#they moved in ranks with a purpose ➻⌠memes⌡

[phoenixcoin]

❂⭃ PERMANENT STARTER CALL ⥷❂

This is a permanent starter call for phoenixcoin. If you would like to, please like this post to give me permission to do any of the following:

❒ Send unprompted asks and memes to your inbox

❒ Make unprompted and/or unplotted starters to you.

❒ Tag/mention you in posts that remind me of our muses

❒ DM or send a message over Discord to plot at any time

❒ Respond to any opens, starter calls, memes, etc.

I'm addition, any of my mutuals will gain these same allowances and can do any of these things at any time they wish.

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2023: #12 & #11

12. ARMENIA Brunette - "Future lover" 14th place

Decade ranking: 37/116 [Above Stefan, below Systur]

Very tempted to just post this meme as justification for putting Brunette here.

Like, what is Brunette if not A Neat Lady? ? She working on herself, deciding to be good, do good, look good #TeamPretty for her future lover whom she wants to kiss her face, read books with and drink smoothies with at neat cafés - it's no "Why don't you make me dizzy with all your kisses *sad synth*", but it's cute and relatable for a libretto strung together from Pinterest posts lol <3. A Presence That Was Liked (--Gretchen Jones) if ever there was.

What really pushed "Future lover" higher up my ranking though was the live, and specifically the middle section. "Future lover" is not an easy song to get into, but Brunette made it work, specifically by knocking the rap break-

AND the following dance break-

Right out of the park! Princess was eating and her song was the buffet.

And honestly that's enough for a 12th place on my list. You know me, whenever we reach a new zone, we rank the competent people first since they're the ones I have the least opinion on. Brunette is good, i submit the live in Liverpool as evidence, I 'm sure we agree on that? "Future lover" was never more than a fun filler entry for me and I don't mean that disparagingly - every contest needs their also-rans and if the entries that pad out the numbers are good themselves, the contest usually becomes more enjoyable as a whole. Brunette was part of a strong streak that ran from Alika to Pasha, and she earned her spot, by delivering a strong and inspired live that was solidly good with no drawbacks. It's not something I'm passionate about, but "Future Lover" was top shelf Fun Finale Filler, and I wish the entries near the top of the scoreboard I put below Armenia had demonstrated the same level of quality.

---------------------------------------------

11. ICELAND Diljá - "Power" 27th place

Decade ranking: 34/116 [Above Lesley Roy, below TBA]

For the purposes of ranking ESC, I like to clump together entries I have similar feelings for to pretend the chaotic wreck that is this blog as a minimum of consistency. In this case I've completely given up lol <3 Diljá and Brunette couldn't be less alike if they tried. Where Brunette was competent, dignified and professional, Diljá gave negative fucks about how she came across and how it affected her point total. <3

That isn't to say, I didn't enjoy "Power" for what it was because I did, a lot. Basic catchy Electropop by weird indie girls is my safe zone, and where I can fully unwind, calm down and be myself (I suppose that's the introvert equivalent to zoning out to a girlbop? You couldn't pay me to move to a Loco Loco or Slomo in public, although I like both of them). You can defo be sure that I loved "Power" for all its shortcomings and man was it flawed.

As noted pre-show the biggest threat to Diljá was Diljá herself. Now don't get me wrong - I LOVE her. I love her annoying foghorn-like personality that blasted through her rehearsal tiktoks. I love how she, when asked what the best Eurovision song of all times was, served cunt by naming herself. I love how she gave zero shits about something as trivial as qualifying, and just went all out enjoying herself via the medium of her untreated neurodivergence. And of course, most of all, I love that she completely engineered her own demise in the semi, for no reason other than that she felt like it:

YOU HAVE NO PPPPOWER OVER MEEE ::is so overpowered by her own ADHD/autism she peppers her song with needless karatechops and backflips::

Like, I'm pretty sure there's a decent chance "Power" could have qualified in that second semifinal. The target after all was Alika, who was an obvious traditional jury carry. But Diljá threw all that away when she magikarped herself to death on that turntable. 😍

she could have chosen ANY aesthetic and she chose Lucie Jones in Arthur Fleck cosplay. 😍

She could have chosen any camera angles, and went for several ones where her back was turned to the audience.

In a sense, that was the most beautiful ending one could have imagined for Diljá's journey - a villain origin story turned flesh. Diljá would always be eliminated in the semis in any contest held acrpss the multiverses and it would always be through needless self-sabotage. 😍 AND SHE ALMOST QUALIFIED IN SPITE OF IT. REST IN P-P-P-POWER, my sweet anxiety princess.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TEN BEST ACTS OF ESC 2023

THE RANKING

[dreamsoffantasty]

━━ ❀         𝕴𝖈𝖔𝖓 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝕳𝖎𝖗𝖊    𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃 ( 2011 ) 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐊         ❀ ( lyrical meme appreciation to Icon for Hire, with some of my favorite songs. please feel free to change the pronouns as you see fit  ! some of the lyrics changed to fit better for RP purposes. )      

                         TW: dark emotional theme may present. self-harm topics.             

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐑𝐄

❛ My life is a musical. ❜

❛ I know how to put on a pretty pathetic show. ❜

❛ I hid backstage. ❜

❛ Keep the curtains closed. ❜

❛ 'Cause I'm scared. ❜

❛ I'm getting pretty good at feeding them the lines they like. ❜

❛ I don't recognize the girl that I face each night. ❜

❛ I can compromise till I'm convinced. ❜

❛ What happened to the girl who could overlook the world ? ❜

❛ She never gave a second thought to what the other people thought. ❜

❛ What happened to the dream of rejecting the routine ? ❜

❛ 'Cause they never worked for me. ❜

❛ I'm gonna burn this theatre down. ❜

❛ pray to God for the strength to help me face the crowd. ❜

❛ I wanna live like I lost the script and scream every line. ❜

❛ They say all the world's a stage. ❜

❛ Rewriting your identity is all the rage. ❜

❛ Well next act please, I'd like a change. ❜

❛ I don't really like pretending. ❜

❛ I'm gonna burn this theatre down and pray to God for the strength to help me face the crowd. ❜

❛ I wanna live like I lost the script and scream every line Like " this is it! ". ❜

❛ The sad thing is we're all in on the action. ❜

❛ We're all holding our breath. ❜

❛ Waiting for a reaction. ❜

❛ We're all holding our breath, waiting for a reaction. ❜

❛ You play your part. ❜

❛ I'll be playing with matches. ❜

❛ You play your part, i'll be playing with matches. ❜

❛ If you'd like a show, you can follow the ashes. ❜

𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐄

❛ Somebody make a move. ❜

❛ Test my reality. ❜

❛ Check if there's a weak spot. ❜

❛ Clingin' to insanity, in hopes the world will ease up. ❜

❛ Try and make it look like it's all somehow getting better. ❜

❛ 'Cause I know how to play it pretty good against the measure. ❜

❛ Everyone started out a little insane. ❜

❛ We learn pretty quick how to fake it for the game. ❜

❛ Some of you never learned to drop the act. ❜

❛ Under that skin of yours: a heart attack. ❜

❛ 'Cause everybody's so scared. ❜

❛ We don't wanna go there. ❜

❛ We don't wanna make a move. ❜

❛ We got all our lives to lose. ❜

❛ Screaming in the dark while. ❜

❛ We just play our part. ❜

❛ I play right along. ❜

❛ I don't know what's going on. ❜

❛ We all know what's going on. ❜

❛ If I had the answers, I'd have written them out. ❜

❛ I can tell you what to do. ❜

❛ What this thing is about ? ❜

❛ All I've ever learned comes second-hand. ❜

❛ I dare not preach what I don't understand. ❜

❛ You and I: we share the same disease. ❜

❛ Cover up. ❜

❛ Compromise what we grieve. ❜

❛ I've let more than my share of revivals die. ❜

❛ This isn't pretty but it's what I am tonight. ❜

❛ Pointing my fingers, the problems still linger.. ❜

❛ They keep getting bigger. ❜

❛ I hold the trigger. ❜

❛ Running with fire, I live like a liar. ❜

𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋

❛ We throw tantrums like parties. ❜

❛ We're not happy 'til everyone knows we're sick. ❜

❛ That's just how we like it. ❜

❛ We've hurt bad enough, right, we've earned it. ❜

❛ Don't tell the others but it's all getting old. ❜

❛ I mean how many more times must our stories be told ? ❜

❛ Being lonely's only fun in a group. ❜

❛ It sort of loses its charm when it's true. ❜

❛ I meant it when I said I wanna get well. ❜

❛ Are the rest of you so content ? ❜

❛ Stay where you are but it hurts like help. ❜

❛ I'm sure it's fun at first. ❜

❛ Test your pulse and check your vitals. ❜

❛ If it's only a game you lost me. ❜

❛ Now you know all my secrets. ❜

❛ I want out. ❜

❛ I know I don't need this. ❜

❛ Can you find me friends that don't rank me on what I've been through ? ❜

❛ The more battle scars the more attention it gets you. ❜

❛ Yeah we should've known it would end this way. ❜

❛ What did you expect ? ❜

❛ Pretend it all away. ❜

❛ All we've got left is a sorry pile of hearts. ❜

❛ I'm getting out. ❜

❛ Gonna write myself a new start. ❜

❛ Come on, dry your eyes. ❜

❛ Meet me on the other side. ❜

❛ Run as fast as you can and we'll make it out alive. ❜

❛ We know better now. ❜

❛ We don't have to live like this. ❜

❛ Go tell them all we don't have to live like this. ❜

𝐈𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐄

❛ I say I wanna be healthy, but I turn up the noise. ❜

❛ The IV drips a steady stream of poison. ❜

❛ I think I'm just in love with the feeling. ❜

❛ Break my bones so I can feel them healing. ❜

❛ Crazy's, I believe, the medical term. ❜

❛ When we wanna recover, but we don't wanna learn. ❜

❛ Keep breaking what's been fixed a thousand times. ❜

❛ Give me some more of that iodine. ❜

❛ I can't make reality connect. ❜

❛ I push till I have nothing left. ❜

❛ If we want to wake up. ❜

❛ Why we still singin' these lullabies ? ❜

❛ I'll run in circles till I crash. ❜

❛ One day these steps will be my last. ❜

❛ I say I wanna be happy. ❜

❛ I quickly forget. ❜

❛ I sabotage all the good I've got left. ❜

❛ Depression's like a big fur coat, it's made of dead things but it keeps me warm. ❜

