame of mind.

“How long do you think this will last?” you ask, adjusting Shachi on your hip again, and Law’s eyes flick from the redhead to Bepo’s sleeping face, then to his own hands. Both are occupied by a set much smaller than his own, and Ikkaku looks up at him and beams as Clione stares at the ground, scuffing his shoe in the dirt. 

What an odd scene this must appear to be ㅡ two adults and a group of children of varying sizes scattered nearby, tucked far enough into an alleyway that the casual passersby wouldn’t spot them. 

“Not sure. If we’re lucky, it shouldn’t last much more than a couple of hours.” 

“Well, nothing to be done but figure out how to look after them until it wears off.” You wiggle the fingers of your free hand in invitation, and Law watches as Uni darts over to latch onto it with both of his. “Should we take them back to the Polar Tang?”

“That’d probably be our best bet,” Law sighs, and Clione looks up at him with a frown. 

“Are you mad at us?”

Law turns, lips parting ㅡ and you cut him off before he can speak, your tone gentle in a way he’s never heard. “Of course not. Nobody’s mad at any of you, okay? You’re not in trouble, I promise.”  

Clione perks up at your words and you smile, pleased that you’ve been able to help cheer up your crewmate. Pushing down the stir of something odd in his chest, Law looks back up at you. “We should head back.”

You nod and adjust Shachi again, coaxing him to wrap skinny arms around your neck for support and still when Bepo squirms at the accidental knock of Shachi’s hand against his cheek, though the mink otherwise stays asleep. 

You slip past Law and he watches as Hakugan, Penguin and Jean Bart hurry to follow you, sight uncannily similar to that of ducklings following their mother. Glancing down at Ikkaku and Clione, he heaves a soft sigh before he moves to follow you. 

You make it half-way back through the little town before Ikkaku is tugging on his hand, and he glances down at her. “My feet hurt.” Cheeks puffed in a tiny pout, brown eyes bore into his own as she tugs on his hand for emphasis. “Carry me!”

“It’s not much further,” he tries, adjusting his tone so that it’s something closer to yours had been and when it doesn’t do anything beyond making Ikkaku pout further and stomp one of her feet, he gives in and lets go of Clione’s hand for a moment to pick Ikkaku up. The tiny girl makes a noise of delight, and he reaches for Clione’s hand again, little fingers curling around his. 

He knows how strange the two of you must look with your entourage of children, and he finds himself wishing more now than ever that the effects of that devil fruit will wear off. You’re stuck here until it does, after all ㅡ the two of you can’t pilot the Polar Tang on your own, and he’s not certain about the effect of deep-sea submersion on children. 

“You have a lovely family, my dear.” Law looks up to find you halted by an older woman who watches his crew cluster around your legs, Shachi tucking his face against your shoulder. As Law steps closer, her eyes flick to him. “This must be your husband.” 

There it is again, the odd flicker from before ㅡ stronger now, even as warmth threatens to rise to his cheeks at being called your husband. Your own are already pink, though your smile stays polite.

 “Thank-you,” you say, and the lady beams before she hurries off ㅡ apparently her only intent to compliment you and your supposed family. The Heart Pirates are your family, you've said that before and made it clear ㅡ but that woman's words are rattling around in Law's head with an entirely new kind of persistence. 

He's never given what he'll do after all of this much thought. To keep himself grounded in reality and not let himself hope for too much, he's told himself he'll be fine with just making it out alive. But now? 

"Law?" Your voice pulls him out of his thoughts to find you watching him, your expression somewhere between confusion and concern. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he says, "let's keep moving. The sooner we're back on the Polar Tang, the better." 

Now, he thinks he might give it more thought. Something soft, vulnerable ㅡ a future with you, where he can be your husband. He's never even thought about marriage like that, but being called your husband ㅡ he could get used to that. 

And a family. 

That surprises him, the sudden want for it ㅡ or maybe it's always been there, pushed down and buried. He doesn't even know your own thoughts on it ㅡ what you want for the future. You've never talked about it in depth before ㅡ but he still hopes that whatever you want, he can be the one to give it to you. 

ㅡ

"They're all finally asleep," you report quietly as you slip into Law's room, shutting the door with a sigh. "They'll be confused if they wake up like that and they're back to normal." You pause. "They are cute, though."

"Small price to pay," Law says, watching as you climb over his legs to settle on the bed beside him. "I just hope they don't remember this."

"Embarrassed that they might see you as anything but a grump?" You tease, grinning when he gives you a flat look. "I saw you holding Ikkaku earlier, it was cute." You reach, snuggling into his side. "I can see you as a dad to a little girl." 

Law tenses. "About that," he starts, and you pull away to regard him curiously as his attention shifts to you, eyes locking with yours. "Have you thought about what you want when this is over?" 

Your head tilts. "I mean not really," you admit, "but if I had to…I think I'd want us to settle down somewhere nice. I'd want a garden, so it'd have to be a place with good weather…" Law is staring at you, and you trail off. "What?"

"You said 'us'," he points out, and you snort, amused.

"Well yeah, dummy. You think I want that with anyone but you?" There's a small smile tugging at your lips, one that gives him the push to continue with his next question. 

"And…would you want a family?" 

"Well, you're my family," you say and his lips part to protest that he doesn't mean like that, but you're continuing before he can. "But like…our family? Between you and me? Yes, but…I would never push for something you didn't want too, Law." Your tone is soft but expression serious, no sign of teasing. "Kids or no kids, I want my future to be with you, whatever that means for us." 

He wants to agree. Wants to tell you that he feels the same way, that it doesn't matter as long as he has you ㅡ but instead, he kisses you. 

He can tell he's surprised you with the vehemence behind it, the seconds delay before you kiss him back. You let him push you onto your back, caging you beneath him. 

"Law," you manage when he finally pulls away in favor of kissing your jawline, "Law, the kidsㅡ"

"They're not really kids," Law counters and you huff, finding it hard to focus with the pinch of his teeth, worrying strawberry pink blooms down your neck. 

"They're right there," you still protest weakly, though you know you're already on the losing side of the argument. Law hums, pausing against the flutter of your pulse point, lips curving into a smirk.

"Then you'll just have to keep your voice down." Law is an absolute menace when he wants to be ㅡ something he's making clear at the moment.

You bite back a whimper when his lips press against your collarbone, the upward skim of one of his hands on your stomach earning a shiver from you and the arch of your back as he palms at your breast. 

There's the brief pause as he works your shirt up and over your head, his own following before there's the warmth of his mouth on your skin again. 

Lifting you a hand to cradle the back of Law's neck, you whine when he reaches up, tugging your hand away and pressing it down into the bed beside your head. "If you know what's good for you," he murmurs, "you'll keep your hands there."

It's a threat and a promise, one that makes heat pool between your legs, instinctive upward roll of your hips against earning you a groan against your skin as he grinds down against you. 

The path that Law makes down your chest is gentle but intentional, the brush of fingers down your ribs as he lets his attention linger at the soft skin of your stomach. Your cheeks burn at the soft intimacy of it, the strategic handful kisses at your navel, down to the swell of your hip bone. 

And then Law is moving back up, kissing you soundly as he pops the button of your pants, tugging the fabric of your underwear down with it and thumbing at the plush of your thighs as he skims his hands back up. 

The sink of one long finger into you gets a choked gasp of his name, one that makes him smirk, watching your face contort with pleasure as he adds a second finger. 

"This soaked and I've barely touched you," he murmurs, eyes gleaming at the crawl of darker red across your cheeks before your hips buck at the curl of his fingers. You've been intimate only a handful of times but he knows you like the back of his hand, drinking in every sound and face you make and committing them to memory. 

He can feel the slick pulse of your walls around his fingers, clenching with every curl and press of his digits, a moan slipping from your lips when he scissors them. A hard crook of his fingers paired with the abrupt press of his thumb against your swollen clit is what does you in as you cum, clenching hard around his fingers as you soak his hand. 

He gives you a moment to recover, watches your chest heave as he reaches to shed the last of his own clothing. His skin is warm against yours as he settles over you, hisses at the slick drag of your core against his throbbing length. 

"Want you," you say, and Law's chest aches as he leans in to kiss you. This time he does it sweetly, intertwines one of your hands with his, the other slipping down to guide himself to your entrance before he sinks into you. 

Your fingers squeeze his as Law's hips meet flush to yours, room quiet save for the sound of soft panting as you try to ground yourself. Law hisses as you clench around him, kissing the corner of your mouth before he pulls back enough to start moving. 

It's not as rough as you'd been expecting with how suddenly he'd pounced on you, but there's a certain intensity to his thrusts that doesn't go unnoticed. Your gaze drifts over the flush to Law's cheeks, the fine layer of sweat at his forehead, the shock of dark hair you so often run your fingers through during late nights and early mornings. Times where he's wholly, selfishly yours, just as much as you are his. 

Pleasure lances through your veins when he shifts his hips a little, nudges your legs apart a tiny bit further apart so that he sinks just a little deeper into you. The hand intertwined with yours slips free, fingers drumming down your ribs and in.

