#there are 2 wolves. one wants to talk about the drawing on the post itself. one wants to keep it nice and pretty and hash tag aesthetic by

[starstruck-sheikah]

Cheeks are rosy like a Boucher cherub

I’m a strawberry soda, raise my lashes to heaven

Stars in my hair running like a waterfall

Clouds in the whites of our eyes we saw it all

(Man’s World, Marina & the Diamonds)

[johannestevans]

The #MonstrousMayChallenge 2021

Love monsters?

The #MonstrousMayChallenge is going to be a series of monster-centric prompts for every day of the month of May!

Draw, write, talk about, analyse, shitpost, critique, rec, discuss, create, consume, and otherwise have fun with each prompt.

Tell your friends, pick and choose the prompts that you like best: make art, make fiction, make rec lists, make jokes, make monsters!

May 1. What is a Monster? May 2. How to Talk to Your Monster May 3. The Vampire May 4. Iconic Settings May 5. Feeding Time May 6. The Lycanthrope May 7. Adverse Weather Conditions May 8. The Monster in Love May 9. The Undead May 10. "... and add a monster." May 11. A Baby Monster May 12. The Alien May 13. The Domesticated Monster May 14. Clothing Your Monster May 15. The Mermaid

May 16. The Gentle Kaiju May 17. Monstrous Transformations May 18. Angels & Demons May 19. Monstrous Flora May 20. The Monster in History May 21. The Hybrid May 22. Kept Captive May 23. The Human is the Monster May 24. The Dragon May 25. The Monster Dies May 26. The Hive-Mind May 27. The Fae May 28. The Monster Extinct May 29. Cultural Differences May 30. The Minotaur May 31. Happily Ever After

The full write-up for the #MonstrousMayChallenge is below the cut — for every day of the month of May 2021, there’ll be a new prompt all to do with creating monsters and monster-centric stories!

You can either go directly off of the prompts themselves, or if you want a little more inspiration, you can come check this post for more in-depth exploration of the idea in question.

For each entry in response to the prompts, regardless of what platform you post to, make sure to tag the #MonstrousMayChallenge! In the meantime, just spread the word and tell your friends to get them ready for May!

Feel free to pick and mix the prompts you like best, to skip any prompts that don’t suit you, or to swap in prompts of your own if you like — every 3rd day is a specific category of “classic” monsters, and they’re not for everybody!

“Monsters are the patron saints of imperfection.” — Guillermo del Toro (x)

The emphasis on all of the prompts below are on monster-centric and monster-POV stories. Monstrous romances and monstrous erotica are both welcome and encouraged, just as much as platonic monstrosity is, and please feel free to join in regardless of your medium, whether you draw, write, animate, or create in another way entirely!

Just a note as to what expect — this challenge is intended for those who love monsters, who identify with monsters, who feel for the monsters, and all the prompts are written with that expectation in mind.

One small note: throughout these prompts there are references to folklore and ideas from different cultures and backgrounds. When exploring ideas from cultures that aren’t your own, remember that not every representation of spirits or monsters can be divorced from its original context, and take care to do your research to ensure you aren’t harming others by furthering harmful stereotypes or appropriating ideas of cultural importance.

We’re all here to have fun, which means that using a love of monsters as a vehicle for racism (whether that’s outright or by upholding colonial and imperial ideas, appropriating from other cultures, or fetishising other races and cultures) is not what we want to see in the course of this challenge, and isn’t welcome here.

Note the above especially in regards to the Alonquian W*nd*go.

Saturday 1st May 2021 — What is a monster?

Here’s a warm-up challenge to start the month off:

For you, what is a monster? What makes a monster monstrous? What delights you, excites you, scares you, horrifies you about a monster? What fills you with affection for monster?

When you first hear the word monster, what springs first to mind?

This is a free space — talk about, write about, draw, animate, sing about, the monster(s) you love best, and why you love them!

Sunday 2nd May 2021 — How To Talk To Your Monster

How does your monster communicate?

Do they have a mouth, lips, a tongue, like humans do? Do they communicate verbally at all? Do they communicate via telepathy, via their tentacles, or their limbs? Do they speak, but at a pitch or volume or speed inaudible or incomprehensible to human ears? How is this gap bridged?

Does your monster understand humans but struggle to make itself understood? Does your monster want to be understood?

Alternate: How does your monster communicate with other, different monsters?

Monday 3rd May 2021 — The Vampire

The vampire is a walking corpse that sustains itself by feeding off the the blood of the living.

There are a thousand variations on the myth — a corpse that rises from its grave at night only to mindlessly glut itself on the prey it can find becomes a reclusive gentleman who lives in isolation in a brooding, gothic castle overlooking a Transylvanian woodland (Dracula); a sparkly immortal Mormon who likes to climb into young women’s windows to watch them while they sleep (Twilight); a rich aristocrat so intent on preserving his properties and his privilege that he clings onto immortality at all costs (Interview with the Vampire); an extremely sexy vampire in sunglasses who’s devoted to killing other vampires (Blade), and so on and so forth.

Explore your own take on the vampire:

Is your vampire actually dead? Do they just appear dead, or sleep in coffins?

What makes a vampire? A curse? A ritual? Transmission of vampiric disease — via the exchange of blood or via sex? Are they born that way? Do dhampirs (half-vampires) exist? Do vampires become vampires by choice? Is there a contract or an agreement?

Does your vampire drink blood? Cerebral fluid? Consume human flesh? Do they sap energy from others in non-literal ways — for example, do they feed off of emotions or energy, or seek to devour a soul?

If they survive off of the above, do they also eat or drink other things? Are they capable of doing so without becoming ill?

Is your vampire sensitive to sunlight? Bright light in general? Do they physically react to it? Do they burn, or crumble to dust? How do they cope with this — do they only come out at night, do they wear leathers and carry a parasol, do they use a medicated suncream?

Can vampires become ill? Sick? What weakens a vampire? What kills them?

Does your vampire have any other powers? Can they fly, hypnotise people, transform into gas or another animal?

What happens if a non-human becomes a vampire?

Alternate: A non-vampire monster becomes absolutely obsessed with vampires. They love them to pieces! Why? How do they get their vampire fix?

Some inspiration, if you want it:

Article: An 18th-century guide to hunting vampires from National Geographic

Article: The Great New England Vampire Panic from the Smithsonian Magazine

Video Essay: The Sexy Vampire Trope, Explained, from The Take

Tuesday 4th May 2021 — Iconic Settings

Imagine an iconic setting within the horror genre or without — your Transylvanian castles, your unending deserts of shifting sands, your haunted houses and their infinitely winding corridors, your unholy spires atop distant peaks, your deep and dismal caves, your roiling seas…

What monsters lurk within these settings? How do they feel about their environs? What happens if you transplant a monster from one such setting into its opposite, or combine a few of them together?

What happens if these settings are invaded, lost, destroyed, expanded, changed?

Alternate: Imagine any iconic setting you like, but instead of the monster lurking within, the setting is the monster.

The seas themselves are sentient; the caves are toothy maws of impossible beasts; the mountains themselves have eyes; the castles and houses and ancient tombs and temples are, themselves, imbued with a spirit… Is it hungry? Angry? Lonely?

Wednesday 5th May 2021 — Feeding Time

What does your monster eat?

Is it predator or prey? To a human understanding, does it look like what it is? If it eats meat, does it prefer to eat it dead or alive? If it’s not from this planet or dimension, does it struggle to find new things to eat? What does it look like when your monster eats? Is it private about eating? Does it look scary when it feeds?

Does it eat at all? Does your monster get its energy from the sun, from electricity, from magic, from something else entirely?

Alternate: From a monstrous POV, a human’s dietary habits seem monstrous and strange. Why?

Thursday 6th May 2021 — The Lycanthrope

The werewolf is a person who turns into a wolf, typically at the time of the full moon. Lycanthropy is the name of the condition of being a werewolf, or someone who turns into some other animal.

The variations on the werewolf are infinite — the core is often people bitten by strange beasts and left forever cursed with their regular transformation (for example, in The Wolf Man); but a curse is also possible, such as when kings are turned into wolves as punishment for their hubris (as with King Lycaon in Metamorphoses); or of course, a curse inherited, such as when young men who come into their inherited lycanthropy and suddenly have a whole host of new puberty concerns (Teen Wolf).

And it needn’t be a wolf at all — there are all manner of shapeshifters between one myth and the next, and as much as there are werewolves there might be werelions, werebears, werebats, et cetera, et cetera.

For your lycanthrope, why not explore:

What animal or creature does your lycanthrope turn into? A wolf, a bear, a lion, a snake, a bird? Something magical — a phoenix, a unicorn, a griffin, a dragon?

Once transformed, can your lycanthrope be distinguished from the normal edition of the beast? What are the differences, for example, between a werewolf and a wolf?

Can your lycanthrope transform at will? Is it influenced by their emotion? Is it kept to a regular schedule? Can that schedule be interrupted? For example, if it’s a monthly cycle like someone’s menstruation, can they go for periods without transforming or with “spotty” transformations? If it’s with the phases of the moon, does hiding from the moon help? What happens if you send them to another planet?

Is the transformation painful? Physically or mentally taxing?Are there any health problems associated with lycanthropy?

When transformed, how conscious and aware of themselves is you lycanthrope? Do they know they’re transformed? Do they remember what they were?

Alternate: Sometimes, another monster turns into a human.

Friday 7th May 2021 — Adverse Weather Conditions

What weather is your monster happiest in? What weather is your monster least happy in?

Is your monster native to an area that’s extremely hot and humid? Very cold and dry? Is your monster used to heavy rains, droughts and little water, sandstorms, electrical storms, blizzards? If your monster lives in space or underwater, how are they affected by solar flares or tropical storms, shifts in tides and gravitational flows?

How has your monster evolved or developed to handle these weather conditions — or, is there anything your monster hasn’t evolved for, and struggles with?

Alternate: Your monster is a house-monster, and will not be going outside. They would like a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa and a nice comfortable bed, please and thank you.

Saturday 8th May 2021 — The Monster In Love

Your monster’s in love — what do they do about it?

Does your monster have any particular mating rituals or ways in which they show their affection? Does your monster mate for life, does your monster date, does your monster romance singular or multiple partners? Does your monster yearn, do they pine? Do they bring gifts, do they do special dances, do say particular words or have mating calls?

Is their love reciprocated — is it even understood?

When one monster loves another monster, what does it look like? What does it look like when a monster is in love with a human? When a human falls in love with a monster?

Alternate: Your monster has never been in love, and is baffled — perhaps even disgusted — by the prospect. Do they do research? Demand an explanation?

Sunday 9th May 2021 — The Undead

The undead covers a lot of things under a similar umbrella, and it’s up to you whether they count as monsters or not — ghosts, ghouls, poltergeists, spirits, revenants, draugr, reanimated corpses like zombies, arguably vampires… To infinity, and beyond.

We can be talking spirits without bodies or with new bodies, corpses with new spirits in them, corpses controlled by necromancers or the like, and so on.

So, for this prompt:

For your undead monster, are they conscious, sentient? Do they control their own body? Do they remember when they were alive, if they were dead and then reanimated?

If they have a physical form, can someone tell they’re undead? Are they rotting, corpse-like, desiccated, all bones, all flesh, all muscle? Are they missing parts? Do they have any extra ones? Do they look the same way they used to? If they don’t have a physical form, can you see them at all? Can you see them only sometimes?

What sustains this undead monster? Do they feed off of anything, or are they just sustained by the air itself, by magic, by some sort of magical object or curse?

Was your undead monster once a human? Once a werewolf? Once a faerie, once a dragon, once some other creature entirely?

Alternate: Your monster is a necromancer, and they are not undead, but control and raise, in some way or another, the undead.

Monday 10th May 2021 — “… and add a monster.”

Take absolutely any iconic work you like, whether it’s a classic piece of literature, a poem, a piece of mythology or folklore, a fairy tale, a fable, a shanty or a campfire song — anything that’s in the public domain and might be well-recognised — and add a monster.

Have Sherlock Holmes meeting a vampire, reimagine Jean Valjean as a minotaur, give Mr Darcy a deep and affectionate longing for his local werewolf.

You don’t have to keep to the same characters or plots — rewrite an existing plot with monsters (Rapunzel or Cinderella, for example), have two plots crossover (what happens when the monsters in two myths team up to defeat the hero out to kill them?), add monsters or change the monsters in the narrative, or if it already has a monster, add another.

Alternate: Take a public domain domain monster and give them a break. Send Dracula on holiday, give the poor result of Frankenstein’s experiments a spa day, etc.

Tuesday 11th May 2021 — A Baby Monster

How do the monsters breed?

Do they lay eggs? Give birth to live young? Do something else entirely? Are monsters active parents? What happens when monsters interbreed, or breed with humans?

Is the breeding… fun? 😉

I know not everyone likes writing babies or kids, and equally that some people have come into this challenge specifically for the monsterfucking, so there’ll be two streams of main prompts — one focusing on the breeding for you child-free monsterfuckers, and another focusing more on monstrous baby development once an egg is laid or a baby is born, etc.

Feel free to do both if you want to do both, as one does lead into the other!

Questions about breeding and monstrous pregnancy:

Does your monster fertilise eggs for the purposes of a live pregnancy, do they lay eggs, do they clone themselves, do they breed in some other way?

If your monster has genitalia, what do they look like? Are they analogous to human genitalia? Are they particularly big or particularly small compared to the analogous human parts, if so? How compatible is your monster’s genitalia with a human’s genitalia — or another monster’s?

If there is a size difference between monster and partner, what comes of this? Are there any chemical differences between monster and partner — for example, does the monster’s touch impart a high or some kind of contact aphrodisiac?

Are any attempts at breeding viable? If the monster’s partner is filled with eggs, what happens the longer they carry them? If the partner does carry the eggs or the babies to the point of birth and laying, what happens? Is it a painful process? Will they survive it? Does the partner know they’re pregnant at all?

And the pregnancy/egg-carrying questions: how does the partner’s biology change to accommodate the pregnancy? Do they have any strange or unexpected cravings? Does their biology change in any unexpected questions?

Questions about monstrous child development:

How is the monstrous baby first conceived? Is it an egg laid, is it an egg fertilised, an egg fertilised and then carried, as the result of a live pregnancy, something else entirely? If they’re laid eggs, do they go through a larval stage or other similar development?

Are monstrous babies born alone, or in groups? Do they have a high viability rate? Do the monstrous babies eat one another? Do they eat their egg casing or their placenta, if applicable? If not, what do they eat — do they drink milk or blood, do they need their food pre-chewed by their parents, can they look for food themselves?

Are monstrous parents very active in caring for their offspring? Are monstrous babies born able to take care of themselves, able to have a sort of independence, or do they need to be cared for for a period first?

How fast or slow is a monster’s development? How long does it take for them to become fully grown? How much do they grow, and how does their body develop and change as they run through their lifecycle? Do they shed their skin or any body parts, do they change a lot materially?

Alternate: What does monstrous contraception look like? Do they have a concept of it? If they don’t, how do they feel about it being explained to them?

Wednesday 12th May 2021 — The Alien

What makes an alien?

Are they from another planet, another dimension? How similar are they to anything found on Earth? How did they get here?

Are they intelligent, sentient? Do they know they’re on a foreign planet or in a foreign dimension? How fit are they to survive on Earth? How do they respond to the animals, the new sounds, the new world, around them? What technology do they have? Do they appear to be aliens as people imagine them? Do they pilot aircraft as people think they do?

Alternate: A human (or another species from Earth) is the alien on another planet or another dimension populated with “monsters”.

Thursday 13th May 2021 — The Domesticated Monster

Let’s look at the monster domesticated.

The likes of Pokémon, fantastical creatures as beasts of burden or as steeds — unicorns and pegasi and giant spiders and dragons, for example — or other tamed monsters that have learned to live with humans, and live side-by-side with them.

Are monsters actively bred for a result, or do they domesticate themselves as cats and dogs did? Do they perform tasks or assist humans? Do they give milk or eggs or honey or silk or meat? At what point in their domestication are they? Are they happy? Are they well-treated?

Alternate: A monster gets a pet of their own — is it a fantastical species, or is it a dog, cat, bird, etc? Is it even a human?

Friday 14th May 2021 — Clothing Your Monster

Does your monster wear clothes or armour?

What sort of clothes or armour do they wear? Is it grown, made, bought, traded for? Do they wear any other kind of jewelry or decoration? Do they always wear it, or only for some occasion? What do they think of human clothes? Do they want to try wearing any themselves, or taking human fabrics for monstrous clothes?

Alternate: If your monster does not wear clothes, what do they think of human clothes? How do they feel about the fact that humans wear them? Do they have a full understanding of the separation between clothes and flesh?