❛ I don't like pain. ❜

❛ I bring it to life. ❜

❛ I don't like scars, but I am good with a knife. ❜

❛ I don't like tears but I'm starting to cry. ❜

❛ I realize I'm destroying my life. ❜

❛ I do this to myself. ❜

❛ Stop blaming someone else. ❜

❛ We do this to ourselves. ❜

[caitlindigitalcom]

The Most Inclusive Digital Community - Tumblr

Tumblr differentiates itself from most other social media platforms. Without focusing on beauty standards or competition for views and likes as well as less overall surveillance. It really gives its users the most freedom out of any of the platforms to feel comfortable in expressing their opinions and beliefs, while staying anonymous. Some may refer to the groups on Tumblr as being a public sphere, a public sphere is "where private people come together as a public for the purpose of using reason to further critical knowledge which, in turn, leads to political change” (Kruse 2018). Through blogging's long history, Tumblr is ranked number 10 in social media in Australia, with 3.7 million current users (Civic, 2022).

Photo source: womensrunningco.uk

A lot of GEN Z babies grew up using Tumblr to repost aesthetically pleasing photos or funny memes, and I've never thought of it as such a serious platform such as Facebook or Instagram. I'm happy to now find out it is being used for a body positivity movement. After researching on the various #bodypositivity posts used by different women across Tumblr (Reif, Miller & Taddicken, 2022). I discovered how accepting Tumblr is of different groups of people and realised it definitely is the most inclusive digital community out of all social media platforms. In contrast to Instagram and its high beauty standards, and need for likes.

Tumblr's surveillance is one of the lowest out of all platforms, with users not being able to tell when people are online. You also don't have to post an image each time you post, in contrast to Instagram, which I think helps the platform move away from the superficial sides of the internet. Date/time stamps are also not prioritised which gives users more freedom to post whenever they like, not in the need for likes and comments.

To sum up this blog, Tumblr is definitely accepting of these marginalised groups and is one of the most accepting and inclusive digital communities online.

References:

Civic Web Media (2023). Australia’s most popular social media sites 2023 | Civic Web Media. Civic Web Media. Viewed on 17 March 2023. Available at: https://www.civicwebmedia.com.au/australias-most-popular-social-media-sites/.

Anne Reif, Insa Miller & Monika Taddicken (2022): “Love the Skin You‘re In”: An Analysis of Women’s Self-Presentation and User Reactions to Selfies Using the Tumblr Hashtag #bodypositive, Mass Communication and Society. DOI:10.1080/15205436.2022.2138442.

Lisa M. Kruse, Dawn R. Norris & Jonathan R. Flinchum (2018) Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84, DOI:10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143.

Teng, R. (2022). Health in every size: Balancing the weight of the body positivity movement | TheHomeGround Asia. thehomeground.asia. Viewed on 17 March 2023. Available at: https://thehomeground.asia/destinations/singapore/health-in-every-size-balancing-the-weight-of-the-body-positivity-movement/.

[cringeyvanillamilk]

Animes I associate with each zodiac

Decided to do this for fun since I love astrology! I mainly focus on the themes and energy each anime had that reminded me of each zodiac sign. These are based on animes/mangas I’ve watched or read.

Aries: Black Clover

Themes of fighting for yourself and those oppressed by the system

Rarely slows down and quickly moves forward

Very straightforward and improves as times go on

Taurus: Tiger and Bunny

Slow and steady in terms of story

Plot starts with conflict regarding stubbornness to change

Less exaggerated and more down to earth visually, but still appealing

Gemini: Fairy Tail

Easygoing, but layered like an onion

Colorful world with a strong sense of community (guilds)

Comical even during serious situation (whiplash)

Cancer: Demon Slayer

Central themes of family

Emotionally driven and shows sympathy towards pain

Can be sweet at times, but will tear your heart apart the next

Leo: My Hero Academia

Showcases the duality of image and responsibility

Bombastic, but structured

Doing what’s best for society vs. the self

Virgo: Bleach

Major plots revolve around going through great lengths for a loved one

The purpose of living (to serve humanity, soul society, etc.)

Polished and articulate designs

Libra: Ranking of Kings

Themes of justice and fairness

Charming and visually soft, but carries different morals and perspectives

Emphasis on connections with others

Scorpio: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Introspective and soul searching

Dark and heavy on symbolism and transformation

Having to read between the lines and not take what you see at face value

Sagittarius: One Piece

Going on an adventure and seeing how big the world is

Optimistic even when things seem grim

Fun loving, but tactless in some areas

Capricorn: Hunter x Hunter

Themes of ambitions

Consists of goal oriented characters with many who are willing to sacrifice for said goals

Despite how bright it appears, it can be realistic and harsh

Aquarius: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Forward thinking and twists the standards

Enlightening and daring, started many trends (Ex. Poses, memes)

Values freedom and expression, with various color schemes and individualistic fashion

Pisces: Mairimashita! Iruma-kun

Main character is known for showing compassion to everyone (pisces energy)

Lighthearted and full of wonder in a place that should be dark and scary.

Finding a purpose or ambition for oneself

[noxsoulmate]

Cupid's Arrow

by noxsoulmate

Fandom: The Old Guard

Ship: Joe/Nicky

Rating: General Audience

Word Count: 5577

Summary: Nicky is this close to finally becoming a high-ranked Cupid. All he has left to do is to finish his master project – which, of course, just has to be Joe, the one mortal that has been the bane of his existence for almost a millennium now.

Based on the kink meme prompt “Love God accidentally pricks self with his own arrow”

Pretty made by the wonderful @lunaravenclaw9 😘

Sneak peek:

Of course, it had to be him!

Nicky huffed a breath of annoyance. It came out so forcefully that it moved his fringe a little bit, annoying him even more.

Why was it that his master project had to be the one mortal that annoyed him beyond all else?

Leaning against the railing of his lookout, Nicky followed Joe’s every move. From his place on the piazza to the coffee stand to the man that sold hot pretzels and back to his place where he started consuming the bought goods until his next potential customers stopped. He had this stupid smile that, for some reason Nicky couldn’t fathom, drew other humans in and made them spend way too much money on mediocre art. Honestly, his portraits didn’t even look like the people Joe was supposed to draw. Well… maybe they did a little bit. But not really! Nicky was absolutely sure there were better artists out there.

So it had to be that stupid smile that made people stop to watch and finally sit down to get their portrait drawn and pay money for it. Nicky guessed that dumb smile counted as attractive or friendly in the human world or whatever.

For Nicky, it was simply annoying. Joe was annoying! He and absolutely everything about him.

And of course, he had to be the one human Amor had assigned to him for his master project. It was the final step of becoming a Cupid, a full Deity of Love, under the command of Amor. It was a bit depressing, really, that humans believed there to be only one Cupid… by the name of Amor. Mortals were so narrow-minded, really.

In reality, there were hundreds of them. Yes, Amor was essentially their boss, but obviously, she wasn’t the only one in charge of love being spread on Earth. She was, so to speak, the mastermind and also the tutor of apprentices. She was the one to select the candidates from the pool of souls that had decided against another turn on Earth or a quiet stay in Heaven; those who were still looking for purpose in afterlife. She was the one to supervise the rookies to see if they were up to the task of becoming Cupids. She was the one to decide who was to be sent back to Heaven to find another occupation and who was finally allowed into the apprenticeship. She was the one to… okay, yeah, she was a pretty impressive deity.

But that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t the only one and the higher the rank, the more freedom a Cupid had. Amor would still supervise bigger decisions such as love stories that could change the world or history as humans knew it. But for the smaller, less significant love stories, higher-ranked Cupids were allowed to just follow their gut. Nicky couldn’t wait to be one of those higher-ranked Cupids because had he been there already, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

As it was, he was still an apprentice and this was the final step in his training to climb the ranks.

And of course it had to be fucking Joe!

Nicky huffed out another breath, pretty sure that Amor was having a field day, messing with him like this. After millennia of carrying such a heavy burden, always having to make the perfect match, Nicky guessed she needed some stress relief here and there. He just hated being that stress relief.

It wasn’t as if Nicky had anything against this particular version of Joe – but the man was the reincarnation of earlier versions of Joe that Nicky had… well… to put it mildly… ehm… not such good experiences with.

For example, in Jerusalem, 1099, when Nicolò’s mortal life had ended at the hands of Yusuf.

Keep reading on ao3

[meruz]

Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? 

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha. 

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at isellhotdogs@gmail.com.

<33333333333333333333333333

[mewtonian-physics]

my ranking of the alex rider original series (stormbreaker through scorpia rising) from ‘book i least enjoy rereading’ to ‘book i most enjoy rereading’ let’s goooo

spoilers for all 9 books under the cut

9. Ark Angel

...He went to space. He went to space. Also the entire plot could have been avoided if Drevin had actually bothered to provide a photograph of his son. I’m sure he had one. I still like this book but it’s literally so insane that I just don’t know what to do with it. 