The barely there swell of your lower stomach is what catches Law's attention, magnetic as he spreads his fingers against it, pressing down slightly. It's not enough to hurt you, would never be that much ㅡ but the way your eyes roll makes it beyond worth it. 

"Gonna give you a baby," he says, words tumbling from his lips unchecked, "give you everything you could ever want, so long as you're mine." 

He pairs it with a rougher thrust, aware of how you're clenching around him, dangerously close to that precipice. "Say you're mine, [Name]. Wanna hear you say it." 

"Yours," you gasp, voice pitching higher when he slips his hand down to rub at your clit, working it in tight circles. "I'm yours!"

Law cums first, presses as deep as he can and groans into your neck as he spills into you, setting off your own orgasm as you clench around him with a moan. 

He all but collapses against you, breathing hard as you drag a hand up and down his back. Once he's caught his breath, he leans up enough for a soft kiss, one you return before you thread your fingers into his hair and tug him away from your mouth.

He expects a comment on what the two of you just did, or perhaps something about what he had said, the potential ramifications of your actions. But you don't. Instead you stare at him sweetly, a juxtaposition from the words that you say next. 

"If the kids heard any of that," you warn, "you're dead to me."

[solalunar-eclipse]

Okay. Okay, I don’t normally do this, but I’ve been wanting to do some sort of analysis post recently and the Sonadow shipper inside me grabbed me by the throat and pointed in Netflix's direction, soooooo...let’s have a look at some clips of Sonic and Shadow interacting in Sonic Prime, shall we? (Putting this under a readmore because of all the images.)

The first clip comes from this post. (I don't know how to add that particular gif to my post, or else I'd put it here too, but oh well. I'm analyzing the first one, to be specific.)

So, we begin with Shadow walking away, saying “We’re going after Nine”.

Sonic then reaches out to stop him (with his right hand, despite the fact that he has to reach all the way across his own body to do so, possibly suggesting that Prime!Sonic is right-handed?). This seems to be just before Shadow’s noticed, because he’s still moving forward, looking resolved now that he’s decided what to do.

Shadow sees Sonic’s hand, and looks at it with an expression that seems…mildly irritated, but not outright angry. It’s about halfway between his “resting grumpy face” and his “actually angry face”, in my opinion.

He looks over at Sonic himself with a slightly angrier face (mainly made evident by the fact that the point in the middle of his brow is actually touching his muzzle instead of resting above it).

Then he looks back at Sonic’s hand again (in a pose that I swear is slightly different from the last one even if it doesn’t look that way). The only real difference is that he’s just looking down a little more. The effect of these last three images in actual motion, though, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glance at the hand, up to Sonic, and then back to the hand. It's sort of a "huh-what-huh?!" motion, I think. To me, this gives off extremely strong “what the heck is even happening right now?!” energy.

For completion’s sake, I’m going to finish out the rest of the gif with these last three pictures. Shadow pulls away from Sonic at this point (which, fair, Sonic did grab him out of nowhere and he’s not normally very touchy-feely although this may be disproved in the next gif), and it may or may not have felt like a small punch to the gut for me to see Sonic’s hand outstretched like that, but anyway.

Shadow shifts into one of his patented I’m Trying To Be Cool And Aloof Despite Being An Adorable Three Foot Tall Hedgehog poses, complete with an eyeroll. He doesn’t actually seem that upset about Sonic touching him, however, I think it’s probably more the context of the situation. Shadow keeps insisting that Nine is a threat that needs to be stopped, and Sonic keeps preventing him from doing that, so his frustrated reaction seems to have much more to do with why Sonic touched him than the fact that he did so at all.

And, least but certainly not least, a cute contemplative (and still slightly grumpy) expression from Shadow. (He’s just adorable!! Aaaaaaa—)

Now then! Let’s move onto a really, really big one…

…The Hug™.

The post that I got this clip from actually has some really good points that I’m going to discuss further, so please go read that first! It won’t take long, and also everything the OP says there is absolutely true.

Ready? Here we go! (Please excuse the slightly crunchy pictures...the only way I was able to get this level of detailed analysis was by recording the gif, scrubbing through the frames, and taking screenshots of specific moments, which naturally led to some artifacting.)

So, what's just happened prior to this frame was Rebel Rouge saying happily, "Sonic, you're okay!". Sonic, like the goof he is, does not acknowledge this in any way, fully focused on introducing his boyfriend to his other Shatterspace pals. Instead, he's just looking over at Shadow. Notably, Shadow is instead looking up at Rebel. I'd like to think this is because Rebel has the most put-together and leader-like behavior out of the Rouge counterparts, so he could be waiting for her to continue speaking and give instructions or commentary on the situation, like she does with Team Dark in the games. That's just my take, though, he could just as well be generally on edge—he is in the middle of a battlefield, after all.

Smear frame!! This is included for the expressions as well as for completeness…but mostly for the expressions. Look at how big Sonic's eyes are. Look at how excited he is. He's so hyped to introduce his best rival to everyone. Shadow, meanwhile, looks like he just bluescreened out of pure shock. Sonic's yanking him over so fast he's all blurry, but we can see that his expression is basically 0—0 right now. He has been Touched and he is being Moved and he has not had time to process Why.

(Notably, however, he doesn't break the hold, despite the fact that he definitely could...)

Now, they’ve both settled into place (although ‘settled’ may be the wrong word for Shadow, haha). Sonic is doing what I can only describe as beaming—just look at him! He has a big smile on his face, and he looks almost proud to be introducing Shadow. It really shows how much Sonic values and respects him. (*sobs*) Shadow, meanwhile, has shifted from “what is happening” to “oh Chaos I am being held I am being hugged?? What??? Physical contact? Why????”. He just looks so stunned by the hug, it’s too adorable! More specifically, in addition to the obvious fact that his irises and pupils have shrunk and that he has very stiff posture, if you look very closely at the gif as well as at the following pictures, his ears are also standing up a little straighter and his quills have pushed back slightly, possibly prickling at the sudden contact? Interesting…

Here, we can see Shadow’s ears relax now that he’s processed what’s going on, and his quills have more of a visible curve to them instead of sticking out so much. He’s also glaring off to one side in a position that could either be interpreted as frustration at his current situation (though not so much that he’s willing to push away!!) or as embarrassment. Personally, I think it’s a little of both. Sonic, meanwhile, is still smiling like the sweetheart he is.

Now, we’re getting into the frames leading up to Sonic leaning into Shadow (aka one of the most precious moments of the show). Honestly, I don’t have too much to say about this one, except that Sonic is moving in a way that he would normally while talking right now (shifting around, because this boy has loads of energy) so I have a feeling Shadow probably doesn’t expect the cuddles that are coming his way, ehehe.

The Smush begins!! Shadow looks like he’s quickly resigned himself to his fate, but also decently irritated that he’s essentially getting side-snuggled in front of everyone. This could’ve been another part where he shoved Sonic off himself (goodness knows he did it before in Avoid the Void), and yet he doesn’t, leading to the best part of this whole moment!

Sonic, you smug hedgie. Shadow’s already letting you hug him, don’t push it with that smirk! Shadow does have his eyes closed here, suggesting to me that he is at least a little bit annoyed by now. Again, though, I think this has more to do with the fact that he’s essentially in front of an entire crowd, none of whom recognize or know him. I’ve seen someone else point out that Shadow gets more closed off in Prime when he’s around people aside from Sonic, so honestly, the fact that he’s putting up with this at all sure is…something. (Shipping goggles on: it could be because he appreciates Sonic’s affection enough that he’s willing to cope with the embarrassment if it means the cute annoying hedgehog next to him will hold him a little longer :] )

Okay, so this is really difficult to see, but look at Shadow’s wrist protectors in this image as well as the last one. See how there’s less of them visible in this picture here? That’s because, as the person who posted this gif noted, Sonic moves his hand up and down Shadow’s arm twice after cuddling up to him like this. It actually moves Shadow’s entire arm and shoulder up and down with the movement, making it look a little bit like a friendly rub or shake. Sort of like “hey, look at my grumpy friend, isn’t he great?”. Meanwhile, Sonic’s still looking smug, but I’m now wondering if it’s a bit of a knowing look as well? I mean, this is the one friend of his who’s truly known him for more than a few days. I’m wondering if there’s a bit of “‘ey, Shadow, c’mon, don’t be so shy! You’re my pal!” vibes here, partially because he knows it’ll annoy Shadow and partly because he just knows how Shadow is but wants to drag him into his circle of friends regardless. (Look at how much Sonic cares about Shadow, trying to make sure he’s included! So cute!!)