Saturday 15th May 2021 — The Mermaid

A mermaid is a half-human, half-fish.

You can take this very literally, as in The Little Mermaid, with someone who has a human upper half and fishy bottom half (or the other way around…😏), you can think more along the lines of the fish-person we see in Abe Sapien from Hellboy or (also) in Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, or you can look at different variations on mermaids — the seal-like selkie who can remove their pelt to walk on land; the siren that calls to sailors so they dash themselves upon the rocks; naiads and other spirits of the water; the rusalke of the water, and so on.

Questions for your merfolk:

Do they belong in freshwater, saltwater, brackish water? Do they stay in the seas, in deep lakes, in ponds?

Do they regularly come to the surface, or do they live very deep below? What sort of temperatures are they used to, and how much sunlight? If they live in cold water or deep below the surface, are they very large and blubbery to ensure they can cope with the pressure and the cold?

Are your merfolk bioluminscent? Fish-like, cetacean-like, cephalapod-esque? If they do look similar to humans, with a human face or human body parts, do they look or feel like human flesh underneath the skin, or is it just for appearance?

What and how do your merfolk eat? Do they eat fish, meat, seaweed, plankton?

How do your merfolk feel about humans? About fish and other marine life? About animals on land? Other monsters?

Can your merfolk step onto land? Do they want to? Are they curious about what they find there? Do the humans nearby know about them, care about them?

Do merfolk live alone, in groups or as families? Are they migratory? How far do they travel, and for what reasons? Do they build towns and cities? How do they feel humans compare to them?

Alternate: A completely different non-merfolk-esque monster lives at the very bottom of the sea. What is it? How do humans come upon it? How big is it?

Sunday 16th May 2021 — The Gentle Kaiju

Kaiju is a Japanese genre of films— your Godzilla, your Mothra, your Rodan, all of these are kaiju: strange, gigantic beasts.

This prompt is centred around any monsters of superlative size that are trying their absolute best not to harm any of the little people scurrying them about them.

You can take this literally — think kaiju tip-toeing their ways through great cities and trying not to step on anything important, huge space beasts careful not to disturb planetary orbits in case they hurt anyone, or even the likes of the human trying not to step on any ants — or you can think of other monsters trying not to harm others despite some aspect of their biology making it difficult for them — Lovecraftian beasts doing their best not to do anyone any psionic damage, for example, or Medusa-like beings desperate to avoid people’s gazes in case they do any harm.

Alternate: An extremely tiny monster or another monster very easily harmed by human activities needs to kept safe.

Monday 17th May 2021 — Monstrous Transformations

How does a monster transform?

Does in transition between one form or another, like a werewolf, or between forms for land versus water? Does it regularly transform or transition through different physical presentations? Does it shed its skin, leave its old body behind? Does it grow new teeth or claws or body parts? Does it transform in response to disease or ailment?

Does a human transform slowly into a monster? Does a monster transform into another? Is this transformation willing, conscious — is it against all desperate attempts to prevent it? Is it painful? Is it agony?

Alternate: A monster expresses deep curiosity about human transformations — perhaps the differences between a child and an adult and their scale of growth, perhaps the apparent transformation when a human changes clothes, or puts on a mask, or even make-up.

Tuesday 18th May 2021 — Angels & Demons

A demon is typically an evil spirit or devil, and are sometimes thought to be fallen angels; angels are typically benevolent spirits, often thought of as celestial messengers.

Being as they’re often thought to be celestial or infernal, do you think of them as being from another dimension? How well do they mesh with Earth, from their own perspectives and human ones? How do they look or appear? Do they have to present themselves in a strange or unusual form? How do they communicate with humans — and why? Are they evil, benevolent, or simply neutral?

Are angels and demons separate things? How many kinds of angels and demons are there respectively? If they’re separate, do they communicate with one another, balance with one another?

Alternate: A monster that is not a demon or angel decides to present itself as one or the other. What is it? Why does it present itself this way?

Wednesday 19th May 2021 — Monstrous Flora

Your monster is plant- or mushroom-based!

(Or lichen-based, or algae-based, or moss-based, or coral-based, or…)

What does it look like? What makes it different from a mammalian or scaly monster? Where does it come from? How does it move, how does it breathe, how does it eat? Does it sleep? Does it 😏… you know? Is it good at it?

Alternate: Your monster lives codependently with, or lives inside, some sort of plant. What does that co-evolved relationship look like? How big is the plant? What does it look like?

Thursday 20th May 2021 — The Monster in History

Throughout history, the perception of your monster has changed over time.

Is your monster immortal? Over the progression of recorded history, has it been this same monster recorded in one sighting after another, in art or in story? Or, is your monster the latest generation of a species or line of inheritance that has gone on for a long while?

How much has your monster’s culture changed and developed in that time — has it changed in reaction to or alongside human cultures? How accurate has human perception of your monster been as the centuries have rolled by? How has art or stories about your monster changed in their telling?

How has the monster reacted to changes in human history, or different events as they have happened?

Does your monster even notice the passage of time? Are they in some way insensible to it, or do they experience it in a way humans don’t?

Alternate: The monster is a time-traveler! How do they do this? Why?

Friday 21st May 2021 — The Hybrid

A few things are bred together to create a monster, whether that monster be sublime or an abomination before the universe!

Think about griffins, pegasi, basilisks, cockatrices, and of course the manticore — any sort of beast made by combining one creature with another.

What creatures have been combined to create this monster? Has a human been one of them? How has this combination been achieved — via actual interbreeding, magically assisted or otherwise, via alchemy, a curse, or some other magical process? Has this creature literally been stitched together and then reanimated? How have the different creatures contributing to the creature changed its behaviour or its abilities?

Alternate: An attempt is made to create a hybrid… and unfortunately this is not the result. What is?

Saturday 22nd May 2021 — Kept Captive

The monster is captured.

How big or small is your monster? How was it captured — was bait used to draw it in, such as a food stuff, a copied call? Was it herded into an ambush? Was it trapped under a cage, in drop trap, in a magic trap? How easy was it to capture — did it take a long time, were several attempts made? For what reason was the monster captured?

Now kept captive, how big is your monster’s enclosure? Is it a cage, a glass box, physical chains or bondage, something else entirely? How long has it been there? Is it alone — would it rather be alone than the alternative? Is it struggling with its captivity? Is it marking out the amount of time it has been kept trapped, screaming at its captors, harming itself in its desperation for escape?

Is it likely ever to be freed?

Alternative: A human is kept captive by a monster.

Sunday 23rd May 2021 — The Human Is The Monster

From the perspective of the narrator, the human is the monster.

Who or what is made to fear them? What makes the human so monstrous in their eyes? Is it to do with the human’s size, their appearance, their behaviour, the nature of humans as a collective?

Alternative: The human thinks they’re thought of as the monster — the real monster is behind them (figuratively or literally).

Monday 24th May 2021 — The Dragon

A dragon is a mythical creature, often large and scaly, with variations found the world over.

Is your dragon extremely big, or very small? Is it indeed scaly, or does it appear so? Is it some form of sea serpent, or does it fly? Does it have wings, fins, a tail, teeth? Does it have very powerful senses, or different ones entirely to what one might expect? Does it have a mouth, eyes, a tongue, ears? Does it breathe fire or ice, have gills? Does it have some other supernatural power — telepathy, telekinesis, affect the weather or the tide?

What does your dragon eat? Does it eat meat, vegetables? Does it feed off of magic?

Does your dragon hoard anything — gold, jewels, young people out for a wander? Livestock? Something else entirely?

Alternate: An ancient dungeon, temple, or some other monument, is marked by a huge statue of a dragon. Something else inhabits it.

Tuesday 25th May 2021 — The Monster Dies

It’s the end of the story — or perhaps the beginning.

The monster dies.

Alternate: The monster dies… but only for a while.

Wednesday 26th May 2021 — The Hive-Mind

The monsters in this one are multiple.

They share a hive-mind, whether that hive-mind is created by pheromones, by fungus or infection or disease, by magic, by telepathy, by technology, or something else entirely. How many beings are part of this collective? Do they exist in conjunction with one another, and move as a swarm or a hive? Do they synchronise their movements, and work together toward a common goal? Can they work independently, or only as a group?

Can others be inducted into this hive-mind, willingly or otherwise? Is this painful or uncomfortable? Does it wipe away what experiences came before?

If a member of the hive-mind travels far away, do they remain connected to the whole? How is this hive-mind used, when beings work independently? Can it be sensed or its effects be noticed by outsiders? What is its everyday function?

Alternative: A being once a member of a hive-mind or a collective is severed from it, and now alone. Are they grieving? Do they feel free? Are tasks suddenly more difficult or easy for them? How do they feel?

Thursday 27th May 2021 — The Fae

The fae are supernatural beings or spirits found in a variety of folklore.

The fae are often associated with woodland, bodies of water, bogland, or other particular areas, but there are variations on variations of different fae legend: elves, brownies, merfolk, y tylwyth teg, the bean sidhe, selkies, gnomes, kobolds, leprechauns, nymphs, pixies…

In a lot of modern fantasy, the fae are associated with rigidity around law and rules, certain contracts, and many superstitions are associated with fae or fae-like beings, where one offends them at one’s peril.

What makes the fae monstrous? What makes them frightening and an object of horror for others? What rules do they follow and expect others to follow? What superstitions are associated with them?

Alternate: The fae are introduced to pop culture depictions of fairies. What is their response?

Friday 28th May 2021 — The Monster Extinct

The monster has been extinct for thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands, and based off of the evidence of them — stories, fossils, remains, old art, people are trying to back-engineer what they were like, what they looked like, how they communicated.

How accurate are they? How off?

Alternate: The monster doesn’t exist yet, or is a long way off, but has been told about in prophecy, or glimpsed in visions of the future. Are these glimpses accurate to the truth? Do they tell the whole story?

Saturday 29th May 2021 — Cultural Differences

What does cultural exchange look like between monster and human, or between two monstrous cultures?

How do these distinct cultures affect one another or interact? Are there large cultural differences between the monstrous cultures and the human ones? Are there any moral, ethical, aesthetic, economic, political, legal, or other cultural aspects that are very much at odds between some cultures and the others?

For example, do the human and monstrous cultures both have money? Do they treat money as of the same importance? Do they rank things in the same orders of importance? Do they have similar customs around politeness, greeting, language? Does each culture respect the others, or do they consider themselves superior or inferior?

Alternate: A human has never had much experience of the culture they were born of — they only know the monstrous culture they were raised by and into. What does that look like?

Sunday 30th 2021 — The Minotaur

It’s my birthday and the minotaur is my absolute favourite, so! Minotaurs!

The classical minotaur was the son of Pasiphaë and the unwilling stepson of King Minos of Knossos: born with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull, he was declared monstrous and trapped within the labyrinthine maze beneath the great palaces of Knossos, until the hero Theseus came to slay him dead.

Today, the minotaur is the name for any half-bull half-human delight, tragic or otherwise.

Alternate: You needn’t limit yourself to a half-bull half-human if you feel the need to abandon literal perfection — go for the drider, perhaps, a half-human half-spider, return to the merfolk of several prompts above, and go half-human, half-fish, the satyr, half-goat half-human.

Whatever it is, make it half-human, half-something else, and then decide:

Is your monster cursed? Were they made this way, were they born this way? Are they happy? Are they the same as their family members, or are they different? If they are the latter, are they loved and accepted, or made an exile?

What are the benefits and negatives to their physical appearance and to their biology? Are there any aspects that might be unexpected?

Are they viewed by people in general as frightening, intimidating, unusual, strange, incredibly sexy? Are they treated as a monster?

Monday 31st May 2021 — Happily Ever After

The monster lives happily ever after…

What does that look like?

Alternate: Or, your monster has a tragic ending — because you’re the monster, apparently! 😒😭

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Thanks so much for considering taking part in the #MonstrousMayChallenge!

If you want to do any of the above prompts, or if you want to do them all, but you’re not a writer or an artist, or you are but you’re not always in the mood for art, here’s a list of alternate activities you can do to tick off the prompts!

Do some worldbuilding, analysis, meta, or discussion of common tropes within or related to the prompt

Shitpost or make jokes or memes about or related to the prompt

Do some aesthetic or graphic posts

Watch movies or TV episodes, read comics, or consume other media, related to the prompts

Make rec lists for other people of movies or TV episodes or books (or other media!) related to the prompts

Comment on and show some love for other prompt fills in the #MonsterMayChallenge tag! Share your favourite work and support fellow creators!

I’m on Twitter, and will be posting about the challenge throughout, but I also write other short stories and books!

Check out my Patreon, my stories on Medium, my books for sale, and my WorldAnvil — and if you would like to, feel free to leave a tip!

[hamliet]

u are so weird for glorifying tsukikanae and shipping them thru glasses so rose-colored that u made them have babies despite them being cousins, esp when tg actively condemns incestuous infatuations by showing explicitly how inbreeding creates mentally damaged individuals and making those who have incestuous obsessions bring nth but tragedy on themselves bc of it (hairu, furuta, mutsuki (sasaki was a parent figure) and esp kanae herself LMAO??) .. not only is it proshipping but it's doing so when the story itself condemns it, make it make sense

EYE.

I'm sorry I've been laughing at your ask. I mean, I know I'm weird, but like, I'm not sending indignant messages to people I don't know.

(Actually that's not true, I'm currently haranguing my representatives in a desperate attempt to try to get people I care deeply about out of Kabul with a ticking clock. If you live in the US, or if any followers who do see this, please contact your reps with this here and that specific request.)

In response to your question(?):

These were written in 2017 and 2018. I can offer you many more problematique ships, you didn't have to dig so deep! Really Jonerys would have been more relevant to your point.

Side note: I have no idea what proshipping is--I've seen the term around but I'm guessing it's not "just liking the concept of shipping as fun," so I have no idea whether I am or not and frankly I'm too old to care.

Listen Anon if you are actually interested in learning, I've written answers to all this before, which you could find if you searched my blog like here or here or here. You'd be surprised, such as:

In my AUs they’re not cousins because clearly I’m more comfortable with them not being cousins,

I’m personally from a culture where my first reaction is ick, but there are cultures where that’s the norm, or at least isn’t strange,

I don’t have the right to pass judgment because there are some uncomfortable ethnocentric implications there.

I didn’t know Karren and Shuu were cousins when I first started shipping them

Once I found out I hesitated, but was ultimately like whatever, it’s fiction.

If you're interested in further contemplating, consider:

nuance,

history,

the fact that you--yes, you--are certainly the product of intermarriage if you go back enough generations,

science and statistics,

the kinda ableist hint to your words,

the concept of an alternate universe and historic literary symbolism such as those associated with alchemy,

critical thinking about what makes something morally wrong and what we mean by that (hint: power dynamics and harm),

and finally, ethnocentrism and the colonialist mindset of western liberals who think their values are 100% applicable throughout all time and space.

EDIT: I’m not posting their latest response, which was... lawd. But here is what I do want to say:

1) I talked to someone who showed me their final scene together *before* reading the manga (it was one of the draws for me to read it) and the basics (Karren being a servant who disguised herself as a guy, etc). So I went into the story shipping it.

2) I never mentioned or made any assumptions about your race or religion, only your broad nationality and politics.

3) Not everyone's experiences are the same as yours, and yours should not be prioritized over others. The world doesn't revolve around you. It's fine for you to have a trigger or a squick caused by personal life. It's not fine for you to demand everyone in the world cater to you. 

4) You're clearly a teenager (I hope) or at least have a very immature perspective on yourself, the world, and experience.

5) You don't understand the nuanced relationship of reality and fiction--it is part of reality, but it is also not a 1=1 equivocation, and one's fictional preferences do not reflect one's own desires IRL. There have been numerous studies on this. 

6) I'm not saying "cousin marriage is good and you must ship Tsukikana"; the opposite. I'm just saying to approach with empathy and humility, which you aren't.

7) I'm not going to say "die mad" because I hope(d) you were reasonable and actually would listen, but I see I was wrong. Still, I hope you mature throughout your life. 

8) You know what's a trigger for me? Black-white thinking and a lack of an open mind, even one fenced in as a way of protection. I know purity culture because I was raised in a cult. I know you cannot see it now, but someday you might realize that it does not protect you to have fenced yourself in with wolves. 

9) Purity culture in fandom may offer you direct meaning (even if you don't realize it as a conscious level) because it makes things simple and offers something you can presumably do as opposed to the numerous other issues in this world where we are borderline helpless to do anything at all in an increasingly out of control environment, pandemic, wars, political landscape, etc. It's all for naught. 

10) You have meaning and worth as a human being just because you exist. You do not need to save the world to earn those rights; you do not need to police or control others (aka style yourself as a god) to be worthy of existence.