It is however really funny that Webber just goes and gives a speech insulting this super high-profile ecoterrorist group and acts like it’s no big deal and then they kill him. Shock of shocks.

8. Skeleton Key

Okay, points to this book for terrifying the shit out of me. God damn it does that shark scene scare me. Also, points for making me feel a little bit bad for a man who wants to nuke his own country because he thinks it will fix the place up. I’m still not entirely sure how that’s supposed to work, but that’s probably a good thing. I feel like understanding his thought process would say bad things about me. Still, I actually did feel sorry for him, if only a little. Dude was clearly mentally unstable and I doubt his son’s death helped at all. I also got sad about what happened to Carver and Troy. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a cringe fail American who has the American release. So sue me.) What a nightmare that must’ve been to endure... Otherwise, though, I’m not super into this book. The opening is just kind of meh and the way it leads into the rest of the plot seems a little bit unbelievable. Also, this might be an unpopular opinion, but Sabina annoys me. I would not get along with her at all and I can’t imagine her as a girlfriend. Skeleton Key does, however, absolutely excel at the emotional scenes. 

Also, why are all the spy agencies so comfortable with sending in a 14-year-old? Especially when they outright admit that the other attempts have all died horribly? Bureaucracy’s a bitch.

7. Point Blank

Boo, Dr. Grief! Boo! We hate your white supremacy! I’m so glad you got a snowmobile to the face, you deserved it. (Perks of books written by Jewish people--we aren’t afraid to give the neo-Nazis an unpleasant death.) Anyway, this book definitely isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t really say it stands out in the series. It definitely does hammer home the point of just how trapped Alex is, since MI6 isn’t going to just let him go after one mission, and let’s face it, the plot with the clones is creepy as hell, if highly improbable. But I’m largely just here to see the neo-Nazi get snowmobiled. That’s right, I just completely changed the definition of a pre-established word. I’m a rebel.

Also, I hate Fiona Friend so much and overall think she just didn’t need to be in the book, but the line about ‘I’d rather kiss the horse’ made me laugh so hard. Alex, you sass.

6. Snakehead

Okay, let’s talk about how genius the plan in this book is. I love it! I love how Yu wants to kill the people involved in the peace conference without making them into martyrs, so he comes up with this whole elaborate plan to stage a natural disaster. It’s incredible. This dude was thinking so far ahead. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid... But anyway, I don’t see a lot of books where the villain really acknowledges that killing their enemies could just cause more problems for them via turning them into martyrs for a cause. Also, the way he’s so polite and soft-spoken while also being a complete monster... This book genuinely gives me chills. Extra bonus points for the part in the hospital, the absolute nightmare of having all your organs slowly removed and sold off and everyone around you is being so nice about it? ‘Oh, don’t worry, Alex, it won’t be so bad. Here, take your medicine. Do you need anything?’ Literally just. What the fuck. 

Also Ash can fucking fight me. You put your own godson in horrible danger on purpose! You killed your best friend! Bastard. 

...And just in case the book wasn’t disturbing enough, Yu’s fate at the end lives in my mind rent-free and I think about it on a concerningly regular basis considering that the chances of that happening to me are so low they’re practically in the negatives. Damn you, Horowitz.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention just how much I love the tagline ‘once bitten, twice spy’.

5. Crocodile Tears

Ah yes, the book that kickstarted my drift away from the church... I kid, of course. I drifted away from the church for completely separate reasons. But Desmond McCain is always going to scare the shit out of me. The ability to kill countless innocent people while blissfully quoting Bible verses (that he takes wildly out of context and uses for his own self-serving means) is... well, I could actually say a lot about what that reminds me of, but I’m here to rate books, not religion. Moving on. This book has some really stellar antagonists, and the plot is chilling in a way that feels a lot more realistic than most of the other books. Even if some of it is a bit farfetched (sabotaging a nuclear power plant? Really?), the idea of using disasters for your own profit... well. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why that is so believable. The Poison Dome is also a really cool and chilling scene--even Alex, who has the luck of the devil, can’t get out of that one unscathed. Further scares come in with the fate of Harold Bulman--imagine having your entire existence wiped and your identity changed while you were asleep! The breakdown he has over it is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him, even though he was ready to exploit a teenager and make his life a living hell just to turn a profit. Note the word almost.

Also. The opening makes me cry. Specifically the line talking about how Ravi’s kids would ‘never meet Mickey Mouse’. I lose my goddamn mind every single time I read it. That little personal touch turns the scene from a statistic to a tragedy. Once again: Damn you, Horowitz.

4. Stormbreaker

Yeah, this one gets the special cover shot. And why not? What we are looking at here is the birth of a legend. Move the fuck over, James Bond, Alex Rider is on the scene now. Anyway, yeah, this book is pretty damn spectacular. It has its stumbles, but as the first book in a series, that’s to be expected. Still, it pulls you in from quite literally the first line and keeps you going right up until the end. (If you came here from my post of memes, you know how much the line ‘Killing is for grownups, and you’re still a child’ destroys me.) It has the debut of much-beloved characters such as, of course, Alex--but also Jack Starbright, and of course, the best MI6 agent of them all, which is to say Smithers. Hell, even Yassen Gregorovich, especially once you get through Russian Roulette... Man, that was a rough one. 

Seriously, though. This is a really good book. The scene with the Portuguese man-o’-war still gives me the chills to think about. (Have you ever looked up pictures of those things? They’re beautiful, but holy shit will they make you regret being born. Nature is funny like that.) 

We also get the introduction of, of course, Alex’s patented sass (his response to Sayle saying he relates to the man-o’-war is HILARIOUS) and we get the inherent humor of Alex screwing up an alias one time and then just going by Alex for the rest of the series so he doesn’t do that again. Really, kid, I know you’re not a trained spy or anything but did you never play pretend growing up? Ever? You can’t pretend your name is Felix for a little while? That sounds like a you problem.

3. Scorpia Rising

I distinctly remember when this book came out, actually. I was on vacation at the time, and I remember my brother annoying the hell out of the poor workers at a bookstore we frequented there to see if/when they were going to get it in. They did, finally, and we bought it immediately, and I was of course absolutely desperate to read it. He got to read it first, though. -_-

This is a great book, an absolute emotional rollercoaster all the way through. The way Blunt tricks Alex back into service by staging a shooting was exactly the kind of cold, brutal behavior I’d expect from him. Seeing Julius come back was shocking, but very exciting, too. And Razim makes an incredibly chilling villain, with his absolute disregard for human life and his desire to measure pain. Also, seeing Smithers’s house was so much fun. Smithers in this book was just really fun in general, but he’s really fun in every book, so... nothing unusual there. But also, I want an unwelcome mat. Please?

2. Eagle Strike

‘But Penny,’ you might ask, ‘why is this book so high on your list? It has so much of Sabina in it, and you said she annoys you.’ That is true. What does not annoy me, however, is basically the entire rest of the book. I love the tense opening, and then reading through Alex’s real-life ‘playthrough’ of Feathered Serpent is still one of my favorite scenes. Cray is absolutely incredible as a villain, with the way that he truly believes in his cause--which is undoubtedly a good one! Yet the extremes to which he will go for that cause, and the fact that he very nearly succeeds, are what elevate him to one of the most dangerous villains in the series. That scene with Charlie Roper and the nickels is something I can never seem to stop thinking about. Actually, I think about it basically whenever I think about large amounts of money paid in small increments... 

Also, I really enjoy how he gets into the whole plot in the first place, and I really enjoy Smithers saying ‘ah, fuck it’ and helping him out anyway. Go, Smithers. You once again prove me right in saying that you’re the coolest adult in MI6.

The revelation that Yassen knew Alex’s father is one that absolutely blew my mind first time around. The way his life was threaded into the lives of the Rider family--he worked with John Rider, was saved by him, killed Ian Rider, and then died for refusing to kill Alex Rider--wow. Wow. It gets to me. It really gets to me. This book is a masterpiece. I heard that it’s going to be what the second season of the TV series is based off of, and I’m so hyped for that. We love to see it, we really do.

1. Scorpia

I don’t believe anyone who says this book didn’t get to them at all. I just think they are lying. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to not be affected by this book. God. Just thinking about it reminds me of why I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, come on. We get all this backstory about Alex’s parents, we get tricked along with him into thinking MI6 killed his father, then bam, that was a lie, and Alex may have just fucked himself over big time. Also, that plot is terrifying! (And I bet anti-vaxxers had a field day with it, huh.) Julia Rothman is a really great antagonist, one of the only ones who didn’t go and explain her plan in great detail to Alex--the fact that she didn’t actually being a plot point was something I personally found pretty clever. In general, this book is... I tend to hate when people say they ‘can’t put it down’ because it’s usually an obvious exaggeration, but that really is how I feel reading it.

And again. If that ending didn’t get to you... Well, I just think you are lying.

