#these guys were made at very different times in my life

[band--psycho]

Vander x Reader - In Another Life (Part 1)

SPOILERS FROM ACT 3 - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

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The way I sobbed during this first episode when I saw Vander again!

I just had to write this afterwards - I hope you all enjoy this!

You woke with a start, your heart beating at a rapid pace as a light bead of sweat formed on your forehead. 

You stayed like that for a minute, just sitting upright in the bed as you began to catch your breath; your eyes focusing on the environment around you. 

You weren’t in your bedroom. 

In fact, you didn’t really know where you were…it was weird, although this place seemed so different to you, it felt oddly familiar at the same time.

The last thing you could remember was being in the room with the hexcore in it. 

Ekko…Heimerdinger…Jayce…where were they?

Thoughts were running around in your mind faster than you could keep up with them; you’d barely finished one thought before another one took over, as you tried to work out what the hell happened and where the hell you were. 

‘Am I dead?’ you thought to yourself, running your hands over your face. 

But all your thoughts were halted when you heard the door to your side creek open; followed by a voice that confirmed you must’ve been dead, or just completely losing your mind.

Vanders voice….

“Good morning, sleepyhead, or should I say afternoon,” he chuckled; a sound that made your heart ache, and yet at the same time, made you feel all warm and fuzzy. 

It was a sound that you never thought you’d hear again… 

A sound that had made you feel safe; regardless of what was going on, even now when you had no idea what was going on. 

You heard his footsteps getting closer to you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look at him. 

Not even for a second, just in case this was just your mind playing a foul trick on you. 

It wasn’t long before the sounds of his footsteps stopped and the bed that you were sitting on dipped as Vander sat in front of you.  

He lifted his hand to your face, tilting your chin up with his thumb, “You okay, sweetheart?”

His touch; it felt so real, so real that it made you sure it wasn’t your mind deceiving you. 

It couldn’t have been. 

Vander quite often occupied your dreams, and in every single one of them, his touch had never felt as real as it did in this very moment. 

“Am I dead?” The words fell from your lips before you could stop them, coming out in a small whisper.

Your eyes met Vanders gray ones, that’s when you noticed the worry that was slowly building inside them as he stared at you. 

“No, darl,” he cooed, wrapping his other hand around your waist, lifting you out of the bed momentarily before placing you in his lap, “you're safe.”

Safe.

You hadn’t been safe in a long time. 

And yet, here you were feeling safer then you had in years, with a man who should’ve been dead.

Your man. 

The love of your life. 

He was here. 

He was alive. 

You could hear his heart beating as you snuggled into his chest, savoring the all too familiar scent of Vander….smoke, fire and alcohol, mixing together with a small amount of cologne he loved to wear. 

“You’re alive…” you breathed, tentatively reaching out to touch his cheek. 

He seemed different. 

But in a good way.

The dark circles that were once under his eyes were pretty much all but gone; and his eyes seemed happier than when you knew him, as though he was free from all the stress that once plagued him. 

“Course I am, darl,” he assured you with a small smile; before pressing a soft kiss on the top of your head, hoping that his small action would be able to ease your mind. 

It didn’t. Not really at least. 

You were so confused. 

You didn't understand what was happening.

You tried to blink back the tears that were forming in your eyes, tried to keep yourself together so you could figure out what was happening. 

So you could think logically. 

But there was nothing logical about any of this…the arcane….magic…it wasn’t something that was logical. 

But now, being wrapped up in Vanders arms again, made you want to throw logic to the wind and just stay like this with him for as long as you possible could, not knowing how long this could last.

You didn’t know what was happening, or how, or why; all you knew was that Vander was here. 

That was all that mattered.

Taglist:

@xacatalepsyx @barbersjoy @conretewings @the-lone-librarian @cass-brightwood @fortune-fool02 @arielpanda1 @mothratic @simping-ella @stickyrice5096 @levis-butterfingers @lesbianinyourarea @eternallyvenus @trixiex2 @nagislemontea @dazecrea @littlejoyfullthing

[rafeskai]

Life as We Know It — Rafe Cameron

Epilogue

Two opposites must navigate love, loss, and unexpected parenthood to discover the meaning of family.

Summary: When tragedy strikes, two very different individuals find their lives unexpectedly intertwined as they become the guardians of an orphaned child. As they navigate the challenges of co-parenting, balancing careers, and confronting their pasts, they discover that family can form in the most surprising ways. Through heartfelt moments and unexpected humor, they explore what it means to build a life together—one step at a time.