[randomnameless]

Needing that evening salt

While I thank @nilsh13 for giving me the link to that interview.

I was like “prepare for a ton of salt, take your lemons”  however, I’ve kind of mellowed out a bit because the VA seems to be a really nice person -

and I’ve read the Toyonaga interview recently.

Sometimes, the VA are allowed to interpret the character in a certain way that fits with what the game developpers more or less intended (granted they are the same guys who didn’t hire a continuity guy so...), and sometimes, it fails because direction sucks, because lenses are given and doesn’t match with the content you’re adaptating.

As a result, we have Jp!Rhea and lolcalised!Rhea.

i wonder if inoue will ever make an interview one day about 3H but I doubt it

We start with the infamous 

“You don’t have to try it so much (to be the calm and composed person), Rhea doesn’t try, she just is - The essence of Rhea is enough”

Pat no :’(

But... Rhea isn’t calm and composed, Rhea is emotional, pretty much, she’s a bubble waiting to burst and she tries to be calm and composed and keep a facade (more on that later) but, I feel like the “Rhea doesn’t try she just is” might be the reason why lolcalised!Rhea feels detached during certain events, when Aelfric’s attempted Nabatean homonculi Transmutation backfires, when Kikuko Inoue nails the sense of sadness and dread because, uh, a man she just said she saw as her own child basically died here to become a grotesque monster and attempted to replicate her own mistakes. 

Rhea tries to be a calm and composed person, she managed to keep up appearances for, apparently, 1000 years, but Rhea is also emotional as fuck.

But... This is where everything falls apart.

“You were given the direction - paraphrasing - to channel your inner Dumbledore?”

It’s safe to assume most people can draw parallels to “Three Houses and Harry Potter”

And Leigh falls in the biggest trap, trying to “play the game and figure out who is who” because, while I think someone replied to an earlier post about the parallel (i’m really sorry when i finally had time to reply 2 weeks had passed and i didn’t want to necropost), but I still firmly disagree, and truth to be told, this is, in a way, what I was afraid of when 3H was announced.

FE is a series that loves to reference itself, so when it was announced that the next game would be set in a school, and Bernie and Dorothea were previewed I grew really afraid that the game was going to have the typical “North American High School AU” and none of the “Fire Emblem” series. We had the recluse, Sylvain appeared to be the frat boy, I was expecting the cheerleader, Ignatz to be the nerd etc etc.

With the HP thing, and “trying to see who is who”, I feel like the localisation team and the VA were trying to look at the game with a special - tailored by them for their own use - lens. I will not say “western” lens, but they were trying to look for things that just... aren’t?

Yes, 3H took inspiration from the latest behemoth who was trending at that time, but it wasn’t HP, it was ASOIAF. 

And even then, it is only a flair and a colour scheme. 

If Edel isn’t enough, the Golden Deer, with its specific color scheme immediately calls back to the Baratheon sigil (a black stag on a field of gold, when the Golden Deer is a deer... on a field of gold). House Lannister and Arryn are reversed, the Lion isn’t associated to the Red House but to the Blue one, and the Eagle (actually the Arryn sigil is a falcon) leaves the Moon to the Blue House and lands in the Red House. And the Ashen Wolves are... grey wolves on a white field, like this house. IS managed to take animals from traditional european heraldry, but with the colors and the specific animals picked? It’s hard to deny the ASOIAF nod.

Hubert calls the mole people snakes, but it is his own nickname, the death cult has its own name, Agarthans. They never use a snake of their banner, nor refer to themselves as such.

Bar the aesthetics? 

IS wanted the monastery to be a nod to FE Jugdral’s Barahra Royal Academy, a place where, apparently, heirs of various nations could study together and form lasting friendships, which were supposed to prevent wars (or at least made former alumnis of said academy sad to fight against each other).

But because FE Jugdral wasn’t released overseas, and someone didn’t do their homework about the series (when Toyonaga is a big fan of the Jugdral saga), the monastery, and its academy, was linked to... HP.

Rhea isn’t Dumbledore. Rhea is an amalgation of Gotoh - the mentor who guides you - and, twist, of Tiki! 

If Seteth doubted Billy’s abilities, it is tied to their own nature as a self-insert, Fred doubted Robin when they first met, but then mellowed out. Or, without the avatar angle, when Greil trusts Ike, and later on, Titania, Shinon doubts him until the end (or until you recruit him).

So with a blurred lens, it is no wonder why localised!Rhea is so different from Inoue!Rhea. 

Then Leigh continues on with the interview, noting how insecure she is, irl, and how Rhea helped her realise that “sometimes I don’t need to try to be someone else to fit it, it’s okay to just be myself” ...

:/

How can the direction give this impression of Rhea to her VA when Rhea, her character, is the complete opposite? 

Rhea tries to be someone else, she laments about it, she cannot be herself, she has to put on a facade and make careful choices and pick certain words as an archbishop, Rhea has to anonymously ask how to tell people she doesn’t like hot tea because she is afraid of hurting feelings, she wants to socialise with people but cannot due to her station and the role she has. Rhea has to pretend to be a guide and a leader to her people, when she only wants her Mother to return to assume this role she thinks she is butchering.

So, doubling Rhea should actually have the opposite effect, Rhea cannot “just be (her)self”! or maybe it’d be an advice Leigh gives to Rhea, the character?

So if you take the blurred lens coupled with the tragic direction given, Rhea’s depth is erased. She is instead turned into the scary fanatic who never emotes, save to raeg, and only wants to rez her mom.

Cute moment though, even if the topic is one I disagree on, where, talking about Rhea’s temper, Leigh says she wouldn’t want to encounter her when she’s stuck in traffic :) (lbr we all know Rhea would pull out the wings and reactor of her DeLorean and fly over everyone, without Billy though, she cannot time travel)

Tl; dr : Imposing doesn’t mean frightening, Leigh and the interviewer watched too much DBZ and ASOIAF (rather, GOT) was the “western” behemoth referenced in FE16, not HP. 

The other referenced behemoth was... well, a small series called Fire Emblem.

As always, I’m more willing to cut some slack for the VAs because the industries is more recent than the one in Japan, and/or roles weren’t directed the same way (do you know the guy who dubs Morgan Freeman in Wonder France also dubs the voice talking during Uncle Ben’s ads? Or Bruce Willis is in Martin Mystery?)

But the Directors? No. Games have been imported and translated/localised for several decades now, you can’t pull a “4Kids” anymore on content you do not understand or do not wish to understand, and butchering a character (or misunderstand a character that much) shouldn’t have happened in 2019. 

Dub is nice, when it exists, but for now, I’m still going to stick to Sub.

[bookcoversalt]

Have you noticed the latest edition of Charlie Bowater can only draw one (1) face? She did The Princess Will Save You and Cast In Firelight both YA Fantasy set to be released this year. And they are how you say... the same fucking cover

Ah yes so you saw the same tweet I did

I know I literally just posted that we cannot outlaw book covers from looking like each other, but ! Oof!

The only thing that softens the blow here is that Charlie has improved at representing nonwhite features such that characters look like POC rather than tan white people, although,, that bar was low. Anybody remember the ACOTAR coloring book.

(Would you have guessed that 2/3 of these people are nonwhite? Or even that they’re supposed to be three different men? I guess all the men in Prythian have the same haircut?)

But that minor victory is mostly lost in the quagmires of the fact that Charlie’s style is to give everyone instagram face:

I wouldn’t even call this “Sameface” necessarily: that implies limitation, that an artist is only capable of drawing a single facial structure competently. Bowater is incredibly technically talented, she just chooses to give everyone catlike fae eyes and the cheekbones of a starving nymph. (My previous post on this here.)

But I don’t really blame her for that, or for these hilariously identical, nearly devoid of personality covers. Artists are allowed to do whatever they want. Artists who make art for covers are being art directed by designers and marketing teams who bear responsibility for how the finished pieces turn out.

No, this is our fault, as a community and an industry and..... society, kind of, for valuing character portraits that are “pretty” (“pretty” being an extremely loaded, culturally subjective concept) over art that actually Says Something About The Story. Bowater’s style happens to dovetail perfectly with what we currently collectively find pretty, and so we’ve put her art on a pedestal at the cost of everything else art can or should do for our stories.

And this is understandable: in contemporary western culture, pretty is a value unto itself. Seeing our characters portrayed as pretty denotes them as special, as smart, as powerful. It’s almost impossible to de-program ourselves from that reaction. There are approximately five kajillion studies on how beautiful people are at personal and professional advantages; how they’re perceived to be happier, healthier, more successful, and how those perceptions can translate into realities. (Nevermind how thinness and whiteness enter that equation, see above note about “pretty”.) I would love to see more “average” or weird- looking characters abound (and be accurately visually represented) in the YA/ Genre lit sphere, but for now... everyone is pretty.

Which sometimes means everyone is pretty boring.

But that’s just the specific, "What’s the deal with Bowater’s success in book circles and her style and all the sameiness” part of this equation. What if we backed up and asked: why character art at all? Beyond a question of “pretty”-ness (and general obvious Artistic Quality), why do we gravitate towards it, what's the purpose of it, how does it fall flat in a general sense, and how can it be utilized more effectively?

This is something I think about all the time. I follow writers on social media (because..... I am a writer on social media, regrettably), and we have an enormous collective boner for character art. “Getting fanart [of the characters]” is one of the achievement pinnacles constantly cited when people get or want to get published. Commissioning character art is something we reward ourselves with, or save up for (WHICH IS GOOD AND CORRECT. FREE ART IS GREAT BUT DO NOT SOLICIT IT. PAY YOUR ARTISTS). And like???? Same????? We love our stories because we’re invested in our characters. Most humans, even prose writers, are visual creatures to some extent, and no matter how happy we are with our text-based art, it’s exciting to see our creations exist in that form. So we turn that art into promo material and we advocate for it on our covers-- because it’s so meaningful to us! It goes with the story perfectly!! Look at my dumb beautiful children!!!!!

But on an emotional level, it’s hard to grasp that it only means something to us. Particularly when you take into account the aforementioned vast landscape of beautiful visual blandness of many characters (in the YA/ genre lit sphere, that’s pretty much all I’m ever talking about), character art can be like baby photos. If you know the baby, if that baby is your new niece or your friend’s kid, if you’ve held them and their parent texts you updates when they do cute shit, you’re probably excited to see that baby photo. But unless it’s exceptionally cute, a random stranger’s baby photo isn’t likely to invoke an emotional reaction other than “this is why I don’t get on facebook.”

Seeing art of characters they don’t know might intrigue a reader, but especially if the characters or art are unremarkable-looking, it’s doing a hell of a lot more for the people who already have an emotional attachment to that character than anybody else. And that’s fine. Art for a small, invested audience is incredibly rewarding. But like the parent who cannot see why you don’t think their baby is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY IN THE WORLD???? I think we have trouble divesting our emotional reaction to character art from its actual marketing value, which.... is often pretty minimal. This is my hill to die on #143:

Character portraits, even beautiful ones, are meaningless as a marketing tool without additional context or imagery. 

I love character art! I’m not saying it should not exist or that it’s worthless! Even art that appeals to only the one single person who made it has value and the right to exist. And part of this conversation is how important for POC to see themselves on covers, whether illustrations or stock imagery, particularly in YA/kidlit. I’m not saying character portrait covers are “bad”. 

I am saying that I have seen dozens and dozens of sets of character art for characters who look interchangeable, and it has never driven me to preorder a book. (Also one character portrait for a high-profile 2019 debut that was clearly just a painting of Amanda Seyfriend. You know the one. There’s nothing wrong with faceclaims but lmfao, girl,,,,)

I’m sure that’s not true for everyone! I am incredibly picky about art. It’s my job. There’s nothing wrong with your card deck of cell-shaded boys of ambiguous age and ethnicity who all have the same button nose and smirk if it Sparks Joy for you.

But if your goal is not only to delight yourself, but to sell books, it’s in your best interest to remember that art, like writing, is a form of communication. The publishing industry runs on pitches: querys, blurbs, proposals, self-promo tweets. What if we applied that logic to our visuals? How can we utilize our character design and art to communicate as much about our stories as possible, in the most enticing way?

Social media has already driven the embrace of this concept in a very general sense. Authors are now supposed to have ~ aesthetics. “Picspams” or graphics, modular collages that function as mini moodboards, are commonplace. But the labor intensity and relative scarcity of character art visible in bookish circles, even on covers, means that application of marketing sensibility to it is less intuitive than throwing together a pinterest board.

Since we were talking about it earlier, WICKED SAINTS, as a case study of a recent “successful” fantasy YA debut, arguably owed a lot of its early social media momentum to fanart.

(Early fanart by @warickaart)

The most frequently drawn character, Malachiasz, has long hair, claws, and distinctive face tattoos. WS has a strong aesthetic in general, but those features clearly marked his fanart as him in a way even someone unfamiliar with the book could clearly track across different styles. Different interpretations of his tattoos from different artists even became a point of interest.

(Art by Jaria Rambaran, also super early days of WS Being A Thing)

Aside from distinctiveness, it's a clear visual representation of his history as a cult member, his monstrous powers, and the story’s dark, medieval tone. The above image is also a great example of character interaction, something missing from straightforward portraits, that communicates a dynamic. Character dynamics draw people into stories: enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, childhood rivals, platonic life partners, love triangles, devoted siblings, exes who still carry the flame-- there’s a reason we codify these into tropes, and integrate that language and shared knowledge into our marketing. For another example in that vein, I really love this art by @MabyMin, commissioned by Gina Chen:

The wrist grip! The fancy outfits! These are two nobles who hate each other and want to bone and I am sold. 

In terms of true portraits, the best recent example I can think of is the set @NicoleDeal did for Roshani Chokshi’s GILDED WOLVES (I believe as a preorder incentive of some kind?): 

They showcase settings, props, and poses that all communicate the characters’ interests, skills, and personality, as well as the glamorous, elaborate aesthetic of the overall story. Even elements in the gold borders change, alluding to other plot points and symbology.

For painterly accuracy in character portraits on covers, I love SPIN THE DAWN. The heroine looks like a beautiful badass, yes, but the thoughtful, detailed rendering of every element, soft textures, and dynamic, fluid composition form a really cohesive, stunning illustration that presents an intriguing collection of story elements.

The devil isn’t always in the details, though: stark, moody, highly stylized or graphic art with an emphasis on textural contrast and bold color and shape rather than representational accuracy can communicate a lot (emotionally and tonally) while pretty much foregoing realism.

The new Lunar Chronicles covers are actually the best examples I found of this (Trying to stay within the realm of existing bookish art rather than branch into All Art Of Human Figures Forever):

Taking cues from styles more typical of the comics and video game industries.  (Games and comics, as visual mediums, are sources of incredible character art and I highly recommend following artists in those industries if you want to See More Cool Art On Your Timeline.)

TL;DR: Character art and design, as a marketing tool (even an incidental one) should be as unique to your story and your characters as possible, and tell us about the story in ways that make us want to read it. I tried to give examples because there are so many ways to do this, and so many different kinds of art, and I could give many more! But I’m bored now. So to circle all the way back:

These are not just bad because they look like each other, although that is embarrassing and illuminating. These are bad covers (although,,,,, PRINCESS is the far worse offender, at least FIRELIGHT suggests a thoughtful cultural analogue) because a desire for Pretty Character Art overrode the basic cover function to tell us about the story. We get no sense of who these people are, what their relationships are, what these books are about beyond the most general genre, or why we might care. The expressions are vague, the characters generic-looking, the compositions uninteresting and the colors failing to be indicative of anything in particular. 

They’re somebody else’s baby pictures.

(And yes, that’s the CRUEL PRINCE font on PRINCESS. I better not have to do a roundup post but it’s on thin fucking ice.)

[dragon-grunkle]

star wars and flight rising are in the same universe and here’s why, a ted talk by stanley

in an effort to both 1. talk about my lore more often like i’ve been meaning to and 2. explain what i meant when i went off about it in the tags of my last post, i’m gonna attempt to explain my rationale for deciding star wars and flight rising can totally coexist in the same universe.

there’s a tldr at the very bottom! i do use rebels as a basis for some of this lore, since it basically just confirms concepts i was already thinking of before i even watched the show, but it IS a little spoilery sometimes.

