#these are kind of low effort compared to the last set

[aceghosts]

Rooney Shepard (They/Them)/Yorinobu Arasaka Screenshots (7/X)

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[saltymongoose]

ohh my goodness. i've been waiting to send these until requests were open bc i wanted to hear ur thoughts.

might be a little silly, but consider: matching outfits. player gathers clothing materials!! and coordinates outfits one day on missions!!!! even makes props!!! hijinks ensue. idk if this had already been disscussed before, but thank you for your time and consideration, ily. you are so cool <<3333!!!!!!! everything you make is so scrumptious!!!!! <33

Omg, thank you, this is so nice of you!!! :D ❤❤❤❤ I love this art so much, you have no idea - the way you portray the boys here fits so well (as always lol). And the memes too omg!! I can't even put it into words to be honest with you, these are just excellent. I do feel slightly bad for that random grunt though, something tells me they'll be sleeping with one eye open after seeing that lmao.

(Also, thank you so much for the compliments too of course, you're far too kind. (˶⸃ ⴰ⸃˶)♡ I could say the same to you btw; your art is always just *chef's kiss* perfection.)

Anyhow, I've actually thought a bit about this scenario before, but this just inspired me, so I wrote some short hcs for you. Hope you like them! <3:

The Player Matches Outfits with Them ft. The Main 3 + 2BDamned

(TW: Yandere, Obsessive Behavior)

- [2BDAMNED] -

2BDamned knew that you had been working on a little project - one that you tried to keep as secret as possible. He was curious, but not enough to encroach on whatever boundary you set regarding it. All he knew from your rather lackadaisical explanation was that he'd be very surprised when he saw. And, well, he was.

The first conscious thought in 2BDamned's head is the question of how you've managed to make a mask that looks so similar to his without borrowing the original. It's really spot on; the seams are in the exact same place, and even if yours has to have been configured differently to fit your more human facial features, the silhouette is exactly the same.

(In the end, he concludes that you simply must've studied his appearance for a while to truly replicate his mask, which makes him feel almost giddy in a way he might've deemed embarrassing before meeting you. But now he's just overcome with happiness that you were obviously interested enough in him to do this.)

He openly praises your skill in sewing, knowing that grunt clothing is ordinarily much too large for you. And you'd notice how the fondness he holds for you seeps into the words, his gaze lingering on you in a way that left you feeling warm.

If you could see underneath his own mask, you'd be able to see the smile he was unable to bite back as well, and the flush that he'd try to will away otherwise. And while he is incredibly impressed (and happy) at what you've managed to put together, he will mention that you could also borrow his actual things once in a while, if you feel so inclined. He just happens to think one of his own jackets might suit you too.

(Of course, he doesn't miss the chance to lean real close to adjust your mask as he says this either, just to fluster you even more. You really have no idea how cute you are, especially looking like this.)

- [DEIMOS] -

A full minute of unintelligible sputtering leaves Deimos' lips the moment he sees your new outfit, and you laugh at the way his face goes bright red. When you said you had a surprise, this was one of the last things he expected.

Luckily for him, he's able to quickly gather his composure, and his excited ramblings turn into smooth flirts that'll leave you blushing instead of him. Expect all sorts of comments about how cute you looked dressed up like him, and praises about how you look even better in his fit than he does.

He insists on taking a ton of pictures together, and you can bet he keeps his favorite in his wallet. (It's one of your faces smushed together as you both grin at the camera, making a heart with your hands.)

He considers this a total power-couple thing; matching shirts are so low-effort compared to this, if anything it shows you perfect you are together. Although there is one thing he'd help you change from your original DIY version of his outfit - those sheet-metal dog tags you made can't compare to the real thing in his opinion, so why don't you just use one of his instead?

Also, don't think he won't take advantage of the fact that you both are the only ones with headsets. Even if yours isn't functioning (because let's be honest, finding one in working condition would be difficult), he'll fix it up quickly just so he can talk more directly to you during missions. And whenever else he wants to, to the irritation of the other three.

- [SANFORD] -

Sanford would consider his outfit to be fairly standard, but he recognized that you were emulating him the moment you slid the sunglasses on. And he couldn't stop the goofy smile from splitting his face when he realized it either, not even attempting to hide his amusement at what you've done.

(He only gets visibly happier when you 'threateningly' brandish your wire hook in his direction. You really put a lot of thought into this, didn't you?)

While Sanford has the amount of restraint in him to not openly brag about you doing this, he can't deny the rush of satisfaction he gets from seeing you in what is an unmistakable homage to him. If you look closely, you'll see him straighten up in pride whenever you come into view. (It's almost like preening, really. If he weren't so flushed, perhaps you'd think it to be more of an ego thing, but no.)

Although, he does show a little bit more concern about some aspects of your outfit. Like your boots, for example; he can't count the number of times he's gotten blisters while breaking in his own, so you should expect him to ask you if you need any plasters (or help bandaging yourself as well).

(If you decide to accept his offer, you'll find yourself questioning whether he ever officially trained as a medic before. He surely has the gentleness befitting of one, shown in how he carefully cleans your wounds and softly applies the ointment, his calloused fingers gently smoothing over the plasters on your Achilles heels afterward. Although you have the slightest suspicion that this tenderness from him is known only to you.)

Sanford will also make it part of his routine to pluck your glasses from your nose and clean them after he does his own. Afterward, he'll slowly lean in when he places them back on you to make sure he doesn't poke you in the eye. Neither of you mention that you could do it yourself, or that his decision to slide them back onto the bridge of your nose himself was highly unnecessary. Maybe he just does it to get a better look at the way you blink up at him and blush, or perhaps it's for some other reason, who's to say? Either way, you have no complaints.

- [HANK J. WIMBLETON] -

Your laughs are muffled under Hank's hands as he cups your face, tilting it up to look closely at you. His excitement at your new look is almost palpable; you can easily tell from how he's shaking and hurriedly looking over, his gaze never stopping on one spot for longer than a second. He just wants to take in everything about your new look, is all.

He'll almost insist on doing a mission with you wearing it, not only because the idea sounds fun to him (with his love of carnage and all), but also because it provides an excellent opportunity to rub in everyone else's faces that you chose to copy his outfit. Not theirs.

In a way, he also becomes just a tad more doting than usual. He busies himself with dusting you off, and adjusting your goggles and the lapels of your coat whenever another skirmish is finished. It's his way of checking you over and making sure your hard work wasn't damaged either.

(Plus, he'd hate it if this instance of you copying him was cut short because of some worthless grunts' attempts at harming you.)

You'll catch him sticking closer to you than usual too, and he does so for multiple reasons. First is that he just prefers to be near you whenever he can anyway (the warmth of your presence is one of his favorite things, and it gives ample opportunity to show off around you), but now there's also the fact that your outfit will freak out your enemies. As you can imagine, he enjoys that immensely, and what better way to improve this experience than to have his Player join him?

In a way, Hank also sees this as a sort of 'claim' you've put on yourself too. Wearing your significant other's clothing is kind of a thing with some grunts, and while he knows they aren't really his clothes, there's still some of that same sentiment there that makes him purr just a bit louder whenever he sees you in that new outfit of yours. It tells the world you're his in some way, even if not officially. So why wouldn't he be happy about that?

[sneezypeasy]

Original Script Analysis, Part 1: Kataang Is Better... And Also Worse.

I want to start this off by saying that when it comes to media analysis, I personally don’t tend to give authorial intent a significant amount of weight – at least, not by default. I understand why authorial intent is so often debated among media analysts, and why so many metas and critiques often hinge their arguments on paratextual information that serves to provide potential insight on what the authors were thinking or planning. But I myself tend to follow more of a “Death of the Author” framework. There are some exceptions, such as when I believe the author’s stated intent – or even details such as their background, life experiences, advocacy etc – has bled through their work so heavily that it becomes impossible to ignore its impact on the final product. (E.g., reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky compare murder to state-ordered execution, it is hard not to contextualise the passage with the knowledge that Dostoyevsky himself faced a firing squad and was given a pardon at the very last minute). Even then, I tend to treat paratextual information like – Understanding the context behind x scene or y narrative choice potentially adds a layer of meaning to it, particularly why some scenes may have been framed the way they were, or why the author chose to tell/expand/conclude the story like this instead of like that. I use paratextual information to deepen my understanding of the author’s reasonings behind their choices. I don’t use paratextual information to form my opinion on whether their choices were good.

(I prefer to form my own opinion on that, based on what I think of the text itself.)

That being said, like most of you readers I too had heard the many rumours surrounding the writing/production process behind ATLA, especially when it came to the ships. Which ship, if any, was planned for, when were the romance arcs finally decided, were there conflicts/disagreements between writers, were there script changes and animation edits to strengthen one pairing while weakening other, and so on and so on. I’d heard the rumour that The Southern Raiders went through multiple rewrites/changes, because it was originally “too shippy”. I’d heard the rumours that Aaron and Elizabeth were pro-Zutara, Bryan and Mike were pro-Kataang, and that their respective positions/opinions on these two pairings seep through their writing in an acutely perceptible way.

I’d also heard the counter-argument, the official narrative endorsed by the creators that any chemistry or subtext between Zuko and Katara was always intended to be platonic, and that readers who saw anything romantic between these two characters were simply setting themselves up for disappointment by projecting their own expectations or preferences onto the show, nothing more.

Over the past 15 years or so, these debates shaped much of the ATLA “shipping discourse”, sometimes even dominating discussion on the subject. I myself have gotten many a variant of “Zutara was never going to happen, get over it” – even when I’ve made a deliberate effort to omit any mention of authorial intent in my analyses, because, as I’ve said, I still don’t consider that kind of paratextual information relevant to my own opinions on why I think Zutara just works better. But given the intensity of the arguments surrounding behind-the-scenes shenanigans, their impact on the final product, and even their supposed significance in determining shipping validity, it was impossible not to wonder at the truth behind all these conflicting rumours.

So when I set foot in the WGF, it was admittedly difficult to contain my bubbling excitement and anticipation. Even still, I resolved to keep my expectations low. Rumours are rumours, after all. Secondary sources must always be taken with a healthy grain of salt, and some of the rumours weren’t even second-hand information at that. And I already knew that no matter what I found, my own opinion that Zutara is the best love story almost written, would not change.

All that said and done, let’s just say that I found the discovery... highly rewarding, and for those of you who have spent years refusing to accept that you were just “reading into things”, I hope my findings bring you some long-awaited vindication.

There are two other disclaimers I need to get through before we continue:

1) The Writers Guild Foundation is not a lending library. You may make an appointment to view the scripts in person, and you are allowed to take notes and manually copy as much as you like. But you will not find copies of their scripts online, and photos and screenshots are strictly prohibited. From what I understand it’s a copyright issue. Legally I’m fairly certain that embedding photos in this post and accompanying it with critique and analysis would/should count as “Fair Use”; however, I know that at some point I’d like to be able to return to the library, and I don’t want to risk being blacklisted for not following their rules.

As such, all the images embedded in this post are reproductions of snippets that I had to manually copy and type up, word for word. It was slow work, so as much as I’d love to be able to just plop the entire script of The Southern Raiders (or any ATLA episode) here for you to read, I had to narrow my focus a fair bit. I mainly noted down, in order of significance:

additions, omissions or changes in the original script compared to the show

bits where the writer’s notes/storyboard directions contained insights or descriptions that I found interesting, surprising, or just plain funny

scenes that weren’t really all that different or unexpected, but we love to see it in writing anyway (ahem Crossroads of Destiny *cough*)

I’m sure there’s a lot that I still managed to miss - even visiting over two days, I couldn’t read every episode. I highly encourage Zutarians living in or near LA to make an appointment and read the scripts for yourselves. You’ll be able to see more than what I’ve posted here, and you might even unearth some goodies that escaped my notice.

(Credit goes to @lady-of-bath for taking my boatload of notes and reformatting them to look like scripts again ❤)

(Also apologies that some passages are split across two images; that just means they were long enough that they spanned two pages and I couldn’t be bothered splicing them back together so I just embedded them here as separate image files. I promise I didn’t cut/remove anything; images not separated by a line of dashes should be read as one continuous snippet 😊).

2) The second thing I ought to clarify is that, from my understanding, the drafts I read were final drafts. These were scripts submitted to the guild just prior to storyboarding, voice acting, animating etc. As I read them, I noticed that the only changes to the script that I could tell were non-dialogue related - so things like, descriptions of the characters’ actions, movements, facial expressions/body language, what you can or can’t see in the shot, etc. Otherwise, voice lines have been essentially kept intact. This suggests to me that the changes made to the script after submission to the guild, were also made after lines had been recorded, possibly even after scenes had been storyboarded. It also suggests that the scripts the voice actors read were the same ones I read in that library. (There is one notable exception that I found, a very interesting exception in my opinion, which we’ll get to later.)

While I would have loved to have seen the earlier drafts, to be able to see how the script changed with each revision (including revisions made to the dialogue prior to voice recording), it’s my understanding that the guild rarely ever receives these scripts, and such was the case again this time. I did also have a look to see if they had the ATLA Series Bible, but unfortunately that hadn’t been submitted either. It is what it is. Still, I’m not mad about what I found. :)

And on that note - ONTO THE SCRIPTS!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m going to start off by defending Kataang a bit here. (I know, I know. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the juicy Zutara stuff in due course.) In my 2 hour long video analysis I talked about lack of development being one of the biggest structural problems with Kataang as a ship. Specifically, I showed how you can take the scenes that we know to be “Kataang scenes”, jumble them up so that they appear in a different order than they do in the show, and the end result still makes just as much narrative sense - or maybe even more sense than they did in the show. 

Interestingly, the original scripts for these scenes do not fail this test - at least, I don’t think they do. Let’s start at the very beginning:

It’s love at first sight for Aang, which we all knew already. For Katara, it’s less “love” and more “wonder”. But it’s a powerful meeting for both of them. Honestly, this isn’t all that different from how I perceived this scene on television when I watched it. 

Let’s continue with the Fortuneteller:

Okay, so again, roughly what we see on television. Katara realizes Aang could be who Aunt Wu was referring to, and is unsure what to make of this. Fair.

Next, the Cave of Two Lovers:

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Unlike in the show, Katara doesn’t blush in this script (I also checked the ending of the script where I remember her blushing again in the show, but the script doesn’t mention any blush, anywhere). However, Katara seems to be taking the possibility of Aang as a love interest a little bit more seriously here. In the show version, they hug, Aang seems a little awkward and is clearly hoping for some closure/confirmation of where they now stand, but Katara doesn’t seem to spare it a second thought - she just yeets it out of there. The slow parting and the “awkward look” these kids share in the script suggests, at least to me, that script!Katara is placing more weight on what just happened than show!Katara does, and she at least seems aware, maybe even nervous, of the fact that sharing a maybe-kiss in a secret love cave might do something to their dynamic that she’s not sure how she feels about yet. 

The divergences get more interesting now. Enter The Earth King scene, where Aang attempts to confess his feelings to Katara:

“They both know what he's about to say.” 

WELL. Not only did they cut out the “he looks her directly in the eyes” part, but they completely took out any shot that might have indicated a mutual understanding between them, as was written in the script. Instead, we get a deer-in-the-headlights look from Katara, then her head cocks to the side “What is it, Aang?” and then… nothing. Everything about her body language on screen is written to suggest she either has no idea what’s coming, or is doing a great job of playing coy about it.