THE PAT. Two of Sonic’s fingers are lifted up here, which he then uses to give Shadow a light tap on the arm. THE AFFECTION. THE OBVIOUS CARE AND FRIENDLINESS IN THIS ONE SIMPLE ACTION. SONIC CARES ABOUT SHADOW SO OBVIOUSLY IT HURTS ME TO WATCH. MY HEART. No matter how many times Shadow puts up walls, Sonic smashes them down. After all, Shadow doesn’t get to be the only one who does things like keeping Sonic safe or helping him stay grounded! Sonic’s not going to pretend those things just didn’t happen—Shadow cares about him in his own awkward, emotionally constipated way, and Sonic is reciprocating. You can’t stop him, Shadow!

I’m skipping the smear frame here, just because Sonic and Shadow basically pop up and right into this position. Sonic’s two fingers come out of the tap/pat and straight into the peace sign, and now he’s smiling even more than he was at the start of this whole thing. His eyes are all big and shiny too—he’s clearly very happy to have introduced Shadow, and perhaps also quite happy that he’s getting this moment of prolonged physical contact with Shadow. Now, while Shadow’s shoulder is still kind of smushed upwards, which could indicate stress in another circumstance, it seems to me here that this is mainly because Sonic’s hand is pulling it upwards slightly. (Although, I’m afraid it does appear to be the case that Sonic and Shadow are approximately the same height in Prime—remember, Shadow’s ears aren’t as perky right now as Sonic’s, and the ears are really the only height difference between them here.) Shadow’s expression, however, is honestly quite neutral. Despite his previous discomfort (part of which, I just realized, could be because Sonic essentially was pushing him off balance. Shadow was tilted pretty far to his left, which could be a little awkward of a position to be in, especially for an extended period of time), he doesn’t look bothered at all, instead just quietly existing in this situation. Most of the irritability in his expression comes from his angular eyes and his aforementioned “resting grumpy face”, honestly.

(I couldn’t find any gif that includes this next part—probably because the camera cuts away from Sonic and Shadow here for a moment to show the general confusion of the Shatterverse folks—but when it cuts back, Shadow is still standing there with Sonic’s arm around him. Heck, he looks willing to continue standing there for however long Sonic stays next to him, only pulling away when Nine comes back and makes noise, reminding everyone that we’re in the middle of a battle for everyone’s survival here. And when he does pull away, Sonic is dragged with him, which is probably mostly for laughs, but does also imply that a) he was holding onto Shadow pretty tightly and b) he wasn’t expecting to have to let go even AFTER Nine made himself known.)

This post is long enough already (and I drafted it when I could've been going to sleep, because the force of Sonadow infected me), so I won't be doing the "Shadow saves Sonic" scene just yet (unless a lot of people want to see that). For now, though, thanks for bearing with me throughout my descent into madness over these two. And if you want me to take a look at other gifs, feel free to send them my way or put them in a reblog and I'll see if I can make the time to analyze them!

[foone]

So here's the thing about AI art, and why it seems to be connected to a bunch of unethical scumbags despite being an ethically neutral technology on its own. After the readmore, cause long. Tl;dr: capitalism

The problem is competition. More generally, the problem is capitalism.

So the kind of AI art we're seeing these days is based on something called "deep learning", a type of machine learning based on neural networks. How they work exactly isn't important, but one aspect in general is: they have to be trained.

The way it works is that if you want your AI to be able to generate X, you have to be able to train it on a lot of X. The more, the better. It gets better and better at generating something the more it has seen it. Too small a training dataset and it will do a bad job of generating it.

So you need to feed your hungry AI as much as you can. Now, say you've got two AI projects starting up:

Project A wants to do this ethically. They generate their own content to train the AI on, and they seek out datasets that allow them to be used in AI training systems. They avoid misusing any public data that doesn't explicitly give consent for the data to be used for AI training.

Meanwhile, Project B has no interest in the ethics of what they're doing, so long as it makes them money. So they don't shy away from scraping entire websites of user-submitted content and stuffing it into their AI. DeviantArt, Flickr, Tumblr? It's all the same to them. Shove it in!

Now let's fast forward a couple months of these two projects doing this. They both go to demo their project to potential investors and the public art large.

Which one do you think has a better-trained AI? the one with the smaller, ethically-obtained dataset? Or the one with the much larger dataset that they "found" somewhere after it fell off a truck?

It's gonna be the second one, every time. So they get the money, they get the attention, they get to keep growing as more and more data gets stuffed into it.

And this has a follow-on effect: we've just pre-selected AI projects for being run by amoral bastards, remember. So when someone is like "hey can we use this AI to make NFTs?" or "Hey can your AI help us detect illegal immigrants by scanning Facebook selfies?", of course they're gonna say "yeah, if you pay us enough".

So while the technology is not, in itself, immoral or unethical, the situations around how it gets used in capitalism definitely are. That external influence heavily affects how it gets used, and who "wins" in this field. And it won't be the good guys.

An important follow-up: this is focusing on the production side of AI, but obviously even if you had an AI art generator trained on entirely ethically sourced data, it could still be used unethically: it could put artists out of work, by replacing their labor with cheaper machine labor. Again, this is not a problem of the technology itself: it's a problem of capitalism. If artists weren't competing to survive, the existence of cheap AI art would not be a threat.

I just feel it's important to point this out, because I sometimes see people defending the existence of AI Art from a sort of abstract perspective. Yes, if you separate it completely from the society we live in, it's a neutral or even good technology. Unfortunately, we still live in a world ruled by capitalism, and it only makes sense to analyze AI Art from a perspective of having to continue to live in capitalism alongside it.

If you want ideologically pure AI Art, feel free to rise up, lose your chains, overthrow the bourgeoisie, and all that. But it's naive to defend it as just a neutral technology like any other when it's being wielded in capitalism; ie overwhelmingly negatively in impact.

[ken-dom]

tell me something about lars realizing how big his hands actually are

This unintentionally got kinda long for something that’s not really a fic, so it’s under a readmore! @heresthestorymorningglory gave me the most delicious idea for this and I’m giving her full credit for the bit where Lars thinks about choking.

(fluff and nsfw, afab!reader, fingering, choking mention, bruising)

∘₊✧────────────────✧₊∘

Lars knows he’s strong. He’s stronger than he realises, yes, but he knows he’s really good at chopping wood and that being good at it requires more than average strength. He knows he’s tall too; taller than most when he stands up straight. He knows he’s generally big, but he isn’t really aware of the effects his size can have.

Like how powerful it makes him feel when you’re pressed flush to his chest, fingers intertwined with his while you sway to the soft jazz that fades into the background as you tune in to one another’s breathing instead.

In a flash of inspiration, Lars dares to slip his hands out of yours and place them at your waist, holding you close to him. You can hear he's holding his breath. It's intimate, and, dare he think it, a little sexy to hold you like this, and when he’s overcome with a sudden urge to lift you, feeling bold, does just that — seamless, graceful and easy. He surprises even himself.

You feel small in his gentle, steady grip. His palms and fingers splay out over your back, softly exploring. He covers almost every square inch, and he likes that. He likes feeling big and strong when he holds you, like he’s protecting you, keeping you safe… making you his.

The realisation of his actual hand size, though? That comes later on. When your physical relationship develops from chaste kisses and innocent handholding to making out and touching.

Sliding inside your underwear, his fingers are caressing and careful. His breath catches in his throat and his cheeks burn when he feels how wet you are, and his head swims because this is just as he’s imagined it would feel. Better somehow. Real.

When his middle finger strokes through your folds and pushes inside, he gasps at how tight you feel around him. He’s stretching you with just one finger, thick and long and elegant, beckoning you to the brink with a precision that makes you wonder how on earth he’s never done this before.

And later still, when he’s buried to the hilt inside you and his confidence allows him to explore his desires a little further, as his hips snap against yours, he considers how he could wrap just one hand around your throat. If you wanted it. He won’t do it. Not yet. But he likes how small your throat looks in comparison to his hands and the way his fingers could tighten around it. He feels a thrill run through him at how easy it would be. He knows it won’t be the last time he thinks about this.

The marks he leaves on your body are just as appealing. He apologises profusely the first time he leaves some, tears stinging his worried eyes while he’s busying himself with aftercare and comes across a series of fingertip shaped bruises at your hip. Those very fingertips trail over the purpling flesh as he wracks his brain, trying to think of ways he could make this better, make it up to you.

'I've hurt you,' he sniffles, trying to pull himself together.'

'I liked it,' you answer, surprised he doesn't already know.

He never thought you’d actually enjoy it, the way he did when he lost control and growled into your ear that you’re his, holding your hips still in his unfathomably tight grip while he ravaged you, and his fingertips dug so deep into your flesh that your own pleasure peaked with a strangled cry of bliss.

Blushing, he looks a little closer, this time with admiration in place of concern. He smirks when he really sees for the first time just how big his hands must be, just how powerful and strong. And most importantly, what they can do to you.

[max1461]

Here's my other problem with tumblr discourse: even when I make the context/intended interpretation of a post really explicit, people ignore this context and respond to it in like... for lack of a more charitable term, a discoursebrained way.