[phoenixcoin]

❂⭃ TAG DUMP ⥷❂

donʼt ask me！ ask them！➻⌠ooc⌡

phoenixʼs firey fundament！➻⌠psa⌡

youʼll need to keep your wits about you ➻⌠rules⌡

theyʼre in cahoots！➻⌠dash⌡

and prove myself worthy of a place in your merry band！➻⌠promo⌡

one of the many treasures in my collection ➻⌠saved⌡

you have that same stubborn look as your father did ➻⌠my art⌡

they moved in ranks with a purpose ➻⌠memes⌡

i think i can manage that ➻⌠starter call⌡

will this suffice as a deposit？➻⌠inbox call⌡

we have much to catch up on，you and i ➻⌠plotting call⌡

my boy！➻⌠open⌡

but what of security？➻⌠closed⌡

i retreated to my countinghouse，and danced attendance upon the vicereine ➻⌠hc⌡

we represent one of the oldest and greatest trading houses of port isolde ➻⌠musings⌡

on the battlefield‚ i am but a single axe ➻⌠aesthetics⌡

forgive me for not being able to tell you more ➻⌠drabble⌡

for your trouble ➻⌠answer⌡

i shall expect you to regale me with the tales of all your adventures when next we meet！➻⌠reply⌡

tap a cask and stoke the ovens‚ for your favorite uncle is here！➻⌠ic⌡

only a fool would believe even half of the things you claim ➻⌠pre game verse⌡

had i the courage of my brother ➻⌠pre night of flame verse⌡

after what befell at phoenix gate ➻⌠main game verse⌡

i am proud to call you nephew ➻⌠post game verse⌡

[keikakudori]

For the invasive question meme: Why did Aizen not choose to recruit more individuals from the shinigami/rukongai when enacting his plan, like for example Momo (who it seems would have absolutely followed and joined his cause if only to remain with him?) Is it that he didn't think anyone else had the power to contribute to his cause?

Has he considered the fact that if he had recruited more shinigami (or anyone else) over the years that he might have won his war? (ie by having the manpower to distract/kill Kisuke.)

this reads as something less invasive and more as meta so it's going to be treated as a meta.

to put it very simply? aizen chose to keep himself to an abundance of caution. he did have followers in the seireitei as we've seen thanks to turn back the pendulum and gin's own memory of what happened when he and rangiku were children. in those days, of course, he moved very carefully because of the fact that he was being watched over by his captain. shinji had sharp eyes and aizen was not so interested, when he was going through such motions that would lead to his defection a hundred years later. he certainly did recruit other subordinates but aizen is all about tests of character in some ways, depending on who you are -- and, to be quite honest? the more people who know a secret, the more likely it is to get out.

aizen quite simply could not easily trust other shinigami. momo was too perfect as a pawn for what he was planning, after all. he said it himself -- he trained her so she could not live without him and exactly what that training entailed is ... questionable at best. i, personally and with the way momo acted towards aizen, have no doubt in my mind that he outright seduced her. he treated her kindly, of course, allowed her to think he had affection for her -- but in some ways, aizen bears a mild contempt for her too. but her purpose was to be a pawn and nothing else. aizen can be cruel and he was certainly cruel in his aspects of his plan where momo - and by extension, toshiro - were concerned. honestly, the more i think about it, the more i realized that aizen has a vague contempt for both momo and toshiro due to their having never understood what it is that makes the system of the seireitei so broken.

thus, the pawns. 

it isn’t that he doesn’t think anyone else didn’t have the power to contribute to his plans -- i have no doubt that hisagi and kira would have been quite useful to have on his side as well, had he thought of such a thing and i honestly could see kaname and gin taking them along as well to expand the ranks. but aizen perhaps didn’t deem them mature enough in terms of their power as of that point in time to consider going that far. there’s also the fact that aizen is quite an empathetic man, despite all appearances to the contrary. he knows how to read people and he can very easily flip things about to be in his favor. it’s very seldom any sort of genuine setback he can’t work past occurs to him, at least prior to deicide. 

and of course he considered it. it’s aizen. he did indeed think about such an aspect but the goal of the war wasn’t entirely about winning. there was that small piece of aizen that i doubt he’s been aware of for decades that wanted to lose. but in turn, as well, there was the fact that aizen HAD TO GO THROUGH DEICIDE IN ORDER FOR THE BLOOD WAR TO BE WON. 

i don’t think he ever expected he would lose the way he did. aizen’s too intelligent not to consider what would happen if he lost. he had plenty of time in which to plan for both outcomes. but it was the manner in which aizen lost which he never anticipated. he expected the possibility of losses - of course he did. but there were factors which occurred that day that led to his defeat and not all of them were because of a lack of manpower.

there’s also the other problem of that he considers people who are strong enough to have possibly been of aid to his plans to be too loyal to the seireitei. the command structure is what it is, after all, and there’s a fierce loyalty to the system as a large ingrained n plenty of people. aizen was always too aware of the injustices of the system as a whole. aizen has had plenty of time to read the archives and to see, first hand, just how much the system is fucked. needless to say, this is an answer with a very complicated nature.

[austen-tatious]

Northanger Abbey Lee Miller

        Prior to this year I hadn’t read Northanger Abbey or Pride and Prejudice, surprisingly as a fourth-year English major.  Even more surprisingly I liked Northanger Abbey the best out of all the Jane Austen works I’ve read, more specifically, I think that Henry Tilney is the most attractive Austen love-interest. 

         I made this meme to represent my hot takes on Austen-men that I’ve developed from this class. I didn’t use a template, but rather edited photos over stills from the TV show “Dance Moms”.  I chose the “Dance Moms” pyramid scene because It reminds me a lot of our discussions every week in class; we often circle back to debates around which Jane Austen love interest is the best, and the “Dance Moms” pyramid functions in the show to do just that—rank each week’s best performer. If you follow the show, you will understand more, but if you don’t, allow me to try to explain. One of the running themes in the “Dance Moms” TV show is that every week when they do the pyramid, Maddy is on top, because Maddy is Abby’s favorite. This favoritism is evident even outside of the pyramid—Maddy can truly do no wrong in Abby’s eyes and she is constantly rewarded with solos, praise, and one-on-one practice sessions with Abby free of charge. Likewise, all of the other girls have to work twice has hard (if not three times as hard) in order to get recognized by Abby, and even when they do just as well as Maddy, they are still not praised for it. Abby talks more critically to these girls, specifically the Chloe, who is the closest in age and talent to Maddy. Now, this isn’t to say that Maddy isn’t an amazing dancer, she is, and since the show she has gone on to be very successful. However, she is not necessarily better (at least not all the time) than the other girls, especially Chloe. Now, Abby represents the Janites, Maddy is Darcy, and Chloe is Henry Tilney (for the purposes of this post I am only including Austen love interests from the books the have read thus-far), which is why I chose a rare scene where Chloe ends up on the top of the pyramid, Maddy coming in second. I also took the liberty of filling in the other open slots, which I feel like I could get some back lash for that bottom row, but I feel pretty strongly about it.

         I personally believe that Darcy is over-hyped. I think that this is partially due to the movies that have come from Pride and Prejudice. This lends into our discussion around cannon and what is accepted as cannon in the Jane Austen fan base. Pride and Prejudice, unlike almost all of the other novels, has a film version that has a fan base that hasn’t read the book, as well as a fan base that has. The move over-romanticizes Darcy in a way I don’t think that the book does. Something we haven’t talked about yet that I feel like we need to, is how intertwined erraticism and fan-made works are. For example, 50 Shades of Grey was a Twilight fan-fiction, just as Twilight was a Harry Potter fan-fiction and each one is more sexual than the next. There are no sex scenes in Harry Potter, however there are several in Twilight, and all of 50 Shades of Grey revolves around sex. Fan fiction and fan art revolve around sex, filling in the blanks of the intimate between characters, and even fostering relationships between two characters who don’t actually have any romantic relation in the original story. I think that this romanticized Darcy is the one that people chose to picture and fawn over—not the Darcy that is on the page of the book.

           Henry Tilney is charismatic, smart, mostly handsome, and rich enough. Further, Henry mentors Catherine in his own quirky way, preparing her more for the real world than the manipulative Isabella and the diluted Mrs.Allen. He isn’t afraid to show his feminine side, which is a more-modern taste than one of the period. Like Elizabeth Bennett, I don’t think that TIlney would struggle if he were yanked out of his world and placed into ours—perhaps he too is “born out of time”. More so, I would argue that Tilney is more selfless than Darcy because he defies his father for Catherine forsaking the most important thing to a man in the 18th century—his money. Would Darcy give up all of his wealth for Elizabeth? Would Darcy have any good qualities if his wealth didn’t permit him to be selfless? I personally don’t think so. While Tilney falls for Catherine because she loves him, Darcy falls for Elizabeth because she doesn’t—and he becomes obsessed, which I personally would find annoying and maybe even creepy if I were her. If in modern times an older man was paying for everything for a woman, proposing to her every few months, and yet still treating her as if she is lesser-than him, we would call that a sugar daddy, not a love-interest. Instead, I believe the reason we like Darcy (even in the book) isn’t just because of the movie depictions that glorify him, but because we like Elizabeth, just as we dislike Henry because we don’t like Catherine (at least in the beginning). Through free-indirect discourse we get proportionately more of the female characters than the male, and thus our judgements are based more on their interiority than on the male characters themselves. Like Abby Lee Miller in “Dance Moms”, the fan base has an undying biased towards Darcy, but there is so much more to Austen then a rich bachelor. 

[theprofessionalpromptmaker]

Worldbuilding Questions (Ask Meme)

(IMPORTANT NOTE: These questions are either taken directly, paraphrased, or added to the questions provided in the book ‘HARP Folkways’ by Johnathon Cassie, which goes into way more detailed explanations and has even more questions to consider and is a great read for anyone doing heavy duty worldbuilding.)

These are some questions to ask when developing fictional cultures. They are broken into 20 categories with a couple questions in each.

As an ask meme: Send a category and a number (or numbers) in to be answered.

Questions Below the Cut!

Environment: Topography | Water | Ecosystem | Weather

How do your cultures respond to, shape, get shaped by, understand, anthropomorphize, and live in their physical environment?

What are their water sources, fauna/flora, landscape, altitude, weather patterns, etc. like?

Do they have seasons and what do those season entail?

Urban: Permanence | Configuration | Aesthetic | Stratification

How does your culture build villages, towns, and cities?

What does the built environment look like?

How do people move through it?

How permanent are structures (settled vs. nomadic)?

How are things placed and spaced?

How do different socioeconomic status people’s homes differ?