The cheek-kiss is intact in both versions, however. Let’s keep going.

I didn’t take notes on the Headband. I probably should have, but I didn’t bother because there weren’t really any notable differences between the script version and the show version. What you see is basically what you get - Aang dances with On Ji, Katara is agitated but acts aloof, Aang invites her to dance, she hesitantly accepts, they dance and it’s all very cute. She says “that was some dance party, Aang” and gives him another cheek-kiss at the end. If there were any differences from script to screen, I didn’t spot them.

But there was a pretty big difference for Day of Black Sun:

(By the way, this confirms an earlier version of the rumour that had been based on alleged edits made fairly late in the storyboarding process. Credit to @lady-of-bath​ for procuring this receipt).

So, what I’m basically getting here is that, in the original script, up until the midpoint of Season 3, the writing was originally heading towards a Kataang conclusion. And actually - you may disagree with me here but you know what? I actually don’t hate this version of Kataang. (So far, anyway).

There were two main issues I had with Kataang - the structure/pacing of it was all over the place, and on a deeper level I felt that the conflict they set up regarding Aang’s character arc and “letting Katara go” were not properly resolved in the show, leading to a lack of cohesion in the storytelling.

Combing through these passages, script!Katara reads way more natural and realistic, to me, than show!Katara. Let’s look at the progression here, from Katara’s side:

She meets an “adorable” boy and forms an instant attachment to him

She sees their dynamic as platonic until a comment from Sokka makes her question whether it will always be so in the future. She doesn’t quite know what to make of this at the time.

She shares a maybe-kiss with him in a secret love cave, and seems to be aware/nervous that their dynamic may change as a result. 

Some time later, he works up the courage to confess his feelings with her, and the script makes it clear that she understands what he’s trying to say and may even have been anticipating it. 

They go to a party where Katara is moody seeing Aang dance with someone else. Then Aang asks Katara onto the floor, and they dance, and Katara seems genuinely pleased/delighted.

Finally, just before the eclipse, he kisses her. She may not have been expecting it, but her reaction (smiling after him as he flies away) shows she didn’t see it as unwelcome. 

If Kataang were actually written like this, I think that would solve the structural problems of the ship that really bothered me, and I probably wouldn’t have stopped shipping them. It’s very clear to me that taking any of these scenes, as written, and jumbling them out of order, would completely mess up the steady (if subtle) progression of Katara 1) seeing Aang as a potential love interest, 2) understanding he sees her as one, and finally 3) realising she does actually return his feelings.

It also makes Katara feel much more like a real person, and less of an objective for Aang to try to reach in a “two steps forward, one step back” sort of situation.

I think, even then, I still would have shipped Zutara as well, because I don’t think the symbolism and depth to Zutara can be beat. But I’m pretty sure I would have kept a soft spot for Kataang, for the fluff. At least, I wouldn’t be strongly opposed to it. My position would likely be “eh, there’s flaws, and it probably could have been written better, and I think writing Zutara instead would have been more compelling and thematically satisfying but you know what, this is cute. I get it.”

Of course, that’s before we get to the second half of Season 3, where Kataang goes from oscillating in place to taking a nose-dive out of ... nowhere.

And in a way that seems to seriously contrast with how the ship had been written from Cave of Two Lovers to Day of Black Sun, the downward spiral of Kataang coinciding with a deepening friendship/connection for Zutara - seems to be exacerbated in the original script.

Remember how uncomfortable it was to watch Ember Island Players in the show?

...

It’s quite a bit worse here.

Aang comes off significantly less sympathetic in this version of the episode. Here he is, looking at Katara “accusingly”, and even “glaring” at her, because the actress playing her on stage is flirting with actor!Zuko. Why is he so angry, and at her? And meanwhile, she “pretends not to notice”? Ick.

I’ll be honest, I never had a strong opinion of Aang being “possessive” in this scene. I understand why other people did, and I totally see where they’re coming from with that. Personally though, I kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt and just perceived him as immature, not really getting it, and I always perceived his jealousy to be more hapless than disturbing. This is just my personal opinion, but I felt that their clash in this episode was more indicative of a lack of compatibility and understanding between them than anything else, and obviously I think the non-con kiss was wrong, but generally I didn’t think the kid had bad intentions - I just saw him as... too young, to be honest. He did get pushy and demanding, and either way Katara deserved better, but with Aang, I kind of understood it to be stemming from hope/desperation rather than anger/entitlement.

The writing here, however, does not leave room for me to be charitable. Aang hearing Actor!Zuko suggest that Katara was supposed to be “the Avatar’s girl”, and glaring at Katara as if to say “Yeah!” - I don’t know how to read this as anything other than possessiveness. Yikes on a cracker.

ALSO, did you notice that Zuko and Katara don’t scoot away from each other in this version? Read it again; the absence of that bit escaped me on my first read-through. (Credit to @zutarawasrobbed​ for spotting that difference!) Zuko and Katara are still sitting next to each other here (the earlier “I wanted to sit here/Just sit next to me, what’s the big deal?” scene is still intact), and all it says about Katara is that she’s pretending not to notice Aang simmering at her from two seats away. Wow.

The non-con kiss is kept intact and most of it is just dialogue so there isn’t much deeper insight to gain from the script, though again, Aang comes off more explicitly volatile/angry at the end of it:

Later, Aang rejoins the group in the theater, and sees Actress!Katara reach a goofy platonic understanding with Actress!Aang, and reacts to this with chagrin and embarrassment. There is no reference to Katara averting her gaze from the screen in a sad or awkward manner, as how she does in the show. 

Overall, I find that Kataang looks worse here, a lot worse than in the show. The omission of Zuko and Katara’s “awkward scoot” is intriguing as well. To be honest, I never perceived “the scoot” to be explicit confirmation or denial of any potential attraction between them (that clip can genuinely be read two ways depending on what trope you’re trying to invoke; neither are inherently invalid), however, the fact that it wasn’t originally written but was added in later... that’s interesting.

Some of you might be forming some opinions by this point. I have some of my own as well, though I want to hold off on them for now. Let’s have a bit of a palate-cleanser with the snippet of Zuko sharing some vulnerability with Katara before we move on:

❤

Now I am going a bit out of order here - I know that EIP actually happens after The Boiling Rock/The Southern Raiders, but as I was already on the topic of the Kataang arc, I decided to continue with that before I delved into the other episodes. So now we’re going back a little bit, chronologically.

(Also, you know me, gotta save the best for last 😉)

Ultimately I had a very brief look through The Boiling Rock, and nothing really jumped out at me - except for this bit:

I can’t be the only one tickled at the idea that Zuko just yeets himself out of that prison cell and doesn’t seem to spare Mai a second thought 😂 (if you’ll recall, the show has the two of them share a glance through the cell window after Mai yells “Get off of me!”; Zuko looks apparently apologetic/sad while Mai just glares at him). I know people have pointed out how amusing it is that Zuko seems to forget about Mai completely after TBR, right up until their last scene together, but the way this scene is scripted here just makes it even funnier to me.

But I know which episode it is that you guys all want to read.

*record scratch*

Oh ho HO, what have we here Elizabeth Ehasz 😉

Next up - Part 2: The Southern Raiders, The Finale, and What I Think About it All

[marblemoovt]

Take Care - Whis/Reader

MASTERLIST

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Fluff, A sprinkle of angst, Mentions/depictions of anxiety and depression. Anything else is in the tags <3

SUMMARY:

Sometimes it’s easy to forget when to eat or do basic care, but it becomes an issue when it happens frequently. And Whis has started to notice that something is wrong. When subtlety doesn’t cut it, a confrontation is required, and sometimes hidden feelings are revealed in the process.

------

“Nobody has seen you in days,” and he states it like a fact.

Any excuses that I’ve created disappear from my mind, and I have no ammunition against his claim.

“The others have started to notice. They’re—I’m worried.”

I stare blankly, before bursting into laughter. “You? You’re worried about little old me?” I grin and shrug off his hand. “Thanks, but I’m doing perfectly fine. I was planning to visit today.”

“I can see that you’re troubled,” he says, and I squirm underneath his penetrating gaze. 

I avoid his eyes and shrug my shoulders. “This is my normal resting face,” I say with a lazy grin. 

Whis holds my hands. “Just know that I’m here to help because I care.” He clears his throat and switches topics. “Now, let's get you something to eat.”

NOTE:

Hello! The last time I posted a finished fic on this site was October of last year (°ー°〃)

I did not experience any life-threatening situations. I didn't survive an accident and upload this from a hospital bed on the verge of death as I struggle to type this all out. My life is not that chaotic, and I appreciate that it's 'mundane'

Life happened and I got a bit burnt out. I have other hobbies that also take up a lot of my time and commissions that are prioritized over stories I write for myself.

That being said, this story was a commission and they graciously allowed me to share the fic publically. I don't often write in first-person, but expect any subsequent Whis fics to be in the same format.

Also, just a fair warning that I know absolutely nothing about Dragon Ball other than what I was able to gather from the Wiki and a few clips.

Happy Reading! ヾ(•ω•`)o

“This is delicious. Try some,” Whis says, offering his plate to me. 

The squeak of metal cutlery against porcelain pierces my eardrums as I push my food around. It takes great effort to maintain my smile. “No thank you,” I decline. I can barely stomach what I already have. Accepting his offer would be a waste of his kindness thanks to my absent appetite. 

It’s not like I didn’t want to eat, but more that I couldn’t. There was no desire for food. And if there were, it would be forgotten once another task consumed me. My limbs ache for the comfort of my bed, weary after a long day at work. 

The chatter around me becomes grating to my ears, and every cell in my body screams to run, hide, and be alone. I glance at my friends, admiring their energy compared to my low social battery. The food is tasteless on my tongue, and I set my fork down, forcing myself to swallow the last mouthful. 

“Are you done already?” Whis asks, and he almost looks… surprised?

“People normally stop eating once they’re full,” I say, pushing away my plate—still full of food. 

Beerus snatches my plate and dumps the contents into his mouth, shrugging at Whis’s look of disapproval. “What? They said they were done,” he says.

I stand up and wave goodbye to everyone. With no remaining evidence of my recent eating habits, they all respond like usual. Some even suggest I take a break from work to hang out more.

The only one who’s different is Whis.

“At least take some for later,” Whis says, handing me a small bundle. I peek inside and see a variety of snacks. 

“Thanks,” I say, hoping the exhaustion doesn’t slip into my smile. 

The mask doesn’t come off until I arrive home. I set the snacks down on my desk but decided it would be safer to refrigerate them. The bright white light sears into my retinas, and I blink until my vision clears. There’s no competition for space, and the bundle looks lonely in the fridge. 

I shut the door and hope I don’t forget about it. 

After staring at the list of chores I promised myself I would complete, I opt to just sleep.

The same routine repeats. Over and over—until Whis appears at my front door one day.

“Beerus sent me on a hunt for delicacies, and I absolutely cannot carry it all. I was walking and remembered you live nearby,” Whis speaks behind a tower of food. It’s honestly impressive how nothing has fallen yet. 

“An almighty being such as yourself can’t handle a bit of manual labour?” I snark, biting my lip to contain the laughter.

“Even if I can’t see your face, I can still tell you’re making fun of me,” he says. “Will you help me or not?”

I glance behind at the dust building up on my floor and the cleaning supplies that sit abandoned in the cupboard. 

“Why not,” I say with a nonchalant shrug, shutting the door behind me. “I can take time out of my busy schedule to help.”

Lies, but they came out of my mouth with such ease. At least today I won’t lay in bed and realize hours have passed in the blink of an eye.

The journey is silent as I balance a stack of cookies and chocolates. But the lack of conversation makes me sweat. Am I being too awkward? Maybe I should say something, but my mind is blank.

“I haven’t seen you at the dinners lately,” Whis says.

I nearly stumble in my steps. “What?”

“Your absence has left a profound emptiness at the tables.”

His face is still hidden behind boxes and bags. 

I purse my lips and say, “Work has kept me busy lately.”

Whis’s thoughtful hum fills the gap in our conversation. “Pace yourself. Nothing good ever comes out of overworking,” he says.

I stare at him, unable to decipher his tone. He sounded—dare I say—concerned for my well-being? There’s no way. This is Whis we’re talking about. To him, I hold the same significance as a bug crawling on the ground.

We continue in silence. Worries that I did something wrong plague my thoughts. But Whis makes no further comment and thanks me when we reach his destination. He offers some of the food as a reward.

A companion for the lone bundle that still sits in my fridge.

Life continues in its monotonous cycle, with each morning harder than the last. Some days I’m lucky to even get out of bed. 

Working overtime becomes automatic at this point and my attendance at gatherings is now sporadic. Sitting at home, the sunlight reveals tiny particles floating in the air, and laundry has begun piling up in the hamper. Did I remember to shower today?

Despite all this, I can’t bring myself to do anything about it. But seeing myself slide down that slippery slope of neglect further propels my anxiety, which fuels worries over my inability to just get things done. It’s a vicious cycle. Neverending. It leaves me ragged, too exhausted to haul myself out of the depressive pit I’ve dug myself into.

How long has it been since I’ve seen my friends? I need to visit soon; I don’t want to worry them. Otherwise, they’ll come to visit me, and then they’ll see how pathetic I really am.

A knock on my door sends my heart leaping into my throat. I sit up, my limbs tangling in the sheets. 

“Is anyone home?” A voice calls out. It’s muffled by the door, but I recognize it immediately. 

Maybe if I keep quiet, he’ll go away?

“I know you’re in there. I can sense your presence,” Whis says. A rap knocks against the wood. “Please open the door before I resort to more… intrusive methods.”

I scramble out of bed and run to the door, flinging it open.

Whis’s eyes widen, and he stares at me without a word. He lets out a low whistle and asks, “What happened?”

“Why do you care?” It comes off more snappy than I intended, but I can only beat myself up for it later.

He ignores my question and steps around me to enter inside. “I knew you weren’t eating well lately, but this is… getting out of hand.”

“And how would you know that?” I scoff and cross my arms. Whis is indifferent; it's a core part of his personality. The destruction of entire planets doesn’t phase him. Now he’s going out of his way because I skipped a few meals here and there?

“My powers of observation are quite astute. I deduced something was wrong due to the discrepancy between the amount of food you and other Saiyans consume,” Whis says, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. 

I flinch but do my best not to recoil from his touch. The uneasiness gives way to a comforting warmth. I want a hug, but I’d rather die than tell him that. 

“Like I said, work is hectic, and I haven’t had much time to cook or eat,” I say.

Whis doesn’t look like he believes me.

“Nobody has seen you in days,” and he states it like a fact.

Any excuses that I’ve created disappear from my mind, and I have no ammunition against his claim.

“The others have started to notice. They’re—I’m worried.”

I stare blankly, before bursting into laughter. “You? You’re worried about little old me?” I grin and shrug off his hand. “Thanks, but I’m doing perfectly fine. I was planning to visit today.”

“I can see that you’re troubled,” he says, and I squirm underneath his penetrating gaze. 

I avoid his eyes and shrug my shoulders. “This is my normal resting face,” I say with a lazy grin. 

Whis holds my hands. “Just know that I’m here to help because I care.” He clears his throat and switches topics. “Now, let's get you something to eat.”

The fridge pops into my mind. “I still have those snacks you gave me.”

Whis wrinkles his nose and says, “Those must taste dreadful by now. I’ll have to dispose of them before you attempt to eat any.”