So a while ago I made a post about some ethical intuition I had, and at the top I put a huge disclaimer which said something to the effect of "this is just an expression of my feelings, it's not meant to be a philosophically airtight position, please don't take it as such", followed by a readmore and then the actual post. Why did I do that? Because I figured that if I didn't, people would nitpick it in various technical ways that missed the basic point. Lo and behold several people still did that, and when I replied basically restating the disclaimer, one of them said "oh I didn't even see that. Well I think if you post a half-baked thought online I retain the right to nitpick it".

I guess that's true. My blog is public. But the point is that I want to use my blog for certain things and not others, right, that's what I'm attempting to do. And people seem actively resistant to my attempts to guide the discussion on my blog in certain directions, which makes blogging less enjoyable. Of course some people will always do that, that fact doesn't bother me, but it feels like the irrelevant/point-missing discourse so often overshadows the meaningful discourse that I start to feel less of a desire to put in the effort.

Like, the point of issuing that disclaimer was to say, as explicitly as I could manage, "I am trying to have a discussion about feelings and intuitions here, I am aware there might be ways these intuitions are not fully consistent, but that is not the discussion I'm trying to have". But even so explicit an attempt to specify a conversation topic does not work; the discourse machine demands a certain kind of engagement and that is the engagement every post will get no matter what.

I don't want to put the person who missed my disclaimer on blast: it's honestly an error that anyone could make and on its own it's no big deal. If said person is reading this: you didn't do anything wrong and I am not mad at you, to be 100% clear.

It's not a one-off mistake that bothers me, it's the fact that this is how discussions on here so often go that putting in the effort to discuss things productively often feels wasted.

Another example of this that... if you go through my #society tag, you will see a lot of uncertainly in my phrasing. You will see me say a lot of "it seems like we should..." and "we should find some mechanism to..." and so on and so forth. Why? Because, as I've mentioned before, I've gotten a lot out of political discourse on here. When it's good, I actually find it quite good. But it's good when it has a constructive or collaborative tone, when I am bouncing ideas or thoughts back and forth with someone. Generally I am trying to invite this kind of discourse.

Sometimes, again, I say it really explicitly. I don't have them off the top of my head, but I know there are quite a lot of #society posts where I've said something quite straightforwardly to the effect of "here are some niche social/political issues I've been contemplating, does anyone have any ideas for how to respond to them". Obviously there's a spectrum in how explicit I am about this, but even when I'm really clear, most of the responses I get are still "discoursebrained", in the sense that they seem antagonistic and generally more interested in saying "X guys are cool and Y guys are lame" than in productively engaging with a set of ideas.

Even if you disagree with my claims or my premises, there is a way to state that which adds to a conversation instead of shutting down a line of inquiry. I am always trying to invite this type of mutually-productive discussion, and I so rarely achieve it.

Over the years my methods have changed. I come from a background of like, forums for specific nerd interests. Those places are plenty contentious, full of plenty of drama and disagreement. But ultimately, I always still felt that productive discussion was valued above destructive discussion; that because we were all united in a common goal of [doing our nerdy hobby], a comment where you build on someone's idea to say something useful to others or to introduce a new insight was generally valued above one where you just said "you're wrong for such and such reasons, hah!" or even "you're right for such and such reasons".

Coming from this background, I assumed this would also be the case on tumblr, and that I would not have to put in any extra effort to invite this sort of discourse. Alas, this was not true; even long and thought-out replies from respected discoursers often just amount to "here are the guys I agree with and here are the guys I disagree with, for such and such reasons". This is lame and boring and not appealing to me.

So over the years I've tried to be more and more explicit about what types of discussion I am trying to have, I've tried to tee up the sort of interactions I want as much as possible, but it hasn't really worked.

The problem is not strictly the quality or measuredness of the responses or their tone or anything like that. These are the things most people focus on when they critique the discourse, but I think they miss the point. The problem is that most responses don't seem to be intended to advance a mutually-productive discussion, they don't build on the base of what they are responding to, they just make various assertions and statements of allegiance in the vicinity of the material they are responding to and call it a day.

Maybe this is too harsh. I'm sure I do this too. And it's not always bad. Sometimes I use someone else's post openly as a jumping off point to elaborate my own ideas (although I try to be careful about this, and also make it somewhat clear that I am doing it), and this can be productive. I do actually want to hear people's ideas. It's not any single instance of these things I'm complaining about, it's just that discoursey responses seem to drown out all other types of discussion, even when you are really clear about what type of discussion you are trying to have.

So that's my complaint.

[ouroborosorder]

OK but when you're free of all the other obligations and able to do it can we get the Ines skin writeup anyway because I liked the Eine Variation one and why do they keep giving Caprinae ops skin like this do they just hate goats at hypergryph or what

Okay so I got this ask a month and a half ago and am just now getting to responding to it. In that time, I got a job as a professional VFX artist so my opinion means double what it did before. So that's fun! Respect me and bow to me, peasants.

I wrote a massively long writeup here and then my page refreshed and I lost all of it twice. Let's speedrun this shit, alright? (She says, immediately writing a 5 page unhinged rant.)

This skin sucks because of the exact opposite reason Eine Variation does, it's just too fucking detailed for its own good.

...Also what the fuck is that in the background is that a goddamned alien spaceship has anyone else noticed this?? This is a bloodline of combat skin this is canon does ines just fight aliens at some point what the FUCK?

Anwyay VFX in the readmore.

Deploy animation. I hate you. I hate this. I hate it.

It's rare I get to see an entire skin's mistakes in microcosm like this! That's fun!

This is so detailed that it actually ceases to have any real shape or identity. This doesn't look like shadow, because skins can just. Change character lore to make something look cool yes I'm still mad. Is it stars? That would explain the weird yellow dots, and there are stars in the art. Fire? No, it's not actually fire, there'd be fire here. Burning fabric? It only looks like that if I squint and zoom in, but I can't... think of anything else.

The colors are so awful. The way that there is a hard line between the dark lavender and the scarlet which then fades into orange is. A choice. I would not have made. At all. In any way. Ever. At any point. Also the random dots of yellow are very funny because they are so clearly just random pixels of yellow. Some of them even aren't in the orange, so they're just like, highlights that have decided to break out of the highlighted areas. Did they.. want this to look like her burning dress? In which case, why are they.. blue? Her dress is black with orange embers, I don't GET IT.

Also small thing but it has a drop shadow, but like. She's literally in all black until she fully appears. And the swirling ribbons are dark-colored. There's no worry about them not standing out against a light background. Is that just supposed to look like she's surrounded by shadow if that's the case then why isn't the rest of this shadow AGH.

This looks weirdly... JPEG compressed??? Like, you can kiiinda see it in the big version, but if I shrink this down to phone resolution...

GOOD LORD SHE'S BEEN DEEP-FRIED.

S1 is good. I like it. It's simple, elegant. Good use of colors, and I think the impact looks great, good use of red and orange to create visual interest. Not gonna bother to screenshot it, it's not that interesting NEXT

S2!

Stop it. Stop it. Put a few colors away. I am counting 8 distinct colors in this one swing alone, and then two more for Ines herself. Stop it. That is too many colors. Add less colors.

I don't even see what the colors are there FOR. Are they selling the tip of the swing? That's not right, because the red highlights start at the tip, then swirl inwards until the red is in the inner part.

I do actually think this one is a lot better at actual resolution.

It's still too detailed, and that detail ends up being crunched and not really... serving any purpose in the grand scheme of the effect, but I do think it is... better. It makes it more clearly light on the outside, dark on the inside.

Also I hate the ends of this swing. I hate it. Why is one a perfect circle that's been stretched out and the other end a rectangle that's fading out. Why is that how you did this. This effect looks like two different swings that have been stapled together like goddamned Catdog.

BUT WHEN IT FADES IT HAS AN INKBRUSH LOOK SO WHAT IS THIS EFFECT.

Why not lean into the burning dress look? Have it be a black trail that like, burns away when it fades? That would be STUNNING, anything but. Whatever is happening here. Mrgrgr okay fine it can't get worse right

DEAR READER. I PRESENT. S3. THE CULMINATION OF EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM.

So this IS a stars theme after all. This IS stars? Just wanna make sure we're all on the same fucking page here.

Dear reader. I hate this. So fucking much. This may be, and I do truly mean this, the worst piece of VFX I have ever seen in any game. This doesn't read as a piece of VFX in an anime game, it reads like the background of a YA fantasy novel's cover.

The nebula doesn't move. It's static. It is clearly just a jpeg. It's not even doing the Chowder screen-space orientation thing. It's just. There. Inescapable.

The comet itself just. Ends. It doesn't fade out or taper. It just. Stops. There's barely any anti-aliasing here. It's just a hard line between the comet and the background.

Ines herself is surrounded by identical dark lavender and orange energy, so there's no visible difference between the effect and herself. Sure. It's not going to be onscreen long anyway. Who cares.