SO. what do we know about sornieth? here’s a summary: it’s the fourth planet from its sun. it has at least one but possibly two or more moons. powerful beings of pure elemental energy sprung up in the early days of the planet’s formation. a darkness from beyond attacks the planet, and the gods build a pillar to keep it out. after this, humanoid races flourish and they learn to combine magic with technology, but eventually someone gets too arrogant and builds a big machine that blows up all of civilization. from this, the arcanist is born. he grows curious and encounters the shade, which breaks the pillar. the other gods see this and decide to go their separate ways. they create dragons.

this new society has reached a point roughly equivalent to the 1920s, and that’s as far as we’ve gotten. that’s it, that’s flight rising. no aliens mentioned, except for the shade (and possibly the forbidden portal enemies if you count those, but that’s for another time).

what about star wars? as we all know, it’s set ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’. there is a lot of history here that isn’t really relevant, so i’m just going to talk briefly about the layout of the galaxy: it isn’t named, but there are different sections to it that are, and they’re grouped according to how far away a planet is from the center of the galaxy. you have: the core worlds, the inner rim, the mid rim, the outer rim, and wild space. generally, planets are more densely populated towards the center of the galaxy and less as you go out. compare coruscant, a core world entirely covered by a city and inhabited by trillions of people, to tatooine, an outer rim planet that wookieepedia states has 200,000 inhabitants total. 

-----

where does sornieth fit in this map? the answer is simple: wild space. this region lies beyond the outer rim, where not many bother to travel because it’s just not worth it, and it’s where i’ve placed sornieth in this scenario. wookieepedia says:

Unlike other regions of the galaxy, Wild Space existed along the entire circumference of the galactic disk and on the borderlands of the Unknown Regions. It was inhabited by sentient species but not fully charted, explored, and civilized.

star wars: rebels touches on wild space a bit: one of its main characters is a lasat, a species thought to be wiped out by the empire. lasats come from lasan, but they have a legendary ancestral homeworld called lira san. except it turns out that lira san isn’t a myth: it’s real, it’s populated, and it’s in wild space.

the fact that an entire species believed their original homeworld was a myth means we can easily set sornieth there without ever having to worry about political groups such as the republic, the empire, and the rebellion coming across the planet and mucking up our established rule of No Aliens Besides Shade (And Maybe Arcanist). it’s conveniently out of the way AND protects the lore of both continuities very well, ensuring that they don’t interfere with each other by introducing a previously-unheard-of super-powerful flying magical race to the galaxy, or having stormtroopers invade the southern icefields, or something else fucky like that.

------

now that we’ve got location covered, we have to talk about the force, magic, and the gods. i’m gonna get a little handwavey here, but it’s also, i think, the most interesting part of this whole thing, so here we go.

first off, the force. what is it? here’s how obi-wan describes it in a new hope:

It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

with that description in mind, i want to draw attention to one little throwaway line from the flight rising lorebook chapter 1: the first age: 

From this bedlam, the magical energies themselves began to concentrate and change. Similar particles receded into four great beings, each overwhelmingly dense with a different element. As if eager to proudly display their emergence to some unseen divinity, these beings took on the shapes of great wyrms.

that ‘unseen divinity’? yeah, that’s the force. you could even take the ‘similar particles’ bit to mean midi-chlorians, if you want to acknowledge the prequels’ interpretation of the force.

as we know, some people are stronger with the force than others. these people usually become jedi or sometimes sith, depending on whether they use the light or the dark side. but the jedi and sith aren’t the only force users out there: there are plenty of civilizations who have different names and explanations for it and how it manifests itself varies from person to person. in fact, the lasat people i mentioned earlier recognized the force as something called ‘the ashla’. so different concepts for the force exist across the galaxy, and it’s very possible that what we know as ‘elemental magic’ on sornieth is simply how dragons see different aspects of the force. as if that wasn’t enough, we also know some force users can use the force to manipulate the elements themselves, like how palpatine can use the dark side to create lightning.

so really: i don’t think it’s a stretch to say some intensely powerful creatures born of the universe itself could specialize in a specific aspect of the force and manifest entirely that way.

[billy mays voice] But Wait, There’s More! i’m gonna reference rebels again. yeah, i know. on the planet of atollon lives the bendu, a being of the force who is neither light nor dark. he’s powerful, and at one point, turns himself into a giant storm and strikes down ships with lightning to defend his planet. loth-wolves are a similar concept. they’re animals which are shown to have a deep connection to the force, but only as it relates to the planet they call home, lothal. at one point a character asks if the loth-wolves are on their side and the answer is "they're on lothal's side.” this is how i see the gods as existing in the greater star wars universe: powerful beings intrinsically linked to the planet they originate from. they’re capable of great feats on their own, but can guide others (like humans or dragons) to use the force / magic in their stead.

the gods are real inasmuch as the force is real, and act as extensions of one another. if we wanna go a step further, the deities could all be light-side users and the shade is their dark counterpart, which is a REALLY fun concept to explore.

-----

phew, that’s it. i’ve covered most of it except for how dragons get off sornieth and into the wider galaxy, which is...somewhat less essential than the stuff i talked about above, but i still want to address it, especially since we’ve established they have no outside contact and are limited to 1920s tech. to keep it brief, the easiest answer is...magic.

i don’t want to get tooooo deep into rebels stuff again, but space-time portals do exist in star wars, which is really exciting for me personally, and also a nice setup for dragons to get out into the galaxy - if they have access to them, that is; in rebels they only appear in a jedi temple, but i think it’s possible other access points exist, given that other force-societies also exist. the point is, being handwavey and saying ‘eh, portals’ is a valid excuse that doesn’t totally break either universe because they are canon to both universes. you could also go the route of magic experiments gone wrong, the deities picking off a few special individuals and sending them out, or crazy lighning-arcane tech mergers shooting dragons off into space, never to be heard from again.

there’s any number of possibilities here, ranging from crazy space wizard shenanigans to early spaceflight gone very very wrong.

-----

tldr: sornieth is located in the far reaches of the galaxy, away from major events, and has remained undiscovered. the deities are manifestations of the force channeled through the planet itself; the gods and the force are extensions of one another. sometimes dragons can get off sornieth, but not often, so dragons are rare in the wider galaxy. there is no conflict of lore that says these two things CAN’T exist in the same universe, and in fact, the lore sometimes even supports them coexisting.

or in other words: star wars and flight rising coexist because i want them to, but also because i have legitimate justification for it. i’m too powerful and nobody can stop me from making star wars dragons now.

[odyssiaca]

i said i was gonna do it, so here i am! i am writing this on the fly, making it up as i go along so who knows how long it will be! who knows. 

i have finally played every route in fe3h, including the dlc- currently im making my way through the new game+ and screaming because this is my life now apparently. this isn’t really a deep and meaningful essay just... my experience playing the game and all the routes. 

( pls note i played on casual and normal for my original playthrough because i am a wimp. for ng+ im still playing casual but this time im playing on hard. )

this is the order in which i played the routes + dlc: verdant wind, azure moon, cindered shadows, silver snow and crimson flower. 

right! so!! let’s start!

White Clouds: the first twelve chapters are obviously pretty same-y, which is fine, except when you’re playing 4 times in a row. i liked the fact that the goddess tower was unique for every route and character you were trying to get s support with. there were some unique aspects to the different house, ie. judith, arundel, rodrigue, finding out about dimitri and edelgard. but other than that i did get pretty bored when it came around to doing it... again. and idk just, like i said the reveals obviously weren’t as shocking the 4 time around but like, they were still enjoyable, which is good at least!

Verdant Wind: this route is... eh. it’s the first one i did because dear god i am in love with claude. the route in and of itself is probably one of the weakest ngl. there were things that didn’t make sense in the context of the route and unlike azure moon and crimson flower it didn’t feel unique (given that this route and silver snow are.... IDENTICAL. except the final bosses) the final boss was dope and i am obsessed with God Shattering Star, but other than that? meh. i liked it at first because it was my first one and yknow, claude. but now it’s just idk, it’s lacking. and i’m gonna be honest: i don’t like most of the class. i like claude, hilda, marianne and lysithea. that is it. the others are just overbearing or kinda boring. lorenz i just, i can’t get over his design, i know he’s a deep character but i dislike most of his c supports, i hate his hair and the way he talks. ignatz and raphael are forgettable. i know they’re also very deep characters but their surface levels make me not want to go into their characters. and just. fuck leonie, i’m sorry i just cannot handle her. she’s overbearing, annoying, thinks that because jeralt trained her she’s better than everyone??? GOD. her supports with hilda are cute, and i like her post-timeskip design but otherwise she’s one of my least favourite characters in the game. im sorry. (edit: okay im revising this because it was late at night and perhaps i was a bit harsh. i dont actually mind the characters i mentioned that much, in fact they can be quite funny, however, i still prefer characters from the other houses more.) so my verdict of this route is that i did enjoy it, i liked the cutscenes and the timeskip designs but it’s still only my second favourite. 8/10.

Azure Moon: look. i’m just saying, this route? is the best. hands down, it’s absolutely amazing. it has it’s flaws, and it’s very different from the other routes and is also very much the most fire emblem like route but that’s okay. this route is devastating, heartbreaking, really fucking sad. and that just draws me in. when i first did the route i was gonna marry mercedes because i am gay and love her but the character of dimitri is just so incredibly well done- before and after the timeskip. i like the fact that there’s essence behind his character, meaning. i actually found this route to be kinda hard in places (cornelia for example and also edelgard) and it’s also very unique. i like the way the two factions of faerghus and adrestia interact, and also the way the alliance is just dragged into it. ( claude doesn’t die which is good!!!!) in the other routes you only really see dimitri as this crazed character but in azure moon you find out WHY and yes, that is good. the characters are all very unique and i like them all they all have their own stories and characteristics that make them as unique at the route. the cutscenes and stills are, beautifully done and truly heartbreaking. and just. AH. i adore this route more than i have any right to, on the whole it’s my favourite. 10/10.

Cindered Shadows: this isn’t really a route, but that’s okay, im sure you guys don’t mind. i love the ashen wolves, they’re amazing. the story is... weak. because it doesn’t fit into the actual plot at all and that annoys me. aelfric is a character i dislike immensely but maybe that was the point? i find the explanations in the route to be its downfall, because it clashes with what we already know in the game. sitri is pretty and im glad we get a tiny bit more byleth and sitri backstory but otherwise the characters and abyss are it’s saving grace. 6/10.

Silver Snow: im gonna go ahead and say it: fuck this route. it’s verdant wind but with seteth instead of claude. it’s verdant wind but bad and boring. it’s dull and unnecessary. i had really high hopes for this route because it’s the church! i dont like the church but a route with them could be very interesting! it was not! it lacked personality, it lacked uniqueness. i don’t particularly like most of the characters and basically just used the students and fuuuuuck the final boss. the only reason i did this route was because i wanted to romance yuri but also edelgard.  2/10 would not play again.

Crimson Flower: ... ... ... WHERE ARE THE CUTSCENES!!!! where is the reunion scene between byleth and edelgard, why is it all stills!!!!!! WHY IS IT SHORTER THAN THE OTHERS!!!! WHY. the story in this route is actually very interesting, and well thought out. but the aforementioned points are what make me want to ram my head into a wall. idk why they thought to give silver snow cutscenes and not this route but it was stupid. i do like the way the portrayed the church and rhea though. as the villains they technically are. i like the characters a lot, they’re all great, and i love the angst!!! the way you get to choose if you want to spare or kill your children whom you love. ( i spared claude and lysithea because i am weak. ) but its just. the vibe of the route is ruined by the lack of cutscenes and thats dumb ik but it is what it is. and also it did NOT need to be shorter, there was no reason for it to be as short as it was. 5/10.

so in order we have: 

Azure Moon

Verdant Wind

Cindered Shadows

Crimson Flower

Silver Snow

i enjoyed the game a lot, the writing was beautiful and the characterization was also really good. but some of the characters and routes were just. weak. very very weak. 

idk what else to say so imma leave it here i guess!! pls feel free to debate with me, i’d like that a lot. 

[spidermilkshake]

Welcome to My Elective Vampire TED Talk #2

TW: Mention and discussion of blood, hematophagy, etc., food and overeating mention.

This one's much less a characterization problem I have, and a lot more a problem with sheer physics goofs in vampire-y media. Science and numbers abound. Behold:

Vampire Physics: “Chuggin’ Four Liters of Buttermilk”

Lovely title. It should certainly evoke some idea of exactly what aspect of the typical vampire mythos I’m about to have a big issue with. Heavy whipping cream, buttermilk, light corn syrup… anything along the lines of red blood in terms of viscosity—whatever you prefer.

It’s the reason vampires are vampires; it’s the primary identifying trait across all the various little representations throughout folklore and fiction. It’s the primary “fear factor” behind the potential presence of a vampire in these fictional settings: They trail after you, perfectly stealthy in the night, perhaps they look and act just like you, could be hidden until darkness or even blending in among you right now—innocuous, human-sized beings but especially equipped to outrun, overpower, or avoid your notice. They very well are among your communities—since you have something they need. The Blood!

Cue the royalty-free thunder sound effects.

But that’s just the issue here with making the vampire fears so very grounded and founded. This isn’t a pack of wolves being sure to stay close to the elk herd to survive the winter on whole bones and carcass. They want something of the humans that the humans can live without, at least to some degree. “But Spider,” I hear a particularly ardent hypothetical vamp-fan interject, “blood loss does kill people! These vampires must be lethal because they need all the blood—it’s not like they waste it!”

Ah, well, the point is well-made: If you have decided the vampires of your setting require this and operate this way, who am I to stop you? The only questionable idea is that a vampire leaving a person alive and unharmed is a “waste” apparently. But do consider your worldbuilding choices should be done with intention—do not introduce a rule that you are not prepared to account for in logistics and adherence to verisimilitude, and especially physics. When establishing a “drains-dry rule”, establish also a physicality of such vampires that suits it because the typical capabilities of a vampire in most modern fiction would need to change for such a lifestyle.

Let’s start with size:

Presuming a vampire is within the size range possible to humans (what better way to blend in, eh?) and is uniquely adapted to subsist on an at least partial blood diet, deriving some or all needed energy and nutrients from the substances of blood, of an amount they can comfortably fit inside them on a nightly basis. Assuming you want your vampires to be even roughly passable as human pre-feeding as well as post-feeding (and not have them expand to several times their normal girth like a tick and spark a new wave of, er, inflation enthusiasts), then the blood-drinker’s maximum stomach volume should be at roughly one liter. And that’s maximum—as in “OH GOD WHY DID I EAT THAT MUCH? I FEEL LIKE I’MA DIE” levels of over-doing it, not a normal “full” volume where most would stop. That more moderate volume would be roughly half down to roughly a third of that one liter. Basically, if in any sense your setting’s vampires are actually physically putting the blood inside them, and they don’t bloat like a damn balloon, they don’t require any more than a quart of blood at one time.

This does mean, by sheer physiological limitation, your non-expandable human-sized corporeal-blood-needing vampires should never be lethal for their prey just by virtue of draining that blood. Here’s why: The average human body contains anywhere between 4 liters and 6 liters of blood, depending on size again. Even a particularly careless and gluttonous vampire (who also happens to be dumb and/or skeevy enough to not just go “ah. I get more blood by noshing on more people, not just the one”) biting a particularly petite victim will leave them still alive but very much depleted and unconscious. Only intentional carelessness or an accident (such as the “whoops! That one was super-anemic already!”) or both would turn out worse. And “draining dry” should be physically impossible for such a vampire—even an especially ridiculous and greedy one.

Most of the less-hungry vamps shouldn’t even affect the “prey’s” health any more than a typical (notably not-deadly) blood donation, as the ideal “one-third to one-half of max capacity” for a vampire’s DV of blood calculates out to… between 350 mL and 500 mL of blood from one human. Surprise! A donated unit of blood is measured at exactly 450 mL—the perfect amount for a vampire and the human can somehow survive the attack of the dread creature-of-the-night, so long as…

…you find a place to sit down for a few minutes and some orange juice is nearby. Wow, how harrowing. Truly a miracle that you made it.

“But,” I hear a naysayer nay-saying, “the vampires I’m making are after blood for life-energy! So they can take more because they need the life!”

If blood is being physically consumed whether it’s the blood itself or not, the volume constraints still hold. Also, if blood does “contain life energy” in your setting, who says your vamps need all the life energy from a person? Why isn’t 450 mL of life-energy enough? And why can’t the vampires just drain that much “life-energy blood” from multiple people, until it totals up to a “full life’s worth”? They do realize that if they end the life in a body, it stops making life/blood, right? Those vamps just sound like wasteful clowns to me. Or desperately looking for an excuse to kill someone. See Vampire TED Talk #1.

“But they siphon blood straight into their own veins—so they can drain more!”

… Pay better attention in biology, kids. That is not how eating things eat. Unless you are implying your setting’s vampires are literally undead sponges with no working innards at all, just rubbery, desiccated blood-tubes that need a fillin’ for the demon pneumatics to be puppetted around properly, that is not how eating works. Feel free to use these in horror settings or especially as villainous monsters or demons—but I better hope you ain’t planning on making them otherwise act or think like live, conscious, sapient people! If they’re meant to be good characters especially—y’all are transparent as an empty blood-draw bag with excuses to make vampires universally killers.