Family: Reach | Relationship | Authority | Idealization

How does your culture structure and support families and households?

And what is the difference between the reality and the ideal?

How are power dynamics distributed in the family?

How far does the connection of family reach (to sibling or first cousins or distant cousins, etc.)?

What are family obligations for different members?

What is the most common family structure?

Marriage: Authority | Inheritance | Legitimacy | Love

How does your culture define and understand the courtship ritual, the marriage-bond and divorce?

Who inherits what when someone dies?

Who are you allowed to marry?

How many spouses are acceptable and/or common?

Under what circumstances are you allowed to terminate a marriage?

What is the relationship between marriage and family?

Lifespan: Infancy & Childhood | Adolescence | Elderhood | Transitions

How does your culture treat children, adolescents, adults, and the aged?

What does it say about birth, dying, death, and the dead?

What education is given at each stage?

Does it differ between groups?

When does a child become a productive member of society?

Are there ritual practices in transitioning between stages?

What are birthdays and funerals like?

How does the culture mark the transition from living to not?

What are the obligations of those close to the deceased to perform if any?

What behaviors are allowed or restricted in different stages of life?

What celebrations or experiences are required/common for a person to have they move through their life?

How do these transitions shape the next phase of life?

What is the age of majority in your culture?

Gender & Sexuality: Definitions | Norms | Non-normative Patterns | Relations

How many sexes does your culture/species have? How any genders?

How is gendered defined in comparison to biological sex and separate from biological sex

What aspects of biological sex and gender and sexuality are acceptable in the culture?

How do people outside those norms interact with the culture?

Are they suppressed, eliminated, exiled, or punished?

How well does the society tolerate and treat them?

How do the different genders, sexes, and sexualities interact with one another? Is there norms for this? Are their social rules and expectations? Gender roles and obligations?

How is the difference between biological sex, gender, and sexuality defined in my culture?

What will it enthusiastically embrace as a norm, what will it tolerate as an emerging norm, and what will it suppress?

Association: Distance | Fraternity | Guild | Obligation

How does your culture govern patterns of friendship, kinship, clan, fraternal organization, affiliation, and settlement?

How tightly does your society bind those in association together?

What do people who become friends do together? What makes them friends?

And once they are friends, do they develop special subcultural behaviors that make them obviously different from others? Do they acquire a tendency to wear particular jewelry or clothes or speak in a particular way?

When part of a group, what does that mean? What does their membership obligate you to do? Is your association public or private? Do you wear insignia that identifies you as a member of your group?

About what do members of the society gather together for purposes of fellowship, friendship, safety, and collective action?

What is the line between friendship and family?

What makes an association legitimate? What makes it criminal?

Rank: Nobility | Mobility | Exclusivity | Coercion

How does your culture assign rank between members of the society?

What do the different roles entitle or obligate the holder to and what are the relationships between ranks?

How does one raise their standing?

What privileges are given to the different ranks?

What are the mechanisms that compel the holders of specific ranks to act in a certain way?

Do these elements coincide with family or marriage?

Order: Sphere | Joining | Tenacity | Presence

How does your culture define orderly and disorderly behaviors?

How does it maintain orderliness and punish disorderliness?

What are the ordering institutions within that society?

How does the culture exert social control or legal control?

What are the social or legal laws of the culture?

Who decides the rules?

Who has the power to enforce and assign orders?

What organizations are in place that do the day-to-day business of enforcing the rules?

Where do they draw their authority?

What are the police and militia equivalents of this culture?

What parts of your culture are so important, so integral, that your culture would kill to ensure they aren’t violated?

What cultural practices does your culture’s most powerful forces ignore or miss? What can powerful people get away with?

What venues are available for disorder or protest?

Who has the power to give an ordering institution authority to enforce its will?

What happens when ordering institutions within one society are at cross purposes?

Authority: Legitimacy | Power | Authority | Participation

How does your culture define power, authority, and political participation?

What marks someone as having legitimate and real power?

How are they allowed to wield it/where might they wield it?

Who has authority in smaller groups? What’s the descending order of authority?

What gives someone authority? And how do people gain authority?

Who wields power in the culture and where does the person’s mandate derive?

Who exists in my culture that challenges the most powerful?

What are the competing forces at work?

About what do the members of the culture care about when it comes to power and authority and where do they feel compelled to use their own authority?

Freedom: Freedom | Liberty | Binding | Directionality

How does your culture define liberty, freedom, restraint, and libertarian customs and institutions?

What is the relationship between individualism and collectivism in the society?

About what is the individual both entitled and encouraged to act on?

Where do expectations about the broader society impinge on the rights of the individual?

What are the correctives that society uses against people that do not behave themselves?

What are the correctives that your culture uses to limit the power of the collectives to act?

Wealth: Objectification | Status | Gift-Giving | Reciprocity

How does your society feel about wealth, wealthiness, the wealthy themselves, and the impoverished?

How does your society distribute wealth?

What is rare in your culture and what is recognized, by its scarcity, to have value?

What does having a lot of money confer a particular status?

Does having wealth make you powerful or not?

Does it give someone access to the levers of power?

Does wealth shape order, authority, or rank?

Does your culture have private property?

What does it mean to have anything in your culture?

Does having or not having wealth cause people to have certain obligations to others and their society?

Work: Subsistence | Feudality | Ethic | Slavery

What does your culture value about work?

What is its work ethic?

Is there slavery?

Why do people work? Is it due to needing to stave off starvation or for other reasons?

Do people commonly enjoy their work?

What value do people assign to their work?

What value is assigned to different jobs?

Leisure: Leisureliness | Competitiveness | Athletics | Diversions

How does your culture design leisure? Does it value it?

What do people do to kick back, provided they have the means to?

Do they like individual sports? Team sports? Learned pursuits?

What do members of the culture feel competitive about? How do they manage these feelings?

Is your culture vigorous or languid?

What does a typical member of the culture prefer to do to relax?

Are different ranks/groups allowed to engage in leisure together or the same leisure activities?

What sports and games are played?

What do people do to pass the time other than sports and games?

Dress: Practicality | Status | Jewelry | Body Modification

How do members of your culture dress and adorn themselves?

How practical are their clothes?

What do different ranks wear?

What is considered jewelry? What is precious in your society that isn’t money?

How does clothes express different ranks or groups or ages?

How is social status marked via dress?

What are the materials that your culture uses to make clothes?

What about accessories like hats, shoes, gloves, and such? How are they used?

How does your culture engage in body modification of any kind? Are branding and scarring and tattoos common and used? What about piercings?

Food & Drink: Locavore | Status | Embellishment | Technique

What do members of your culture eat and drink?

What animals and plants and potential food materials readily available in the culture’s landscape? What are their local ingredients?

What foods and ingredients are reserved for people of certain statuses?

What do the poor eat vs what do the rich eat?

How do they cook? What preparation techniques are used in cooking? What are common cooking techniques?

How do people embellish their food with tastes and textures and visually?

How are kitchens commonly laid out? What are common items found in a kitchen?

Language: Dialect | Majority | Pidgins | Naming

How does your culture use language and naming?

Are there mannerisms of speech, terms, phrases, accents, etc. that are reserved for/commonly spoken by different groups/ranks? What’s a snooty way of speaking? What’s a low class way of speaking?

How is naming done? How is it important?

What are the linguistic/ethnic minorities and how is their cultures and languages treated?

How many names does a person have? Does this change based on rank?

Are named sacred and if so, how?

How do they use slang and what makes something slang?

What are terms used by different groups that aren’t commonplace in the majority language? What are code words in different groups?

What words or expressions mark someone as being of a certain rank?

What are the naming conventions of the culture?

Do the characters conform to these conventions?

What is common and what is considered completely weird when it comes to naming?

Magic: Value | Occasion | Constraint | Instruction

How does your culture understand, shape, control, teach, and use magic?

Does it have a positive or negative relationship with magic?

How do non-mages view magic?

When is magical commonly practiced, what occasions call for magic to be used?

What personal limits would an individual impose on themself and their magic? What magic is off limits/taboo?

How are mages trained formally? Is it passed down and taught by parent to child or is their public institutions for it?

Who is allowed to use magic?

How does magic impact one’s rank and status?

How hostile or friendly is the majority of the population to users of magic?

Is magic viewed as supernatural or natural?

Would magic frighten a child or delight them?

Does the practice of magic have any influence on other sections of the culture?

Supernatural: Reason | Reflection | Ritual | Soul

How does your culture understand the relationship between that which cannot be seen and that which can?

Does the culture engage in religious practices? If so, how and what are they?

How much do people trust religion and the intangible vs science and the tangible?

What are the big questions that shape the culture and it’s religion or religions?

What is the right relationship to have with the supernatural?

What kinds of relationships can people have with it?

Are their rituals or buildings or people who wield religious authority and power?

Do the religions generate a rich interior life?

How does it help the mind and soul?

Is it more internally or externally practiced? Is it personal or public?

How are people without a religion treated?

What are the religious minorities of the culture?

Self-Reflection:

What lies does your culture tell?

What does it refuse to be honest with itself about?

What are secrets and tension and cause for shame?

[flyingcookierambles]

ideas that are impossible but hey i thought of them

continuation of my previous a3! post/wishful thinking regarding the best case scenario of a3! en continuing

not my idea but someone mentioned having a subscription type payment added to the game where subbed players get extra items and cards in exchange for guaranteeing the localization team income for the month. i don’t have anything against this, its a fine idea, in fact Obey Me! does it already and players get bonus items and access to the animated shorts on DevilTube.

my ideas tho are more of kickstarters that help fund the localization team. essentially we pay for ebooks. they don’t even have to have narration like “He moved to the kitchen and said...,” it could literally be very rough and like stage scripts ie:

                                        SCENE: Mankai Kitchen

JUZA: You made cake? Can I have a slice?