“I wouldn’t eat cookies that have gone bad!”

“No, but you would leave them in your fridge until an entire bacterial colony grew. Let me take care of you today. Go. I’ll prepare a meal while you cleanse yourself.” He waves me off to the bathroom.

I grab a change of clothes, sighing at the laundry that awaits me. “Whis?” I turn to look back at him.

“Yes, darling?” And I swear my heart nearly flops out of my chest. I fight to keep the fire underneath my skin under control.

“Thanks,” I mumble, hiding my face behind my hair.

“Anything for you. Anything.” 

And somehow, I can feel that he means it. 

I step out of the shower, and the air is cool against my damp skin. I feel better; my thoughts are clearer and less jumbled. The smell of cream and garlic wafts through the house, and I immediately start salivating. 

I speed walk to the kitchen, where Whis adds chicken to a skillet and stirs in some cheese. There’s an ache in my stomach, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this hungry.

He doesn’t say much, only smiles and says that it’ll take a few minutes for the sauce to thicken. I watch as he plates the pasta, trailing after him to the dining table.

“Have a seat,” Whis says, patting his legs. 

My eyes feel like they’ll pop out of their sockets. “On your lap?” I ask.

“I must ensure you eat an adequate amount.”

I stare at him, waiting for him to say he’s kidding or that it was a joke. But he waits in silence, smiling wider when I stumble over my answer. “Um, well—ok?” I say, sitting down in a daze.

Strong arms wrap around my waist, and Whis’s breath tickles my ear. “I won’t release you until you consume everything on this plate.” His tone is firm, and he teases me with a squeeze.

I’m glad he can’t see my face well. I clear my throat and pick up a fork, twirling a generous amount of pasta before shoving it into my mouth. The milkiness of the cream and cheese, combined with the garlic, makes for a rich sauce that complements the chicken. I can’t contain the content noises as I continue eating.

“Someone’s happy,” Whis chuckles. 

“I’m not.”

He hums and leans back. “That’s not what your tail tells me.”

Only now do I notice my tail is wagging back and forth. I have to make a conscious effort to keep it still, willing it to stay down. 

“I don’t even like Chicken Alfredo,” I say.

“Then why is it always the first dish you eat when it’s available?”

He���s close. Too close.

His skin feels like ice against mine, and I struggle to hear anything over the thundering of my heart.

“And how would you know that?” I ask, squirming in his hold.

Whis keeps me locked tight in his arms. “Because it would be disrespectful to not know the favourite food of the one I love.”

“You… love me?” I whisper, feeling an ache in the back of my throat. 

“I do, and I want you to love yourself just as much. So please let me help. Please confide in me.” He rests his chin on my shoulder, and his presence envelopes me with comfort and peace.

The last wall in my defence crumbles. 

It all spills out of me. Everything I went through in the past few weeks, how hopeless I feel, the anxiety that gnaws at my ribcage like a greedy little rat. He listens to me, nodding and offering words of comfort.

“You’ll be alright,” Whis says, stroking my hair. His cuirass is streaked wet with my tears, something I apologize continuously for, to which he reaffirms that it’s ok. “You won’t feel this way forever, and you don’t have to endure it alone. Asking for help is not shameful. I think it’s brave. To ask for help is to admit your faults and acknowledge that you seek improvement.”

“It is?” I sniffle, not wanting to add snot to the mix.

“You have your friends, and, most importantly, you have me,” Whis says. His expression is tender—shy. Can you imagine? The indifferent immortal shy?

I didn’t know he could hold so much affection in his eyes.

I wipe my face with my sleeves, feeling lighter than I have in days. “Can you make me Chicken Alfredo every day then?” I ask.

Whis gives me an incredulous look. “Every day? Won’t you get sick of it?”

I shake my head, smiling at the thought of seeing him in my kitchen daily. Maybe I could buy him an apron?

“On one condition,” Whis says, and I wait with bated breath. “You allow me to aid you in cleaning your house.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” I trail off, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. 

A tug on my tail surprises me. “You’re so cute when you’re excited,” Whis laughs, holding the animated appendage in his hands. He kisses my burning cheeks and says, “I know you would appreciate my company.”

I take the last bite of my pasta and show him the empty plate. “I’m done eating, can you let go now?”

Whis releases me, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll take that as a yes then,” he says.

We spend the rest of the day together, cleaning around the house. I tackle my overdue laundry and Whis washes the dishes that have piled up in the sink.

By the end of it all, I was exhausted but happy. The house looks great again; it looks like it did before I stopped cleaning. Seeing how orderly my environment became actually eased some of my anxiety, which is a huge weight off my chest. 

“Thank you, Whis,” I say with as much sincerity as I could muster.

He pats my head and says, “It was no trouble at all. Don’t worry, I’ll always be there to catch you if you fall.”

Heat prickles my skin, and the apples of my cheeks tingle.

“Does this change anything between us?” I ask, fidgeting with my fingers.

Whis tilts my chin up to meet his gaze. The corners of his eyes crinkle. “Only if you want it to,” he says.

I stare at the wall behind him. “Only if you do,” I mumble.

Whis claps his hands together. “It’s settled then. Now sleep, I'll make you breakfast in the morning,” he says, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

I nod, following him in a daze as he leads me to the bedroom. Whiz’s laughter echoes through the hallways, and I end up holding my tail to stop it from swishing. No force in the universe can stop my tail once Whis climbs into bed with me.

“I’m making sure you rest well,” is his excuse, but I know better. 

Sleep comes easy to me that night, the spot on my forehead still tingling. Whis’s arms keep me warm and I inhale his scent as I’m pressed against his chest. His gentle voice lulls me to sleep and I dream of food, Chicken Alfredo, and Whis and his affectionate gestures.  

END NOTE:

This fic might become a series. I'm not sure whether I'll upload it as one (chapters) or individual one-shots. Probably the latter as I don't think they'll directly happen after each other.

I'll see you guys at my next hyperfixation! (。・∀・)ノ

Taglist: @lovecats123451

[sgiandubh]

Logo wars: the unicorn vs. the griffin

Ever since August, the battle between the Warchief and the Sassenach has been lurking somewhere, on the outskirts of my radar. While some still deny there is anything going wrong between S and McTavish, I have strong reservations it's all about sunshine, lollipops and roses in that department. And I couldn't help but wonder if the key to the problem was not to be found in the very disingenuous way Graham chose to build the marketing strategy of his products and to update his own personal brand, in the process.

So I took a deep dive into socials and this is something that is going to take some more time to complete. If this kind of content is not your jam or you disagree with my premises, it's totally fine with me, but maybe you should skip these posts. And since we have to start somewhere, let's start with their companies' logos: they have a lot of things to tell us.

Soon after the Remarkable Week-end, S finally unveiled a business project he'd been alluding to for quite a while (if anything is wrong in here, kindly correct me in comments). This was the logo and the slogan they are still using until today:

The Sassenach Unique Spirits. Spirit of Home.

As compared with what McTavish released this summer:

McTavish Spirits. A Scotsman's Dream of America.

First logo: clean, sober lines. A Unicorn, whose contours seem more aptly designed for a sports car or a new, innovative line of home equipment (think rather audio systems, not refrigerators). Or even an elegant, country life oriented clothing line, with all the paraphernalia (gloves, scarves, etc - but we already knew about the First Love tartan, then, so it's still a possibility).

Unique spirits, with all my deep affection and due respect for a real effort, is not the best they could have come up with. You see, that's hardly a sales argument or an efficient pitch. Just like any dog owner on this planet would tell you that Bebe or Fido or Snoopy are 'the best dogs ever', a new entrepreneur would confidently tell you his booze is 'unique'. The effort S put into patiently educating his passion for whisky and creating something personal out of it deserved better. Not the completely expected and almost meaningless 'unique' - this is very lazy copywriting, I think (not a copywriter, just an exacting client, here). It spells low budget where we needed something irresistible.

Onwards to the Unicorn. Of course, it's all about Scotland - it's whisky, for Christ's sake. But, it's also about this:

This is the sixth panel of one of the most moving, exquisite things that ever graced this planet: The Lady and the Unicorn cycle of Flemish tapestries, now making the pride and joy of the Cluny National Museum of the Middle Ages, in Paris. A place I know well and was a very frequent visitor of, when I was living just about three blocks away from it. Its story has to do with the Five Senses and this is the last panel, featuring a mysterious message on that lavish tent's roof:

A mon seul Désir. It's French for: "To my sole desire". Unique, indeed.

Let's let things flow a bit in free association mode (I know Puffy did it on her blog with the Barbour project, but she didn't invent it and she certainly has no copyright - so yeah, waiting for a couple more idiots to block right after posting this):

Unicorn... Scotland... legend... purity...even Mary Queen of Scots asked for a unicorn horn to make sure the water was not poisoned, while in prison... untamed...chivalry.... woman...only a woman can tame and lure a unicorn... Medieval...Cluny... desire... sole desire... soul desire (heh)...unique...passion.... statement... labor of love... personal testimony...first love and we wrap it up nicely with a smile ('she is the original Sassenach', ahem).

That was the first set of (genuine) talking points he went with. Now, we deal with a contorted & painful explanation: Scotland is an inclusive nation and land, I am the Sassenach, etc. What do our unsuspecting American friends know, after all? But to a #silly European, it makes no sense: yes, Scotland is a very inclusive, open and even avantgarde society for many things, but this is whisky and should spell tradition, not innovation. It should spell mystery and something that comes (at great costs) from a faraway, fabled land of mists and druids and lochs. Not from a blaring EDI crossroads, where people are gathered to protest against global warming. Then how about that unnecessary 'I am the Sassenach' - no, Sir, you aren't, plus I hope you know how we, shippers immediately interpret it ('blood of my blood and bone of my bone' - 😁).

But your main problem with the name and the brand that goes along with is not even this. The problem is that a unicorn is always female. You have a feminine brand for a masculine product.

So instead of a haphazard explanation which smells of improv, why not just take the second, abstract, meaning of unicorn and just say cheekily something along those loose lines, for example:

'Well, we are a new, innovative enterprise which aspires to be a smaller unicorn in the world of spirits. Maybe we'll never make it to 1 billion dollars, but it's the bravery and the innovative spirit that we bring with us from Scotland, our home (cue in waxing lyrical and fill in the blanks with all the tropes you can think of). So we're the new kid on the block, the outsider, the underdog set to conquer new lands and new opportunities, exactly like Jamie Fraser, the character I play in OL does (cue in credible retconning of your initial strategy: you need a new client base to generate sales volume & secure or even multiply returning sales and those people DGAF about OL).'

Granted, you'll totally throw under the bus the whole initial plan, but hey - it's an elegant way out of a conundrum.

Second logo, quite a different situation. It's busy, busy, busy with the kind of motifs that make one immediately think of an engraved Colt grip. Something like this, perhaps, only stylized:

Instead of the Unicorn, we have a double beast: a Lion and an Eagle. In Ancient Greece, this mythical combo was called a  γρύψ (gryps), which later gave 'griffin' in English. It is a hybrid, but then so is bourbon. The Lion is a symbol for the European roots of the brand and the Eagle, well - easy, America, pointing West and meaning new perspectives, freedom, etc. But the brand is McTavish Spirits, in a very personal approach: this is my bourbon (isn't it ironic, for a white label project?) and this is my story and these are my (a Scotsman's) dreams of America. Transparent. Legible. I mean business - this is not a labor of love.

Free association again:

The Lion self... the Older, Wiser Guy... the Leader... the Statesman... Dougal MacKenzie...the (hello) Warchief...but this is America... so I am also the Lonely Gunman... I am exploring a New Frontier... bringing my past with me (all the classy, gentleman-like persona)... telling my personal story, too, in the process... from my Scottish roots to making it in Hollywood... so I am also The Storyteller (unlike that young nincompoop, who just goes zorbing and chases barmaids) ... so, maybe, just maybe if you listen to my stories, you will forget I put zero effort into trying samples and touring the whole land looking for perfect balance, and just went for the easy solution and a quick buck... buy my booze and I'll tell you more... I am reliable and tried and tested and still young enough and strong enough and determined enough (the Eagle) to have a new wife and new plans.

Plus: a masculine brand for a masculine product. I won't keep scores for a while, but pfff... point taken.

This is not only logo conception copycat and shameless, reactive competition, on very thin ice and on a (at this point in time, at least) very slim portion of the market. This is, mark me, war between two people who still have some gigs together.

We'll see next time who shows up at their parallel events and buys their booze and also how they choose to engage (or not) with these people. I think I begin to understand what McTavish's brand strategy is, but I need to have a second, closer look. More on this, tomorrow.

[tired1mmortal]

Out of all the motifs @jelloapocalypse could have given people, I did not expect FOOD to be important symbolism in Prison of Plastic.

The candy, cake, and such that Lorelei makes takes no effort at all to make. She just waves her hand and boom instant dessert platter. This is also usually the only kind of food she makes with her epithet. What strikes me is how this is easily comparable to how Lorelei tries to connect with Molly. She makes cool worlds for fun playtime that would make any kid green with envy, but it’s little more than a low effort bribe to win over a child, like a divorced parent spoiling their kid to win custody despite being incredibly unfit to raise a child.

Then there’s the fact that it never lasts, because she never concentrates on it long enough for a person to digest it. This was mentioned a few times and after Giovanni’s conversation with Martin it’s clear why. She never develops her ideas. She never puts in the effort to reuse them. She never works hard towards anything. She just expects to be able to augment her way out of anything. And that’s exactly why she’s no good for Molly.

Because Lorelei always has to have her way, and always takes the easy way out at the slightest inconvenience, she could never be the dependable parental figure Molly needs.

Enter Soup Best Boy

Unlike the candy which is just empty calories soup is a meal. Even if it may not be a person’s first choice for a meal, soup is healthy. Soup is warm, comforting, nurturing, and even Charlie’s entire family got by with cabbage soup before he got the Golden Ticket. We see a lot of these soup like qualities in the book, and even back in season one.

Gio loves his boys. He gets defensive when people belittle them like when Mera belittles them after easily taking Gio and his boys down. Or when Molly implies that his minions are kinda weak. He is always very swift to defend his minions even when he was about to get beat up back in redwood run. Like any good cook he take pride in those who assist him and knows they all have their strengths.

Another major thing about Giovanni is that he’s always encouraging to his minions, especially those who need him in the moment. Admittedly Soup can burn but it’s good for people in the long run. Giovanni berates Car Crash for living up to his name but in the same sentence expresses concern that he may have astigmatism (which believe me is annoying). He was a little bit tough on Molly but that’s just to nudge her to be a little bit more assertive, and all of her friends notice the positive effect it’s had on her.

Giovanni spends almost all of the museum arc talking with or protecting Molly. After tricking indus into freeing them, Gio immediately shifts into fun older cousin mode. They make a fort, she talks to him about her problems and he listens. Unlike Mollys family he listens and he even give her advice and encouragement. Then when Sylvie come in Giovanni is quick to jump to Mollys defense and to get her out of the fire. He is very willing to put in the effort and risk himself for Molly even though they just met.

This is made even more apparent with how he is with Lorelei. He respects Molly’s input and doesn’t give Lorelei an easy in with his group, and yet, he still gives her a fair shot to join. He sets up a challenge that is designed to be impossible, not to test he capability at the task, but to test her character. He bans the use of magic because her abilities aren’t what he wants to know about. When Lorelei messes up the first batch, the first thing he does is tell her that she failed, but that it’s ok. That he doesn’t think less of her for failing. He encourages her to be better.