If you think this makes vampires “boring”, well… Maybe you’re not in it for vampires. Maybe explore what’s in that dark corner of yourself? Question your “default thoughts”. Let's see more fantasy writ with intention--and conscious of its tropes' tendency to be very, er, questionable when thought about for more than a passing second. I know I'm not the first to notice the blood-logistics problem: Special thanks to Martha Bechtel's ol' blog, which I ended up discovering while researching just how off most vampire media is.

See here for their "Worldbuilding: Vampires and Portion Control" post: https://martha.net/2008/08/vampires-and-portion-control/

[urbanteeth]

Novel Prep Tag

I was tagged by @llesbianwrites @songsofaleria and @fictional-semantics! Thank you!

I will be doing this for The Silence, since I haven’t talked about it very much!

First Look

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

The trees have forgiven us. The wolves will guide us home.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

I’m doing seasons for this story! Right now, two seasons are planned, but of course there's room for more if they’re needed! 

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

The quiet of winter, wolf tracks in the snow, long stretches of roads lined with cars abandoned long long ago, the traces of humankind after a disaster, bones picked clean by a flock of ravens, frost crawling across a window, the faint smoke of a far away fire, the weariness of travel, frosted breath like clouds, tiny green plants pushing their way through the snow, the howl of a wolf, the warmth of hope

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

Wolf’s Rain was maybe the biggest influence for the whole wolves are driven to find paradise trope. But The Last of Us also inspired the story! Mainly characterization and just having the story be a character driven one!

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

Main Character

6. Who is your protagonist?

The story is told in the POV of five wolves! Though I’m considering picking maybe two wolves and also doing part of the story in one of the human character’s POV.

7. Who is their closest ally?

The wolves’s biggest ally is each other. Other animals also help them along the way, notably a bear and a pack of coyotes.

8. Who is their enemy?

The land itself is the biggest threat to the wolves. Winter is harsh and never-ending, which pushes them to keep moving. Sure, they have some scuffles with humans from time to time, but really, it’s the winter cold and famine they need to be very careful of.

9. What do they want more than anything?

Really, all they want is a home where they can be safe.

10. Why can’t they have it?

It ties back in with how winter made the land hard to live off of. Food and water are both scarce and the main wolves don’t have packs to rely on. And even after they band together, it’s still dangerous for them. So they have to keep moving.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

They have a lot of doubts, both of their journey and of themselves. They spend a lot of time wondering if paradise is real and if they’ll be able to get there, as well as worry about finding their places within the pack.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

I have posts where I made the wolves with Wolvden’s demo customizer! Here and here!

Plot Points

13. What is the internal conflict?

The characters mainly deal with hopelessness and the tension of trying to stay alive and try to make the right choices to ensure the rest of the pack makes it as well.  

14. What is the external conflict?

The wolves and their environment! They have to deal with little food, water sources freezing up, the cold, and some later injuries that occur.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

I think at first the worst thing that could happen is they finding out paradise is just a story and their journey being all for nothing. But being that they band together and the hardships they face bring them close as a family, losing a pack member is the absolute worst thing that could happen.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

The relationship between spring and the wolves! They believe that they are being led to paradise/spring, but it’s really more of the other way around. But there’s also the wolves finding out just how deeply this winter is affecting others around them.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yes! I’m going for a sort of bittersweet ending. A good ending, but bittersweet.

Bits and Bobs

18. What is the theme?

Finding hope, learning to trust, familial love, knowing when to step back, letting yourself be wrong, looking forward to tomorrow

19. What is a reoccurring symbol?

Wolf prints, human objects that are broken down / not where they’re supposed to be / abandoned and little green plants starting to grow in those places, the sun, melting snow, and storms

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

It’s sort of an alternative earth that was hit by a never-ending winter type apocalypse (and ice age I guess you could say!). The other seasons just don’t really happen anymore like they used to. Sometimes, it’s a little warmer than most days, but not enough to do things like plant crops or go outside without burying yourself in layers first. Some people have managed to keep animals and grow hardy crops, but it’s really hard to find resources.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Yes! Some scenes I have planned are as follows:

the pack meeting and getting help from some coyotes (and a bear later on)

the pack coming across a group of human survivors

the pack partaking in their first hunt together

a lost wolf reuniting with the pack (can you tell I’m super excited about indulging in that sweet sweet found family trope?)

22. What excited you about this story?

I’ve always wanted to write a story with wolves! And this idea of a winter apocalypse and a journey to find spring / paradise is actually part of an older wip that I scrapped. But looking back, I genuinely really liked it. So I wanted to give it a chance to grow into something new.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Oh yikes. I don’t really have a set method. Before writing though, I do like to give the WIP playlist a listen to remember the mood / vibe I was going for. Sometimes if I can’t quite sit to write, I’ll make little edits for the episodes. Usually that helps put me in the mindset to write.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

9x11: Details Part 2 + My Wacky Carzekiel Theory

Okay, welcome to Details, part 2. I’ll mostly talk about Carol and Ezekiel stuff in this post, but trust me there are a lot of Beth ties. For I’ll talk about the details I saw in the episode. Then I’m gonna throw out kind of wacky theory I’ve had swirling around my head lately. Let's get started.

So Ezekiel and the Kingdom go on an elk hunt. Obviously, the deer reference is important because of the Deer Theory.

I noticed that when he's first talking to Diane, she says there's about 100 elk in the herd. That stuck out to me because 100 is a number we've heard before. I don't think we've heard it for a while, but I concluded some time ago that it represented the path home to TF. So, one hundred elk is kind of interesting. Diane says that there are 200 walkers coming in. They have about six hours to get to the elk before the walkers do. Both the elk and the walkers were headed to a place called Falls Church. I don't know if Falls Church is important, but they give the name, so I figured it was worth noting.

We don't see the hunt but we do see that they get some elk. Now, having dead deer in the shot suggests someone getting hurt but surviving (Deer Theory). It could be Beth, but I have a theory about what else this might be about. I'll come back to it.

It also occurred to me that this is the second time Carol has been heavily associated with deer. Back in in S4, she was associated with them because of Lizzie and Mica. But also remember that she told Tyreese's Ed’s stupid hunting joke. The one about beer nuts vs. deer nuts. The punchline was, "deer nuts are just under a buck." So, she was specifically associated with large, male deer (bucks) in that episode. I suppose seeing the big antlers just made me think of that.

I never realized it before, but there weren't any bucks around Lizzie and Mica. The deer she tried to get Mica to shoot, which is standing there after she shoots Lizzie, is either a baby deer or small female. 

It would make sense for it to be a baby, since Lizzie and Mica were children. So again, just pointing out that Carol has been associated with this before, and I think that's important. Again, I’ll come back to them.

Let's have a comedy appreciation moment for Zeke and Jerry in this episode. Zeke tries to trick Carol out of going to the theater. Guy has no poker face. And of course there was Jerry. Between his goofy grin and his lip-synching, he kept me very entertained this episode. 😉

They’re after a projector bulb, which is a light bulb. It occurred to me it's it really is a type of lamp. Often the bulbs in projectors are referred to as lamps. So, we can connect this to the Lamp Theory.

They also say the phrase “cobra strike” over and over again. Snake reference, which we always relate back to Still.

Ezekiel also talks about “bringing cinema back from the dead." Sounds like a resurrection reference to me.

The movie theater reminded me very much of the Big Spot. There was the lighting, of course, but we see that lighting in many places. Just the dim interior with the much brighter exterior. Still, any place to go with those lighting reminds me of Grady and I relate it back to Beth.

Diane mentions a whole bunch of tubs of butter-flavored coconut oil. That stuck out as odd to me because it was unnecessary. Yeah, maybe you'd find something like that in a movie theater, but it wasn't like they needed that detail to establish this is a movie theater. She’s very specific about what it was, heavily drawing attention to it. 

Besides, in my experience, butter flavored coconut oil is not what’s a general used in movie theaters. They used a synthetic form of butter for the popcorn to be sure, but coconut oil is actually an expensive product. A movie theater probably wouldn't have it stockpiled. So, I’m not even sure this is particularly accurate. Maybe some theaters do it, and it’s possible, but most wouldn’t. They’d want to be more cost effective than that.

I looked up symbolism for it, and I don't see any symbolism specifically for coconut oil, just for coconuts. But I figure it's all the same since the oil comes from the coconuts. Coconuts have symbolism in many different cultures and places, but it almost always represents healing and regeneration. So again, this could be a Beth/resurrection thing, but also might just point to the fair and how they're hoping it will heal the communities.

Okay, let's get to the good stuff.

We see a walker with three deep gouges in its head. Jerry kills it. He does so by sticking his sword upward through its chin and face. 

That really jumped out at me because at the Big Spot, Sasha killed a walker in exactly the same way. 

The only reason I remember that is because Sonequa really liked that kill. She said it was the coolest kill Sasha had ever had, and she really enjoyed doing it. So, when I saw Jerry doing that, I knew they were paralleling this with the Big Spot.

And why do that? Again, I’ll go into it with my theory, but if nothing else, it’s yet another callback to S4 among many this season, and there must be a reason for it. The Big Spot was in 4x01, after all, which also includes the Bethyl hug and was the beginning of Beth’s arc.

There's a huge wheel on the popcorn cart. 

It just caught my attention because we see wheels a lot on bikes and such. Whenever I see a big wheel like that, the thing it reminds me most of is this wheel that we saw in 6x02, when the wolves showed up. Just saying.

We later find out scratches on the head of the walker Jerry killed came from crawling underneath the popcorn cart. In a very disgusting sequence, we see another walker do it. It took me a couple of times of looking at it to realize there's a pitchfork sticking down through the popcorn cart. 

So, it's not the cart itself they’re being cut on. It's the pitchfork that's leaving with three gouges in the four head.

We're not sure what the pitchfork represents, but it's important to note that we do see a pitchfork in the opening credits, now that they’ve changed this season. 

It's probably an important symbol. The biggest thing is that it can represent farming and that always leads us back to Herschel's ranch. It can also represent the devil, or a mob mentality (think walkers in general).

More importantly, we see a light-haired walker crawl under the popcorn cart. It looks female, with long, light hair, so sort of like one of the blond, Beth walkers. In a thoroughly disgusting sequence, it not only gets the gouges we saw in the earlier walker, it actually loses the top of its head. 

That’s really interesting because the part of its head that it losses is the very tip top, the crown. In other words, right where Beth was shot.

So I was thinking that the pitch fork representing something negative (the devil, evil, mob mentality, etc.) could work as well because S5, when Beth disappeared is the bad stuff, and we think she disappeared in a horde of walkers. Just really interesting the way they do this symbolism.

I had to laugh when Jerry took the bulb out, talking about how he had to be careful. He actually used the line, "this is going to be surgery." What you mean, Jerry? Surgery like…Grady? Like Dr. Edwards? Like Beth is coming back? Like you know she's gonna be here soon? 😆😉

Okay, next one’s huge. When Zeke gets his poster box and Carol goes to help them, I noticed a poster hanging on the wall in the background. It's very difficult to see because it's washed out. I did my best to mess with the lighting so that it's easier to see what's on the poster. 

I’m fairly sure there's a woman getting piggyback from a man. We don't see the full-body picture of it, but if you look at the white streak on the left side, that's her arm and it looks like she's slightly above him and has her arms wrapped around him from behind. 

I was still a little unsure about what I was seeing when I noticed that Carol said something interesting to Ezekiel. She says, "You were serious before..." Yeah, guys, this is the representation of a “serious” piggyback.

Now, the interesting thing is that we've seen this before with Carol. Back in S7, she read the book that had the piggyback on the cover. 

This is super interesting to me because it proves that this wasn't just about her meeting Ezekiel. Back then, I don't know if anyone did, but people could theoretically have argued that maybe it just showed that she was going to meet her soulmate, just as Beth and Daryl were soulmates. If that's all it meant, then we couldn't really point to it in a way that suggested Beth was returning.

Now, none of us serious (Sirius) TDers actually bought into that argument. Because it's a serious (Sirius) piggyback and Sirius is the dog star that always returns, we knew there was more to it. This proves that it couldn't have just been about Carol meeting Ezekiel because at this point (in S9) they’re already together. It's unnecessary to show the symbol again. So why is it showing it? Again, bear with me. I have a theory.

The other interesting thing to me, as far as the plot of the show goes, was that Carol suggested asking Hilltop to take them in if things got worse. 

I know about you guys, but I didn't realize things were that bad the Kingdom. We saw that things were kind of falling apart in 9x06 when Jerry and Henry were trying to tape up a water pipe, but it sounds like their home is really falling apart and they are going to need to find a new place to live. Not sure what that's leading to, but it's interesting.

One of the Kingdom guys comes in to tell Ezekiel the boombox has died. Really? As in the music just died?

And then when Jerry drops the light, he dropped down some sort of chute. We don't get a very clear view of it, but it reminded us a lot of the elevator shaft at Grady. 

And remember, if Beth is the lamp, we had it being dropped down an elevator-shaft-like chute, just as Beth went down the elevator shaft, and then one of the Kingdomers comes to tell Zeke the music has died. Just saying.

At one point, Ezekiel suggests, "maybe were done losing for a while."

*Shakes head* Zeke, Zeke. Haven't you learned yet? You on TWD. You’re never done losing stuff.

Okay I think that's all the stuff that I noticed. 

Now for my wacky theory.

Okay, so here's the thing. One thing I didn't mention was that the very first shot we get of this episode is a 10:10 clock. 

(Okay, technically, it's a 9:10 clock, but the shape of it is the same as the one that hung on the wall in Beth’s room at Grady.) And remember per THIS POST, watch manufacturers often set their watches to that time because it represents something specific.

According to legend, it's the exact time at which various historical figures and leaders were assassinated. Whether that's true or not is up for debate, but that's the legend of it. In other words, having that clock on Beth's wall isn't actually a resurrection symbol. It was just a foreshadow of her getting shot and TF believing she’s dead.

Then there’s the 8:20 clocks, which are a perfect mirror of the 10:10 clock represent the opposite thing. So, if the 10:10 clock represents death, then the 8:20 clock represents resurrection.

I think one of the best proofs we have of this theory is the fact that we saw the 8:20 clock around Rick in Carl's vision of the future. 

As far as Michonne, Carol, Daryl, and Judith are concerned, that vision can't possibly come to pass in the way Carl wanted, because Rick is dead. Or so they think. I think the 8:20 clock was there to show that, in TF’s eyes, Rick will be resurrected, and that future will come to pass.

And now, we have this 10:10 clock in the first scene with Ezekiel. My first thought was that it represented that someone's going to die. I'd love to believe that it's just Jesus, since we know we already lost him, but honestly probably not. It would be an unnecessarily symbol, which TWD never does. And remember that callbacks always double as foreshadows. So, it must apply to someone else. I started wondering who it could be, and went through everyone in the scene before realizing the answer was right in front of me. It's Ezekiel's watch. It's on his wrist. So, it probably applies to him.

Now here's the thing. (Bringing together a whole bunch of variables, here.) About a week ago, a bunch of articles came out implying that Ezekiel was going to die soon. Probably not until season 10, but we’ll still be losing him soon. I was disappointed to hear that. I maintain that he probably won't get his comic book, death, and that someone else (you know who if you’ve read spoilers) will be getting his comic book death. Of course, just because he doesn't get his comic book death doesn't mean he's not going to die. That hasn't been the case for any of the characters. But I'd simply hoped that we could keep Zeke around for a little longer.

But the more I think about it, the more suspicious I am with how they're dealing with this. This idea of Ezekiel’s impending death wasn’t leaked by the spoiler site. It's being said by the clickbait sites, which many of us believe are informed by AMC. Of course this isn’t something AMC has officially confirmed or anything, and they won’t, but these sites get info from “sources close to the show,” so it feels like AMC is preparing us for Ezekiel’s death.

Why would they release something about Ezekiel's death? Putting the spoiler site aside, this isn’t something AMC ever does.

There been several times that we've been able to guess the character was going to die (again, outside of spoilers). For example, with Sonequa Martin-Greene and Chad Coleman, they both got jobs at other networks that were announced. AMC can't do anything about that, and so because they were leaving the show, it was obvious that they would be dying on TWD. (A similar thing is happening with Sydney Park right now.) But those are outside influences. AMC does their best to hide character deaths, not talk about them a year before they happen.