OMI: Sure, cut yourself a slice!

that’s it.

the amount of Acts translated can be split into something like Main Story Act 1 - 4 as a “bundle”/main goal, with getting all the Event stories, mini-chats, and Backstage stories as extra unlockable tiers. We don’t have to worry anymore about ranking of Event grinding or RNGsus giving us the correct SSR cards, we all get all the stories at the same time, we just have to actually pay money because these will just be regular books at this point. also, since there are no more rolls/banners for new cards, just letting everyone access the stories is fair i think.

in terms of distribution, while seeing that character’s emoting faces is great, i think that ebooks/the scripts being somewhere more accessible to the public like kindle or kobo or ibooks or whatever is better for archival purposes. having the app update just once or twice a year with more story content and all would be nice, but speaking from experience as a person who has already lost an online gacha game, having things tied to the app and the servers wouldn’t be good if CYBIRD/LIBER decides to finally really just pull the plug. for nostalgia reasons and since it barely takes any space at all, i still have terra battle of all things on my ipad. however, when i open the app it gives me a “can’t connect to servers” error message because the server’s plug got pulled, and i have to go to the wiki if i want to actually read the stories. so, having the ability to buy the translations as regular ebooks and having the ability to have it on your computer offline / having a personal copy forever is better than nothing/having to rely on the app constantly, even if we lose the “visual” part of the “visual novel” and just have a “novel.”

kickstarters could be held once or twice a year depending on the amount of the Acts/Main and Event stories that get grouped into a “bundle”/untranslated content is in the japanese a3!

again, i doubt that this will happen given how strict and weird japanese companies are sometimes, but it’s the best case scenario where we could still get updated translations from the official localization team where we bait LIBER with some money and also give the localization team some extra income bc i do follow a lot of official anime/video game translators on twt and half the time they’re contracted freelancers who get underpaid for the amount of work they do and i’d gladly give them some extra money.

extra:

that time that anime fans crowdfunded a kickstarter to get an osamu tezuka manga translated into english

that time that the Time of EVE sci-fi anime movie got kickstarted to be translated

that time that Nozomi Entertainment crowdfunded a translation and dub for ARIA

Operation Rainfall (god i feel old this was a thing when i was in middle school lol) (really tho if yall can try to play a rom of The Last Story or listen to music from it, it was fun i miss it but only because my wii broke and idk where in my house my wiiu is otherwise i’d play it again but dolphin is a pain to set up idk how lol) (i miss terra battle...) (can’t believe im planning to give money to apple arcade to play fantasian) (sorry for this rant lol but i guess ive been a mistwalker stan since middle school without really realizing it)

Welp that’s it, that’s all i got. basically our issues with A3! en’s servers were money related and it seems like the only way to try and continue something, even if it is a little pricey and takes some time, is to give money upfront and treat anything farther like a regular ebook that you would purchase.

also, quite unlikely altho 2020 was a bad year for LIBER’s jpn revenue due to cancelled events and such, if they ever do complete the story and shut the jpn servers down as well, i do hope that LIBER treats the jpn fans right and give them the story in some form as well, whether that be putting all the story on their website, keeping the app up, or literally just compiling everything into physical or digital books that you can buy and keep forever rather than just having the app disappear for good.

also, in a way, A3! eng fans aren’t alone in a server halt. the Taiwanese servers got shut down earlier this year it seems and many Taiwanese players have to migrate to the mainland China servers....

i’ll make an epic handshake meme of this soon. edit: ayyyy get your shitty handshake i made in like 5 minutes

[sepublic]

Sense and Insensitivity!

           Aaah, I swear this episode helped fix a crippling absence in my heart that I’ve been missing out on! I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is… MORE OWL HOUSE!!!

           I feel like this entire episode is a rather meta joke about the writing process, especially with the whole bit about publishers and how they’re forced to do crunch-time; Pretty sure that’s a real thing, and if so, I applaud Dana and the crew for making sure to remind viewers! And also, Luz, SAME… I, too, understand the pain of being a writer!

           There’s not much else to say about Piniet, but I like his design, premise, and voice! He’s pretty neat, and his ability to read entire books within seconds is… It’s much too powerful! I must have this power… Not gonna lie, I didn’t expect HIM to be the true mastermind behind it all (rather, just a lackey for John de Plume) but I guess it makes sense! I thought Plume was kind of an annoying narcissist, but after seeing what he’s going through I guess I can’t blame him for desperately drinking up any love and support he can get!

           That scene with the cubes though… Pretty freaky stuff, honestly. Legit thought a dude died when Piniet stepped on him, but apparently not- Still, we never see them revert back to normal, and with Piniet conducting business as he usually does after this, YIKES. Also, love the chaotic energy of Not-Dana in this episode, I didn’t really see her coming into play here but it makes so much sense! Also, this episode can be seen almost as a metaphor for what happened in real life, perhaps- Piniet/Disney wanted to pull more writing from King/Alex Hirsch, who didn’t want to dedicate the rest of his life to Ruler’s Reach/Gravity Falls! Then Dana/Not Dana comes in, dazzles Piniet/Disney with her story/The Owl House, and King/Alex Hirsch is free to do as he pleases (in this case, becoming a VA) while poor Not/Dana has no clue what’s in store for her!

           Subtle, Dana. I like it.

           And Luz and King’s friendship! I love episodes that delve more into King and his insecurities, and I’d DIE for these two goobers! I love that while King and Eda are definitely partners-in-crime, there’s a certain silliness to Luz and King’s friendship that is unique to their relationship! Not to discount Eda and her bond with King of course… More on Eda later, naturally!

           Typewriter was a hilarious character, and I love how Luz still wants to show unconditional support for King after he’s famous! It just shows how kind-hearted and empathetic she is… She knows what it’s like to be lonely and not taken seriously and she doesn’t want to take away the gratification from King! Likewise, I love how the show acknowledges that King may just be a tad-bit jealous of Luz and Eda, or at least he recognizes that they ‘have’ what he doesn’t… To King, his two friends seem self-assured and confident, like they’re living their own dream while he doesn’t! I can see why King acts selfish at times, he justifies it to himself because he thinks that Eda and Luz are already having it so good… Surely it can’t hurt to indulge himself once in a while, right?

           But at the same time, King is not truly selfish. Once he realizes he’s messed up, he’ll go back on his mistakes to make amends, ASAP, throwing away whatever he’s gained for that precious friendship! Maybe the REAL power was the friends we made along the way…? Regardless, it’s clear that Eda and Luz, the latter especially, take his insecurities and thoughts a lot more seriously than anyone else, and I think that’s what’s so important to King! The fact that they listen to him, they humor him… And it’s because part of what makes them so well-off is King’s own presence! I just LOVE this trio you guys!

           Also, imagine Boscha’s perspective of Luz and King after everything. I swear, these two –and Eda- are such utter weirdos and cryptids to everyone they come across, it’s amazing! I’m also low-key wondering who made King that scarf… I might want to check later. Not-Saria, planning to trash on that book if it fails you… I know how you feel. And beware King, “There’s more to life than shipping” is fighting words! They’re not FALSE, but still, it’s like that meme about how they hated him because he told them the truth! Like I said, this episode was hilariously meta and close to home, and you get the feeling that Dana is one of us- A fan that’s obsessed over things in the past and suffered laboriously through the pain of writing!

           But… EDA AND LILITH! OH, how I’ve waited for this! I knew it, I knew it was coming, that delicious sibling interaction and team-up, and oh it feels SO good!

           I’m glad to see that Once Upon a Swap hasn’t changed how Lilith feels! It’s pretty ingenius how her strategy for capturing Eda is just ‘procrastinate as long as possible’ and she manages to justify it! Of course, Belos probably won’t tolerate this strategy for long after a while…

           Speaking of Belos- He needs the Bloom of Eternal Youth?!? Is it for some other purpose, or is the dude himself aging? Who knows HOW old he’s been, or how long his rule has lasted- For all we know he’s been the original creator of the Coven System himself! There are even some theories that he was the Boiling Isles Titan, or lived long enough to interact with it! Given how the Bloom was fake from the very beginning, has he been relying on ways to extend his youth throughout the years, or is the first time his years have caught up to him?

          Does he want Eda, partially to mend this? What if the curse was cast by Belos on Eda, to drain her of her youth in a parasitic exchange? The show itself has more or less confirmed that Eda is getting older because of the curse! WHAT IF Belos killed the Titan, because he acted as a parasite by draining its life-force to keep himself alive- He DOES have an insectoid motif, and I guess you could connect insects to creatures like Mosquitoes and Fleas…

          Anyhow, I’m glad to see that Eda will also go out of her way for Lilith, too! The mixed-feelings, aggravation, and genuine love between the two is so amazing… I love how the two are acknowledging that the other means well, and has their own reasons for what they’re doing! And I love how the show has confirmed it- That Lilith DOES want Eda to join the Emperor’s Coven, she just wants her to do it on her own terms, with her own agency! I love this complicated relationship between these two sisters, where they loudly proclaim that they’d sell one another to Satan for a corn chip, but then would move the stars for the other when no one else is looking!

          Obviously the trailer spoiled us, but it was obvious from the get-go that Ratman Witch dude was a fake and it was a trap! Love how they play with the twist by just… Having Eda and Lilith not bat an eye! After all, this is some one-off goon without a name, VS the two most powerful Witches in the Boiling Isles (sans Belos, possibly)! I’d say I wish we got to see the two fight together, but let’s be real- There wasn’t even a fight to begin with. They likely combined a single spell together and ended it within seconds… And on a side-note, I like how Eda confirms that she and Lilith got into trouble together in the past, too! Hence ‘There she is!’ in Covention.