The center of the comet is bright white as if it's the highlight of the effect, but it's... it's off-center?? so it's ultimately... Highlighting something. is it highlighting the sword? Is it supposed to be a haze that shows you the sword? But it doesn't look like it because it took me 15 minutes while writing this to realize that the sword was there at all because it's the same orange color as all the other highlights and so it gets eaten. If your highlight color stops drawing my eye, then you've fucked up because that is literally what a highlight color is supposed to do. Where am I supposed to look at this thing, where is the focus, the shape?

It's even funnier that the blade leaves a little cartoony goofy team rocket blink when it leaves, before immediately turning into whatever public domain NASA star image they're using for the comet. A real glimpse into what it would look like if Spiderverse sucked ass. (I do like the blink itself tho, a small little blue haze to add color and contrast against light backgrounds, smart touch.)

Explosion sucks. Suddenly they decide the palette is something entirely different. Where did the yellow come from. Yellow isn't even on the art. I guess when your palette is that big, you can change them up how you want. I would actually like this effect if it was slightly less detailed and in a skin that had actually used this pallette. It reminds me a bit of Specter the Laurentina. But with this level of detail and these colors... This somehow looks more like a YA book cover. A Sword of Goats and Stars. Fuck me I hate it.

I almost like this buff uptime indicator, It's just that the red from the swords fades into the orange on her dress and makes the whole thing muddy. Also she has an actual roiling flame behind her LMAO GET DUNKED ON HOEDERER THAT'S RIGHT I WILL DUNK ON HIM EVERY TIME EVEN THIS PIECE OF TRASH HAS ONE UP ON THE HOE LMAOOOOO

(In fact I actually... think this might be a recurring texture? It looks familiar, but I can't pin down from where. This is a bad screenshot for showing it but I'm not bothering to get a new one. This is my mental breakdown and I get to choose the visual aids.)

Anyway, maybe I'm being mean. After all I'm criticizing an effect for being too detailed when I am actively zooming in and looking at the details. So let's shrink down to the resolution of my phone just to see how it would-

Ah.

Final Ouroboros VFX ranking: A jpeg compressed photo of a wizard airbrushed on a van / 18 Originium Prime. Actually wait no that sounds too cool. Uh. The wizard is also racefaking. Now it's no longer cool. Nailed it.

[gin-juice-tonic]

i think itd be interesting if leaving a bit of zombie in a person would effect their life span. would they live longer or shorter lives? will they ever truely die, or would they turn back to being a zombie instead?

also think itd be a really cool thing to explore just overall. would laboratories pick it up? find a way to test for it? find a faster/safer way to neutralize it? maybe even make vaccines for effected towns so people are less likely to be effected. or would you even be able to do that since its not actually a virus?

Im gonna answer this under a readmore because it got long.

I talk about my zombie lore stuff a liiiiitle more in this post:

https://gin-juice-tonic.tumblr.com/post/704995046015041536/gin-juice-tonic-part-of-something-the-little

But for specific answers to your questions:

1) If you have more not-zombie in you than zombie in you, all major zombie operations in you are supposed to cease, so I'd be inclined to say nothing special about your life span would happen. (The bit about vegetarians having a hard time after being cured was more of a joke.) If something WERE to still happen though I would say it'd increase your life span a little, because of zombies ability to stay together despite their whole... everything. But hopefully that wouldnt happen.

I guess I sort of implied that humans with zombie in them can drink formalin and be okay... until they cant anymore. That's the only perk you get.

2) If you die and you have zombie in you at the time, your body becomes a zombie. But your life force isn't in there anymore, so you can't really say it's still that person anymore. That's the zombie's body now. Cures will no longer do anything at this stage

3) In journal 3 Ford says he analyzed Soos and could tell he survived being a zombie "Due to evidence of autolysis". I did bad in biology in high school but I'm still pretty sure that doesn't make any sense at all lol. Maybe we're to assume that like, a minimal amount of his cells are still self-digesting in a unique way but not enough to affect him as a whole. Which lends credence to the idea that there is no perfect cure, i guess.

4) In my mind the only test for it is "Is the person looking or acting like a zombie", and its about as an exact science as the blood test from the movie the Thing (1981) lol. But as noted up in point 3, Ford I suppose tested Soos somehow. Perhaps one could take a sample of blood and use the titration method I described earlier on the sample until the all cells in it are no longer killing themselves. But then you'd have to make some assumptions involving the ratio of zombie to human based off that tiny blood sample if you wanted to try continued curing at a larger scale. Ford doesn't mention trying to cure Soos further or anything, so I'll just go ahead and claim it's too dangerous to attempt, even for Ford.

5) The thing that kills the zombie force also kills normal humans, so I'm inclined to say a vaccine wouldn't be possible. Who knows though

[mochayoubi]

hello!! how are you? i'm reaching out to you because you're the one i keep seeing my dashboard that's related to japanese learning.

i wanted to ask: how do you suggest a beginner should start studying? like, they're N5, and they know hiragana and katakana, but do not know how to move forward from there because it scares them? (it's me, btw, hi hello how are you how are the kids)

thank you so much!! have a good day!!

omg hi!!! im doing ok (im sick rn but it's fine lol) thanks sm for the ask! :3

i think the best thing you can do for yourself is follow your curiosity! at the early stages of learning curiosity will take you much farther than trying to set hard deadlines for yourself - especially when it sounds like moving forward is a bit intimidating at the moment.

so, i'm going to list out things that might be worth checking out. it takes a while for people to figure out what works for them, and since you mentioned you already know hiragana/katakana you're primed to get out there and really explore your options! embrace the feeling of possibility rather than the fear of the unknown :D i say this bc if you get too caught up in making the "right" choice it might just make learning too stressful to want to continue

anyway here's some things that beginners commonly go for when continuing with japanese learning (under the readmore)

find a textbook and work through it there's a bunch out there, I know Genki I is probably the most well-known, but i'm also familiar with Tobira I, Yookoso, and Minna no Nihongo. textbooks are nice because they're literally designed for learners and offer structure to what order you learn kanji, grammar, etc. and come with lots of practice questions. the difficult part is self-teaching through them since they tend to assume youre also using it with a teacher who can correct you and give advice. however they're still pretty good as references imo! if you google "[textbook name] pdf" they're pretty likely to come up

find an app you can use daily there are also a lot of these, and many of them are designed to be used daily so you can better enforce the habit of studying japanese every day. these tend to be simpler and gamefied to make it more appealing and easier to pick up as well. i would just stay away from duolingo as i've heard their japanese curriculum is bad. some other ones i've heard are helpful are Renshuu and Human Japanese.

find an online guide and follow it by "online guide" i mean websites people have compiled of their own guides to learning japanese, such as Tae Kim. these are more accessible and unlike textbooks tend to assume that you are self-studying, so it's easier to follow independently, but usually don't have any practice questions or ways to test yourself. still good as a reference. you can also check out this website that specifies their philosophy on what makes effective japanese learning and what steps to take as a beginner (imo it's very. long. and winds on for a while. but people have said it helps!)

download and use anki anki is an app (both phone and pc) that uses flashcards and that many learners use to retain vocab. their site has decks other people have created, and you can find decks of "core vocab" for example which has flashcards of common japanese vocab. you can also create your own flashcards of words you encounter in the wild to help practice them even after you've read it. i think anki is super useful, but i would probably suggest using it once you have more of a grasp on basic japanese concepts or else you'll just be rote-memorizing things that don't make sense to you yet. but i'm putting it here in case this appeals to you!

take a class or find an online tutor now this one will most likely cost you money, but it offers the most structure and guidance possible which can be extremely helpful starting out since you're able to ask questions and get feedback. you can look into nearby universities who might offer japanese classes, or you can try one of the many language-learning tutor websites out there. i've had some decent success with italki, and there's also JOI (japanese online institute) that i've heard is very helpful too.

watch japanese-learning videos these can be nice bc you can actually hear the japanese and how it's supposed to sound, and it's typically lower effort and easier to get into than actively starting a textbook or class. miku real japanese, japarrot, and 日本語の森 are channels i've watched before and like, but there's plenty others out there too. i'd just steer away from clickbait-y looking ones like "i learned japanese in 30 days and here's how!!" since they tend to not be that helpful.

read simple stories in japanese reading in japanese tends to be the most intimidating step for people, but there's sites that have stories made for beginners that are easy to follow and only use hiragana/katakana. my go-to for my students is usually tadoku since the stories are short, organized by level, and very beginner friendly. a while ago someone showed me natively which lets you look up japanese books, also by level. if you want some good beginner manga, yotsuba and teasing master takagi-san are what i've recommended before

misc. things you can try!

watch anime but intentionally - try to actively listen and pick up on words they say. a long time ago i used animelon, which puts japanese subtitles that you can adjust to show hiragana only

look up jlpt n5/n4 specific materials. they're geared for an exam so it might not be the most natural feeling, but they do tend to be convenient for lists of vocab and grammar. this website has some helpful resources for that

add an extension on your browser that will let you hover over japanese words and see its definition. i use firefox and have 10ten reader to do this, but rikaikun and yomichan are also similar extensions

when you learn the japanese word for something in your house, put a sticky note on it that has the japanse word. like, for "table" you can put a note on it that says 「テーブル」. i heard this can help with retention (i haven't done it myself tbf)

EDIT: ohh i can't believe i forgot this. but join a japanese-learning community! there's discord servers out there, and if you have a friend willing to study with you you can ask them to be your accountability buddy.

anyway, i know that was a lot but i hope that gives you some direction on where you'd like to go next in your japanese learning journey! ^_^ and again, absolutely no pressure to do all of these. the most important thing is letting curiosity be your guide and fostering a positive relationship with learning japanese rather than being afraid. if i can help out some more lmk!!