Pairings: Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: Character deaths & angst.

Author's Notes: That marks the end of this series :( thank you guys so much for all the love and feedback! I’m so proud of this series and I hope u guys love it as much as I do.

Masterlist: Here

It had been a year since the custody battle, since Rafe and you had found yourselves standing side by side, figuring out this whole "family" thing. A year since both of you issued a restraining order against Ward, and the judge granted it. A year since you stopped pretending you didn’t feel something for him, and he stopped acting like he was too good for anyone, especially you. Now, the chaos of life had settled into a strange, beautiful rhythm. It wasn’t perfect—far from it—but it was yours.

And, somehow, against all odds, the three of you had made it work.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The morning sun streamed through the kitchen window, where you stood trying to assemble breakfast. You had learned, over time, that cooking for Willa was an Olympic sport. Every time you managed to whip together a simple meal, she somehow managed to flip the situation on its head—literally.

"Willa, no!" you heard Rafe call out from the living room. You looked up just in time to see him frantically trying to stop her from scaling the couch like some sort of tiny, diaper-clad Spider-Man. “You can’t climb up there!”

But Willa was undeterred. She gave a small shriek of triumph, her baby legs scrabbling up the cushions like she was born to conquer furniture. You had to admit, you were impressed.

"I swear she’s part monkey," you muttered under your breath, flipping pancakes with a practiced hand.

Rafe stumbled into the kitchen, his hair sticking out at odd angles, the look of a man who had given up on ever having a decent morning.

“You say that like it’s a surprise,” he deadpanned, rubbing his face. “We’ve had this conversation a hundred times. No more couch climbing. She’s already an inch away from that giant coffee table, which, let me remind you, is made of solid oak. And do you know what happens when Willa decides gravity is optional?”

You snorted. “We end up on the floor with her holding a half-empty juice box like she’s just conquered the world, while you scramble to pick up the pieces of your dignity.”

He shot you a pointed look. “Exactly.”

You set the pancakes aside and wandered over to rescue Willa, who was now attempting to climb up the back of the couch like a small, determined mountain goat. Scooping her up with one hand, you held her up in front of you. “You know, kid, you’re lucky you’re so cute, because if I had to stop doing my work every time you decided to do a backflip off a chair, I’d be in therapy by now.”

Willa gurgled, her eyes wide and innocent, as though she didn’t have a single rebellious bone in her tiny body.

Rafe leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms. “I’m just saying, if she’d stop doing that, maybe I could get ten minutes of peace. But no. We live in a house of chaos.”

You smirked, watching as Willa grabbed his shirt and yanked. “If she’s chaos, you’re the tornado that hits right after,” you teased, making Rafe roll his eyes dramatically. “Just admit it—you love it.”

He groaned but couldn’t hide the small smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah, yeah, I love the chaos. But you have to admit it’s a lot of work. I mean, who’s going to put together her tiny little rocking horse without accidentally breaking something?”

“Not me,” you said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I broke that rocking horse three times already.”

At that, Rafe laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, I’ll take that as my cue to fix it. You keep trying to make breakfast, and I’ll figure out what’s going on with the toy horse that’s apparently haunted.”

Willa babbled in your arms, and you kissed the top of her head. “I’m not saying this to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure she is a secret agent in training. I’ve seen her figure out how to break into places she’s not supposed to be like she’s in a spy movie.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Spy movie? She’s more like a tiny burglar who knows how to manipulate you with her big eyes and unstoppable giggle.”

You chuckled, nodding. “Fair. But I still think she could make a killing in espionage. Maybe we should start saving for her college fund in case she ends up needing a fake passport.”

Rafe grinned, his mood visibly lightened by your banter. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to need therapy more than we need a college fund. But I’ll get started on that fake passport idea, just in case.”

You grinned back at him, feeling that familiar warmth settle in your chest. There was a time—just a year ago—when you had no idea what your future would look like. Now, here you were, a family, even if it didn’t look like any family you had ever imagined.

“Well,” you said, turning back to the pancakes, “we better get our act together before she eats all the syrup by herself.”