The second time, that’s when Lorelei gets a little burned. Giovanni tries to soften the blow but it doesn’t change the fact that Lorelei couldn’t cope with not succeeding and cuts several corners using a lot of magic to seem like she did better. She didn’t care who she had to step on for Giovanni’s approval. And that was the problem.

Lorelei tried to cover her every mistake with a layer of frosting in more ways than one. But Giovanni doesn’t see value in someone willing to step on others. That’s why he left the Bonzai blasters in the first place. He wants someone willing to put in the hard work, willing to accept defeat, willing to take the bumpy road despite the difficulties as long as they come out better for their failures. Just because you mess up the broth a little bit doesn’t mean it’s gone to waste, but Giovanni recognizes that Lorelei needs to cool of before giving her another try.

Giovanni himself let his taste suffer to improve his Epithet, and he doesn’t regret it at all. He would do it all again because all the improvement he’s made was built on his trial and error, valuable experience, and determination to make himself a great villain with the card he was dealt. While Lorelei may be able to make wonders rivaling Willy wonka like nothing, Giovanni has made a great soup from a stone.

Lorelei has the power to maybe not fix everything but at least make things better for her family, but she won’t even bother to try.

Giovanni isn’t some big shot rich guy, and he doesn’t even have a job, but he always wants what’s best for his minions and is willing to fight for them. Honestly that’s what matters. Giovanni isn’t the sweet candy most kids would want, but he’s the good soup that Molly needs.

Lorelei makes things with a wave of her hand, Giovanni puts all his heart and soul into it.

is just something I’ve been thinking of for a while.

Let me know if any of you have your own interpretations of this. Or at least better words for it.

[karenandhenwillson]

Fandom and Ships

In the last couple of weeks, we have seen the number of fics in the Bucktommy tag skyrocket. Which is pretty exciting and amazing and a clear sign of how very excited the fandom is about this development. But of course there is also backlash, mostly from people who suddenly see their preferred ship in danger. (Honestly, when has a canon ship ever stopped fandom from shipping the people involved with other people instead?)

It's expected that some Buddie fans are disappointed. It's also expected that they would lash out (though, I had hoped people could for once remember there are adults and just because everyone is anonymous in online spaces doesn't mean there aren't people sitting behind those keyboards getting hurt by baseless accusation of racism and other things). I should probably not be surprised they are now also using the low engagement we have always seen with Henren as a weapon.

So, let's talk about fandom and ships.

There is no question that there has since season 2 always been the most engagement with Buddie content in this fandom as a whole. People saw the chemistry between Buck and Eddie and ran with it. Compared to that, the canon couples have all barely any content.

But if you look at any fandom at any point in time, there is a clear pattern between canon and fanon ships. There are only very few select fandoms where canon couples ever got a lot of engagement. Of the various fandoms I've been part of, I can only think of one at the top of my head.

I think the reasons are pretty simple. 

First of all, the fans get that couple on their screen pretty regularly. They don't have to wish and hope for it, don't have to search for the little details that will validate their headcanon. They don't have to go into fandom spaces to find content for that ship. They can just lean back without any kind of effort and enjoy this ship right on their screen.

And then second, those who do create fan content for those canon ships have to balance a very fine line. What of the canon facts will they dare to contradict to create their own content in fanfiction? (Fanart, videos, gif-sets are probably a little easier there.) Where and when do they deviate from canon? Is there even anything they feel is missing from canon that they want to see in fan work? Do they want to risk contradicting anything that will be established in canon later on? Usually, this conundrum leads mostly to short fics about missing scenes, but nothing truly epic. At least not as long as the there is new source material fairly regularly.

People creating content for purely fanon ships don't need to bother with most of those questions. Because they are deviating from canon anyway. It doesn't matter much then how far they go with that. Everything canon that comes later will just be dismissed with a shrug. Everything canon that happened previously and they don't like can be dismissed just as easily because they are already dismissing parts of it.

Then there is a clear divide between hetero, maleslash and femslash content, no matter if canon or fanon. There are probably people much better suited to get into the gritty little details about that. I'll just share some thoughts I have about any of those ships in this fandom because of my experience as a fanfiction author.

I've always been writing and telling stories. And I started writing fanfiction pretty early on, too, because I found a lot of freedom there in the content and relationships I could explore. Looking back, I've always mostly written maleslash. But I've also always had hetero and femslash pairs in my works. Have had works that focus solely on those pairs.

I know as a teenager I wrote mostly maleslash because I just got a lot of engagement for that. And back then that was a great motivator to publish my fanfiction. It's not my motivation to publish now anymore and it's never been my motivation to write at all. So there are some stories about hetero or femslash couples on my hard drive that I just never published back then.

For 9-1-1, I've been writing many of the ships there are. More than once I focused on characters who don't get much attention otherwise, not even in canon. I have some femslash stories published, most of them Henren. They don't get many klicks. And the comments I get are from friends I actively talk to very often who just read about anything I publish. Or from some very dedicated readers who I seem to have enamored enough with my writing that they'll follow me into pretty much any rabbit hole, I think.

I like Buck and Eddie a lot as characters. I adore Christopher. So, I enjoy creating for them a lot. But I also enjoy creating for the other characters and I'm scratching that itch regularly. But no matter the reason for why I write (because the stories are just in my head and the only way to get them out is to write them down), sharing what I create is more fun when I'm finding engagement over it. So, there are stories that are outlined or even fully written who I'll maybe never publish.

Where were all those Buddie fans in the past who now complain about the missing content for Henren? Where was their support for those who have written Henren all along only to be practically talking into a void? (Right, just as it was never about queer representation for some people, it was never about Henren either. No matter what they say now. They are just searching for the next thing the mob might be latch onto so they can pretend they are right.)

[mikhailwrites]

Remotely possible II / Ghost x Soap

Kinktober #23 - Sex Toys

Somewhat standalone-ish continuation of this thing where Soap convinces Ghost to wear a remotely controlled sex toy for a day. This time, Ghost gets his revenge.

Read Part I

Part II:

The absolute silence of the room is disturbed when Soap yelps and nearly falls from his chair. Everyone turns to him, mostly questioningly but, in Laswell’s case, with a clear suspicion.

“Sorry, sorry, something’s bitten me,” Soap murmurs an apology. A scarlet blush of embarrassment is clearly visible on his cheeks. Ghost is the epitome of indifference, unwilling to spare Soap a single glance despite this being all his fault. Well, the little remote controller in his pocket played a part as well.

“If I may continue,” Laswell interjects, apparently not in the mood for jokes as she explains the latest AQ resurgence in Al-Mazrah, accompanied by satellite images.

The rest of the briefing went smoothly and without any interruptions, which cannot be said about the lunch. Soap’s only saving grace is the overall noise in the mess hall, so the loud clang of a fork falling onto the plate and high-pitched yelp are only noticed by his squad mates sitting around.

Gaz leans in closer, looking from Soap to Ghost and back. “You lot are out of your bloody minds! If Price knew...”

“If I knew what, Kyle?” Says a voice behind Gaz’s back.

Soap promptly excuses himself, ready to leave the table. “Where do you think you’re going, Sergeant?” Price’s heavy hand lands on Johnny’s shoulder promptly, stopping his retreat and pushing him back down before Price sits next to him. “Well, who’d like to enlighten me, then?”

“I... I have no idea what you mean, Captain,” Soap stutters and hisses because someone kicks him in the shin under the table. Ghost.

“Last week, Ghost was acting like someone put a cockroach into his trousers; today, it’s you. I’d like in on the joke,” Price smiles. The kind of smile that spells imminent doom.

It takes Soap tremendous effort to hide the panic. He needs to say something. The longer he stalls, the harder it would be the sell the lie.

“Alright, alright, we made a bet, Ghost and I,” he admits, trying hard to think of something, anything! Fortunately, Ghost rescues them both. “It’s a shocker. Taped to a thigh. We were comparing our interrogation training and couldn’t decide who was trained better.

Johnny stares for a second too long. That’s... actually... ingenious. The sort of shitty brag-bet only soldiers can think of. And it explains their weird behaviour. Ghost’s brilliant! Gaz chokes on the drink he hoped to hide his disbelieving stare with. He knows very well what’s going on.

Price sighs and massages his temple in an equivalent of “I’m too old for this shit.” Yet, in the end, he only says, “I guess I should be grateful you’re content to pull off shit like this on downtime instead of the field.” Price shakes his head and stands to leave them alone. Before he does so, however, he turns back to them. “I hope it goes without saying that you cut the crap now and act your age and rank, lads.”

Soap nods, but Ghost is going to collect the debt to the last bloody minute, especially since Soap is on a rookie training rotation in just about an hour.

Ghost is camping on the roof of the armoury with some snacks and a pair of binoculars. He’s keeping Soap in the illusion of security for the moment. The Sergeant crosses part of the obstacle course to kick someone’s ass for slacking off. Ghost waits a few seconds into the apparent monologue until he presses the button. The setting is low, but he can still clearly see Soap flinch. Can almost hear him lose track of his words.

He leaves the vibrations low, knowing full well, from his own recent experience, how maddening it starts to be after just a few minutes.

He’s right, of course. Soap starts to fidget, then he starts to pace and, finally, sits down on the low wall because that’s perhaps the best way to hide the bulge in his trousers. Should’ve worn camo today. Ghost smirks at his own joke as he flicks the intensity slider.

Blush creeps high on Johnny’s cheek as he looks around, trying to locate Ghost. No luck. Simon is feeling particularly cruel, so he increases the intensity once more. Johnny very nearly doubles over. It’s enough for one of the recruits to come over to him, presumably asking if he’s feeling alright.

Soap replies something before he nods, stands up and apparently excuses himself. Ghost is reasonably sure he’s going to lock himself on the toilet and wank, and that just wouldn’t do.

Ghost leans against the stalls. There’s only one occupied, and there’s no one else present.

“Hiding from me, Sergeant?” Ghost says in a deep purr as he knocks on the door. There’s only silence. Then the lock clicks. Ghost squeezes in. The stall is way too small for the two of them, not that Ghost cares. Especially not when he sees Johnny sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, his trousers undone and something wild shining in his eyes.

Ghost’s own cock twitches at the sight. Suddenly, there’s an idea. “Stand up,” Ghost commands, and Johnny obeys like the good soldier he is. Ghost takes his place as he sits down and pulls Johnny to sit on his lap, back pressed to Ghost’s chest. It’s a little bit of work to get the trousers and the briefs out of the way, but they manage. Johnny spreads his legs as much as the trousers allow, and Ghost looks down over Johnny’s shoulder, humming in approval as he sees his hard prick already leaking.

Simon holds Johnny up with one arm while the other sneaks between his legs and a bit further until he touches the hard base of the plug, feeling the vibrations. He presses on it, pushing it a little bit deeper. Johnny whines, or he tries to, but Simon’s hand promptly clasps over his mouth. “Be quiet, darling, unless you want someone to see you like this.”

Soap nods weakly. When Ghost grabs the plug and starts to pull it out slowly, Johnny does his best but still cannot completely stifle the whimper and the moan as he feels the stretch. Ghost doesn’t pull it out all the way. Instead, he pushes it back in and repeats it. That’s when Johnny understands.

“Simon,” he starts but is cut off by the sound of opening doors followed by footsteps. They both still, Soap putting all that training to good use as he controls his breathing. They hear the sound of a belt clasp, a zipper, and the telltale hiss of piss hitting the urinal. Ghost, against his better judgment, resumes his earlier actions. Soap stiffens with surprise and, most probably, a bit of fear. Which, of course, doesn’t really help him as he clenches around the plug all the more. He’s happy for Ghost’s hand still firmly covering his mouth.

When he proposed this whole idea to Ghost, he had no plans of taking it this far. On the other hand, he should’ve seen it coming. Both of them were always up to push the other further, consequences be damned. It’s the whole reason they started this twisted parody of a relationship. Getting fucked by a toy in the public toilets is, however, the stupidest thing they’ve ever done. No, he corrects himself; the stupidest thing they’ve done so far.

All the thoughts leave him as soon as the soldier on the other side of the door washes their hands and leaves. That’s when Ghost picks up the pace. That’s when he whispers into Johnny’s ear to touch himself. He does, gripping his hard, neglected prick and flicking the thumb over the cock head, spreading the precum to make the wank smoother and easier. The plug in him isn’t angled right to hit his prostate, but the vibrations make up for that, riling him up, forcing him to speed up, to tighten his grip as Ghost whispers filthy little things into his ear.

The danger of being discovered, the rush of this whole daring endeavour, and, of course, the fact that Ghost has been slowly edging him for the better part of the day gets to him fast. Ghost forces his wrist into Johnny’s mouth, sensing he’s close and giving him something to bite into instead of crying out.

He does. Ghost hisses quietly as Soap’s teeth sink into the skin right before he feels him seize, watching the thick ropes of cum staining his tee and hand. He stays tense for a few seconds before sagging against Ghost, who catches him from sliding onto the floor.

This was a horrible idea. But god damn it, was it worth it.

[k7l4d4]

K Reviews and Rants: Miraculous Ladybug Season 5! Episode 13

Hello! One more episode until I review the episode I feel is the worse in this show to date, continuity-wise!

Now, Migration is... less bad then the majority of Season 5, but that's such a low bar to clear it isn't anything impressive to write home about. The plot is kind of, honestly, garbage in that it has Kitty Section be shilled as this amazing band in the making by Jagged Stone (not sure if we've ever actually seen him play at all, honestly, but he's a professional shilling an amateur band), while also having them being super hyped over signing on with Bob, which makes no sense as Bob has never been anything less then a scumbag towards them. Like, this episode would've made more sense if they'd had it that the group they were signing on with was actually run by Bob in secret and they didn't learn about it until AFTER signing. Like, the best thing about this Episode is that it doesn't do any irreparable damage to anyone involved, and has a genuinely cool scene of Marinette freaking out over realizing someone knows her secret that she didn't tell personally before hand.

Anyway, with that said, onto the episode review! As always, warning for any profanity on my part.

Episode 13: Migration 

Alright, Marinette shows up to a Kitty Section meeting, and goes instant noodle. Not as badly as normal, though. 

And we get a brief moment of Marinette zipping around greeting everyone. I know it's partially for effect, but dang, she's fast. 

Marinette briefly dances around what she wants to talk with Luka about, Luka cuts through the bullshit, and now we get an awkward scene of Marinette using Luka as a therapist. The awkwardness is mostly in how Marinette is phrasing things, personally. Like, starting a conversation with "as you know, there are things I can't tell Adrien" doesn't help matters as, for all MARINETTE knows, Luka DOESN'T know there are things she can't tell Adrien. 

And we get Marinette whining about "breaking Luka's heart" and I just... I'm just sitting here and wondering how long this conversation is meant to last. 

...The fact that Luka is basically reiterating something both Tikki AND Alya have told Marinette multiple times for her to go "so you mean I'm not cruel, or pathetic?" just kills me, and not in a good way. It's nice seeing Luka get some development, but it doesn't feel as believable as it should, if that makes sense. I don't get why Luka is meant to be the "team therapist." I don't MIND that he is the one, but it doesn't look like anything was put into establishing why that's the case. 

And right away, now that I'm back in... Why in the world is ADRIEN going to Luka for therapy!? It made SOME sense with Marinette, but from what I recall, Adrien and Luka don't even really KNOW each other all that well, and have interacted less than Adrien normally interacts with his classmates. 