[whaliiwatching]

Caught up to the fic!! Absolutely fascinated by all the queer/punk/poc history here, since I don't know much myself. Very sweet chapter as well.

Unrelated question - mostly - but why is it common fanon to depict Noir as the more scarred up of various spiderpeople? Naturally everyone has their fair share of fights, though the only we see sustaining any marks is Peter B and his misaligned nose. Personally, I've taken it as Noir Peter not healing as cleanly due to it being Spider God stuff over Weird Radioactive Healing Factor stuff. Thoughts?

thank you so much!! i’m glad you liked it, & hope the ending was satisfying for ya <3

short answer: hot

long answer, plus a map of my idea of noir’s scars: under readmore :)

i’m not a devout spidey comic/movie fan or a doctor. this is based on conjecture and minimal research!

when i came up with my unmasked noir ideas, i wasn’t influenced by fanon—i hadn’t seen any other fan art, not even when itsv came out. but i can think of a good few reasons that scarred noir is a popular headcanon: evidence of what he’s been through makes him feel more tangible/relatable, the visual difference enhances his thematic individuality as distinct from other spider-people (especially other Peter Parkers), self-consciousness can explain why he doesn’t take off his mask in itsv even around other spiders.

all perfectly valid and interesting reasons! but the first two reasons are doylist and the last one is missing a crucial question: why does he have scars? unless a wound is severe, gets infected, or gets lucky, it won’t usually scar. facial injuries especially need to be really bad to leave a mark. and of course most if not all other spider-people have the healing factor. so what gives??

i like the spider god’s curse influences healing factor idea; it opens up some nice angsty possibilities regarding an inability to Be “Fixed;” no matter how much he tries, he can’t erase/forget what’s happened to him. but i also enjoy the bandaging someone up after a fight genre of fic, and am annoyingly pedantic, so my personal working theory is that the healing factor is not a doctor with ten plus years of experience and an accurate understanding of human anatomy. when a bone really badly breaks, it has to be reset or it’ll heal wrong. to me, the healing factor doesn’t know what ‘right’ is, only ‘fast’ and ‘effective.’ it’s an accelerant, not a substitute for medicine.

so let’s establish the baseline. modern spideys either receive modern medical attention or the injury is superficial enough that they don’t require it. even poverty-stricken peter parkers get rushed to the hospital, because fictional doctors Don’t Care About The Money and/or peter is dolled up in spider gear and who’s going to ignore a visibly beat-up celebrity hero?? plus i honestly believed peter b’s nose was just genetics or smthn. my nose is misaligned and it’s never been broken to my knowledge

to compare, noir lives in 1933 and, far as i can tell, doesn’t rlly garner the same fame and respect from the public as modern spideys do. in the 30s, medicine was meh (they had x-rays but didn’t rlly consider radiation much of a threat, penicillin was still in its infancy, polio was a huge threat, etc) but was also, more importantly, far too expensive for most people suffering during the Great Depression. whatever treatment noir receives after a fight, if any, would look way different from ours. that means his healing factor, which can’t differentiate scars from normal skin or a misaligned bone from a whole one, would be inefficiently assisted or left alone. it would leave its history behind.

on the infectious disease side of things, it’s probably much easier for even noir to recover from less physical ailments like the flu and pneumonia—spider healing factor likely remembers and codes for immunity better than regular immune systems—but without modern drug therapies he’d still be worse for wear, ie internal scarring. mans would have a shorter-than-average parker lifespan if not for the pseudo-immortality of the Spider God

anyway. all this to say, here’s my personal map of parker’s scars. crop tank and daisy dukes to keep tumblr off my ass <3

(tbh this is more for my reference than anyone else’s, i’m sick of looking through my art of Just His Forearms to keep my details consistent, but maybe someone will find it interesting lol)

[whentvsfly]

S.E.E.S, but Pokemon. (Kudos to those who can tell who's who without the readmore)

More info after the cut!

Tried to make everyone look like themselves without adding clothing/accessories. More difficult than expected, but a nice challenge!

I imagine either only persona users can use their moves (at all, or effectively, not entirely sure which) or when they use their personas (personamon?) they appear as an altered version of their fully evolved forms. Kinda like the second one better, as a way to use more powerful attacks and keep in theme with Persona games

Tried to keep them with their elemental affinities:

Mitsuru Kirijo: Sneasel. It just had the right vibe for her, and I curled the tail (feathers?) to make it look like her hair (although Akihiko is standing in front of most of them).

Akihiko Sanada: Pawmo. I needed electric type, and with his affinity for boxing and being fit, I figured an electric/fighting type would work well for him! Didn't want to do Pawmi because it wasn't yet fighting type (maybe he evolves sometime after The Fire) and didn't want to do Pawmot because no one else is evolved, so having him be max evolution would feel *weird*.

Shinjiro Arakgaki: Scraggy. A solely phys skill user HAS to be fighting type. There were several choices for him - Mankey was one, I believe - though something about Scraggy's appearance made me go with it.

Minato Arisato / Makoto Yuki: Castform (Sunny). I like to make the wild cards pokemon with several forms, or the ability to transform in some way. His 'base' form in Tartarus is Sunny, since Orpheus has fire attacks, but he shifts with whatever element he's using.

Yukari: Ducklett (Shiny). She was just going to be normal ducklett, but then I remembered the shiny was pink, and it makes her more 'special' and talk of the school, so I decided that's fine haha. Flying is the wind equivalent, here, so it was hard to Not make her some sort of bird. It works though, I think!

Junpei Iori: Charcadet. Needed a fire type, and charcadet seemed spunky enough to be him, out of the ones available. After Chidori [redacted], his personamon changes from an Armarouge-equivalent to a Ceruledge-equivalent.

Fuuka Yamagishi: Psy attacks don't exist in p3, though they do in p5, who I also already pokemoned, but Psychic still fits both psy attacks and navi abilities, so I'll let them overlap. She was able to avoid being killed in Tartarus for 10 hours, so she would have been using teleport to keep herself safe, as well as other psychic moves to detect where shadows lurked. Wanted a pokemon not usually known for attacking, to fit more with the navi role.

Aigis: Iron Valiant. Another phys-heavy user, so I wanted fighting type, and Iron Valiant happened to be just that. Looks like Gallade/Gardevoir (*is* Gallade/Gardevoir but in the future/ an alternate dimension?) but is also distinctly Robotic. Luckily most people pin the oddness about her as 'why is she fully evolved and in highschool' rather than 'hey, that's not a pokemon I know, what the hell'.

Koromaru: Houndour (Albino). There are not too many fire/dark pokemon, to go along with Koro's fire/curse attacks, and one of them just Happened to be a dog. I had to. I also made up an 'albino' coloration, based off of real albino dogs. If shiny, as a genetic mutation exists, then others can as well!

Ken Amada: Dedenne. Very similar to Koro, there are exactly two (2) pokemon that are electric/fairy, as I equate bless to fairy type, and one of those was a legendary. So Ken is Dedenne. It oddly works out, since he looks up to Akihiko, and they're both small, rodent pokemon (who happen to be their pkmn generation's equivalent of pikachu :P)

I have Many more thoughts on this crossover, if anyone wants to talk about it! I have a few more P3 characters planned out (Strega, pharos, ryoji, nyx avatar), P4's Investigation team, and P5's Phantom Thieves, though I need to actually Draw them all.

[phantomrose96]

Okay since I'm waiting for laundry, I'm gonna write up some fuller thoughts on the new Spider-verse. Spoilers abound beneath the readmore!

So I'm gonna start with the good, because it really WAS a good movie. The main thing working against it is that it's the successor to the original Spider-verse, which was such a master-class in style and storytelling.

Things I loved:

I'll shout out the animation to start, because how can you not. Absolutely lives up to the original Spider-verse and more with "oh this is giving me chills" style and animation. The whole sequence of Gwen saving people at the Gugenheim absolutely awed me.

Speaking of Gwen, Gwen. That whole first half-hour-ish of Gwen-focused screentime was so, so good... Loved her character-development. Loved her banter. Loved all the jokes and goofs and punch-out back and forth during the Gugenheim fight against... villain whose name I'm forgetting. Miguel showing up was great. Jess showing up was even better.

Gwen unmasking herself to her father was so so good... That was the precise moment I went "oh, yeah, I want to come see this again." This then rolled into Miles's part of the story, and his whole sequence with fighting Spot while trying to get to the parent-teacher conference *chef's kiss*. Amazing animation. Amazing goofs. Amazing humor.