Rafe snorted and shot you a grin. “You think she’s not going to try that already?”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Later that day, after Willa’s nap (which, let’s be honest, was more of a battle than an actual nap), you and Rafe found yourselves in the backyard, taking a breather after the chaotic lunch you’d just survived. Willa was happily playing in her little sandbox, tossing sand like it was confetti at a New Year’s party, while you and Rafe collapsed onto the porch swing, exhausted but content.

"How the hell did we get here?" you asked, your voice quiet, more to yourself than to him.

Rafe leaned back with a sigh, staring up at the sky. "I’m pretty sure we got here because you’re too stubborn to admit you love me," he said with a grin.

You nudged him with your elbow. "Excuse me, but it’s not just me that’s stubborn. Have you seen the way you try to resist her puppy-dog eyes? You can’t even handle Willa when she does her sad little face, and you know it."

He groaned. “It’s my kryptonite. I’m weak. I’ll admit it.”

“Good. Because that means you’re finally accepting that she’s the boss around here. We’re just along for the ride.”

Rafe chuckled, nudging you back. “If that’s true, then I’m okay with it. Besides, she has the best team behind her, right?”

You smiled softly, watching Willa scoop up a handful of sand and drop it like a tiny little sandstorm. “Right. And we’re the best team for her.”

There was a pause, a quiet moment where both of you watched Willa. The future was still uncertain—life always was—but for the first time in a long time, it didn’t seem so scary.

“Well,” Rafe said, standing up and stretching, “I guess we better go make sure our future crime boss doesn’t eat the sand. You know, for her health.”

You snorted, laughing as you stood too. “You mean for the safety of our sanity?”

“That too,” Rafe said, laughing as he grabbed your hand and pulled you into a warm hug.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And for once, that was enough.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

And so, life continued. Chaotic. Messy. Full of love. Your newfound family was far from conventional, but it was undeniably theirs—and somehow, that made it all the more beautiful.

Plus, Willa? She’d definitely grow up to be a world-class agent of chaos, and Rafe and you would have to learn to live with that.

But at least you’d be together.

© 2024 rafeskai | All rights reserved. This fanfiction is a work of fiction inspired by characters from Outer Banks, and no part of it may be reproduced or distributed without permission.

[screamofdespair]

Director 出﨑 統 Osamu Dezaki talks about Oniisama E...

Oniisama E... was the first project I worked on at Tezuka Productions. At that time, I had left my work at Tokyo Movie Shinsha and was focusing on OVA projects like B.B. and Sō Ryū Den. One day, a producer named Kuniharu Nagayama, with whom I had worked since my time at Mushi Production and who later joined Tezuka Productions, approached me with an offer. He said: "Why don't you direct it?" I replied, "I always wanted to work on Tezuka Osamu’s original works, but at Mushi Production, I was working on Ashita no Joe" Even after joining Tezuka Productions, they still wouldn’t let me handle Tezuka-sensei’s works. That dream was eventually fulfilled with Black Jack later.

Since I directed the second half of The Rose of Versailles, which is also a work by Ikeda-san, she apparently remembered me, and I imagine there was a conversation suggesting: 'If we’re going to adapt Oniisama E… into an anime, it should be done by that person."

I don’t usually read shoujo manga a lot. The only ones I’ve read are The Rose of Versailles and Aim for the Ace!, which I personally adapted into anime. I feel embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know anything about Oniisama E..., so I quickly read the original work. I found it very interesting. It’s a story full of selfish characters, and I really love that kind of thing.

Some may think this work differs from my past projects, but even with series like Ashita no Joe and Aim for the Ace!, which are often categorized as “sports dramas,” what I truly want to focus on isn’t the sports themselves but the human relationships and drama behind them. I’m someone who wants to portray drama, so I thought, “Oniisama E... is exactly the kind of drama I’m talking about!” (laughs).

“This is a world completely unknown to me. How fascinating!” I thought. As men, we don’t understand women, do we? There are times I find them amazing, and other times, scary. They are truly an unknown world. Throughout my life, I’ve had relationships with a few women, but that’s just a small part of the overall picture. In that sense, i just let my imagination run wild and thought, 'It would be amazing if such creatures existed!'. But as I read and tried to understand the original work, I also thought, They are just human beings like us.

Before starting the anime adaptation, I met with Ikeda-san to discuss about it. She didn’t provide any detailed requests or instructions in the direction, she simply said, 'I’ll leave it in your hands.' However, she made one exception: she specifically asked that Kaoru no Kimi, who dies in the original work ending, remain alive in the anime.