Maybe I'm forgetting something, I don't know, but the show treating it like Luka being the team therapist is this established thing feels... weird to me. Like, if they had Adrien go, "Hey, Juleka said you were good at helping with talking about problems, do you have a moment to listen?" it would feel more... believable, if that makes sense? 

Ugh... I can (grudgingly) see why this episode is regarded a bit better compared to the rest. Seeing Adrien open up when he's been so dead set on keeping his thoughts and feelings locked up for FIVE SEASONS would be a huge breath of fresh air.

And the "therapy Luka" train keeps chugging along. This one, I'm less annoyed by, even if the set-up feels a bit dumb. Like, I doubt a bunch of amateur kids are making better songs than a famous professional like Jagged Stone, but seeing him show doubts about being a father and honestly wanting to improve it, getting his son's input... it's a MASSIVE improvement overall compared to the fiasco that is the show's efforts at trying to portray fucking GABRIEL of all people as a well-meaning father. 

And the "I don't know what I'd do without you" bit ruined it for me. Also, the kinda awkward ship-tease between Jagged and Penny for a second. Jagged struggling to be a dad? I'm cool with that. But the show is trying to push the idea that Luka is this brilliant therapist... it feels forced, especially when it's three consecutive scenes of him... basically just giving extremely basic and obvious advice. And yeah, sometimes hearing obvious advice is what people need when they are making too big of a deal over something that isn't really as complicated as they fear... but it's undermined by how the first scene involved Marinette hearing advice she's already heard, the second trying to set-up Luka and Adrien as being bros when I can't even recall them ever hanging out, and the third just gives me cringe-vibes at how it presents Jagged as being... kinda pathetic 

...And of fucking COURSE we get a fucking FOURTH scene of "therapist Luka." Nope, nope, I just... can't with this. And Penny going "I don't know WHY I'm in love with Jagged" is just... UUUGGGHHH!!! As strange as it might be, people tend to have REASONS they are in love with someone. Even if they are in denial about those reasons. This just feels like the show is shoving Penny into Jagged's arms. They should be able to give a fucking REASON why Jagged makes Penny happy. And yet, they don't, and I'm losing patience with this bullshit. 

No, no, people may not be able to explain WHEN or HOW they fall in love, but people tend to very much know what it is that makes them fall in love with someone, or at least have some kind of idea. I do not like how this show is presenting love as this "unknowable, impossible to understand force of nature." Is love mysterious? Yes, yes it is. But not to this extent; it just comes off as the show trying to defend how crappily it's written all the relationships up until now by going "no no, you can't EXPLAIN why you love someone, you just DO!!" and since this is coming from the same people who insist on treating the idea as if having two crushes at the same time is scientifically impossible, I call BULLSHIT on it.

Okay, seeing Anarka literally yeet Bob off her ship makes all this nonsense worthwhile for that alone. Bob's such a selfish, stupid scumbag that seeing him being treated like garbage just made my day. Thanks, Migration! 

...Yeah, the show saying that Kitty Section are better than a professional musician is just... laughable to me. They aren't BAD bad, but they are very obviously amateurs. 

...Bob Roth getting thrown overboard makes the idiocy on display of him trying to sign the contract for the band he plagiarized so worth it. Also, I wonder if the show will acknowledge the fact that he plagiarized them; that ALONE makes him an untrustworthy scumbag, something they should be well aware of. 

"Anyone can change," yes that's true Luka... but someone has to have to want to change and have shown that they ARE, and Bob has shown NOTHING indicating he's changed AT ALL, and hasn't even acknowledged that he tried to cheat your sister's band. Honestly, knowing the episode that's coming next makes this feel like they are trying to go for the opposite moral of "people never change, so don't bother trying to get them to." 

WHY are they acting like him admitting his promise to sign them up was a lie is some big shock!? The fucker PLAGIARIZED THEIR WORK!!! 

Yup, that's about what I expected. He fired all of them except Luka because WHY THE FUCK NOT!? This man is a fucking moron who doesn't seem to have even the slightest understanding that deliberately antagonizing and alienating someone YOU JUST HIRED is the epitome of idiocy. 

Yeah, the way they are having Bob act like a blatantly evil and immoral scumbag blaming THEM for trusting him would be honestly pretty funny (and whatever comeuppance he gets more deserving) if I weren't dreading what's to come. 

Okay, I can't lie, despite the pit in my stomach, seeing Bob reveal just how completely and utterly overboard he went on making the contract as unfair and exploitative as possible is kinda hilarious. Although I don't really see what's "small print and ambiguous phrases" about "can fire them whenever he wants, is sole owner of Kitty Section as brand, AND owns the rights to whatever they make for the NEXT THOUSAND YEARS."

Like, if they were going for a lesson exploitative and corrupt businesses that treat their employees and talent like tools, it could be really interesting at seeing such a laughably blatant scumbag reveling in being such a jerk and then getting what's cumming to him... but the placement makes me feel icky. 

You know, normally I would put up a token effort against Luka categorizing this as "all his fault," but in this case...? Yeah, no, he's spot on. He took a scumbag who has done nothing but be a complete and utter piece of exploitative shit each and every time he's shown up and done nothing to indicate he's changed in any way at his word that he's become a better person, so yes, this is ALL HIS FAULT. Although, now that I think of it, it's also the rest of Kitty Section's fault, since they were perfectly willing to take Bob at his word all on their own, even without Luka's backing. This is just stupid. 

...Uhh... I just... WHY THE FUCK DID MONARCH INSTANTLY JUMP TO LUKA KNOWING THE IDENTITIES OF LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR!? Like, he has HAD people resist him before, he KNOWS that no one (aside from his cronies) LIKE getting Akumatized, so him jumping to "You KNOW!?" Is utter fucking NONSENSE. It's the same BS with Ephemeral having him take a single word as "evidence" that his son was Chat Noir. Seriously, the Writers aren't even fucking TRYING!! 

I am curious as to how Bob's contracts haven't been destroyed by being chucked in the river. Did he get them laminated? 

Huh, they nearly had Rose admit to being in love with Juleka. Boo, quit with the dodging, writers! Just admit they are a couple!! 

...They had a rubber duck somehow get turned into a record by Bob's new powers. Nope, not gonna think about it, not gonna think about it, nope nope nope! Also, while the songs being sung by the people he's "recordized" might not be what he's looking for, they honestly sound better then Kitty Section did at the beginning, to me.

...Okay, the fact that Bob LIKED the Rubber Ducky Record is the one thing I wasn't expecting. 

...Wow, Marinette really isn't noticing that Luka is explicitly stating her name, despite the fact that she's transformed. I just... wow. Not a good wow, a "I cannot believe this fucking stupidity" wow. 

Okay, NOW she notices, and is currently freaking the hell out. Which is an appropriate reaction, if COMPLETELY the wrong time for it. 

Alright, I will admit, Luka expressing his absolute confidence and trust in Ladybug was nice. 

Yup, he's still an unrepentant scumbag. 

Oh no, the guy who knows Ladybug and Chat Noir's secret identities that Hawkmoth found out by complete and utter bullshit has to leave. Who saw this coming? (Raises hand) 

...When did Jagged see Luka stand up to Bob again?? Also, for fucks sake, WHY would him accompanying Luka involve ANY of that!! He flat out said it himself during Guitar Villain that he's one of the biggest chart toppers there is in-universe, he can just find another producer who isn't an exploitative scumbag like Bob whenever he likes. 

You know, this scene wasn't as bad as I was fearing it was, since it's not Jagged inviting Luka to come with him, it's him volunteering to GO with Luka so he has supervision and company until Monarch is defeated. Still, it's annoying how little focus is given to Juleka in this, given she's supposed to be Luka's twin. And with that, this episode is done. Phew. Not as bad as I was worried about, but it's definitely not a chart topper.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

All right, this is my post about John Oliver’s appearance on Russell Howard’s podcast that’s going to get way more detailed about the Chocolate Milk Gang than anyone wants (I can already picture the @lastweeksshirttonight reply to this to say they care, so I should amend that to say there is one person who wants that, but they have already listened to the episode and don't really need to be told what's in it, leaving this post still of interest to no people). So here is a cut.

It's been just a little bit over a year now since the couple of months I spent doing constant posts to update everyone on my progress through the rabbit hole of understanding the meaning of "Chocolate Milk Gang". A journey that started with an effort to just explain the name, but grew much bigger than that. Consider this post a continuation of those ones.

Okay. Okay. In order to find all the things I wanted to reference for this post, I decided to make one folder on my hard drive called Chocolate Milk Gang, where I collect all the video, audio, and PDF files that reference or relate to it, and I've got to admit I had a moment of looking at the whole folder and saying, "This is all starting to feel a bit Beautiful Mind." But anyway, it is convenient to have it all in one place.

Anyway. Here are the couple of clips I cut out of that podcast for that folder:

There's a lot to unpack here, comedian gossip-wise. Football stories that I'm always happy to hear again. Between Kitson's radio shows, Russell Howard/Jon Richardson's radio show, and The Bugle, I've heard enough different stories to suggest that apparently Al Pitcher's wedding was a hell of a time.

There's also some stuff in that Edinburgh clip that isn't specifically relevant the the CMG, but is relevant to some other stuff I've been posting about in the last few months. Stuff about the difference between British and American comedy, and how I'm pretty sure those differences are largely shaped by the Edinburgh Festival. Specifically by the fact that anyone can go to the Edinburgh Festival, making it very different from something like Just For Laughs that we have here, which is invite or audition only. And I think this is what makes British comedy much more similar to Australia/NZ comedy than it is to North American comedy, because they have MICF. Though I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

John Oliver sums it up well here:

You can kind of finish your ‘bulletproof’ – to the extent that that was true, which it wasn’t – but as close to a solid set of comedy that you can produce. At that point, you’re finished, really, right? So what are you going to do? Are you going to keep doing that? There’s probably many cautionary tales that will show you that’s not the way to human happiness. So then you start to break it. And that was where Edinburgh, for me, was so massively important, that you throw away that safety blanket, and then the next year you come back with a brand new hour. You spent a number of years making that twenty minutes, now you have to spend eleven months making an hour.

I wish he'd expanded a bit on the "not the way to human happiness" part, because that interests me. Going to comedy around here, I've seen how different it is from what I hear from British stuff, and obviously there are lots of reasons for that, mainly that I'm comparing low-level stuff that's local to me against great comedians from Britain. I know that Britain also has low-level club comedians, I just don't hear much from them all the way over here.

I have heard a little bit of fairly low-level comedy in Britain, and it's still notably different from what I hear here. Also, some of the comedians I hear around here have been doing it a long time (including my brother, who's been doing it 13 years, doing regular pro spots for over ten, makes enough money off comedy each year so he could probably almost live off his comedy income alone if he didn't mind being extremely poor), have done quite well. I've tried to see what their ambitions are, what the path is that they're trying to get on to the next thing. And there just doesn't really seem to be one. There are occasional spots on CBC that people would like, but those are so rare, so few compared to the number of panel show spots that comedians can try for in Britain, if they want to go that way. And obviously, in Britain, the new comedians are all trying to put together something good enough to take to Edinburgh, even if at first it's just the twenty-minute set that John Oliver was talking about in that clip for a mixed bill thing. No one here is doing that. They're pretty much doing the exact thing that John Oliver described as "not the way to human happiness", perfecting their 20-minute set so they can impress increasingly important club promoters for years and years and years.

It seems to me like a bad idea to dedicate your whole life to the thing that John Oliver (probably accurately) described as "not the way to human happiness", but I'm interested in how many other options there are. You can try for TV and radio spots, I guess, but there aren't many of those here. Some comedians around here try to audition for the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and Just For Laughs, but not many get in because there aren't that many spots available. A couple of people around here have started podcasts, but contrary to what the front page of Chortle each week might suggest, surely not everyone in the entire world can start a podcast. You could sell your soul to social media, obviously - that's always an option no matter what your field is. But if you want to do comedy and don't want that, what else are you supposed to do? I don't ask that question facetiously, I would genuinely like to know and I wish John Oliver had expanded on his point in that podcast to answer it. Which I guess he did, and the answer was to go to Edinburgh until you get good enough/enough attention to do your own tours. Or, in his case, you have Ricky Gervais happen to mention your name to Jon Stewart when The Daily Show is looking for a British correspondent. Also you start a podcast.

Anyway. That's the part where John Oliver explained some interesting stuff about the intersections between the comedy industry and the comedy craft, but that's not what we're here for, is it? We're here for some comedian gossip! And this podcast episode provided on that front.

Okay. To explain the significance of one part of that clip, I have to go back a bit. To summer 2022, when I spent ages looking things up to try to find the explanation for the name “Chocolate Milk Gang”. I’d found that it had to do with them being sober when all the other comedians were drunk, to them being considered vaguely nerdy compared to other comedians who were more shouty or smooth or alcoholics. So I got the gist, but this wasn’t enough to fully make sense. I kept coming back to asking: But why chocolate milk, though? Do they drink the chocolate milk? Do they talk about chocolate milk on stage? Do they regularly sacrifice cows in the middle of the night? Or was that just that one time?

The clearest explanation I'd found came from a 2007 article that said:

Part of a new breed of stand-up dubbed the Chocolate Milk Gang for rejecting a hard-living ethos, they include the likes of Daniel Kitson, Demetri Martin, John Oliver, David O’Doherty, Josie Long and Alun Cochrane, and can be characterised by their romantic sensibility, intelligence, geekiness, love of indie music and passive-aggressive, alpha male competitiveness.

But that doesn't explain the name. Sure, chocolate milk is a sort of nerdy drink, but there had to be a reason why that specific drink got used in their nickname. In the early 00s, I was hanging out with my high school friends, and we were nerds who didn't drink (not until I was of age) and liked to imagine ourselves as romantic and intelligent, but we never named ourselves after chocolate milk, because that is not a thing that just automatically happens to everyone who’s not an alcoholic.

So I kept searching. There were just barely enough references to the term on the internet for me to be pretty sure it was really used, but few enough references for me to occasionally wonder if I'd made it all up. There are really very, very few direct references to the actual name “Chocolate Milk Gang” out there.

They are so rare that I once listened to an entire Comedian’s Comedian podcast episode featuring the worst person in the entire world, just because I’d read that he mentions the words “Chocolate Milk Gang” in it, which turned out to not even be true. Actually, in the ComCom podcast, all he did was talk a bunch of shit about David O'Doherty. However, on a different podcast months later, he talked to a different guy about how DO’D had (shockingly) disliked the comments he'd made on the ComCom podcast, and it’s there that he mentions that DO'D was in a Chocolate Milk Gang. And I listened to both episodes. I listened to two hours of the worst person in the world talking, just so I could hear someone say the words “Chocolate Milk Gang”, because instances of that name being dropped were so rare. And he didn’t even actually say “Chocolate Milk Gang” – he got the name wrong and called them the “Chocolate Milk Brigade”. And listening to those two hours pissed me off so much that I temporarily lost respect for Stuart Goldsmith, a guy I very much like, just because he was able to be in a room with that guy and not punch him in the fucking face.