Then... hmm, I have some critiques about much of the middle of the movie... I'll get back to that in the next section. But it still had its highlights: Spider-punk and Pavitr were fantastic, and I feel they were used just the right amount. The gags at Spider H.Q. were excellent. Spiderman-pointing-meme my beloved.

Then when the twist hit... my jaw was on the floor. I'd noticed Rio's eyes were green instead of brown, and just chalked it up to maybe a small production error or an effect of the lighting. Even the "Who's Spiderman?" I was willing to count as just the most hilarious possible identity reveal, to a mom who's just not really paying attention to the street vigilante scene. Then it hit... and the fact that Gwen and Miles were not experiencing the same reality just ah... AH!!!

Things I felt kinda so-so about:

The middle part of the movie felt a bit... lacking in tightness? The tension with his parents felt a bit meandering, seeming to wrap up and then come back, and I feel Rio's attitude toward Miles changed without much reason to have caused it to change.

There was a discomfort to the scene with Miles and Gwen spidering around the city... which I know was largely intentional due to the romantic tension and the "Gwen lying to Miles", but I just Do Not Like romantic tension between characters that did so well as friends. I really didn't care for Miles's jealousy over Hobie.

The Spider H.Q. stuff... I really WANTED to like... but I always feel a sort of perhaps second-hand embarrassment for the kind of stories that are like "yeah there's literally thousands of us in on this, but we didn't invite you because ummmmm 😬".

In addition to that, I also have a distaste for the trope that's like "Every single rational and highly-qualified individual knows that 'X' is a terrible and destructive idea that can get people killed. However our naive and head-strong main character thinks we should do 'X'! So he fights off literally everyone else (and wins, for no reason, considering any one of the highly qualified individuals should out-class him) because he's the main character, and it'll work out okay just because." Like.. personally I had a very hard time rooting for Miles in all that.

Additionally... why did Miguel even tell him that they were all just gonna sit back and let Miles's dad die? Like I get it was necessary for the plot, but it was done with this expectation that Miles would just be like "oh okay I guess :(".

What I would have liked way more would be this: After Miles saves the (should have died) Police Chief from Pavitr's world, Miguel says Miles has "proven himself" and can come to Spider H.Q. to come be trained. (Really, Miguel has recognized Miles is an active threat as a canon-breaker, and he needs to keep Miles distracted for a few days while the canon event of Miles's dad dying takes place in his own dimension.) Gwen and Peter B. understand what's happening, but are forced to go along with it, behaving strangely the whole time. Then when Miles catches them in a lie and the truth comes out, THAT'S when Miles rebels and tries to fight against everyone to get home...

I also would have liked it if maybe there was like... more of a hint of hope for canon-broken universes to be saved. Like if Miguel's policy was "a universe can be saved after canon-breaking, however it's too risky for all the people in that universe to it's Spider Law that we must let our canon events occur. We all make this sacrifice for everyone's mutual protection." then I'd see Miles's defiance as more of a "well I'm breaking from you and will succeed at the risky thing of saving my universe and my dad". They did a little bit hint at this possibility with the fact that Pavitr's dimension is not necessarily doomed, but like if they made this clearer I'd feel better about Miles's defiance being not doomed to kill his entire dimension.

Hmm, I also wanted more out of Peter B. I know this wasn't his movie, but I didn't totally love that so much of his role in this movie was being against Miles. (Next movie, I guess).

And all of this felt just, way less tight than the OG Spider-verse. The OG hit all its marks like a perfect run of Guitar Hero and exploded into an amazing finale. This one... just meandered a bit. In the OG, Miles's leap of faith hit so perfectly. That was THE moment he could make that leap. Vs in this one when he tells his mom ("mom", lol) that he finally faced everyone and won and whatever... it just didn't really hit right.

BUT, I don't wanna end this on a negative note, so actually I wanna talk about the twist again.

Actually before I talk about the twist again, I wanna talk about the scene with Gwen and her dad. The "I quit being a cop halfway through your speech" (and the fact that this may present the loophole that saves her father now). The unspoken fact that Gwen was maybe avoiding coming back because she knew her dad was doomed and didn't want to deal with it. Her dad choosing her over everything. It just. It's good...

BACK to the twist. I am NOT a "talks in the movie theater" person but I couldn't help going "OH his dad is dead in THIS universe :000000" once the reveal hit. And that reveal was like 10 reveals all at once that had me just :0000000

Aaron walking in. The reveal that the whole city is aflame because, as Miguel had called out earlier, this universe doesn't have its Spiderman. The "what did you do to your hair". The mural for Jeff instead. The reveal that Gwen and Miles are nowhere near each other. The overlap of Jeff returning him in the universe Gwen is in with Aaron returning him in the universe Miles is in. Miles getting knocked out and I instantly knew it was Dimension42!Miles that did it to him. The Prowler is thriving and it's Miles this time.

[zoneofsmites]

Now that i've finally finished bg2 and throne of bhaal, can I just say that Bhaal's resurrection in wotc canon does not make sense to me? The one as described in the Murder in Baldur's Gate module.

Let me pop off under the readmore, I have things to say and a bone to pick with wotc about the way they clearly ignore bg2 established lore.

(yes its their IP, they can do whatever they want. I can also be disappointed by it and think its poorly thought out bullshit)

Melissa: One of his priesthood needed to have access to the essence that would be collected from the Bhaalspawn... one of his priesthood would have to perform the neccessary rites to give the dead Lord of Murder back that essence.

As stated by Melissan/Amalyssan (by the word of Bhaal himself, for he told her this) just killing the bhaalspawn (thereby returning their essence) would not have been enough to revive Bhaal. It requires a ritual, likely in Bhaal's planar domain where the final battle of bg2 takes place and the bhaalspawn essence automatically regathers.

Solar: The vast majority of the soul essence of the children of Bhaal, Lord of Murder, now belong to you and you alone. You must now decide what to do with this power... Be wise -- the choice is irrevocable.

While Solar hints that not all bhaalspawn are likely death. At the least the vast majority of his essence is returned. Enough to perform the ritual. Enough for Gorian's Ward to ascend to godhood in their father's place. So this doesn't conflict with Murder in BG (and bg3) and the presence of bhaalspawn still.

What does conflict is the way Murder in BG proclaim 'the last bhaalspawn die'. The last bhaalspawn being wotc canon Gorian's Ward, Abdel Adrian, and effectively some random guy. These two duking it out and dying is somehow enough to revive Bhaal.

Even though Bhaal told his own priest he could only be revived after enough essence had returned and a ritual was performed by his own priesthood?

"But Idle" I hear you say, "Bhaal could've told others of his former priesthood. They could've performed the ritual in the background in Murder in BG."

If Bhaal did we still have to account for the fact that Bhaal died, scattering and destroying any organised religion (that was already scattered and unorganised to begin with). Many priests converted to Cyric, others just died. Not to mention by the time Murder in BG happens it has been 126 years since Bhaal died in the Time of Troubles. Leaving only a few races (like [half]elves and perhaps dwarves) who could be priests and have survived till then.

Even then, I must ask. If these hypothetical other priests knew how to revive Bhaal. Why weren't they trying to do so during the Bhaalspawn crisis. The prime moment to do so. But no, it was only Amalyssan. If there were any other priests, she likely killed them when they made it to Bhaal's domain to make the attempt, so she could have the power alone.

But for the sake of the argument, lets pretend there is another priests who has survived and knows of the ritual.

Here's why it's still bullshit:

Solar: Surrendering the essence will allow the gods to remove its evil taint and hide it well within the halls of Mount Celestial, forever preventing it from soiling further souls.

Canon wotc, according to Murder in BG, has a Gorian's Ward named Abdel Adrian. Abdel is a human and has clearly not risen to divinity. Abdel has therefore given up his Bhaalspawn essence. Ignoring the fact that the human Abdel Adrian is alive 113 years post BG2 (living around 50y~ more than the average human). Because to be mortal required giving up the Bhaalspawn essence that Murder in BG reasons was the last bit of essence needed to revive Bhaal somehow. Which Abdel shouldn't have anymore. Because he's mortal.

By all accounts. Bhaal's resurrection, as per wotc canon, goes against what BG2 establishes.

(also boo, why is becoming a mortal the canon wotc choice. rising to divinity is the more fun and interesting option)

[foone]

So the way crossing between worlds works in Mundane Kaya Sona is that theres fundamentally one type of transport: magic can be used to make a jump between two worlds.

(under readmore cause long. This is world building info rather than a story, but I wanted to write it down for my own reference at least)

The difference is where it's done from. There are points where the magic flux between worlds is thinner. Teleporting is far easier at these points, but they're linked to the connected worlds. So from a given point on world A, you can only travel to world B, but traveling there is much easier (allowing for less talented wizards to make the jump, with less mana needed) and the amount of people or cargo you can take with you is greatly increased.