Ikeda-san's charm as a writer lies in how every character is desperately trying to live. Their actions make sense as you read, and you can empathize with them. They end up this way because they are trying their best. They end up this way because they’re hurt. They are people who, in regard to what they’ve done, somehow try to take personal responsibility, aren't they? In that sense, I really "understand" them.

The first character to catch my attention was Rei Asaka, or Saint-Juste. First, I just loved the name “Saint-Juste.” It left a strong impression on me because the name appeared in the The Rose of Versailles as the alias of an assassin. The powerful imagery of that story stayed with me. I thought, “This guy is really fascinating.” However, in the anime, we only managed to explore his character for one or two episodes. Because of that, I wanted to portray Saint-Juste in Oniisama E... as if she were someone transcending time and space. she’s such a poetic and deeply complex character, isn’t she? That's why I had her take pills from the very first episode.

Since it was broadcast on satellite TV, I was told we could push boundaries... This story focuses on adolescents peeking into the adult world, right? So, I figured that kind of portrayal was fitting. All the characters in the story bear emotional scars, don’t they? Whether it’s Saint-Juste or Kaoru no Kimi. Nanako was the only one who didn’t, which made her think, “I want scars too”. That’s essentially what the story is about, right?

Mariko Shinobu was also a fascinating character to depict. Her lipstick left a strong impression. When she made her vibrant entrance in the first episode, I remember thinking, “Ah, this series might really work.” Every project has a moment where a certain image feels like its the “starting point,” and for Oniisama E, that was Mariko. Even in the original work, she’s very impactful. The way her wavering emotions as a young girl are portrayed is truly compelling.

For instance, the way her father’s story unfolds feels incredibly realistic. And the way she quickly bonds with Nanako, that kind of behavior feels uniquely feminine, doesn’t it? Between men it’s difficult to overcome emotional barriers, and relationships tend to be much more detached. But between women, they can form extraordinarily close bonds, which might later transform into hatred.

If the other person is just a little more attractive or possesses something you lack, you may initially admire them and try to discover what makes them so special. But the moment you realize that quality can never truly be yours, they become your enemy. On the surface, you might get along, but if something sets it off, everything falls apart. You don’t even want to see them or hear their voice. You might even go so far as to steal the guy they’re dating. It can escalate to that level.

Men, I think, suppress those raw emotional instincts to some degree. On the other hand, women live constantly in that kind of emotional tension... That must be exhausting. Well, this is just from my imagination, of course (laughs).

Kaoru no Kimi has a masculine purity, yet she is bound by the fate of being a woman. She is more manly than any man. In a story like this, which features only women, the contrast might raise the question: 'What should a man be like?'

I created a scene where Kaoru no Kimi and Saint-Juste end up in bed together, but this wasn’t about homosexuality or anything like that. It was a manifestation of tenderness between two souls, each burdened with their own profound wounds. It was meant to show that something like this could happen. I wanted to portray it beautifully. However, those who saw it may have interpreted it differently (laughs).

As I was working on it, I came to realize that the one carrying the deepest emotional scars was actually Fukiko. When I realized that, she started to resemble to Reika Ryuzaki, aka Madame Butterfly, from Aim for the Ace! I portrayed Madame Butterfly as a woman so exemplary, so beautiful, and so strong that it inevitably leads people to wonder if such perfection hides deep inner struggles. My basic premise is that "the more beautiful a person is, the heavier the burdens they must bear." "The more beautiful they are, the more they must suffer." Of course, it's not always like that in real life. So, I decided to portray Fukiko's past and inner thoughts, as if looking through a magnifying glass. I even started imagining things that weren’t in the original work. Especially in the latter half of the series. Fukiko was particularly well-developed.

In terms of expanding the original story, which only consisted of two volumes, into 39 episodes, the writers really worked hard. At that time, Masami Mori also wrote the script for the OVA Black Jack that I directed, she was around 20 years old. Tomoko Komparu was in her 30s, and Chifude Asakura was in her 40s, so we had three female scriptwriters from different generations, and they all worked really hard. I would often ask them things like, "Isn’t this really how women are?" or "You must be thinking this, right?" and try to get them to open up their true feelings. Even so, it was hard to get them to reveal their true feelings, but when women write, sometimes there would be lines that would make me think, "Huh?", "A man could never have written this." I’m not the kind of director who always follows the script to make the storyboard but i used those impactful lines as a starting point, and then I explored the characters complexities. It was a really interesting and stimulating process. Every time I met Ikeda-san, she would ask me, "How do you understand women so well, Dezaki-san?" I would reply, "Eh? I don’t understand them at all" (laughs). It’s all just from my imagination. I’m sure in reality it’s different, but that’s how I portrayed it.