So here’s what I’m getting at. They have released information about official character deaths exactly 2 times: with Beth and Rick. One of those characters we know is alive because he left them a helicopter with Jadis, and the other one was believed and have been saying is alive for five seasons and the powers that be have never actually looked us in the eye and denied it.

With Beth, AMC tried to say their “leak” of her death was accidental, but we’ve never believed that. With Rick, it turned out to be a bald-faced lie. SO many articles (same sites now talking about Zeke) talked about Rick’s death because Andrew wanted to leave. It was mostly true, but he didn’t actually die at all, now did he?

Furthermore, even though this clock represents death, it's not like we've seen it around every character who’s died. In fact, the only one I can think of (please correct me if I’ve forgotten an instance) is around Beth. 

So, Ezekiel is being paralleled with Beth here. Then we have Carol and the serious piggyback ride, which is obviously parallel to Beth and Daryl. And we have the fact that in 9x01, Ezekiel fell through the floor, looking exactly like the walker from 4x01, and nearly died. He was saved, of course, and Carol was relieved. That’s an awful lot like what happened with Richonne in 7x12, which foreshadowed Rick’s death fake out.

I think Ezekiel's "death," whatever it ends up being is going to be a fake out. I think that's what this is leading to. When Carol first met Ezekiel, we saw the serious piggyback ride because at that point, the relationship really could be heavily paralleled with Beth and Daryl’s. At that point, they weren’t actually in a romantic relationship yet. Carol and Ezekiel were just getting to know one another, like Bethyl when their serious piggyback happened. 

Now were seeing it again, as though to remind us, and it's coming in the same episode in which we saw a death omen for Ezekiel in his watch. 

Think back over everything else I said above: the serious piggyback, the snake references, the parallels to the light falling down the chute, the music dying, him falling through the floor in 9x06, even the deer. It could be there to represent that, like Beth, Ezekiel will be presumed dead and yet be alive. And I don't know if this will be a death fake out for us, the audience, like Beth was, or more of a Rick thing, but at the very least I believe Carol will think he's dead.

Even the Big Spot parallels work here. Big Spot happened in S4 and Beth disappeared in S5. This happening now in S9, and they’re suggesting we’ll “lose” Ezekiel in S10. 

Also remember that, between Carol and Ezekiel, Ezekiel represents Beth (the dreamer, the optimist, has faith, etc) while Carol is just like Daryl (more prone to negativity and practicality). So paralleling Zeke with Beth and repeating this arc in exactly this way makes perfect sense.

Now, I also want to add that, while saying all this may make it seem like all the symbols I named in this episode don’t actually point to Beth. Please know that I don’t think that at all. While I DO think they point at a coming arc for Carzekiel, remember, once again, that Rick is alive. Seeing these symbols, even just as foreshadows of this arc being repeated with another character, makes me believe more than ever that Beth will be returning, and soon. These symbols are alive and well because these resurrection arcs are still very much in play.

So that's my first wacky Ezekiel Theory. That Ezekiel isn't actually going to die, but that it will be another fake out of some kind. A repeat of Beth and Daryl’s arc.

The thing is guys, my theory is really a lot bigger than this. I need to talk about Carol vs. Alpha, because things are coming together over many seasons for me, and I’m seeing some interesting patterns. I feel strongly that the Carol/Alpha dynamic is and always was going to lead to Beth’s emergence, and I can tie it in to what I’ve said here about Ezekiel, but it’s a sprawling theory and I need to look over some previous episodes and check a few things, so I’m not sure when this theory will be finished. I’ll try to get it out to you by the weekend. No promises, though. ;D 

Thoughts on Zeke?

[ginnyzero]

Booktober 2020 Week 4: Classic & Myth

Welcome back to booktober! Booktober is the month I talk about books; in particular I’m talking about horror and paranormal books. Okay, so Booktober isn’t a thing but we can make it a thing. Anyone is welcome to join me in booktober at any time. Just use the hashtag booktober and if you at me, ginnyzero, on social media I’ll reblog your post. 

This week it’s time to delve into the past, classic and historical horror and paranormal. Fun fact about Ginny, I was born on November 8th. Who else was born on November 8th? Bram Stoker, the writer of Dracula. This could partially explain my early obsession with vampires and my necrophobia; the fear and fascination with death.

Dracula, the story itself, is one of those stories that’s been so regurgitated by popular culture that the basics of the story are known by about everyone. The book itself is written in an expository way and so if you like that type of reading, then you’ll like the book. I like watching or reading different remakes of the idea rather than the book itself. Hellsing, Van Helsing, NBC’s 2013 Dracula, and so on and so forth.

My favorite classical horror story is from Edgar Allen Poe, and is ironically rather appropriate for these telling times as it is the Mask of the Red Death. And in the Mask of the Red Death, plague haunts the land killing everyone, so the nobles lock themselves away in a castle with a beautiful and fancy imperial suite and they determine to party the plague away. Until the man in the mask of the red death comes and they all fall down.

It’s a beautifully written and chilling story that I’ve enjoyed since high school. You can’t run away from pandemics and death.

Poe enjoyed drawing on real historical stories for his works, such as the black plague in the Mask of the Red Death. But he also drew upon one of the stories in Glamis Castle, considered one of the most haunted castles in Scotland. Glamis is popular enough to show up in a lot of horror books because of the different tales in it are so outrageous ranging from secret rooms a la the folktale Bluebeard, to the devil coming to play cards, and horrifically, a group of men or a family being bricked up inside the walls until they had to commit cannibalism.

Castle ghosts are some of absolute favorite real life paranormal phenomena because they come with such rich stories behind them. Most of the paranormal phenomena in castles are audial. Hearing voices, such as the Lord of Glamis and the Devil playing dice and laughing at Glamis. Or even hearing pipers, such as the doomed Piper of Duntrune Castle who played his pipes to warn his clan of the Campbell Clan’s treachery, and they cut off his hands and buried him under the flagstones of the courtyard. (And yes, they did find a skeleton without hands buried within the castle grounds of one castle with a piper ghost.) There is an entire phenomena called grey or green ladies, these are ghosts of women who protect castles and castle ruins. Many of them were young women who fell in love with the wrong man and committed suicide when their families wouldn’t let them marry them. Very common theme.

The United States doesn’t have many castles. Not ones with the history of Europe, we do have a lot of penitentiaries and insane asylums that are haunted by the inmates, residents, and employees that look like castles. And if you watch the Dead Files, there are places in the states the land is bad. There’s no other word for it, people should not be living on the land. I think the most detrimental thing Protestantism has done is convince people spiritual and paranormal phenomena aren’t real. Catholicism has a heavy focus on mysticism and the influence of the devil.

If you watch the Dead Files, there are so many interesting things going on with ‘normal’ homes in the states from homes being situated on pathways for the dead, to bad land, to malevolent earth spirits, to even portals to alien dimensions that can’t be closed. That one was freaky because the spiritual alien entity was scratching the side of the house. And the worst thing that can happen is when someone doesn’t believe in it. 9 times out of 10 it makes things worse.

The one phenomena I’ve had some personal experience with is one of our naval ships, called the USS The Sullivans. Now, the USS The Sullivans is named after 5 Sullivan brothers who died at sea during World War Two after their ship was sank by a Japanese submarine. The Sullivan brothers became the reason for the important policy of not putting family on the same ship. They built a Fletcher Class destroyer, a small destroyer, in their honor and it was sponsored by their mother. The ship served in World War 2 and the Korean War and ended as a training ship in the 6th fleet before being designated as a museum ship and eventually stationed in Buffalo.

Sometime after being commissioned and being docked at the Naval Museum, the spirits of the Sullivan Brothers found their way to the ship named after them. Employees have reported lights turning on and off, they’ve seen the brothers, they have come upon locked doors that should be unlocked and vice versa. I think they’ve also heard voices and footsteps when it was supposed to be empty at the end of the day. Pretty typical stuff for a haunted ship and haunted places in general.

I have been to the naval museum. And I got through the tiny submarine the Croaker, and walked through the larger destroyer the USS Little Rock and everything was fine, lovely day, until I got to the ramp of the Sullivans. I didn’t know the ship was haunted at the time. They don’t warn you about this. As soon as I got to the ramp, something felt off. You could not pay me to go on that ship. No way. Absolutely not. I decided having seen the Little Rock and being reassured by my dad, the Sullivans was more of the same, I would not risk my skin and go on board the Sullivans. I stand by this decision.

I love my dad, but I’m not sure how spiritually sensitive he is to these type of phenomena.

Now, I have been on board the Aircraft carrier in New York City and felt a little weirded out on the electronic section because of the heat and static in the air but never since have I felt that sense of dread I did at the end of the ramp of the Sullivans.

Horror has been going on from the very beginning of storytelling and it’s older than dirt at this point with tales such as Beowulf and stories sanitized by the Grimm Brothers as they translated them from oral tradition for the Victorians. My personal favorite which how horrifying it is depends on your point of view and interpretation of the story is Hades and Persephone.

Now, the basic gist of the myth is grim Hades wants a wife and he decides on his niece Persephone asking Zeus, her father, for her hand. Zeus goes to Demeter. Demeter says absolutely not. Zeus goes back to Hades and is like “well, bro, her mom says no, but um, you’ve got my blessing to carry her off in traditional Greek style and marry her.” This was completely legit in Greek culture as long as dad’s permission was granted. (Great time to be a woman, not.)

Hades does so and well, we all know what happens is Demeter gets angry and causes a famine. Zeus panics and goes “hey, bro, we need Persephone back, my wife is going to kill all of us.” Since, you know most of Olympus’ problems are created by Zeus. And Hades is like “Fine, she can come back, as long as she hasn’t ate anything.” And Persephone, had ate 3 to 6 pomegranate seeds and they ended up compromising where Persephone lived with Hades part time as his cold queen, and the rest of her time with her mother, as the personification of spring.

So, the horror comes in on if Persephone was actually involved in this or not. Did she know anything? Was this a surprise? Was she looking to escape her overbearing mother? Did she love Hades? Was she in on the plan and ate the pomegranate seeds on purpose? Were they actually pomegranate seeds? Your interpretation may vary, so the horror could be having to go back to the overbearing mother or her being taken away without her consent to the grim Underworld.

It all seemed to work out in the end. There seems to be only one myth Hades cheated on Persephone and she turned that woman in to mint. (Don’t mess with Persephone.) But otherwise, Hades was faithful to Persephone and they had a lot of children included the personification of nightmares.

Obviously, my favorite folklore creature is the werewolf. Now, I’m talking about the werewolf in the context of folklore only. I’m not talking about the werewolf as presented by Universal Studios or any of the movies after 1935. The folklore werewolf was not considered evil or associated with the devil until the later Witch Hunts of the late 1500s to the 1700s. Before this, the werewolf was considered mostly benign and quite possibly someone who had been cursed by the church itself for punishment of perceived misdeeds.

The culture of the middle ages didn’t view being able to turn into an animal as bad or even evil. In fact, the church itself, most likely relying on the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament, was thought to be able to curse people into take the shapes of wolves. The fear of curses and poxes had real power back then. It wasn’t shameful to be a werewolf, it was shameful to act like an animal without thought or reason.

Conclusion: You could be an animal, as long as you spoke with reason and didn’t attack people indiscriminately. Go ahead, be wild. Just don’t act like you aren’t civilized.

The Werewolves of Ossory in Ireland meld most of the ideas of middle age werewolves into several stories. They were warriors who would take on animalistic traits while fighting similar to Norse berserkers, or were able to transform into actual wolves using a wolf pelt much like a selkie or a swan maiden have pelts and capes, or they projected their souls from the bodies to be wolves. They were looking to make up for past misdeeds. Some stories say they were forced to change every seven years. Cursing men into wolves is a common trick of St. Patrick apparently. Or if you angered your wife by cheating on her for instance, she could curse into being a werewolf.

There were other ways to be turned into a werewolf. Some people were considered born as werewolves. You could drink water from the paw print of a wolf. Or as an adult, pass under a birch arch entwined with a wild rose briar three times. Or even by sleeping out under the full moon for three nights. The Yule werewolves, would like to come out during the holiday of yule and party drinking and dancing.

There were “cures” for werewolfism, mostly the use of wolfsbane or even exorcism and some torture because the Spanish Inquisition. But most werewolves lived peaceably with their neighbors and outside of what you might consider the “uglification” of the ‘savage’ before being converted to Christianity, no one noticed until they went on a wolf hunt and hurt the wolf or hurt the body of a soul traveling wolf and it was converted into an injury on the human.

Like Middle Ages witchcraft, unless it involved heresy, werewolfism was ignored and in some places such as Norway, female werewolves were even venerated. There were even laws instituted about to protect them unless it involved blasphemy and heresy.

Folklore and legends are extremely interesting because the way they changed over time and even by location and the way they were written about in Christian sources of the time, which outside of some written down oral tradition and actual laws are the only way we know about these creatures.

Next week is personal week! Time to talk about personal paranormal and horror things related to my writing and what I’d like to see in the future and just go wild. If anyone wants to join me in promoting themselves this last week of October, here is a handy dandy image!

[ryodan]

im sorry but can you explain to me why SNK is morally unacceptable? i love the series and i admit some scenes were hard to swallow, but i dont see how it's bad? i really respect your opinion and i want to continue SNK, but now that i read your recent post, im not so sure anymore. can you please explain it more (if you can ofc). thank you! have a great day^^

 Sure! Please note that I am in no way shaming people who enjoy SNK. I used to be a fan myself, the series has some really interesting philosophies going for it. It’s less about the series itself and more about the author. To answer this question, first let me talk about those philosophies. We will start with the similarities between German culture and history with SNK. In case you did not notice this series is very German-based, even all the names are of German origin, except for Mikasa who i’ll come back to. 

the show is set in a quasi Germanic society full of German architecture and even German war cries (Are you the prey? No, we are the hunters) as well as german names. This is where things start getting interesting. The political ideology of the show aligns itself with the beliefs of a notorious nazi. A man named Carl Schmitt. The thing I liked about this show is the exploration of these themes through this dystopian world. It’s like ‘what if these beliefs are the only thing keeping society from collapsing?’. Central to Schmitt’s philosophy and SNK’s civilization is the concept of what he calls ‘the political’. There are 3 concepts that he believed situate the political and create a ‘stable’ society. 1- Difference, conflict and inequality. 2- clear distinction between friends and enemies. 3- sovereignty. He highlights that since discord and inequality are inevitable, humanity at it’s basic nature is savage, and that for stability you must fight to survive. Remind you of something? To quote snk, ‘The world is a cruel place, if you want to live you have to fight.’ A constantly reoccurring theme. Further mirroring of Schmitts ideology that states it’s not politics’ job to fix inevitable inequalities in society since they will always exist anyways; instead a strong sovereign should be in control of the population, SNK develops the 3 walls which literally separate the different classes in society. Each wall system is it’s own cast system. The people in wall Maria are not as safe as the people inside wall rose and wall sina. While people are getting eaten on the outskirts, there are people sitting around playing chess. The parallels get real wack when you compare Schmitts idea that to situate the political what is needed is nationalism and survival of the fittest. The nationalistic duty of the warrior class is literally highlighted in opening 1 which looks and sounds like triumph of the will nazi nationalist propaganda. Really, just hear it.The literal lyrics of SNK’s first opening are about ‘having the will of starving wolves.’ To cut things short, SNK had the potential to be a series heavily critical of this guy’s ideology, or explore it in this world that allows for it. Too bad after the author’s political beliefs were revealed, neither seem to be an option. Why would a Japanese man write something so heavily linked to controversial areas? Lets go back to Japan’s history. Once upon a time, Japan was parading around with an imperialist army colonizing the East through brute military power. This included torturing of citizens and selling of women as sex slaves. As a result, many countries suffered because of this but a country in particular still suffers the backlash of this and even has tense relations with Japan to this day, namely South Korea. To quote a post written by a Jew ‘The idea of the walls and their fragility is meant to criticize Japan’s antiwar policy, and the Titans coming back after 100 years is meant to imply that if Japan doesn’t start having wars and breaking down their “walls” and conquering the East again, other countries will come to terrorize the region. What bothers me most having watched the first season of it is the line about “Living like livestock”. It asserts the notion that to live without imperialism is a form of complacency, like somehow the country isn’t living life to its fullest if it isn’t out pillaging and raping the peoples of Korea, Manchuria, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, etc’. Wait , wait. How the hell did we reach such a conclusion? This was unfortunately straight out the author’s mouth, he said some horrific things that upset Korean fans. Like literally all my Korean friends are vehemently against this series. The character called Dot Pixis is based on general Yoshifuru Akiyama, a famous war criminal during the occupation of Korea who Attack on Titan’s writer, Hajime Isayama, called “frugal and respectable” on his twitter account. Erwin Smith is named after a Nazi called Erwin Rommel who, despite occasionally defying orders he deemed “unjust”, was still a fucking Nazi and still took part in the Holocaust. The one that hits the hammer to the head is perhaps the most confound. Mikasa, named after the battleship used to fight a war that hurt the Koreans in very tragic ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Mikasa  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War. This man ended up being not just a person who is pro the nazi movement and the ideology it pushes forward, but also a man who condones the actions of an imperialist nationalist war movement through his work. He literally stated that the colonization of Korea and the east, despite how gruesome and bloody was ‘necessary’. You can imagine how disturbing this is for Korean fans of the series. Specially when Japanese Mikasa was almost sold as a sex slave..something the Japanese army did to their women..among other women from different nationalities such as China. What turned me off isn’t his shitty streaky fight sequences that some people call ‘art’, nor his cheap resort to hard hitting gore and hard to digest backstories instead of actually fleshing out a story and it’s characters to draw the audience’s emotions, but the ideas he wishes to push forward. Whether we like it or not, and you can ask any mass com major about this, media has a very direct influence on the way we think and see things. Y’all might end up quoting SNK not realizing you are echoing nazi propaganda. Hell, even if that isn’t his intention, I don’t care. I’m not supporting a man who is pro Nazi society. If the tables turned and SNK was based on what Israel and England did to Palestine, or France to Algeria and Lebanon etc, i’d be so angry to see people supporting it. ‘Is our blood so cheap just because it isn’t yours?’ (yes our bc my half arab ass sees all of arabs as our). Out of that sensitivity, I cannot sit here and just ignore all of that for shitty temporary entertainment which can easily be replaced with much better series with fan bases that don’t ship 15 year old erin with 30 year old levi. Sorry for the long ass post, but I hope this cleared stuff up.