While not at one of these nodes, you can still jump between worlds, but it's far more difficult: the amount of skill needed is far higher (or you'll end up Nowhere), the mana cost is immense, and and the amount of mass you can bring with you is tiny. At most you can bring another person, maybe two, and you can't bring more than you can carry.

You might think you could go by yourself and take two people's worth of cargo, but it doesn't work that way. The innate magical ability of humans means it's easier to bring them along than some unthinking metal or stone.

The upside, however, is that you aren't limited to the flux links: you can go from any world to any other world, with some limited control of where you end up (usually enough to not land in the middle of an ocean, but not enough to chose what house you appear in). You can't jump to somewhere else on the same planet, but with enough time and mana you could jump out to another world, then jump back in to elsewhere on the planet.

Each world has some number of flux points, which are rooted in the underground mana infusing the bedrock. They stay roughly stable over long periods of time, but do drift with the continents on planets with active plate tectonics, and a large enough earthquake will shift their positions as the flux density of the planet changes.

The number of flux points a world has is inversely corrolated to the amount of surface mana available: a saturated world like Kaya Sona will only have one or two, while a dead planet like Earth could easily have 20-30, all linking to different worlds.

It's been theorized that there could be super-saturated worlds with no subsurface mana: such a world would have a magical barrier so strong that it would have no flux points. This mathematical possibility can't be proven however, as the strength of the barrier would also make it impossible to port into, so these worlds (if they exist) can't be visited.

Inversely it's possible that a world could go beyond dead into negative mana, much like was achieved in The Desolation in Southern Monnon after the Wizard Wars. A world with a negative mana field would be filled with flux points, hundreds or even thousands of them. Although this sounds useful at first (it'd be the ultimate hub world for interplanetary travel), it's less than useless. With a negative mana field it'd be impossible to port back off the planet, making all those flux points useless. But porting at a flux point to another world's flux point requires mana at the source, and not the destination: this means a port route that leads to a negative mana world is effectively one way. You can go there, but you can't get back.

This (along with other natural and human-made hazards) makes exploring the network of port routed inherently dangerous. You could end up somewhere you can't return from. The Kaya Sona Academy explores these routes using pairs of wizards: the first jumps them both down a port route, and the second can jump them back out if the destination is dangerous. Moonstone is used to shield some mana in the even of a local negative mana field, but there's only so much that can be done if the destination world is aggressively negative.

This is one of the main reasons the Academy trains so many wizards: aside from the ever-present need for war wizards, a frightening number of newly trained wizards go on one of their exploration duties and simply never return. It's not known (or really even knowable) how many of them ended up stranded on a world without mana, rather than dying too fast to have their companion port then back out.

There is at least a little safety built into the system: a flux point destination that's not "clear" will be difficult to port to, and wizards exploring unknown port routes are taught to be able to notice that difficulty and abort the jump before they end up appearing inside solid rock or deep under the ocean. But this safety doesn't extend to things like forest fires, hostile inhabitants of the destination world, or mana fields so negative that you can't port back.

So, this all results in the following situation:

Highly trained wizards can port between known worlds with some amount of precision, bringing along themselves and one or two others. This is used by the empire to communicate between the Capitol and invasion fleets across the many worlds, as well as to slip small attack groups into key positions. A common strategy for the empire is to assassinate the leaders and generals of a target nation before the main army arrives. By the time the main force arrives, their forces will be in disarray and unable to mount much of a defense.

As for the army, they're limited by the flux network. A well-supplied army will be able to send hundreds of troops through a flux point an hour, but they need to travel across the worlds in mundane ways. This limits the speed that the empire can expand, as they need to build supply routes on previously conquered worlds before they can move on to connected worlds.

So, the slowness of the main army combined with the incredible speed of high-magic movement behooves the empire to act in subtler ways: along with the targeted assassinations and surgical strikes, they often incite existing factions against each other, supplying existing rebellions with intel, magical supplies, and promises of support when the army arrives.

It's not an uncommon story for a newly contacted world to undergo years of clandestine meddling by Empire agents, culminating in a civil war that devastates all sides, only for the winning side to enjoy mere weeks of triumph before the Empire's army arrives and they realize all the promises of future support mean nothing when they're outnumbered a dozen to one by a newly arrived interplanetary army. If they're smart they welcome the invaders in hopes of securing some sort of viceroy/governor position. If not, well... The assassins of the Empire can appear anywhere without warning, and they're very good at their jobs.

Once a world is conquered, the local flux points are mapped, their destinations are explored, and the supply lines are built out. The Emperor devices where to move to next, and the Empire of a Thousand Worlds expands ever onward.

Kaya Sona te Kaya. Kaya Sona te met allumis - the slogan of the Kalic Empire. "Kaya Sona* is great. Kaya Sona will be forever"

* Kaya Sona is the name of the world, the Capitol city, and in synecdoche, the empire itself.

[thewebcomicsreview]

A'ight a'ight, new Hamsteak tonight! This update, the cue ball update, apparently has a content warning for physical and mental abuse, so I'm putting the liveblog behind a ReadMore

It's still weird that GCATavros and Erisol (and Fefeta) are a thing, for all sorts of reasons, but I'm not going to question it I guess.

Sneaking suspicion we're getting a new Vriska look today. Also confirmation that sprites can't change their appearance. Which I guess is not new information, but...it's also not very interesting! Moving on!

Sollux has the hardest-to-read quirk of any of the main trolls, and adding Eridan doesn't help at all. "Class-swah Dichotomy" probably means class as in social class, and not as in Classpect, but keeping the phrase in mind regardless. Davepeta is the leader of the group, a combination Rogue/Knight of Time/Heart and they passively stole Vriska's time by trapping her in the hyperbolic character development chamber, which seems like something for the classpect chart people to want to focus on. @bladekindeyewear is back in the liveblogging scene, presumably taking all sorts of notes on this.

Why the fuck is GCATavros talking like Gamzee?

Kind of interesting reading this comically pathetic version of Tavros after reading the author's commentary on the first part of this hell tier where they focused on how there was actually a lot more to him than being the buttmonkey. Also after the last update I'm reading this whole conversation expecting that Vriska will meet Doc Scratch and this will somehow tie into that relationship, though I have no idea how.

Well, that's not at all an ominous thing to say in the "Hell Tier" arc. I'm also kind of curious how this can really be an escalation over Spidermom, unless they're going to make some reveals.

This entire arc is character-based, of course, but the lore nerd in me wants to know where Scratch's parlor comes from here. Vriska never saw it, nor did any sprite, so why is it accurate? Where is Hell Tier coming from? It's also worth remembering, along those lines, that Doc Scratch is partially Hal Strider, and thus a shard of Dirk, though this is presumably not the real thing.

Scratch's text also has a typewriter sound effect, which I like. None of the characters in the flash have "voices" in like a Banjo-Kazooie/Celeste-type way, so it's immediately notable when one does.

Getting kind of creepy pretty fast here.

Vriska's text has a black background suddenly. The implications of this I don't really remember off the top of my head, though. Actually on my other monitor it's a green background, which makes a bit more sense. I think one of my monitors has kind of fucked color settings but I don't know which one.

Oh wait, that's right, Vriska has seen Scratch. Scratch distracted Aradia and Terezi so that Vriska could throw Tavros off the cliff that one time. Maybe she has been here before, on the Green Moon.

I feel like Momfang has that title, but make your case.

Oh, what the shit. I'm starting to see where the content warning is maybe coming from.

Okay, seems we're going there. Scratch was certainly always, um, pedo-coded in the way he targeted and manipulated young girls, but it seems like we're about to get some confirmation.

Um.

UM.

Okay, getting de-aged back into Hivebent-era Vriska is honestly the best outcome of Scratch putting her in a "uniform".

As much as this is about Scratch, this is also about Vriska herself, in the end.

Man, I feel like every single Scratch line here is worth examining, but I don't really know what to add. As much as this is Scratch the cueball dude this is also the concept of Fate itself.

More classpect stuff about how Vriska's power is "borrowed". Really, that's true of all the kids, their god powers and even their Ultimate Powers all come from Skaia and can theoretically be revoked at any moment. Not sure when Light "abandoned" Vriska, though, unless it's referring to (Vriska) getting killed. This Vriska knowing that her own best friend tried to murder her and that it was divinely judged Just has have fucked her up a little.

Interesting. Generally the fandom considers classpect has being an extension of your true self and your title being Skaia simply describing who you already were. This (which is partially Vriska's opinion of things) frames it as the kids being Warlocks who were granted power by Skaia. This is mostly Worldbuilding (tm) but if that's the way Vriska's thought of it it kind of explains a lot about her. She doesn't feel like she's ever earned anything she's had, even her divinity.

Vriska doesn't get a revelation here, she just gets insulted and kicked out and-

Erisol, you dick, lol.

Well that was a lot to take in. I think I need to process it. Kind of wild that it's only the halfway point. Up next is the feather and the 8-ball. I think we're down with flashbacks, and the feather is Davepeta and the 8-ball is Vriska getting out of hell.