I hate to focus on the worst person in the world, but in the interests of laying all the Chocolate Milk Gang references out in one place, here's a compilation I made of that guy talking shit on two podcasts, and the Chocolate Milk Brigade reference is about 15:30 into it:

I get into the McSavage stuff because me listening to all that bullshit (and taking the time to put it into a compilation) really shows how far I was willing to go to find direct references to the Chocolate Milk Gang. They were not easy to find. I take it for granted now that I've figured it out, but it took ages.

I did, however, find a number of things that described the phenomenon, without using the specific name. Notably, this clip from the Stewart Lee TV show, Alternative Comedy Experience:

Or this clip from Russell Howard and Jon Richardson's BBC 6 Music radio show, recorded live from the Edinburgh Festival in 2007, with Richard Herring as a guest, looking back at Edinburgh 2006:

Interesting that both Lee and Herring identify them specifically as being strange and different for not spending the entire month of August drunk. That probably says more about Lee and Herring than about anything else.

So they go by many names, apparently. The Chocolate Milk Brigade, in the words of David McSavage. The Hanging Around Gang, in the words of Stewart Lee. The annoyingly sober nerds of the circuit, according to Richard Herring. The Guys with the Bags, in the words of Andrew Maxwell. An International Crime Syndicate that Sometimes Organizes Soccer Matches, in the words of John Oliver (okay, he was talking about FIFA when he said those words, but I think they also apply to the CMG).

That Stewart Lee clip came so close to using their actual name, but they still didn't quite say it. The rare instances of the actual name being referenced include that bullshit McSavage saga, that extremely weird Jay Richardson article that I quoted above (honestly the paragraph I quoted barely scratched the surface of how weird that article is, it's worth reading the whole thing), and a few scattered old articles that all seem to be quoting each other. The term "Chocolate Milk Gang" is mentioned on Russell Howard and John Oliver's Wikipedia pages, but not the Wikipedia pages of any of their less internationally famous core members (David O'Doherty, Andy Zaltzman, Daniel Kitson, Alun Cochrane), which is odd as you'd think it would be more likely to come up on pages for people for whom the CMG stuff was a larger proportion of their total career success.

But the main reference to it, of course, was what I called the Holy Grail Audio Clip, because it took me so much effort to find it, a few weeks of scouring the internet. It's the only clip I've found that really clearly lays out an explanation of what the Chocolate Milk Gang was, while using the actual name. It's from David O'Doherty's episode of the Comedian's Comedian podcast, which really should have been the first thing I checked, looking back (I consider it very lucky that David O'Doherty went on the ComCom podcast before the worst person in the world did, because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten his brilliant episode at all):

God, re-listening to that is reminding me of how exciting it was to find it for the first time. Actually, to illustrate how exciting it was, I still need to get a cat and name it Stuart Goldsmith. Early in the episode, DO'D talked a bit about his early Edinburgh days, and I paused the recording to make a post on Tumblr about that discussion, and how close they came to discussing the Chocolate Milk Gang, and how much I wanted my answer. In that post, I said something like: "Stuart Goldsmith, if you can get an explanation out of David O'Doherty for the term 'Chocolate Milk Gang', I will name my first cat after you." As a joke about how I do not want kids but felt that this was important enough to offer something on the same level as letting him name my firstborn. A bit later in the same episode, when Goldsmith delivered on that, I made a follow-up post to 1) share the above clip and declare that the Holy Grail had been found, and 2) admit that I do need to name a cat after Stuart Goldsmith now.

I've just dug up the post that I made after I first heard that clip, and in it, I transcribe what DO'D said. I shall copy/paste:

David O’Doherty: ’02 was the year where I came [to Edinburgh] with a show, I’d been a bit sad and tried to write a show… and I met just a bunch of people. I met Kitson, I met Conchords, I met Taika Waititi, who’s a movie director now, I met Zaltzman, I met John Oliver, I met Josie Long – I’d met her before but, we were all just trying to figure out a kind of a thing that we wanted to do. And it didn’t quite fit with what was successful around then, because none of us were… I guess you could categorize it as quite low-status individuals. As in, we didn’t walk out with smoke machines, and if we did shout from off stage it was something ironic, about, like, “Get ready to try and stay awake for an hour, because this room is bullshit. Ladies and gentlemen!” You know, and that was… whereas before, that was the start of shiny floor comedy that we see on TV now. So it was like people in tailored suits and bowing, and getting the adulation – that was just never a thing I wanted to do. My father’s a jazz musician, and jazz is like the opposite of that.” Stuart Goldsmith: In those comedians that we’ve named, do you see a sort of reflection of your styles in each other’s work? Because there are sort of similarities, like a common trope of that kind of gang is to treat something gentle and meandering and whimsical as if it’s, you know, like a rap battle or something. To kind of pretend like you’re Notorious B.I.G., talking about a unicorn. David O’Doherty: Oh, that. Yeah, I mean, that’s… that’s pretty low, what you’ve just said. Stuart Goldsmith: [laughter] Well it’s something that’s copied a lot now, and I think it originated with Kitson and with you doing Late ‘n Live. That whole thing of going, “strap in, buckle up.” But now, every idiot in tight jeans is going, “Strap in,” but without a sense of why. David O’Doherty: Right, yeah. Yeah, I guess we were… yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, I’ve always felt that I’m trying to say something reasonably profound. I’ve never done a show that was just a load of jokes, and was just trying to fill the time with talking about, you know, fairy lights and bunting, which was sort of the perception, I think, people who never came to the shows, or some people who reviewed it, would have had around the time. Of like, “Where is he from? I don’t know, but I’d like to visit it.” You know, I’ve always tried to talk about the things that were important. It’s just that those things manifested themselves as the tale of a suicidal lobster, which was the first show here, or whatever it was then. So, you know, none of that was very tough. I remember once, we were referred to as… Me: Oh shit. Oh shit. Please, for the love of God, tell me what you were referred to as. David O’Doherty: …because everyone else was getting really drunk backstage at Late ‘n Live, and we used to go over and get, to [inaudible, I assume it’s the name of a shop that sells milkshakes but I can’t tell what he said, it’s not important] and get milkshakes, we were called the Chocolate Milk Gang. Which isn’t something you see… Stuart Goldsmith: By who? David O’Doherty: I think Glenn Wool, or something like that. Stuart Goldsmith: Okay, for people who don’t know Glenn Wool, he very much typifies the… David O’Doherty: Well, he was certainly then, he was like a party, a mega-party dude then. I remember Andrew Maxwell… Stuart Goldsmith: [laughing] Sorry, even your use of the phrase “mega party dude” firmly establishes you as a chocolate milk guy. David O’Doherty: I remember Maxwell, who’s a friend of mine – Andrew Maxwell is such a much more alpha character – brackets, shorter – than me, and he once said to John Oliver, “You lads, you’ve always got bags.” Because we had, as in a backpack or a satchel. And we probably had, like jokes, or like, books, and he was always like, “What’s in your bag?” Like there was something going on, just… we have effigies of you, and we have ceremonies that you’re not allowed to come to.

Before finding that clip, I'd spent an number of Tumblr posts speculating about whether "Chocolate Milk Gang" was a name they'd given themselves, or whether it was something they got called by the media. I never would have guessed that when I got my answer to who coined the term "Chocolate Milk Gang", that answer would be Glenn Wool. So technically, the name "Chocolate Milk Gang" has a Canadian origin. That's fun.

In that copy-paste of that my old post, I would like to draw your attention to this quote: "…because everyone else was getting really drunk backstage at Late ‘n Live, and we used to go over and get, to [inaudible, I assume it’s the name of a shop that sells milkshakes but I can’t tell what he said, it’s not important] and get milkshakes, we were called the Chocolate Milk Gang."

I said at the time that it didn't matter, because I was so happy to have the central mystery answered that I could overlook one little confusing bit. But of course, I still tried for a while to look it up. I couldn't quite understand what DO'D was saying - it sounded to me like "favorait", or maybe "fav-o'rait"?

I Googled all these things, but it was hard when I didn't even know what type of place it was. I was picturing a sort of 7/11-style corner store, a place that was open late and sold milkshakes. But I didn't know for sure, so I was just Googling a word that I didn't know how to spell, with no definite context. Throwing in the word "Edinburgh" didn't help.

At some point I took to Google Maps, and then Google Earth. He said the went "over" to get milkshakes after Late 'n' Live, which suggested to me that it couldn't be far from the Gilded Balloon. They wouldn't travel all that far in the middle of the night when they'd just done a long comedy show. So I looked around the map to see if I could find anything by that name, but nothing came up. I eventually gave up on it.

However. However. Here's a shortened version of the clip I posted earlier, of John Oliver on the recent Russell Howard podcast episode, talking about Edinburgh. A clip of just the part that's relevant to this post, where he talks about the CMG days:

He said it! He said it! He didn't quite say the words "Chocolate Milk Gang" (though he came so close), but he did say the same word DO'D said, the name of the store. And John Oliver said it more clearly than DO'D did, I could be more sure I was hearing him correctly, so I was inspired to try Googling again.

I tried Googling potential spellings with the word "Edinburgh" for a while, but nothing came up. Then I realized something (and this part isn't going to make this post sound less Beautiful Mind-y): this is a tradition that started in 2002. The Gilded Balloon burned down in December 2002, and was rebuilt nearby. So in August 2002, when the CMG started, the Gilded Balloon was in a different place to where it is now. All that searching on Google Maps/Earth, I was looking in the wrong spot.

So I did some Googling to try to find the original address for the Gilded Balloon. My CMG research from the last year has led me to know a hell of a lot about the Gilded Balloon, because so much CMG history took place there, and I cannot emphasize enough how thorough I have been in my research. I know its layout and how the backstage looks quite well, since it was heavily featured in that Tim Minchin documentary (I even know more than I need to about how the dressing rooms look, by which I mean there were more shots than I needed of Tim Minchin with his clothes off). I know all about Karen Koren and Late 'n' Live and all these things. I know about the fire. But I couldn't find its original exact address.

I do, however, know it was originally in a place called Cowgate, which is a neighbourhood and/or street and/or square (this is why I've named the cow sacrificing event Cowgate, even though that occurred at the new location in 2003). And I found that the fire that burned down the original Gilded Balloon started in something called Hastie's Close. So I went to that place on Google Earth, figuring the fire couldn't have spread all that far. I set the year to 2005, which was the closest year to 2002 for which Google Earth had archive data around that location. And I explored the area.

I didn't actually expect to find anything, really. But then, suddenly, it appeared before me:

Mystery solved! Another mystery solved! Look, to be honest, most of this post has just been to give context that tries to explain why the fuck I was so excited to find an Edinburgh diner that, as I now know because once I knew exactly what I was looking for I was able to Google the place, closed down years ago. It's exciting because it's the last little piece of the answer that I was so excited to find last year. I can finally fill in the blanks of the transcript of the Holy Grail audio clip. That's what David O'Doherty actually said: "…because everyone else was getting really drunk backstage at Late ‘n Live, and we used to go over and get, to Favorit and get milkshakes, we were called the Chocolate Milk Gang."

It turns out that Favoirt is not a 7/11-style corner store, it's a diner that even had a license to sell alcohol late (according to its front window), but is the sort of place that appears to be more about the milkshakes than about being a bar. And it is, in fact, very near the original Gilded Balloon. Or at least, it's very near the place where the fire that burned down the original Gilded Balloon started. I am so pleased to tie up this loose end.

Why does that matter? Look, I'm not quite sure, but it definitely seemed important. Look, why does anything matter? Anything at all?

Like I said, a lot to unpack in that podcast episode. I have now unpacked one tiny part of it, and it was the least important part. But I did unpack it. It's unpacked now. You're welcome.

...As I keep saying, there are worse things I could have gotten deeply obsessed with as a way to cope with the changing world in pandemic times. I could have gotten really into Jordan Peterson, like some ex-CMG members/hosts of podcasts about a box for things people like, that I could name. At least I didn't do that. I just occasionally spend two hours on Google Earth to find a long-closed diner in Edinburgh. I'm doing fine.

[anonymous-bastard]

ooooooo opinion on fruit trees that have free fruit in urban areas?

@underworlds-favourite

So this is a topic I don't really know a lot about so I kind of needed to extrapolate from what I do know. So I talk about the combination urban + green first.

That being said before you guys read my wall of text:

Depends on the tree and the area in question, I'd say.

In general I am supportive of the idea of growing more food and greenery in general in urban areas.

Rooftop gardens, urban gardening efforts, greenery on the side of building, I WANT IT ALL.

Urban gardening brings free food into communities and gardening is just straight up good for you. Time spent outside and caring for plants is good for your mental health.

Unsealing areas (removing pavement etc) allows for drainage of rainwater and often goes hand-i-hand with more greenery. (Keyword: sponge city)

IF DONE RIGHT, plants can also have a significant cooling effect, and give more shadow. Which is important in times of climate change.

And if you ever compare the look of a street with vs without trees - enormous difference. Just visually.

Now onto free fruit trees specifically:

Native trees are always better. Just in general, for everything. Wildlife, insects, they are all little racists that only like locals stuff /j. But seriously, local wildlife is adapted to local plants. If you are going for something better able to weather climate change, go for something from warmer regions from the same continent. It does make a difference!

Location is key here.

1: I'm not sure how much pollution, car exhaust, etc actually effect quality/ eatability of the product, someone who knows more about this than I do tell me.

2: Height is (possibly) another thing - if it is in a public place, where people are supposed to walk by and take food (as opposed to clearly connected to an apartment complex/ a set of apartment complexes), you really don't want for people to need to get a ladder. Berry bushes, raised garden beds with vegetables, etc are probably the better choice in this case, or just trees that grow fruit low. Just y'know. Keep things at people height.

3: Again especially for public places: (some) fruit trees are pretty "dirty". A lof of drooped fruit before it's ripe, or if it doesn't get harvested. And that turns gross and attracts wasps etc, and in a public place no one feels responsible for clean-up. But whether this os truly a problem is location dependent.

The last point can be mitigated by getting volunteers that take care of the project. A necessity in general in many cases - fruit trees are pretty easy once planted, but many vegetables you have to plant every year, weed, water, etc. But I feel with fruit trees especially one of the advantages is they don't need a lot of work and you can just put them there, so yeah.

In conclusion: If you want to start free food projects, whether as a grassroot effort from a local or if you are working for the municipality: look at your location. Think it through what kind of food would work best. Is the maintenance effort important, how much space do you have, what grows well under the local conditions, etc. And then do it! And despite all I've said don't let fear stop you. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and you can adjust yours. It doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to work.

Also:

Fuck every politician and city planner ever that actively destroyed grassroot efforts for urban gardening and free food. I have nothing but contempt for you.

I would love to hear other peoples thoughts or experiences on the topic!

[crystalelemental]

Unit Teambuilding - Olympia

And now we come to Victor, who-what’s that?  Oh, he’s the last thing released this month?  He’s separated from Galar?  Well that’s weird.  So who’s on next?  Wait, Olympia?!  Is it Meowstic?!  No?  Sigilyph?  I mean...it’s fine I guess.  I was hoping for the cute cat.

General Overview Did you know Olympia’s DPS outperforms Challenger Gloria’s without the Rebuff?  1,170,045, compared to Gloria’s 1,135,827 on Pyro Ball.  I just thought that was interesting.

Olympia comes in with Stored Power + Calm Mind.  Her passives allow her to double stat boosts, and on grid she can get Ramp Up 1 and Barricade 1 for Calm Mind, meaning it is a two-turn affair.  Trainer move buffs crit by +3.  Full offensive benefit for first sync, with a Rising Tide type innate buff.  Brute Wits and Smart Cookie are ideal multipliers given her special defense boosting.  There’s little else she could ask for, yet they gave it all the same.  +6 evasion on entry, Ridicure 2, and Queue Cutter 2.  Those are.  Hilarious, actually.