I think Akio Sugino probably enjoyed drawing women like Fukiko. Her grace was something only he could depict. Without that grace, her strength wouldn’t have been conveyed. That sense of elegance in his artwork was something he must have been born with. Well, that’s how it is with all of his works, but that quality really contributed strongly to the drama.

For the cast, I had the late sound director Etsuji Yamada think through a lot of things. We had a truly luxurious cast. Among so many experienced professionals, I had Hiroko Kasahara play Nanako. After listening to her audition tape, I felt something from it. However, I believe it was one of her first lead roles in a series. For that, her character was a bit too heavy, don’t you think?. She struggled at first, but gradually, she got better. In a way, I think she probably synced well with the character of Nanako, who was gradually growing and developing. For the dubbing, the first episode had the colors already added to the animation, but after that, we mostly recorded with just the finished drawings. Of course, this wasn’t something to be praised, but for this particular work, I think it might have actually worked well. The idea was that, by not focusing on synchronizing the voice with the lip movements, the voice actors were able to pour more energy into their performances. There were a lot of heavy lines, after all. Recording authentic, raw dialogue and then matching the animation’s lip movements to it. I think this approach worked well for the piece in the end. There was one time when the animation’s mouth movements and the voice didn’t quite match. It was in episode 17, where Fukiko found the letter Nanako wrote to her older brother and scolded Nanako for it. I decided to darken the scene at that moment. The line "Now, rip it in front of me" was a very striking one, so I secretly thought it turned out to be a good effect.

Source: Oniisama E... Blu-Ray BOX SET Booklet.

Note : The translation might not be the most accurate word-for-word, but i did my best to make it coherent.

[not-available-for-comment]

Wow I do not like this take at all. It correctly defines popular culture while getting basically everything about it wrong.

Yeah, pop culture is meant to have broad appeal. It doesn’t make you a sophisticate to like it. It also doesn’t make you cringe or mean you have bad taste, and it doesn’t mean that pop culture is inherently poorly constructed.

Pop culture is the Reese’s peanut butter cup of the world. Liking it is not groundbreaking. It’s made to be easily liked. Disliking it may make you the minority but it doesn’t make you more correct or special—it just means your taste diverges from most people’s on the topic of chocolate and peanut butter. If you go to a nice restaurant, you won’t expect to see Reese’s peanut butter cups on the dessert menu—you’d expect the chef to make something themselves, ideally with better ingredients and a more complex flavor profile. If people act like there’s no difference between Chef So-and-So’s chocolate torte with raspberry-thyme coulis and a Reese’s peanut butter cup in terms of quality, they’re either not very sophisticated or just flat out willfully obtuse.

But it’s also wrong to say we can’t talk about pop culture seriously if we want to. Perhaps you didn’t explicitly say it was, OP, but generally people equate bad, vulgar, cringe taste with things not worth spending time or mental energy on, and I’m frankly very strongly against that. Things that are broadly popular are useful on a number of vectors. They can tell us things about what broad swathes of people care about, how viewpoints are changing, what people’s power fantasies and aspirations are. And even if they’re just the equivalent of a silly little piece of candy, they can be well made for what they are. Sweet velvety chocolate against the salt and slight graininess of the peanut butter. Just large enough to feel indulgent—for most people it’s most comfortable to eat in 2-3 bites. Melts on the tongue. Sure, I could’ve probably gotten a full paragraph out of Mx Chef’s chocolate torte, and I only got about 3 sentences out of a Reese’s cup, but that’s not really my point.

My point is that yes, some people do seem overly proud of having a diet exclusively of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and I’m guessing that’s what the OP is addressing. But also Shakespeare was lowbrow pop culture. Liszt was a heartthrob musician. Many of our preeminent women writers of the past were published in the equivalent of Better Homes and Gardens or Real Simple. Not every respected contributor to Western culture has come from pop culture—the guy* who wrote “Ode to a Grecian Urn” was not trying to appeal to the lowbrow everyman—but the distinctions are not as sharp as they’re being made out to be here.