[artradhikita]

The time I started writing a comic book / graphic novel (Part 2 of idk how many, this may take a while LOL)

This is Part 2.

Click here for Part 1: 

https://artradhikita.tumblr.com/post/618740135510540288/the-time-i-started-writing-a-comic-book-graphic

@azonip​ btw did I mention my character, Alex, was a ninja? XD

Yep, this is the first drawing of Alex in his ninja getup. Pose was referenced from a poster of Spiderman XD

So yeah, this guy is a ninja from San Francisco and his friends are werewolves basically. I started writing a story like a script of a play on a text document, not even microsoft word.

I am posting the first ever draft of the utterly ridiculous and awesome story I wrote when I was 20 (please don’t judge!). Here it is. Yes, the original title was “The Brotherhood of Wolves” which I thought was perfect until I realized there’s a movie with that title and that pissed me off because then I felt I had to change it.

Copy-paste of the original first draft:

the brotherhood of wolves

it is a dark cloudy day, a young man (alex) is working at the japanese antique shop when a strange man walks in. the man picks up a sword.

alex: can i help you? that's an ancient samurai sword used in battle. it's one of our most treasured items.

the man examines the sword. then swings it.

alex: do you have a name?

the man suddenly points it at alex and smirks. alex is surprised but doesn't flinch.

man: i know who you are alexander cadeyrn. i've been watching you for some time now. you work in an antique shop and you are the lead guitarist in your little rock band....but all that is just a cover for something more secret. and i know your secret, alexander.

alex: who are you?

man: i'm here to tell you that you and your gang are not alone, and you have enemies. we run this town and all the land around it, and we don't like it when people get in our way. i strongly suggest you and your friends leave herrington and go back to where you came from, or face the consequences. *alex glares at him* you don't want to know me, alexander, i am not a friendly man. but if you stick around, i promise i will make your life hell, and all those around you will also suffer. consider yourself warned.

puts down the sword and begins to walk away. he pauses and looks over his shoulder.

man: my name is rafa morton. don't forget it, because if you don't leave you'll be cursing my name until your last breath. *walks out the door*

alex stands there, his eyes towards the door, in deep thought.

end.

a week later...

alex is standing in front of a group of young people, talking to them.

alex: okay guys. i'm going to go pick up my sister. remember, we're just a band trying to make it in the music scene. we share this house. not a word about the brotherhood or wolves or any of that stuff. she doesn't know any of it and i'd like to keep it that way. if i had i my way i wouldn't have let her come at all, but my mom's out of town and lucy's not allowed to be at home alone all winter break. so be careful, don't slip up.

kai: chill out alex, we've managed to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. this'll be easy.

alex: the rest of the world doesn't live with us. she's going to be here for 2 weeks! please, just keep it under control until she leaves.

myrina: don't worry, if anyone steps outta line i'll put them back in. *winks*

alex: i'll be back in 20 minutes.

alex drives towards the station thinking: *damn it lucy, i don't want you to get caught up in my life. half the reason i moved so far away was to keep you from getting hurt. if my enemies find out about you they'll use you to get to me. i just know you coming here is trouble.*

alex arrives at the greyhound bus station and sees lucy with her backpack. he calls out to her and waves. lucy runs over and hugs her brother.

lucy: alex! thanks for picking me up. it's so great to see you again!

alex: it's great to see you too. i can't believe how much you've grown! sorry i missed your 18th birthday.

lucy: yeah, you owe me for that. *smiles*

they drive away and return to alex's house.

lucy: wow, this is where you live? it's a big house.

alex: it's got 5 bedrooms, i share with my band mates.

they go into the large living room and are greeted by the others.

alex: guys this is lucy. lucy this is ralph cheveyo, quan randolf, his sister myrina randolf, and you remember kai, don't you?

lucy: *waves* hi everyone. hello kai.

kai: *staring at her* lucy, wow, you've really grown up. last time i saw you was that christmas party 2 years ago. *laughs*

lucy: oh...yeah, i remember. *looks embarrassed*

lucy has a flashback. she is 16 years old and wearing a fluffy blue dress, sitting alone in a hall full of well dressed men and women. it is the christmas ball her mother's club has organized, and she is not happy to be there.

sorelle: lucy! stop frowning, you look positively miserable and it's really off-putting.

lucy: maybe that's because i am! mom, please, why did you make me wear this stupid dress, i didn't even want to come in the first place. *crosses arms and pouts*

sorelle: i worked hard to put this event together, it would be nice if my own daughter would show me some support. all the other girls are having a great time. why don't you join them.

lucy: what!? no! they're bitches.

sorelle: lucy eira cadeyrn, you watch your language!

alex enters with kai and walks over to lucy.

lucy: alex! *jumps up and hugs him* *whispers: please get me out of here!*

alex: *laughs* lucy you look like cotton candy.

sorelle: she does not! she looks lovely. as for you alex, it's good to see you back from santa cruz for the holidays. but couldn't you wear something more suitable? jeans and t-shirt just isn't classy. *pauses* oh hello kai! nice to see you. how are your parents?

kai: hi mrs. cadeyrn. they're good.

sorelle: oh look who just arrived! i'll see you later my darlings. *walks off*

lucy: hey kai.

kai: hi lucy. haven't seen you since we left for college. you've grown.

lucy: *shrugs* it happens.

alex: how's everything been?

lucy: ugh. since dad died, mom's been working twice as hard to turn me into "a lady". as you can see.

alex: *laughs* you look alright though. *lucy rolls her eyes* no really, the dress sucks but you look nice.

lucy: *smiles* thanks.

a group of girls see lucy and walk up to her.

jessica: wow, lucy.

lucy: *scowling* hi jessica.

jessica: i like your dress. it's...umm....interesting. don't you think so ashley?

ashley: yeah. what are you supposed to be, cinderella?

they giggle, lucy glares, and alex crosses his arms.

jessica: *flirtatiously* oh, hi alex! how's college life?

alex: you'll find out when you're mature enough. come on lucy, let's get going.

they walk out.

kai: ever been to a pink floyd concert, lucy?

lucy: no.

kai: you're about to.

lucy snaps out of her flashback.

kai: good times, huh?

lucy: *smiles* yeah.

alex: lucy, myrina's offered to let you stay with her in her room. you can bring your stuff up there.

myrina: come on, i'll show you around.

lucy: thanks.

they go upstairs and enter myrina's room. she sits on the bed.

myrina: you can put your stuff on that shelf. i made a little space for you. hope it's enough. the bathroom is the next door on the left and next to that is my brother's room. across from him is ralph's room and  kai's room. alex has the room downstairs. we usually chill out in the living room, but when the weather is good we go out into the back yard.

*she points out the window and lucy leans over it to look*

lucy: wow it's pretty big! you've got a redwood tree in there! and a whole forest behind your house!

myrina: *laughs* yeah, it's great. i took the responsibility of keeping the yard nice and pretty. see the fountain back there? that was totally my doing. these guys don't care about how it looks, but they appreciate my efforts. it was a mess when we got here, all overgrown and stuff. although, kai says it looked better that way. he thinks i'm silly for trying to tame nature.

lucy: tell him you're not taming it, you're just leading it in the right direction. i like it, looks really feng shui.

myrina: yeah that was the idea. alex practices his fighting out there in the lawn a lot. he says the atmosphere helps him focus.

lucy: i think i'm going to like my two weeks here.

end.

it's a foggy winter's day. lucy walks through a large evergreen forest. there are snow drops growing in little patches on the forest floor. she picks one and leans against a tree.

lucy: i wish i had a forest next to my back yard. alex doesn't know how lucky he is.

she walks a little further, she suddenly slips on some wet leaves and cuts her hand on a sharp rock.

lucy: ouch!

she sits up and looks at the cut, then closes her eyes and puts her hand over it. it stops bleeding and it heals. the skin repairs itself. she is left with nothing but a bloodstain on her sleeve.

lucy stands up and looks around. she begins walking again but stops dead in her tracks. she sees a wolf approaching nearby. the wolf sees her and stops. it stares. she stares back. lucy feels frightened, but somewhat awed at the same time. the wolf is enormous. lucy knows it could kill her in one leap. she doesn't move, she hardly breathes.

the wolf slowly moves towards her, stopping several times as if to consider. the wolf comes right up to her and sniffs her. his eyes are level with hers, and she stands looking straight into them. lucy understands that the wolf will not harm her. she slowly raises her hand and touches the wolf's fur. she smiles, and the wolf smiles back with it's amber eyes.

lucy gives the wolf the snow drop, who takes it between his very sharp teeth.

the wolf walks away into the woods and disappears. lucy doesn't move for a while, then she begins walking back to the house.

end.

3 weeks later

it's nightime. kai and alex are walking down the street. alex is on the phone to lucy.

lucy: thanks big brother, i had a really great 2 weeks with you. and your friends are actually kinda cool.

alex: it was good to see you too. i'm really proud of you lucy, you've learned a lot and grown into a wonderful, strong person.

lucy: alex, don't. you're making me want to cry. *laughs*

alex: how's mom?

lucy: same as always, but she's a bit more cheerful since she got back from puerto rico.

alex: that's good to hear. anyway, i gotta go. i'll call you soon. take care of yourself kid.

lucy: i'm not a kid!

alex: *laughs* okay, bye lucy.

lucy: bye bye.

alex hangs up and he and kai begin to walk toward his car. they hear shouting and running footsteps down a nearby alleyway and go to investigate. a man is being cornered by two hooded men.

alex: hey! didn't you know it's not nice for both of you to gang up on one man like that? someone might think you're afraid of a real fight.

both the hooded men turn around to look at kai and alex. one of them speaks.

man 1: oh look fred. it seems we have unwanted guests at the dinner table. shall we invite them in?

fred: *to alex* whoever you are, you would do well to leave us alone. we have no quarrel with you. let us do our business and we will not harm you.

kai: where are these guys from, the 18th century?

cornered man: please! don't leave me with these monsters! they're going to kill me!

man 1: the entree speaks! come on fred, enough faffing. i'm hungry, and this man's heart is pumping hot blood, just for us! i say we finish these intruders off and get on with our meal.

alex: what are you? cannibals?

fred: shut up aeron! you have revealed too much already. *to alex* i told you to leave us be, now we must eliminate you.

fred and aeron attack kai and alex. their hoods fall back, revealing their pale faces, black eyes, and fangs.

kai: vampires!!!

a vicious battle ensues. alex fights fred but he is incredibly swift. aeron jumps on top of kai and attempts to sink his teeth in him, but kai suddenly pushes him off with supernatural force and transforms into an enormous wolf.

aeron: were-wolf! you can't kill me, i am immortal!

kai springs on aeron, dashing him to the ground. he slashes him with his claws but aeron gets free. meanwhile alex is struggling to fight off fred, he delivers many powerful punches but fred doesn't seems to even feel them. fred slams alex against a wall and attempts to kill him, but alex plunges a sharp knife into his belly and slices it open. fred screams and retreats with aeron.

aeron: *screaming* you have not seen the last of us! one day you will feel the wrath of rafa and the sanguines!!!

alex: rafa! so he's the one behind all this.

man in the corner: *looks at kai, who is still a wolf* what the hell is going on here!?!??! *runs away*

alex: come on, kai. i think it's safe to turn back to human now.

end.

it is dusk on a cool late winter's day. the orange rays of the sunset filter through a lush evergreen forest. 4 wolves are bounding across the forest floor. they come across a gorge, 3 of the wolves stop but the other accelerates and jumps over it.

myrina: kai! will you please not be so reckless?

kai looks at them from across the gorge and howls.

ralph: knucklehead. *he backtracks, then runs and jumps over the gorge.*

myrina: ralph! see what a bad influence you are kai!

ralph: it's really not that bad. come on!

myrina and quan both jump across the gorge. kai snaps at myrina's tail and then rolls on the ground.

quan: *laughing* you look like a puppy who just got a new toy.

myrina: stop acting like an animal.

kai: i am an animal! and so are you, so quit stressing and have fun!

kai snaps at quan's paws. ralph chases after myrina, the two run around in circles and then disappear into the woods. kai and quan look at each other.

quan: looks like we've been ditched.

kai: *laughs* race ya!

the two bolt off once again.

end.

[thataspdfeel]

that book list I promised

//rubs my grubby hands together happily

Boy howdy do I ever have some book recommendations. This would’ve been posted earlier but mobile decided to go fuck itself. Just a heads up, this is gonna be long

I mostly read series because tbh teen fiction is some of the best. It tends to take the most risks with both style and characterization. (Granted, it also tends to fall risk to some of the worst tropes imo like abuse stalker creepy guy is hot cause he loves protag)

Anything Garth Nix has ever written in his whole life. He’s one of my favorite authors and tends to stick to series. Keys to the Kingdom is 7 books and the first is Mister Monday and you read in order of the days of the week. No really. You’ll see why. His Old Kingdom series is 5 books and a short story so far and starts with Sabriel. It’s about necromancers who keep the dead down rather than raise them. Like I have the biggest boner for this series it’s not even funny

Terry Pratchett is my absolute favorite author of all time (besides Shakespeare) and he’s written over 50 books. You don’t have to read them in any particular order but he does follow characters across books sometimes. I recommend starting with Monstrous Regiment, Small Gods, or Going Postal first. If you want to start in chronological order, I think The Colour of Magic was written first

If you’re patient, read the whole Lord of the Rings series from The Hobbit onward. Tolkien sucks his own dick and describes clouds for a whole page cause he’s a world builder kind of writer. I haven’t had a chance to try the series again but I remember enjoying The Hobbit. Just know this is a very tedious option and may result in more boredom

Less boring is The Chronicles of Narnia but there are a few books that are just an absolute bear to get through. I recommend this right after lotr because these stories are a result OF THE SAME DRUG TRIP because Clive Staples Lewis (no really that’s what CS stands for) and Tolkien were college roommates. And because Narnia is a fucking fun place to visit

George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire cause it includes more detail than Game of Thrones and because I’m always a slut for kingdom musical chairs and dragons

Speaking of dragons, The Inheritance Series which is Eragon etc because it’s like lotr for people who can’t stand reading about a cloud for two pages, almost entirely action. Plus, in one of the books, they (Eragon and Saphira) do a couple of really stupid, slightly offensive things to the elves and admit their mistakes which I thought was cool cause it feels like sometimes protagonists don’t apologize in books

Chris D'Lacey also writes these REALLY COOL books about dragons called The Last Dragon Chronicles where these ladies make dragons out of clay and I’m 90% sure The Fire Within is the first book. There are at least 7 and I really need to catch up

Angie Sage writes about a boy named Septimus Heap who’s the 7th son of a 7th son and those books start with Magyk and there are at least 6 maybe 9. They’re fucking awesome and full of magic and adventure and I’m pretty sure he gets a pet dragon somewhere

Suzanne Collins also writes a lot of great stuff but I REALLY like her Gregor the Overlander series. Think Alice in Wonderland with a guy and no drugs and it’s awesome

Anything Rick Riordan has ever written in his life. I love love love the Percy Jackson series and he also wrote Children of the Lamp which is the bomb dot com about djinn children

Douglas Adams has a whole Hitchhiker’s Guide series and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the first and it’s just bonkers and loads of fun. Basically earth gets blown up and the protagonist has to deal with it. An absolute riot

James Rollins writes the Blood Infernal series about vampires and were-beings not just werewolves. The first book is Sanguine and the protagonist’s best friend is a werewolf. The first two books don’t have much to do with each other aside from being in the same universe but book three picks up at the end of book one and ties them both together. I’m pretty sure there’s sex

I’d also recommend anything Edgar Allen Poe or Shakespeare ever wrote. I know that’s more Classical Canon or whatever the fuck but honestly? Delightful. Same sentiment for Stephen King

I can’t remember the names of all the series I’ve read but these I definitely do. So onto individual books!