Olympia of course has flaws.  She is a general pool pair.  A big one being the same thing I just bitched out Blue for: she cannot truly offload her self-setup.  She is going to spend three turns setting up, otherwise you’re likely missing out on Brute Wits and Smart Cookie.  There are options that can ease her setup, like SC Jasmine and SS Brendan.  She’s not as completely hosed as Blue.  But it’s a notable aspect of her kit.  She also has, just, nothing for team support.  Which isn’t just boring because Tech pairs should have a technical angle to them, but means that her applications are very cut and dry.  She’s going to support the damage effort, and if you need anything else...look to a different pair.

I like Olympia’s kit quite a bit.  I think she’s insanely good for what she does.  I think the defensive profile and immediate capped evasion with Ridicure and Regen means she’ll have a Gauntlet Solo count.  Buuuut she’s not that lifechanging.  Lucian, Sonia, and Courtney, by virtue of the absurd team support they provide, have more value.  But Olympia feels like a Top 5 for the general pool.  Top 10 at worst.  She’s here to do one thing and she does it exceptionally well.  I just...really wish it was Meowstic, personally.  Stoutland got a second chance with SC Steven, where’s the second Meowstic to make up for what they did to base Calem?

EX and Move Level? General pool tech nuke with actual power, full 3/5 EX encouraged for shenanigans.  That said, Stored Power is so bonkers as DPS that frankly, she can do fine with just 1/5 non-EX and just contribute through how much she beats things down.  But if you want to completely remove support from the equation, 3/5 is necessary.  Otherwise, you want a bit of support.

Team 1: Olympia, Caitlin, Lodge Dawn Alright, let’s start by talking about my favorites.  Lodge Dawn has special attack and special defense boosts available, with Team Sharp Entry as desired for Caitlin support.  Notably, her buffing kit is efficient enough through trainer move that she sets up Stored Power very quickly.  Caitlin can take sync for spread damage in CS, while Olympia’s Stored Power is concentrated DPS on whatever survives.  As such, this is a 1/5 Olympia solution, functioning as secondary DPS and secondary tank thanks to evasion.

Team 2: Olympia, Skyla/Jasmine, P!Dawn/Lucian/Bianca It’s hard to shop for Olympia.  She doesn’t really need much.  Skyla provides Defense and Speed to boost stats she doesn’t cover herself, while P!Dawn throws out Fake Tears.  I’m avoiding Lucian due to overlapping speed buffs, but you could swap Skyla for like...Jasmine or Dawn, and have Lucian handle the speed angle.  Or if you’d like, just throw in Bianca for Terrain.  Bianca can be the Tech alternative, or the support alternative, as needed.

Final Thoughts I can’t say much about Olympia because she’s not really teambuilding worthy.  She’s self-sufficient, pretty strong, and wants for very little due to low gauge cost.  She’s the kind of pair that’s effective at her job, but her job is straight-forward so there’s not much teambuilding to talk about.  Just bring something that sustains as a tank, and let her run hog wild.

That said, general pool.  For F2P players, you know the drill.  Yes, I know, we need to spend on these to get them to happen more often, I recognize this, but let me ask you: is that worth it?  Do you really care so much about the possibility of increasing more spotlights?  If DeNA wants to play hardball and release characters in spotlight just before anniversary, let them.  It’s not your fault if they bomb.  And come on, a Psychic type?  Like we really needed more of those.  She may finally be a Giovanni killer, but such a role was unnecessary.  She’s great, but she’s not worth breaking the stash over.  Just...don’t expect to see her in the ticket scouts next month.  Two years running, anything from July and August didn’t show up.  There’s basically no chance she’ll be there.

[darry-rules]

Scorn

Bloody and beaten from the journey you’ve had, you finally arrive. A haunting, immense palace of the long fallen kingdom comes into view. Crumbling staircases and ornate statues in every direction you look, each statue represents something, this kingdom… was built on fear. Fear of dying out. As you climb the stairs, you look at each engraving in the cracked stone walls. Horrific experiments displayed, various ways they have tried to impregnate their females, mutilation, torture, mutated fetuses, birth, death, and so much more.

You step inside the palace. There is an eerie silence. Deafening in a way as if the people of this kingdom are watching you.The only hint that people even lived here, however, is the bodies. Hanging from the grand ceiling of the palace, a kind of organic, veiny cord attached to each of their heads and stitching together into something unseen above.

You did not come this far for nothing. Your health is rapidly declining after having removed the parasite that had attached itself to you in the beginning of the journey. You are now bleeding out, your body unsure of what to do in the absence of the parasite that had once been a part of you. It had weaved itself into your body, one of its tendril protruding from the centre of your hand had acted as a key. You have killed the Crater Queen to get here. Each door, each puzzle you have thus completed, will be nothing compared to this.

In the center of the vast, empty room, the surgeon robot waits. It is a beautiful machine, intricately crafted to hold everything needed for an in-depth surgery. With its multiple appendages, some hold saws, others scalpels, and two long pincers. A main set of arms end in long, knife-like fingers.

It’s time. The ritual must begin. You feel fear now, knowing the amount of pain you are about to experience will be beyond anything you’ve endured thus far. As you place your arms and legs into the restraints of the operating table, locks snap into place to hold you down. The robot surgeon is stiff, centuries of dust and grime caked into its joints. It comes alive when it senses your presence.

Your limbs immobile, you watch as another machine emerges from beneath the operating table. this tube-like pump clamps between your legs, another gentle whirring and the instrument begins to work. A warm feeling spreads throughout your body, and soon, searing waves of pleasure wash over you.

The next procedure starts. The robot clicks and swivels to face you, its knife hands break the cold silence of the palace, slicing without hesitation into the exposed flesh of your abdomen.

You cannot scream, your anatomy has adapted to this harsh reality. Muscle and skin has grown over where your mouth should be. The robot surgeon continues the procedure, rearranging each of your organs. This will continue for the remainder of the surgery..

By this point, the only thing keeping you conscious is the conflicting sensations of pleasure and pain. As the robot surgeon continues to work inside your abdomen, another pair of arms emerge from its back. The two hands you had seen earlier, wielding serrated saws. On these tools is the dried blood of the last procedure. As the saws begin to spin, becoming a blur of metal, a low hum drowns out the sound of the knives cutting your abdomen.

The surgeon’s main hand grasps your neck to tilt your head toward it. It brings the saw to your forehead, and the low hum of the machine becomes a squelching spray of red as it slices into your scalp. The blade makes its way to your skull, and soon the saw has cut a clean slit all the way across your head. The saw stops, and the robot surgeon retracts the instruments back into itself. It brings a new arm to your head, and uses the pincers to grasp the detached bone. With a bit of effort, it peels the skull cap off your brain, tossing it to the side. A steady stream of blood momentarily blocks your vision. A heaviness falls over you as you bleed. You flinch as the surgeon attaches you to the hive mind, the fleshy cord embeds itself into your brain. One last independent thought crosses your mind. You no longer have free will.

The procedure… is complete.

* * *

December 2023

My inspiration for this creepypasta came from the atmospheric horror video game ”Scorn” which, as I’m writing this, I have never played. Only watched the playthrough on youtube. Discovering this game stirs feelings inside me that I otherwise wouldn’t have known.

The beautifully grotesque art design, inspired by the works of H.R Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, is an unconventional approach to horror gaming.

In order to connect to the hive mind, you must undergo a surgery, a surgery without anesthetics to take away the pain. The strangely frightening thing being…you must feel extreme pain and pleasure at the same time in order for the procedure to work.

Imagine the horror of waking up to a surgery being performed against your will. Perhaps you were once human, but those days passed long ago.

[clarktooncrossing]

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT IS I, SANTA CLARK! Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost is nipping at your nose. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. All the dogs in the neighborhood somehow learned to bark Jingle Bells in sync. Yet retail workers are still more annoyed with Mariah Carey. Snow is getting shoveled, tossed, and formed into sentient beings leading parades without permits. It makes for an excellent distraction as the Krampus abducts children for bad behavior. Fruitcake is exchanged only to find its permanent home in the garbage. Terrorists have hijacked the Holiday office party right before your boss can give you a Jelly of the Month Club membership as your bonus. And of course, the Turducken has returned to wreak its fiery vengeance upon an unsuspecting world! If all this doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, perhaps this festive slice of cheer from the Clarktoons will!

Let's make like The Ghost of Christmas Past and rewind back to 2014. Folks were suffering from Frozen Fever, both as a result of the movie and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. That year also saw Jimmy Fallon take over The Tonight Show after Leno stepped away for real this time, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 swung low while the Guardians of the Galaxy aimed high, people still cared about Kanye and Kim's relationship as if either people are worth your attention, Bill Cosby was outed as the horrible monster that he is, and most importantly of all, I initiated the 12 Days of Christmas event. Yes, clearly that's as major a moment as those other things I mentioned. Starting December 14th I would post a new pic or comic everyday leading up 'til Christmas. Our first year saw the Pizza Bites writing their oddball letters to Santa (with help from Mr-Herp-Derp), Crocie visualizing his perfect yuletide, and even a full length action comic starring me as a seasonal superhero. And in case anybody asks: no, the Holiday Knight isn't coming back. Sadly, neither will the 12 Days at this rate. Despite my continued best efforts, this festive event hasn't been able to return ever since 2020. Blame that on the last four months of every year becoming an increasingly busy time for. Should the choice arise, I will always pick spending the season with my family over drawing. Weird to hear, I know. Still, that's not to say I haven't been hard at work. You can tell I have considering this giant page of sketches I found lingering in Clarktoon Christmas limbo. Thus we have Dumpster DUDELZ: Regifted Edition! Let's take a peak to what's waiting under the tree?

[1] KARL THE KRAMPUS People credit that crummy 2015 horror movie for introducing Krampus into the popular culture. To that I say; you're all wrong! Clearly I did that a year earlier with my own character, Karl. Being a Clarktoon take on a German folk monster, naturally he became a big, bumbling goofball envisioned to have the voice of Richard Kind. It also meant he encountered Croc's Swamp Gang the most, Xena and Bumper especially. After years of the two (or at least Xena) tormenting the fluffy demon, it was time for a facelift. Honestly this design is a drastic upgrade over the original, making Karl more monstrous while not losing his approachability. Cuz only in the Clarktooniverse will you meet a cuddly monster who drags naughty children of to hell. XD

[2] NUTCRACKER: REB00TED CAST Nutcracker freak'n sucks! I have made my opinions regarding this boring ballet no secret over the years. For crying out loud, I compared going to see it to the Five Stages of Death. Nothing against anybody who does enjoy it, just don't count me among your masses. Getting me to like adaptations lacking Mickey and Minnie is a challenge. Then again, I enjoy a good challenge. While contemplating what I would do with the story one year, an ad for Matrix: Resurrections dropped onto YouTube. After seeing it I thought: what if the world of Nutcracker was set within the Matrix? Hence we have Nutracker: REB00TED! I plan to diverge more plot details later, but for now you can at least meet our cast. Starting from left to right we have Prince Leon, the Nutcracker Prince who's grasp on reality is slipping. Helping to guide him is the Count Drosselmyer, turned into Love-A-Lot Larry Beary. Don't let his cuddly facade fool you, he will whoop yo' @$$! Alongside his niece Clara, the badass ballerina determined to rescue her beloved and free the kingdom from the evil Rat King! What does the king look like? Good things come to those who wait...

[3] ROSIE MEETS THE HOGFATHER Any excuse to draw Rosie Stardust is an awesome one! Even if the sketch is last minute like this one. During the Holiday season last year this random little idea sprung into mind of Rosie exploring Christmas contemporaries across the multiverse. This would include Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Hearth's Warming Eve, Life Day, and of course Hogswatch. Anyone familiar to the works of Terry Pratchett will recognize the name. Just like those esteemed few will also recognize the mini-Claus counterpart the Cosmic Cutie's encountered. It's not the Hogfather she was expecting, but she will gladly take it!

[4] WILBUR'S PLASTIC TREE You'd think a collection of coupons would be the easiest to complete. Just like you'd think the monkeys would stop flying out of my butt at some point. Nope, that ain't happening. Blame it on my nitpicky attention to details, otherwise Wilbur's White Elephants coupons are already a third of the way done. In fact, the sketch here is already fully colored just waiting to be posted. Being the cheap sonuv'a bush he is, Wilbur naturally won't go for a natural Christmas tree, instead opting for plastic. No, the other kind of plastic. The kind that'll guarantee some poor tree manufacturer in Hoboken will get an angry phone call from an irate store manager. And in case you're wondering what he sounds like, my ideal voice actor is Daran Norris doing his Jameson voice from Spectacular Spider-Man!

[5-7] REDESIGNS FOR RANDOLF, CUPID, AND ZED My, here's a jolly trio that haven't been seen in a good while. Probably because I keep wanting to give them better designs! This is an itch I can't ever seem to scratch! Since I've listed all three of them together, let's go over each character:

RANDOLF: The cocky but caring step-brother of a certain red-nosed reindeer, Randolf hosts the famous North Pole 1 radio show alongside his bear buddy Zed whenever not hosting the even more famous Reindeer Games. Out of all the characters, Randolf is the one who's design if the toughest to crack. I want him to look young, but not super young. Think early to mid 30s if you will. It'd probably help if I could pin down a potential voice for him. Sam Rockwell is the top contender in my mind.

CUPID: Following some messy drama between princessofDisney27 of Disney and I, the original version of Cupid was thrown out and reworked from the top down. With an extreme hairstyle I 'borrowed' from MLP and an athlete's need for speed, Cupid lives up to her namesake who first pulled Santa's sleigh years ago. No idea on who would voice her if I could afford it.

ZED: Raised by gay penguins on a diet of Polar Cola and smooth jazz, Zed is a laid back bear with a beach comber's attitude.  So long as wherever he is has a heater and is populated by his buddies, Zed will go with wherever the flow will take him. His design is the easiest, being a polar bear in a Hawaiian shirt. One of these days I wanna draw him with his two penguin papas too, but for now we at least have the bear. Again, not sure who I'd have voice him.

[8] BUMPER'S A STAR! A sad truth about my Christmas tree is that I can never put a star on top of it. Everything we've tried is too top heavy. For the longest time I meant to make one featuring everybody's favorite floating marshmallow, finally following through on this desire this year. I made a shape template in Illustrator, drew the front and back of Bumper around it, colored it all in Illustrator, printed both sides out and glued them together. I would've just printed both sides on one sheet of paper, but printers are evil devices meant to torture mankind as a whole. I hate them! But I love this tree topper! ^^

[9] PANICKED TURKEY It's a shame Panicked Turkey didn't get to come out of hibernation this year. Especially when I had some good ideas for tips involving Canon Events, certain cartoon rodents, time traveling, dragons, and Rosie. Chances are I'll be able to use these ideas again in the future, but for now I just wanted to post something with the cowardly bird. So here's the sketch detailing his redesign from last year. Like Karl, this is another change I really like, PT feeling more expressive than he previously was. Hopefully we'll get to see this design in action again next year!