You can and in fact should insist on having serious conversations about people who tried to say serious things about the world and humanity in their art. In her essay collection The Death of Adam, Marilynne Robinson writes** an impassioned call to pursuing art and art criticism that approaches ideas expansively and ambitiously, and she ends with the painful phrase, “I miss civilization, and I want it back.” I felt that plea so strongly when I read it 20 years ago, and I don’t want to squash people who want that too. But I’d really, really caution against the arrogance of assuming that just because you don’t personally enjoy something, or you find it gratingly popular, serious discussion of it is not worthwhile. If you wish to pursue an intellectual life, you don’t have to spend all your time in the mud (to introduce a new metaphor at the eleventh hour) but it’s also unwise to ignore everything that grows from it.

___

*that said, while I adore Keats, I also find him very silly most of the time

**I wish I could quote more of it but I had to really ruthlessly purge my library before my last move and I can’t find my copy anymore.

not to be vulgar but the point of popular culture is to appeal to the largest swathe of people. if you like popular culture you cannot claim to be special! you cannot be literary or high culture or whatever floating signifier of intellectual sophistication you want because those are defined by their exclusion. sorry. just embrace your cringe and bad taste that's vastly more respectable.

[walnut-tries-too-hard]

Session 6 double up info dump

Ok, so I'm obsessed with this idea. So it's time to share all of my thoughts on this headcannon.

There was a lot of panic, naturally. For one second, they're humans. The next, they're all knew hybrids.

Grian

-Grian had no idea that people's hybrid traits would be affected by the wild card.

-He knew that the animals would all be swapped but, when everything died, Skizz and Scar started freaking the fuck out because Grian all of a sudden didn't have wings.

-There were they dots, and then boom. He's a creeper like Doc.

-How Doc never exploded was an absolute mystery. Just the stress of Skizz and Scar alone nearly made him explode.

Renchanting

-Ren didn't immediately notice that he wasn't a dog. It was after Martyn started to freak tf out that he realized his hearing was VERY different. And he didn't have a tail.

-That was a fairly easy adjustment aside from this new strange instinct to fly??

-For Martyn, he suddenly had to keep himself very chill, lest he burn down their base. Again.

-Everytime Ren was a different hybrid he changed up his full title. Rather than Rendog; there was Renmoth, Rensheep/Renram, Renbird...ect.

-Those are actually all the differnent versions of Ren I went through trying to draw him.

-Martyn spent a lot of time with Tango trying to figure out how to handle the fire.

General/misc.

-Scott went from creaking, to human, to siren. Lovely whiplash. No flashbacks to limited life, what do you mean?

-Tango was struggling the whole session. He was already cold in the overworld but that was helped with jackets and all that. Now he was physically cold and he didn't know how to fix it. Why were overworlders so cold?!

-All of the lifers were used to being red with their typical hybrid traits. The red lives were a little more out of control than usual.

-Many people, such as Tango had to get used to not having a tail. His balance wasn't as bad as say...Impulse. He's a big guy, who'd depending on his tail far more than he thought.

-The very first change up Cleo got was being a dog. I guess you could say...DoggyCleo? (I'll see my way out). Scott jumped at the image of them as a human, as is. As a dog like Ren? Yeah, that was a surprise.

-Joel was just chilling then there was a poof around him and his ogre traits were gone. Not like he noticed. His wolves were dead.

-It was the same case for Bdubs. He was more focused on his horse. three dots and then it felt wrong to be in the sun. It even hurt a little bit. It took Joel looking over to realize he was looking at a phantom hybrid.

-People were willing to help each other to understand being a certain type of hybrid, like I said with Tango helping Martyn, and Scar definitely giving helpful advice to Joel.

-Sheep Ren at some point got stuck with goat Scar and bull Bdubs. They couldn't help from bonking into each other. Explained Zed, Beef, and Doc.

I'm obsessed with this idea, if you can't believe it.