          As for some smaller thoughts;

          I find it funny, but not surprising, that Mattholomule has been relegated to physical labor in Piniet’s publishing company! Isn’t that child labor? We know Luz is fourteen, and he’s around her age, if not younger- Especially how Luz notes how light he is, and how Matt’s similar height to Gus indicates he’s about the kid’s age. I dunno, I don’t know Boiling Isles rules on child labor, if they even have any, and even if they did I doubt Piniet cares! I wonder how Not-Dana will get herself out of THIS conundrum with him… Not that I doubt she will of course! She’s got that chaotic energy and hasn’t survived this long for nothing!

          And I love Luz, being all weird as she is, having to use her teeth to tear up the contract instead of her hands like anyone else would! I can’t quite understand her mind, but it’s part of what makes her such a favorite to me! At least a contract isn’t some organ from a monster you just came across… And clever of her to use the Light glyph for the book! I love King’s realization of a missed pun, and the unstoppable teamwork of him and Luz!

          Given how King has already messed up a few times by being selfish, I have to suspect this will come into play in Really Small Problems, with King feeling like he’s begun to drive Luz away with his vanity and becoming desperate to rekindle their friendship! But as we all know, there’s nothing he needs to prove- Luz cares for him and vice-versa! And ironically, King indulging in ‘Mysterioso’s’ product is also him being selfish, but in general… I like how the show recognizes his crippling insecurity beneath it all, his feelings are valid and not unfounded. Even without the possibility of him having been an ACTUAL King of demons, the show still makes a compelling motive and reason for what he does!

          Speaking of a potential backstory… It’s worth noting that King claims his name is actually a rank- So what was his real name, then? Does he even remember?Likewise, he mentions that becoming a famous author will help him in his reclamation of power…

          All-in-all, this was a good, solid episode! It’s clearly a very relationship-driven episode, which as someone who enjoys the relationships between characters in this show- That’s amazing! It really establishes how characters truly feel about one another, while subtly setting the stage for something else… I love it!

           Up-next is Adventures in the Elements, a totally-new episode that I have NEVER seen, and I will DEFINITELY discuss my new thoughts about it when it officially airs!

[regrettablewritings]

If youre still doing the fluff meme, can I please request C, g , J, and X for Cassian andor?

Sure, you’re not too late! Stuff’s below the cut!

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?):

In a word, terribly. It’s not as though the man has had plenty of opportunities to perfect the art (“There’s no room for cuddling in a war!” you could imagine him saying). You beat him to the punch, though, and insisted you try to squeeze in some cuddling time during the rare moments he was not on a mission, training, attending meetings, or whatever else his “captainly duties” requires of him. Unfortunately, Cassian wasrather avoidant of it; you dared to even accuse him of purposefully looking for ways to stay busy.

And then the Scarif mission happened.

After the injuries acquired, the remaining members of the “Rogue One” squadron were required to take time off to heal, regain their strength, and acquire more proper training. Cassian, to his dismay, was enforced by Mothma to do the former two. Even once he’d left the infirmary to continue resting in his own quarters, the scowl stuck; a stark contrast to the smugness you tried (and failed) to hide. Now he had no choice but to let you cuddle him.

“Hugs can release oxytocin; it’s good for healing!” you insisted to your mean-mugging boyfriend. The most you got was a bemused raise of a brow. “. . . I promise to be careful.”

“. . . You’re going to keep bringing this up, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

At the sound of his exasperated growl, you knew you had won. The careful positioning of your body against his made for an awkward experience, silently but knowingly worsened by the fact that you had to guide him on where to put his hands or what to do if he felt his arm beginning to fall asleep. It certainly wasn’t ideal, but the man was recovering from a wound; you both were on edge. Once he was further along in the healing process, you could count on the awkwardness decreasing as the two of you became more accustomed to one anothers bodies . . .

You counted wrong: He really is just not very good at it. He always felt tense, like he was trying to control everything down to his breathing, yet wasn’t able to control whatever it was necessary for him to loosen up. You made the occasional poke at this (“For a captain, you sure are more of a cadet at this.” “Shut up.”), but ultimately you knew not to give him such a hard time. Like you considered earlier: Cassian grew up in a war all his life; it wasn’t unsurprising for him to be uncertain -- even possibly uncomfortable with cuddling.

Except he’s not, actually: For as rigid as he can be, Cassian actually loves cuddles. He’s a touch-starved bastard, after all. But given how terrible he is at communicating -- especially communicating what he personally wants -- it’s no surprise he doesn’t outright admit to it. He pretends to go along with what you want, but closer to the surface than he would like to admit is the constant desire for your touch. Specifically, from the position of the little spoon. Sure, for the most part, he’ll be the big spoon; it brings about the least mount of suspicion, after all. But every so often, you’ll make a joke about how he needs to ease up on his arm tensing, or else he’ll cramp up. And that’s his golden opportunity.

“Then why don’t you show me how it’s done, Oh Almighty Cuddle Rat,” he scoffs, eyes rolling. He has to fight the urge to come off too eager when the two of you switch positions, with your chest against his back and your arms about his chest or waist. He’s glad you can’t easily see his face from this position, otherwise you’d be able to tell what sort of bliss he’s in. As the little spoon, he feels warm and safe: Two things he hasn’t felt much of in his life. But for as brilliant as it all feels to him, he’s actually not quite brave enough to admit to it.

But that’s fine: You already figured as much.

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?):

Not especially. Cassian is trained more for fighting when not sniping: ginger fingers in the Rebellion more more reserved for mechanics or medics or people who specialized in acquiring fragile materials for varying purposes. As far as Cassian was concerned, the most careful he really needed to be with his hands was to make sure whatever punches he threw would break only his opponent’s nose and not his own fingers. But one could argue that technically, he was capable of gentleness.

Suffice to say, however, you weren’t entirely convinced: Watching the man you had unfortunately fallen in love with flip his sparring partner onto their back into the dirt with relative ease surprisingly doesn’t scream “thoughtful, careful lover with hands that can sew clouds together” to you. Regardless, you continued to love him, even eventually getting together with him romantically. But for as many things as you entered the relationship confident you could have an effect on, you simply left the expectation of gentleness at the door. Certainly, you didn’t expect outright roughness, but you weren’t exactly going to get your hopes up for him to suddenly have the fingers of an angel.

And for the first bit of a while, your expectations (or lack thereof) on that front were met. It wasn’t until you returned from a mission, however, that you found yourself questioning your ability to make assumptions. You had had a run-in with some Stormtroopers but thankfully managed to escape, albeit at the cost of receiving a cut on your forehead. But considering the alternative, you were grateful. Cassian, however, was less optimistic. His brow furrowed at the bleeding line streaking across the upper right bit of your face.

“C’mon, Cassian, it’s not that bad,” you insisted, trying to walk around him and to the infirmary. He didn’t seem convinced, judging by how he reflected your every side step. Eventually you grew tired of it.

“Seriously, I need to get to the infirmary, I just need stitches, that’s all --”

Calloused. His fingers were calloused. You already knew this, actually, given the few times you had held his hands in private, but feeling them on your face somehow seemed to really get that across to your brain. But in spite of their roughness in texture, the strength with which they held your face in place actually wasn’t especially firm at all. If anything, it was Cassian’s stare that was firm. It studied your every feature intently, their dark color managing to tell you one message from their murky depths: “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Every few seconds, they applied only the slightest bit more pressure to turn your head to a new angle. The inspection only stopped when you felt a new pearl of blood oozing down the side of your face, forcing you to bring about the end with a small cough. To his credit, Cassian did finally listen to you and let you go. You found yourself following the departure of his rough, careful fingers.

He exhaled with acceptance: “Go to the infirmary then; it’s not as bad as it could be.”

You blinked. That was all he had to say?! After all that?!

“Uh . . . But what --”

“I’ll check up on you this evening; I have a council to attend.” He gave you a nod and took his leave before you could even carry on, leaving you to your orders. The entire while the gentle and caring fingers of the medics touched your face, all you were craving were Cassian’s.

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?):

Most wouldn’t consider Cassian a catch to your absolute surprise. That still doesn’t mean you don’t get a little nervous now and then.You know how sophomoric and primeval it is, but you can’t help but narrow your eyes whenever you feel Jyn gets a little too close and personal with your boyfriend. You want to boot yourself up the ass whenever you witness Cassian attempt (and shockingly succeed) at seducing somebody to help him while on an assignment. There’s just no reason for you to distrust Cassian’s loyalty to you. Once he’s committed himself to something or someone, there simply is no other for him!

As for Cassian . . .

No, according to him. It’s so frivolous to worry over things like that; there’s a war going on, he has far better things to do than worry if somebody’s eyeballing you!

. . . Is what he would say if one were to ask him. But if one were to ask K2? It becomes a totally different story.

“Cassian has assigned Corporal Gregginor to lavatory cleanup duty 30% more often than previous chore rotations, ever since he saw him trying to teach you how to improve your aim,” the towering droid reveals to you one day.

You blink before raising a brow. “But . . . He was trying to teach me how to better aim my blaster.” Even without facial expression, you could tell K2 was emoting mischievous intent.

“That’s not what Cassian saw; he saw Gregginor putting his hands on your waist and making you bend over ever so slightly --”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Your face burned (at the droid’s words, at what you realized in hindsight, at the fact Cassian saw), but decided to think nothing of it. Bathroom cleanup duty was a pain in the ass, certainly, but usually the task was reserved for those who had earned a higher ranking officer’s ire through use of inappropriate behavior or disobedience on a mission. There was just no way a captain like Cassian would use it as punishment for touching all over his woman . . . right?