I, Coriander by Sally Gardener set in 17th century London and has to do with a fairy world if I remember correctly

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine about a really ugly inn keeper’s daughter and it’s kind of a retelling of Snow White (She wrote other stand alones but I haven’t read them. Based off this, though, I’d recommend them)

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about a girl who immigrates from Nigeria(?) to the US and it’s just really really good

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe set in Nigeria(?) right when colonialism happens. The first part is pre-colonialism and then it gets into the beginnings of it and all this happens within the lifespan of one man. Trigger warning though for mentions of abuse, explicit child murder and explicit suicide. Like it’s a good book but it’s gonna be a rough ride if you don’t know what you’re in for

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is good, if tedious. It’s a Latin American book so the story is circular and told in spirals. I literally have no other way to describe it. Also don’t ignore the family chart at the very beginning because people get the same names across generations and it’s absolutely hellish. Trigger warning for incest, I think rape, definitely abuse, and a baby gets eaten by ants at the end which is more gross than anything

Black Rain by Kuroi Ame is about the bombing of Hiroshima. I’m pretty sure that’s all the trigger warning you’re going to need

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie is a collection of short stories about various Native American characters living on a reservation

Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt is about a Blackfoot medicine man who finally talks about his life but it’s less interview and more John interpreting things so this needs to be read a little critically

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by Richard Erdoes is a book where a Sioux medicine man talks directly to Erdoes from a Native perspective about various things from sex to politics. Was a joy to read honestly. Very enlightening

Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo basically entails the way of the bushido or the samurai code more or less. Kind of technical but I enjoyed it

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause is about the werewolf protagonist trying to fit into her pack and figure out how to be a teenager. There’s at least one graphic mention of death (I think). It could also be suicide) so heads up

The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause is a vampire romance set in the 90′s and has absolutely nothing to do with the other book and was definitely something I loved. The protagonist watches her mother waste away from illness so avoid if that’s not something you can handle. Apparently, there are more stories (which I’d LOVE to read) and I’d recommend them just based off the two I have read

The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney was amazing and I’ve just found out it’s a series not just a stand-alone so I know what’s going on my to-read list. It’s about an apprentice to The Spook who puts down evil things that hide in the dark. Kind of spine-tingling so if you don’t do horror, don’t read when it’s dark. It’s not horror-horror but if it’s not your thing, definitely read during the day

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is the only thing Faulkner ever wrote I can possibly stand. It’s a short story and the time is out of order but I still liked it

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also a short story and my absolute favorite

Also not a book, but I greatly enjoy the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet but not everybody does because 1 early American literature and 2 Puritan but that’s something if poetry is up your alley

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is about the life of a horse set from the horse’s perspective. No seriously. With I statements and everything. I thought it was very interesting. (I was also like 8)

White Fang by Jack London is by wolves. I don’t remember much more than that because of how long ago I read it but it was probably decent since it stuck in my mind

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman is about a prince’s whipping boy which is a thing because you can’t spank a prince directly so you have to punish somebody else. V interesting

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was very enjoyable. I like Roald Dahl anyway but the concept of a chocolate factory was awesome. I also read it before I saw either movie and before the remake

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is pretty good but skip the epistolary at the beginning and read it after if you want to spare yourself some headache

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a classic and just really fun and I can definitely see why it’s a classic

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman was really interesting and honestly, I’d read anything that man writes after I read that

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is even better than the movie but there’s abuse mentions in it like even more so than the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, heads up for graphic depictions of miscarriage, racial violence, and I don’t remember if the one death mentioned is graphic or not but it’s a heavy book

I’d have more but I can’t remember their damned names right now and it’s bugging me. I also have obscure video game recs because I’m one of those indie freaks. They tend to really draw me in

Also, if you like manga, I’ve read like idk how many series but a shitload and the day onemanga shut down was the day my soul died

Anyway, I hope this is fine. It isn’t even the half of what I’ve read. Like I spent almost all of my childhood reading and I enjoyed most of it. I just wish I could remember book names. Their stories are floating around in my head, just not their names. If I remember any more, I’ll probably add to this list

[chromemuffin]

Shoukoku no Altair / Altair: A Record of Battles

Another series I will be liveblogging, this time a wonderfully detailed manga set in a fictional version of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey (and written by a historian! how rare!). I guess Captive Prince got me started on a historical fiction kick, and I’ve been eyeing this manga for over a month wondering if I should read it or wait for the anime that comes out anyway...I decided to pick it up.

There are 18 volumes of this thing, so I suppose I should liveblogging by volume unless the posts start to get way too long. Which they may, if I get my hands on raws. I am a huge language nerd, so.

Chapter 1

First off, after reading the blurb at the end of the fan translated first chapter, I found out that the ‘shoukoku’ part of the title is a word the manga-ka made up. Composed of the words for ‘general’ and ‘country’ (a country run by generals), the translator found the word stratocracy (a government ruled by the military) fit the description best. Which is why the fan translations use the ‘Turkiye Stratocracy’, which is great because there is no confusion if you know what a stratocracy is, or take a second to look it up.

Meanwhile, the official Kodansha version calls it the ‘Devleti of Turkiye’. ‘Devleti’ is apparently Turkish for ‘state’ (so the State of Turkiye). Very different, and both good. I love translation work for this very reason. I think I prefer using stratocracy. It’s true to the original, and clearly distinguishes this story as being an alternate version of Turkish history to those who know the Ottoman Empire was a monarchy. There are already quite a few unfamiliar words around.

But. I also find myself liking Devleti of Turkiye haha.

HM THIS WILL REQUIRE MORE THAN ONE POST. There is so much to talk about before getting to the chapter itself.

First: the cover

all of them are so beautiful. The amount of detail in every article of clothing from the hat to the jewels to the pattern embroidered around the hem. And the sword. I know nothing about Turkish history or culture (and forgot what little my american schooling taught about the ottoman empire), but a quick search for Turkish swords yields some examples of the more intricately decorated ones. The manga-ka is a historian/majored in Turkish history which. is great.

It’s a pity the Kodansha volumes are digital only?? I’d pay for a physical copy (but don’t hate myself enough to buy a Jpn copy...historical stuff has too many complicated kanji)

I wish I knew more about their style of dress because it’s drawn so well. I’ll look that up another time.

I really love the asymmetry with the glove he wears for his golden eagle to land on. It’s not in every illustration, but it even goes up to his elbow as it should for a larger species of bird, apparently. it’s just. so much great detail.

his shoes

He has this like teeny tiny waist that is totally out of proportion with his massive hats. Also: how do you even figure out where all those folds go in those clothes.

Also, it uses the Turkish word for ‘chapter’, faşil. I’m assuming that’s the right one, of course. Manga likes to change up the words they use for chapters depending on the setting.

ANYWAY FINALLY THE STORY

Why is one of the months called ‘sugar’ in Turkish (sheker, or şeker more technically)??

Look at him, striking a cool pose. I find it funny that he strikes all these confident poses, but he’s actually quite tiny next to everyone else. He probably does it because 1) he is confident in his own abilities and 2) he’s still a teenager in a world of adults, and it’s held against him in this chapter. His inability to do anything later frustrates the hell out of him as it is.

AND HERE COMES HIS BIRDIE. my favorite already

the fuck this type of bird was supposedly used to kill wolves

and it weighs 8-11 lbs depending on male/female

This kid is stronger than he looks. Although, his is male (named Iskander, so I assume), and the males weigh less (avg of 8 lbs) but still. I guess that’s why he has a male one. The females are massive and would probably dwarf his tiny self.

How is this not a wonderful shot, though.

Also, thank goodness for katakana or else I’d have no idea how to even approach pronouncing his name.

As for the situation itself, we jump right into things with a national crisis.

He looks younger when caught off-guard.

Tell me you did not carry that 8 pound bird aloft on your arm all the way here.

The official translation forgot Halil’s nickname/title “大都市” (large city/metropolis).

And this is where things get interesting. Usually in the peace vs. war debate, one side will always seem unreasonable no matter how hard the characters try to convince you otherwise, but I like how this one is set up.

On one hand you have the side that wants war, sees the enemy nation as a threat, and even throws in that ‘do you want to make a scapegoat of one of your countryman just to avoid war’, though can’t really tell if that’s sincere sentiment or not.

But then the old guy, Halil just says ‘yes, if it means peace’. Kind of a classic argument? Reminds me of Akatsuki no Yona, and the state of their country before the story starts.

this. just. his face. I needed to show the two together. Zaganos is obviously not impressed.

and therein lies the problem with politics: its not really about what’s right. I mean, everyone in the room can probably guess that their own soldiers weren’t responsible. But for all present except Mahmut, the meeting was never about finding out the truth.

Also, I love how he rants to Iskander, and even asks him a question directly as if he can answer.

o.o don’t ask me i’m just a bird

Halil calls him “Mah-kun” in Japanese, but the English version gets rid of this. It’s a pity, since it shows how close they are.

“You only just became a pasha, and now this. You must be exhausted.”

Dude, if he’s exhausted then what are you. You’ve had this position for 20 years.

And! yay! He’s angry at himself and his inability to do anything, rather than be angry at Zaganos. Shows that he really is more mature than he looks (especially with his grumpy facial expressions and petite self lol)

He looks just like his mother. D: poor baby iskander and mahmut

the amount of detail in this manga. see the rabbits hanging in the corner? 

also about the next panel: holy shit he fucking heard that??? his mother getting killed right in front of him, and he managed to stay quiet. poor terrified child like holy shit. and he managed not to crush little Iskander

I’m not going to show it, but if you look closely you’ll see she was not only stabbed in the chest, but also had a hand cut off at the wrist. wtf

every panel is so pretty jslethasdk the amount of detail in every background

his expression here just kills me. he’s just coming to the horrible, heart-wrenching realization of what has happened and UGH

I just really like his range of expressions. He’s just so damn uncomfortable with his elder, a guy he obviously respects and has a history with, bowing to him like that.

How can your heart not break seeing this. All he has left is his bird, the bird whistle, and the container for holding the bird’s meat.

Oh you conniving bastard- I actually thought the Emperor was in on it until the second read through I’m doing now. It was hard to notice since the panel just cuts from one scene to the next.

TINY CHILD YOU. Mahmut is taller than Halil counting the headpiece but he is made to look so tiny in front of adults. I think he’s supposed to be around 17 at the moment?

Man, he had a plan. How the heck did he have time to prepare the animal blood anyway? What a classy way to deal with your enemies.

I’m also happy that the manga-ka can draw birds so well. Iskander looks lovely.

...And that is actually really fucking scary. Those golden eagles are huge and strong enough to take out wolves.

The subtle expressions are great. As is the exchange between Mahmut and Zaganos here. They will probably clash again in the near future, but it seems they’ve gained a little more respect/acknowledgment for each other.

And now THIS, this is very interesting.

It looks like a statue, and that is clearly Mahmut and Iskander. I won’t make any guess though, I’m usually dead wrong with speculations.

I love the lines in this though, so fluid with Mahmut and straight and angled with the knight guy.

onward →

[independentartistbuzz]

Indie 5-0: 5 questions with The Collective Bus

The Collective Bus, named after the Argentinian double-decker bus Colectivo, are an alternative rock outfit based in Miami, Florida. They have toured across the country with radio-hit songs(Don’t Stop, Fold it Back), opening for various former superstar (or known national headliner) acts. Their music has been best described as ‘rock with an afro-cuban flair’ taking influence from performers like Angelique Kidjo and the DIY scene to bring a unique, high-octane show for anyone to enjoy. They just released their debut single “Take Time” and we got the chance to interview them about it!

1. What is the inspiration behind "Take Time"?

We wrote this in 2019, on tour, when we decided to take a stop in Pittsburgh for a few days before the next show. Here, we find a fantastic guitar shop known as Pittsburgh Guitars. So we’re in the shop, trying out the gear, having a chill afternoon when our guitarist(at the time) Ben plays this sweet descending riff and I’m like “That’s a golden idea. Let’s record it.” Basically made the blueprint for the song right there in the shop. I then wrote all the lyrics in the car once we were back on the road.

About the song itself, for a lot of my work, I really love ambiguity and double meanings, which really take hold of the central theme to “take time”. Where I feel both readings of taking time together or taking time apart are equally valid. Ultimately it’s about two people recognizing their problems to help each other out. Even if it means ending whatever relationship they had before. They can’t just sit. They can’t play pretend. They can only Take Time. The song is available now on Spotify.

2. You are a huge advocate for the mental health community. Do you have any advice or words of wisdom for those struggling right now?

I don't know if I would describe myself as a huge advocate. I mean, it's definitely important and close to my heart, but I'm no politician. I'm also struggling like everyone else in these tense times. I go to therapy. I take anti-depressants. My mental health can leave me in a deep unseated happiness a lot of the time, so it makes sense for it to be such a strong theme in my music. This is a conversation. Personally, what has helped me to combat intrusive thoughts is to ask what does or doesn't serve me. If I recognize that I'm spiraling out wanting to turn my eyes into paper and feed them to a pack of wolves, I try to switch gears. More typical advice I would say is to keep yourself in the present. Operate without expectation. Hopefully that helps someone, I'm here to talk.

3. How has the pandemic impacted your music creation process?

It has led to me making more music than ever before. This is telling of the kind of person I am, but I constructed a spreadsheet of every song I've ever written per year going all the way back to 2011 with 'Let it Go'. The analysis is meaningless so it serves more as a coping mechanism for the extreme self-doubt I have at any given moment. It's hard for me to trust what people say, probably stems back to my gullible childhood. I'm autistic so I can't really parse sarcasm on the subconscious level, leaving me to rely on logical consistency. The numerical abstractions resulting from the spreadsheet formulates a post-truth ideal of "hard" data that I can draw insights from for future songs such as: I have never written a song in B major. About 20% of my music is discussion of mental health, 20% are what I could call 'character songs' where I'm playing an exaggerated version of myself or someone else entirely, obviously the love song covers about 45% with the remaining 15% going to random one off topics. I sit now at the highest record for my songs per year at 50 songs, 138 songs for the whole decade.

4. How has it affected your mental health?

Poorly, like everyone else. I have deeply intrusive thoughts like "I want to rip my body into a complicated set of packages to feed the birds in my inevitable sky burial" or "I want to tear my throat out and squeeze it until all the words I could've said are silenced, preventing me from embarrassing myself any further than I've already have". These come off like ticks(like a flinch) as a result of the anxiety I feel when reliving past events, which started as another coping mechanism to logically deduce how to function better socially. It gives me the insightful awareness to write songs, make jokes, allow for reasonable doubt, but my impulsive nature prevents me from stopping the negative side-effects of that behavior. It feels like I'm trapped in a cage that I designed. A cycle that is doomed to repeat, which fits nicely into a classic definition of insanity. I'm trying my best to be kind to myself and those around me. I don't exist for my sake. I exist for those who want me to be here. I hope that love tethers the reader still to this material plane. Reader, you are loved. You have value. This bad time will pass, like all things do. 5. If there was one message you wanted listeners to take from "Take Time," what would it be?

I can say what I feel it's about like I did in the first question, but ultimately meaning is a retroactive experience. The listener will know what it means to them by the end, decide how they feel, then justify those feelings. I fully believe in this philosophy; otherwise, we would be objective beings with no distinction between bad or good, things would just be. Also, how can there be discourse if the answer was set in stone? And if there isn't discourse, if I didn't force people to sit with their emotions, then from my perspective the song has no value. Just kidding, obviously the real message is to listen to us on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever else excites you. I'd like music to be my career and I need an audience for that. Join us. Buy our merch. Coalesce. Merge with the almighty capital and rise from the heavens in triumph, heralding The Collective Bus as your mantle. Let us be the horse on which you ride upon to Valhalla you brave warrior. Thank you for reading.

Listen to “Take Time” here: 

Connect with The Collective Bus via:

https://www.danielcorrea.com/

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