Feel free to leave questions or request about this

[siilyclown]

Here are some refs for my Smile For Me OCs!! Hopefully I'll be posting more about them soon :]]

[n0bluev]

@fushiglow hmm….wonder who i’d draw this for all of a sudden and why… 🤔🤔

[crtter]

Why, that’s my main man Louis XVI! We all know him. You know, married Marie Antoinette, helped with the American Revolution War, lost his head during the French Revolution… Louisville in Kentucky is named after him! I like this portrait. It has him wearing his coronation robes. Very snazzy. It wasn’t painted at the time of his coronation though. He was 19 when he ascended to the throne after his grandfather, Louis XV, died from smallpox. He got a different portrait of him painted then. This is a later piece, from the 1780s, if I’m not mistaken. I think he’s in his mid-thirties here.

Anyway, his non-king name was Louis Auguste, he was born in August 23, 1754 and he has never caught a single break in his life. I mean, don’t get me wrong, in the greater scheme of things the French Revolution was a net positive for the world. Like, my country could still be a colony to this day if Napoleon hadn’t ascended to the throne and scared the king of Portugal into going hiding in Brazil. But you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the guy. Nothing ever went his way!

To start off, he was never meant to be king at all and, in his heart, he’d probably would rather have been anything else. His father was the next in the line of succession, and after him, it would be his older brother, who his family like, HEAVILY favored over him and didn’t even try to hide it. This meant he didn’t get nearly as good of an education as his brother did, getting stuck with an elderly, very conservative tutor who mostly only taught him religion and morals. But his brother would die at only nine years old (Louis was six then) from a bone infection after a bad fall from being pushed a little too hard while roughhousing with his friends. Then his father would die as well, of tuberculosis, when he was eleven, and his mother would follow a bit over a year later, having fallen into a deep depression after her husband’s death. So most of his immediate family drops dead and Louis becomes heir to the throne. Turns out he couldn’t have done so in worst circumstances: he inherited a lot of debt from his predecessors, had to deal with the repercussions of an unusually harsh winter that destroyed crops all over France and he just didn’t have a single authoritarian bone in his body.

It’s not like he was unintelligent. Much to the contrary, actually: he taught himself how to speak Italian, Spanish and English (the latter, reportedly, because he loved ships and navigation and he wanted to read Captain James Cook’s memoirs and Robinson Crusoe in the language they were originally written), had his own personal library, mastered advanced calculus and was and passionate about cartography, clockmaking and locksmithing. He was far from a tyrant or out of touch with his people either. He liked to secretly visits poor families in person and give them money that had been reserved for his own personal expenses, often took decisions that were the opposite of what was advised to him because, in his own words, “it might not be what’s best for the country but it’s what the people want and I want people to like me”, and held progressive values for a man of his time, passing or at least attempting to pass laws prohibiting the persecution of religious minorities, abolishing torture, serfdom and the death penalty.

So, why did Louis XVI die in the way he did? There were a lot of factors, of course. One of them is just because he was a symbol of the monarchy that had been plunging the country into more and more debt for the past 100 years, but a key one was that he was just awfully indecisive. It was it hard for him to make important decisions as quickly as he should and easy for him to be persuaded by other people of what he should do, which made for some pretty inconsistent, often poor results. He also hated attracting attention to himself so he refused getting statues and paintings made to celebrate his accomplishments, which made the public largely unaware of the good things he did while VERY aware of his shortcomings, real and imagined, because political cartoon artists had a field day with him and his wife. His contemporaries also thought of him as kind of uncouth and not very bright due to the fact he was shy and awkward. He was a bad public speaker, prone to going into uncomfortable silences mid-conversation and had a hard time looking people in the eye, which gave him an uncharismatic reputation. But, most importantly, Louis just… didn’t fight back. He was chronically insecure. Eager for approval. He could’ve easily thwarted the initial revolts with his personal army but he felt like raising weapons against his own people was as unforgivable as doing so against his own children. So he made a point to forbid his men from attacking the revolutionaries and to try and talk it out with them and give in to their demands, eventually even letting himself and his family to be taken into house arrest to Paris.

More things happen after that, but the gist of it is, even though Louis was technically in decent terms with the revolutionaries and on board with being stripped of all his power and becoming a constitutional monarch, even writing to his brothers to demand that they do not try anything counterrevolutionary and that he didn’t need their help, he felt like a prisoner and that his children were being mistreated. So he and Marie Antoinette decided to take a leap of faith and flee Paris to cross the Austrian border. The thing is, Louis genuinely thought that the revolutionary efforts were concentrated in Paris and that people elsewhere still liked him and would support his decision to escape. He was VERY wrong about that. They were eventually recognized and apprehended because, well. Louis’ face was literally on the money and someone eventually went “Wait a minute… don’t I know this guy from somewhere?”. The people were shocked by his betrayal and secret plotting with foreigners to escape given that he had previously seemed so cooperative. So he and his family are put in an actual prison this time, and he’s eventually tried for high treason and crimes against the state. By then he knows he’s cooked and that he’s going to be killed but he seems oddly resigned to it. I guess he just gave up.