Maybe not. But as the week wore on, you became less and less certain. For one, you barely saw Gregginor due to Cassian sending him all around base to deliver messages that arguably could’ve waited or been passed on to an even lower-ranking officer -- things like lunch orders or minute responses to words exchanged in earlier counsels. For another, when you did see Gregginor, it was usually at training -- and if he didn’t already look worse for wear, he would most definitely look that way by the end of it.

While it wasn’t unusual for a drill sergeant to call everyone to gather and watch him exhibit a move or attack with a sparring partner, Cassian deciding to fill in nearly every day was quite unusual. He insisted he had new tactics to show when questioned about his sudden decision to grace the group every day. And when questioned as to why he kept picking Gregginor as his sparring partner, he simply answered that he knew Gregginor could take whatever he threw at him.

“Besides,” Cassian would say just before wiping the ground with his opponent, “I’m going easy on him.” For the rest of every session, if your boyfriend wasn’t busy absolutely wasting Corporal Gregginor on the field, he was having him run laps or do an absurd amount of pushups. Finally, you had had enough.

“Okay, Cass,” you lightly glared following a particularly grueling session. “Is there any particular reason that you’ve been trying to make Greggi’s week an entire life’s worth of living Hell?”

Cassian, ever bemused by both unpleasant nicknames provided, responded with equal neutrality: “It builds character. He’s been slacking off, this is to make sure he stays on his toes.” You hummed a note that lacked conviction.

“Oh, really? You sure it has nothing to do with the fact that, in the process of helping me learn to better aim my blaster, he happened to place his hands on me hips to reposition my weight? Nothing at all?”

At the mentioning of the suggestive positioning that supposedly hadn’t gotten Gregginor into Cassian’s shit list, the latter’s eye dared to twitch. You caught it just enough and it gave you enough confidence to believe that maybe you had caught him as well. But, to your dismay, the captain didn’t come pouring out his confessions and regrets and apologies.

“Your aim needed work; who am I to get in the way of that?” he confirmed instead. Your mouth dropped in disbelief; was he really going to play like this?!

“And anyway,” Cassian continued, “stop being so ridiculous. Do you recognize how absolutely juvenile it would be to use my position for something so petty?” As much as you wanted to respond, you honestly weren’t sure how to. If you kept insisting, he’d probably just keep dodging. But if you left it alone, who knows how long he’d keep pulling this shit?

In the middle of your inner debate, Cassian flung his sweat-drenched towel over his shoulder. “Hit the showers,” he demanded. “Clearly, training’s done a number on you.” And with that, he turned to clean himself, leaving you to glare at his retreating figure. You swore you could sense him smirking the entire while.

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?):

Two come to mind:

First and foremost is “See the World” by Gomez, though it’s mainly directed at Cassian. It’s soft and simple, just as Cassian can be unassuming in his desire to not be showy or processed. Plus, the lyrics simply fit:

Day to day, Where do you want to be? ‘Cause now you’re trying to pick a fight With everyone you need

You seem like a soldier Who’s lost his composure You’re wounded and playing a waiting game In no man’s land, no one’s to blame

See the world: Find an old-fashioned girl And when all’s been said and done, It’s the things that are given, not won Are the things that you’ve earned

Cassian has dedicated so much of his life wrapping it around the Rebellion: It’s practically a part of him at this point. The problem is, he doesn’t seem to recognize what a problem this can actually be. He doesn’t think about what this means when the war is over, who he’ll be, who he wants to be. He’s just spent so much of his time composing himself in a specific manner, even at the cost of having very few close relationships or making the ones he does get a bit difficult to navigate. With a song like this, he’s being reminded to reevaluate his stances, to remember that Rebellions aren’t just about fighting: It’s also about fighting for what you want in the future.

He needs to see the world, not just what he’s been assigned to see for recon. He needs to explore who he is or who he may want to be without the Rebellion. He needs to find a non-K2 companion to love and go off exploring with -- Actually . . .

He snaps out of his reverie and glances at you, huddled up beside him. The cot is far from roomy or comfortable, yet you don’t seem to mind it. And, when he thinks about it, neither does he . . .

The runner up: “Cold Cold Man” by Saint Motel. This song doesn’t exactly scream Cassian at first because what you initially hear being screamed is overly bouncy music you can easily dance to. Picture you flailing and jumping and twirling around with a stone-cold Cassian standing in the middle of it all. That’s this song in a nutshell. No, really:

Oh, my love I know I am a cold, cold man Quite slow to pay you compliments Or public displayed affections

But baby, don’t you go over analyze No need to theorize, I can put your doubts to rest:

You’re the only one worth seeing, The only place worth being, The only bed worth sleeping is the one right next to you

Cassian isn’t exactly the most openly affectionate person. He knows it, K2 knows it, everyone knows it. Even his friends poke fun at him about it. And even though you know it yourself, you can’t help but sometimes lapse into moments of doubt: Is he happy with you? Does he intend on actually being with you for as long as possible, or is it more like any port in the storm with you?

Of course, you feel awful for thinking these things: It’s not as though Cassian is purposefully withholding certain affections from you; it just isn’t really a part of who he is as a person to be as forward as the average lover. Repetitive as it might seem, growing up the way he did just doesn’t tend to fair well for one’s ability to properly emote. But he knows this isn’t fair to you. He can’t keep using his past as a crutch.

Hence why once, every bluest of blue moons, you’ll receive a reminder. He’ll awkwardly sway with you, even dare to smile as you dance goofily in your quarters. He’ll initiate the hand holding in a corridor, even if he knows there’s definitely other personnel around. He’ll join you at night to just watch the stars, even if they don’t especially astound him (why would they? You can usually see them on any given planet, especially if you’ve traveled as often he has). He doesn’t make any suggestion that he’s uncomfortable with you shitting between his legs, or that he has an issue with you playing with his fingers. You could’ve honestly called it a great night if it had ended there, with you leaning back against his chest, letting the nice, balmy night air soothe you to sleep.

But it’s the unexpected kiss you feel on your temple that yanks you back. You’re afraid to move, certain that if you do, the mood will be lost and your normally gruff boyfriend will no longer want to keep letting you sit there. It’s only when you feel his arms wrap around you with more certainty that you know there’s nothing to can do in this moment that will make him want to let go. There’s nothing in this galaxy that would make him want another.

You’re the only one worth it all to him.

Thank you very much for asking and for being patient!

[takaraphoenix]

I think that Supernatural now has the unique opportunity of coining a new fandom term, because... there isn’t really a word for what they did; not to my knowledge at least.

Queerbaiting is, very distinctively, the act of queer-coding a dynamic between two on-screen heterosexual characters and making a profit off the shippers while at no point having any intention of ever actually making either of them queer, much less dropping the “b” from their bromance. That’s the whole point of queerbaiting; refusing the queer. By making Castiel queer in the end, regardless of how badly it was handled, it kind of disqualified itself from being queerbaiting anymore.

But that doesn’t make it any less bad!

Queercatching is a variation of this, where they give you the gay, but only a little bit of gay. Supernatural would be that if Dean had actually returned the feelings, said “I love you too” and shared one last passionate kiss with Castiel before Cas went to Super Hell. They gave you the ship, but like... only a little bit, so you can’t say they baited you, because it did happen on screen! But they also really didn’t give you representation either, they didn’t give you a queer storyline or a proper relationship. However, Dean didn’t return the feelings, there was no kiss, no holding hands while soulfully gazing at each other one last time five seconds before the show ended.

There should be a term for one-sided canon, for half-assing the queercatching, for saying “look! you were right with this one... but not the other, let us drive home how very heterosexual the other one is and how very not returned the feelings are”. Many, many franchises do that - the tragic queer character who falls hopelessly in love with the very, very heterosexual protagonist. It’s cringey af, all the time.

Sure, most queers have such experiences of crushing on, or being in love with, a straight person at one point in their life, but... mirroring reality and the actual queer experience is not the goal of these storylines. These storylines aren’t about the queer character usually; they center very firmly around the straight guy, because it’s generally his story. The queer character is always a very vital and useful part to the straight character’s plotline, helping him out in huge ways, being a big support, both emotionally and in the fight. And they did it because they were hopelessly in love with the straight protagonist, as it turns out. They served a purpose in the story and that purpose is the straight lead.

These storylines, I’ve never come across them with two characters of equal rank in the storytelling; the straight character is always a more important main character, the titular protagonist, something like that.

In really bad cases, they come off as “look at that saint of a straight protagonist! how non-homophobic he is for handling that confession so well!”, usually (unlike here!), followed by “and now I can write off the gay character into his endgame gay romance”, to be done with that. They never really focus on the queer character overcoming the heartbreak, or on them both dealing with the awkward aftermath of a love-confession, they just move on and that’s what makes it feel so very dishonest. Because it’s not actually about the queer character’s feelings; otherwise we would also deal with the aftermath of rejection and with their emotions. We just move on from it, with the narrative on the straight character.

I’ve seen this plotline so often by now, but honestly, Supernatural really outdid themselves there by adding the Bury Your Gay and sending him to Super Hell, while the straight guy goes to heaven, never actually has to go through that emotional journey I just mentioned always is missing - the dealing with the feelings - instead, it all is just dismissed. And they even got to skip out on putting the queer character into a new romance to be done with him, they just got rid of him completely after he served the straight protagonist’s plot (by saving him; this time and many times before).

I’d love for the term “they sent the character to Super Hell” to catch on in fandom for this particular way of having a queer character confess to a straight character, who has no intentions of returning the feelings, and then just moving on from the confession like nothing happened. Not just in the way it is right now kind of a meme and a joke, but as an... actual lasting fandom term. That should be Supernatural’s legacy. I really hope it sticks around for that purpose.