[10] I'll Have a BOO Christmas Without You ...I'm not even sorry! XD

[11] ALIENS OF THE ROCKAPOCALYPSE! Hey look, more characters you haven't seen in forever! This is Phil, the Clarktooniverse's resident one-eyed rockstar from outer space. Back in the day I used to do mock album covers for Christmas, Phil's girlfriend Yezzi standing in for Mariah Carey on one particularly great one that still holds up. Sadly there's only so many iconic Holiday CD covers you can do that aren't just the same generic 'things coming out of a box' design. Heck, it's why the last one of these I did was based on a Manowar album. That following year would've seen an all-new, totally original creation depicting Phil and Yezzi rocking around a dried out Christmas tree in a Nuclear Winter Wonderland. Sadly the full sketch was never realized, save for Phil's rocker gear here. Worse still, these characters have been retired until I can iron out the finer details of their story. Once I do, expect the ultimate comeback tour from the Aliens of the Rock! Just in time for the yuletide / end of the world!

[12] PANICKED WHO? What turkey? I don't see any turkey. All I see is this friendly induvial with a mustache! One who was just drawn randomly with no other intent behind it. Totally. XD

[13] KREEPY KRAMPUS Once upon a time I was able to complete entire comic storylines before Christmas. That couldn't be said for this one comic where Bumper and Xena both try to buy each other Christmas gifts, each of them going after different notable Christmas creatures to pay for them. Bumper would've gone after the wild Nog while Xena would've picked a more frightful foe: the Krampus! This image of the German monster is what she'd find while searching for information online, my intent to be truer to the original folklore than my usual interpretation. It would've made Karl's inevitable appearance that much funnier. Part of me still wants to see this comic fully realized someday. Until then; let this haunt your nightmares!

[14] ANGELICIA, THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON Remember earlier when I mentioned a comic centered around me as a Holiday hero? The one I will never bring back? Part of that idea involved a literal spirit of the season named Angelicia, an adopted sister of sorts to Finjix's own character Aklamos. Both of us have tweaked and upgraded her overall appearance over the years, this being her last for an intended Sketch BOOM that was scrapped. I really should use this character again, the question is for what?

[15] A TURKEY DINNER TO GO! Like I said, there was once a Holiday Sketch BOOM that was never completed. This Panicked Turkey sketch is one of the few things to survive from it. Ignoring how this design was pre-2022 makeover, I still think this silly little pic is hilarious! Next Thanksgiving I'll make sure to remake this in full color!

[16] THE NOG Along with Karl, the Nog has become a seasonal staple of the Clarktooniverse. For years mankind has wondered where the eggs for Eggnog have come from. Some silly saps think they come out of chickens, but we all know that's a lie! Obviously the eggs come courtesy of the wild, North American Nog! These rambunctious creatures hail in the colder climates, sticking primarily to the North States where they graze on wild berries, tree bark, and rare flowers. Whenever it's not foraging for food it's fending off wild predators, displaying its tusks for potential mates, running for Congress, or raising their young. That is, the young that actually get to hatch. Good luck drinking that next ice-cold cup knowing the Nog is 100% real and you're feasting on what could've been one of its young you sick monster!

[17-18] TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE DOVES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Doves! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Doves! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Doves! Heroes for the Holidays! BIRDY POWER! Back in 2019 I made a silly little parody of the Ninja Turtles based on the beloved Christmas carol "The 12 Days of Christmas". Was it an extremally obvious joke to make? Yes. Does my earlier pun prove I will stoop to such lows? Heck yes! Thus these two goofy characters were born and eventually given the names Currier and Ives by AnimatedTigerGirl. Currier is the one with the bo staff on the left. At home he's a easy-going party animal, but in the field he's a dedicated leader fighting to keep his family safe. Next to him is the nunchuck-wielding Ives, a hot-tempered brainiac with a big heart. Together the two must save their mother, face the 10 Evils of Christmas, and help out their new human friend Ash.

Standing in for their April O'Neal is Ash, one of their few human friends who helps her fine-feathered friends move about New York. Since this story is set during the 90s, she's naturally a skate-boarding tomboy ready to prove to her dad that she's more capable than given credit for. That chance comes suddenly when her father is abducted by the Partridge Crime Family and their ten specifically themed assassins. Now Ash must rescue her dad alongside these two magically enhanced bird-themed ninjas. Y'know, that old chestnut!

[19] SHORT-E AND SHER-I Dang, it's been a while since these two were seen either. I'm sensing a pattern here. At leas these designs have held up the best. Heck, they look especially good in their winter ensemble. SHORT-E wears basic gloves and a jamaica while SHER-I went shopping with EMIL-E to get fancier gloves and a beret! SLAY, QUEEN!

[20] SNOW CONIE MEETS THE NOG Yes, another refuge from the scrapped Sketch BOOM. This one featuring the unofficial mascot of the Sketch BOOMs, the Snow Conies! Or at least one, facing down the angry snout of a mother Nog. I envision these creatures having the temperament of wild hogs, much to the misfortune of this innocent sentient dessert!

[21] SIR PANICKED TURKEY, THE CANADIAN! Along with redesigning this cowardly bird, I also made a special bonus Panicked Turkey tip for Canadian Thanksgiving. It was very last second, going through a few iterations before settling on the final idea. Before then the plan was to either have PT surrounded by angry canucks with guns in a style similar to the John Wick posters or the giant chicken disguising himself as a Mounty, not yet realizing he'll find no peace in the Great White North. Ultimately both were dropped in favor or one menacing Mounty looming over the frightened fowl, which I thought wouldn't work until I saw the final product. Funny how that works, innit? Still, what about the entre in shining armor? That has to do with an idea I mentioned earlier, but I dare not spoil the surprise further than that. Like I mentioned, said idea can be reused for next year. So when Turkey Day rears its ugly head, Sir Turkey turned tail and fled!

[22] UGLY SWEATERS, TROPICAL WEATHER Yet again another idea I hope to bring back, though slightly modified. Originally the plan was to make Ugly Sweater pin-ups for the couples (or friends) of 3K with my friends Finjix and @burningthrucelluloid. This one was the only one sketched before Alec lost his Adobe art programs that would've allowed him to help in this project. Even then, my nitpicky attention to details got the better of me again and too much time was wasted attempting to draw the other pics. All we got out of this failed collaboration were Nerva and her buddy Weed Eater in their Hawaiian-style sweaters, the latter not happy about his situation. He was even depicted eating the sweater and partridge at one point. Who would've guessed the living Christmas tree would be a humbug?

[23-24] CROCZILLA VS TURDUCKEN When I released by Terror of the Turducken posters back in 2020, peeps said they would totally pay to see that movie. Hopefully the same can be said for its sequel, an epic clash between the titular Turducken and the colossal Croczilla! Why are they fighting? Who cares, it's two giant monsters beating the stuffing out'a each other! No doubt the posted to go with this creature feature would've been a legendary one! At least had it not been for my nitpicky attention to details. Plenty of poster designs were drawn up, including this one that was inspired by the then-current Godzillva vs Kong posters. Perhaps I can recycle this idea next year when the sequel comes out and the two fight another giant monkey. Until then, feel free to place your bets on which of these festive Kaijus come out on top!

And if you're rooting for the Turducken, enjoy this redesign of the character where each of its heads feel more distinct. Hey, if nothing else it's cooler to look at than another freak'n ape.

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

[aleksandrdubrovin]

Innovative marketing strategies

Currently, demand for Class A warehouse real estate exceeds supply, resulting in a shortage in the market. As a result, the vacancy rate dropped to a record low of 1% last year, while a balanced industrial real estate market requires vacancies of about 5%. Despite this, the market remains disequilibrium in favor of owners rather than tenants. Large developers can choose tenants and determine terms, affecting developer companies' marketing strategy.

Previously, developers have actively pursued marketing strategies to attract attention to their brand, increase market share, and establish customer contacts. With the right approach, these strategies significantly impacted the company's results. The developers used various methods such as creative banners, television commercials, Internet marketing, etc.

To promote their warehouse facilities, PNK Group has resorted to the help of marketing innovator Aleksandr Dubrovin, who led the creation of several videos. World-class celebrities were invited for the filming, including Samy Naceri - the main character of the movie "Taxi" - and Jean Renault himself. The videos were made in the format of extreme tours, in which the warehouses offered by the company were subjected to a kind of crash test organized by retired superhero tour guides.

Media trends have become increasingly demanding, showing that content must be high quality. A viewer spending more and more time on the Internet quickly loses interest, so more effort must be made to make your product stand out. One method that can work 100% is the use of celebrities. Aleksandr Dubrovin used this approach, got over 30 million views, increased brand awareness, and attracted new customers. Compared to boring advertising, which focused on the facility's deadline and area, extreme tours were a breath of fresh air.

In 2021, marketing strategy remains essential for commercial real estate developers, but experts advise shifting the focus to product quality. Aleksandr Dubrovin, a famous marketing expert and trendsetter in promoting industrial real estate, says that under conditions when the developer sets the requirements, maintaining the quality of the product is extremely important. There is often a temptation to go for quantity, but the demand for Class A industrial real estate continues to grow along with the growth of the online segment.

Commercial real estate marketing specialist Aleksandr Dubrovin is unfamiliar with an approach where objects are built randomly only to gain space and sell. Today the first place in marketing strategy is to develop new products that meet the needs of a rapidly growing market. For example, Aleksandr Dubrovin, as a trendsetter in promoting industrial real estate, recommends building two-story warehouses or small multi-user warehouses of a light industrial type suitable for small, medium, and large businesses. Statistics from significant retailers confirm Dubrovin's words about the continued growth of the online segment. Analysts at the largest online marketplace provided data on Black Friday results and compared them to last year's results. This year's total amount of orders exceeded 43 billion rubles, which is 2.6 times more than last year. Another major retail giant reported a significant increase in sales compared to last year - on its platform, the volume of orders on Black Friday increased fivefold. Such companies are buying Class A warehouses for their distribution centers, where goods are stored, sorted, and shipped directly to customers.

[molly-timmins]

Bromeliad Society of New Zealand journal -

Jan 1986 issue

featuring the garden of my maternal Grandma and Grandpa, Hazel and John Jack

Post- it note:

Hi Diane,

enclosed is an article on your Mum & Dad's garden in 1985

Kind regards,

Dave A

Visit to Mr and Mrs Jack.

WM. Rogers.

Our last society visit for 1985 was to Jacks' on the North Shore. About 30 members attended a pleasant mild early Summer afternoon. The front garden is very simple, a series of curves - a curved lawn, a curved pebble garden planted with two or three low growing, wide spreading junipers and a clump of Drosanthemum against a setting of red paving and red pebbles.

On one side of the house is a narrow border of low growing ferns. The back of the house is at the top of a steep incline, almost a cliff, looking out over the motorway and an inlet of the Waitemata harbouor. This steep incline is laid out largely as a bromeliad garden. Paths and stairways zig-zag downwards through pebble covered beds and slopes and scoria retaining walls. The garden slopes downwards to the east, getting the morning sun. It has been planted with a number of tall shrubs such as Schinus molle which give dappled light to the plants beneath. Some of the shrubs which might have cast too much shade have had their foliage thinned somewhat. The garden is virtually frost free.

The top terrace below the house contains a variety of well spaced speciment plants set out widely to display their individual shapes and colours.

On the next terrace is small greenhouse packed with miniature tillandsias, dwarf orchids and a number of offsets being propagated. Some wire baskets contained clusters of dry loving tillandsias placed as is, without soil, or other support, Several tillandsias were hanging from the roof on nylon fishing line. It would seem a good way to produce offsets. On T.Steptophylla was completely upside down and was producing 6 or 8 offsets round its base. Some offsets of Crypy. 'It' were being started in a small trough about 12" long, about a dozen plants in two rows. It will make a fine container full once fully grown.

Among the orchids a Sophrolaelia looked very colourful. The flowers bright red, about an inch across in a head of about 8 were very eye catching.

Back outside under a light shade is a large bed several square yards in extent, of red foliage Neoregelias of several kinds. Looking at them from a lower level with back lighting, they were especially impressive. Looked at from above there are a great variety of foliage and bract colour patterns to be seen. The individual plants vary from large to small growth habits and should be a great use, not only to bromeliad lovers but to the average Auckland home gardener, once they are better known.

At a slightly lower level is a Schinus molle-pepper tree - used for hanging an assortment of tillandsias. Most are suspended from nylon threads and have been in place for several years, some forming clumps a foot or more across. A month or so ago, from the recent flowers to be seen they would have been a mass of colour.

Looking down a steep slope there were fine plants, some of them very large. Most of the plants in the garden are in containers, plunged in pebbles so that they can be moved about as needs require. The stone walling and layers of pebbles were a lot of work to get organised, but now the garden is comparatively maintenance free, no weeding, and the efforts can be concentrated on the plants.

Near the bottom of the garden is a small area covered with shade cloth, the structure shaped to fit the uneven angles and slopes of the site. Here was to be seen a fine Phaius tankervilliae orchid with several flower spikes, purple and white. The bottom level of the garden for contrast from bromeliads, was of further low growing junipers and ground cover of ajuga. Here and there, through the garden are dotted bonsai of various kinds, a dwarf pine, a sciadopitys, umbrella pine, and others such as xanthorrhea or grass trees and a beaucairnea. Nearby was a large plant of Guzmania cryptantha about 3" high and across which has recently flowered. The larger Ae. pectinata was showing a nobly flower head bud.

Coming back up the steps on the other side of the garden is a collection of assorted colour forms of Neo.carolinae - oranges, reds and purples.

A little higher is a ground cover garden, a new one to me. Several square yards of tiny spreading plants coming through the pebbles and plastic to form a carpet. Purple and yellow sisyrichium were in flower. The foliage fans making a contrast to the ground covers which included cotulas grey and brown, Spanish shawl with its purple flowers pratras with blue flowers and a minute dianthus.

After several good looks round - one isn't enough - we were able to enjoy a nice afternoon tea prepared by Mrs. Jack and the ladies of the Society. To the Jacks, many thanks for a very pleasant outing.

I am interested in this article for many reasons. There is of course a personal curiosity about my grandparent's appearance in this journal, and a nostalgia upon reading about 'Paths and stairways [that] zig-zag downwards through pebble covered beds and slopes and scoria retaining walls' which I remember so fondly as a child. Although I was born 12 years after this article was written, it paints a very accurate picture to the garden I spent much time in during my childhood when visiting my grandparents.

Analysing this in a more critical way relevant to my masters research, I enjoy certain phrases throughout the article that can highlight some metaphors and parallels with painting.

This includes:

'A little higher is a ground cover garden [...] several square yards of tiny spreading plants coming through the pebbles and plastic to form a carpet '

The term 'ground cover' can relate to priming, and gesso, and the way one might prepare a canvas surface.

'a series of curves - a curved lawn, a curved pebble garden'

Many descriptors of gardens in this text relate to formal qualities of paintings, in terms of colour, composition and texture.

This article has sparked a new painting idea: I am going to do a painting of my grandparents' garden, from memory. The type of garden they had has a particularly beautiful combination of wilderness and curation - something I am currently interested in my practice.

As mentioned in this article, the actual species and layout of the garden was very considered, however the atmosphere within it (at least the two decades later in which I experienced it,) was of immersive overgrowth, the type of garden where you feel completely cut off from the rest of the world when inside because of the intensity in which it surrounds you. This of course could be because of the fanciful, and proportionally different way in which I experienced things as a child - but painting through this lens could contribute to an interesting painting.