Later on when his lawyer and former minister goes to tell him, in tears, that he has indeed, been convicted to death he just thanks him for his hard work and tells him that “We’ll meet again in a happier life!” One of the last things he said at all, on the way to the scaffold, was asking if there have been any news of the La Pérouse expedition lately. which was this version of the Captain Cook expeditions of his he had organized a few years before it all went to shit. Funny little man, he was. He was scared of cats because he got a nasty scratch on the butt from his grandfather’s cat as a child, but he dutifully took care of this very cat until the day it died after his grandfather’s passing. He liked to stealthily make his way out of windows and climb on the roofs of the palace of Versailles at night to hunt for nocturnal animals. His favorite horses were named Escargot and Desiré.

I can do this trick with some other VERY random subjects too. Someone look up “French king”, get the first picture you see out of Google Images and show it to me on this post. Don’t give me a name. Just the picture or a link to the picture. I’m going to either awe you or creep you out. No middle ground.

[entering--hyperspace]

Cannot imagine whatever is going on through Mr Leonard Echowatcher's head. You spend your life yearning for a world where you lived differently, where the day wasnt soaked in war, blood, and battle. Where you could envision a future where you have a partner and a family with friends to live gracefully with. But then you are given such opportunities only to find you were never taught to be gentle, you have a gentle, empathetic nature and yet the physicality of it is a stranger to you. You are expected to raise a child with gentle hands so that she saves the world, What does that even mean? How can you accept your growing love for your friend when you were never taught how to love, that intimate love is a luxury best left forgotten, there are no need for such things in war. He has to learn to become the things he wanted bc he grew too old to develop it naturally. He becomes a father to taimi fumbling his way into learning how to care and parent, he is defensive of Aurene bc he is from a culture where they arent expected to raise their own young and yet has to do so with a dragon. It feels like a test, He has to prove both to others and to himself he is capable of being a father, of nuturing, that calloused, stained hands can still be gentle. He has to accept that love is a terrifying leap of faith in vulnerability in order to gain a partnership that is considered a rarity. I love the idea that he spent 30 years yearning for things he thought he would never have and when he is actually given those opportunities (albeit admittedly through unusual circumstances) he has to learn how to actually live in them, becuase they were always just Concepts until now. Ohhhh my god Mr. Leo you are my everything

[get-more-bald]

the thing about X6 is that he's essentially a slave given to the Sole Survivor by the Institute. and I think that the fandom's treatment of him would be different if the game addressed it or even just said it

[monty-glasses-roxy]

For some reason, this round of meds (same dose and everything as last time) is making me have very violent Realisations and Remembering Things moments. And by that I mean the Thing I Forgot and/or the Realisations show up with a bat and see how hard they can make my brain hit the wall. So anyway.

YOU GUYS REMEMBER SPIKE THE WETFLOOR BOT??? YOU GUYS REMEMBER HER??? THE FIRST FAZBEAR ANIMATRONIC TO BE BORN FROM LOVE INSTEAD OF PAIN??? YOU REMEMBER HER???

CAUSE I JUST DID

[mariyekos]

One day I'm going to finish my FFXVI mega essay, but for now I think my thoughts on the game can be summarized like this:

When making FFXVI, the developers sure knew what they wanted to do, and by god were they going to do it.

Were they also going to do other things that would make those first thing better? Were they going to do other things that make a good game overall? Ehhhhh...they were going to do what they wanted to do, and invest all their time and effort into that, so surely that would be enough! Surely!

[autism-disco]

sometimes i wonder why i am the way i am and then i remember that the penultimate track on the summer 2014 car cd was ben folds five boxing. and yeah no that adds up

[nomaishuttle]

on a semi related note there r like 2 specific times i remember expecting one of my safe foods and getting something entirely different and being SO insanely upset abt it even though the thing i got still tasted good

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinkibg. ...

[arolesbianism]

I need to make a new pmd story right now or I'll explode