#this is actually distressingly tragic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

recurring-polynya · 4 years ago

Note

Your thoughts and headcannons on Nemuri Hachigou because I don't think she gets talked about enough, when in reality she's pretty interesting, she's essentially, a blank slate, Mayuri's second chance that I don't think he feels like he deserves. She's Nemu but she isn't and I think people(especially Mayuri) forget that a lot, that's a fascinating position to be in.

Puttin’ this under a cut because I’m gonna say some unkind things about Mayuri and I do not want to cause any distress to the many lovely people on this website who delight in his horrible antics.

This is not so much a headcanon so much as a thing I came up with for fanfiction purposes, but it’s all I got.

Right. So, like I said, I despise Mayuri. I just hate him. I understand that he appeals to some people, but I strongly dislike the dude and go to exorbitant lengths to avoid him ever appearing in my fanfic.

Additionally, I do not vibe with Nemu 7. She registers as not-a-person for me, she’s basically an extension of Mayuri himself. Don’t get me wrong, I find Mayuri’s treatment of her to be vile and I wish someone would take her away from him, but she comes off as very robotic to me. She is conscious, but she is not an independent being, if that makes sense. She is not a real girl. It’s funny that Mayuri keeps talking about how advanced she is, because clearly he means only her cognitive and fighting abilities. In terms of recreating a person, she’s incredibly primitive compared to the other mod souls we see. Take Kon, for example, who has a fairly limited powerset, but is never presented as less of a soul than any of the other characters. An even more interesting example is Ururu and Jinta. Ururu is described as being older than Jinta, and she is clearly “less human” than him-- she has less affect, she shifts into a distinct “attack” mode, etc, which implies that Jinta represents advances in mod soul technology. It’s notable that Urahara and Tessai and even Renji, in the canon scene where he protects the Shouten kids, never treats them as anything less than people. The contrast with the way Mayuri treats Nemu is stark. He likes that her feelings and personality are limited, he sees this as a feature.

I was completely unmoved by the entire chapter where Nemu died. Her sacrifice did not come across to me as anything indicating growth or humanity-- in every battle she's ever been in, she nearly dies because Kurotsuchi tells her to. She simply prioritizes Mayuri over herself. She always has. It’s simply the logical extension of her programming. A lot of people say they would have preferred Nemu to live and Mayuri to die and for sure I would have *preferred* that, but I have never seen Nemu as enough of a character to be worth rooting for. Like, at least Uryuu would have gotten some satisfaction form killing his clown ass, and that might have convinced me for at least half a second that he actually was on the side of the Quincy.

Caveat: if some talented fanficcer wants to write a short novel on Nemu discovering her humanity etc etc, I’m all for it, I’m just saying that canon hasn’t given us anything to suggest she would do more than just shut down without Mayuri to tell her what to do.

Onto Nemuri 8. I can’t believe they let Mayuri have another one. It makes my blood boil. The dude is an on-screen abuser and Kubo had the gall to try to make me feel sorry feel him (I did not) and then gave him another one.

So, I took her away from him.

I mentioned earlier that I go to great lengths to keep Mayuri the hell out of my fanfic, and usually the way I do that is to have my characters go through Akon whenever they have to deal with Squad 12. I think I started doing this because Akon is sort of weirdly familiar with Renji and Rukia in the TYBW, but I have projected all over him and he’s mine now. The way I assume Squad 12 functions, based on my career in scientific programming, is that Mayuri is like a primary investigator-- he's the Big Ideas guy and he spends a lot of time doing wholly self-directed research. He’s the face of Squad 12, so he has to go talk to the Captain-Commander and beg for money and defend blowing things up, but when it comes to science stuff, he does what he wants. Nemu is the lieutenant, and I think she handles most of the usual lieutenanting-- paperwork, meetings, etc., but I think Mayuri takes up a lot of her time by using her as a personal lab assistant on his wacky projects. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think in a lot of squads, the lieutenant is responsible for the day-to-day running of the squad and spends a lot of time dealing with their subordinates and other lieutenants. Nemu, instead, focuses on her captain. Now, the rest of the Gotei counts on Squad 12 for a lot actually-- gigai, Hollow tracking, Dangai monitoring, etc. etc. From the point of view of most science people, this stuff is mundane-- it’s all application, not development, and all the difficulty is in the twitchy little details. It’s frustrating and it’s unrewarding and you never get credit for it, and it is vitally important. There is a certain kind of science professional that makes a career out of this. They usually have master's degrees instead of PhDs, and they are usually tragically underpaid and underappreciated for what they do. In the real world, without these people, you wouldn’t have mass vaccination sites or weather data on your phone or cute li’l robots landing on other planets. In Bleach, these are the people keeping soul reapers alive in the field. And in my mind, this is Akon’s department.

So here’s the headcanon:

After Nemu’s death, Mayuri has so much sad clown pain about it that he wants another robot child poste-haste, but can’t bring himself to do the actual work, so he shoves it off onto Akon, with a list of the design specs he wants. The last one was pretty good, Akon can handle a few minor upgrades, it doesn’t need his personal hand in it. Thinking about going through all that work again just pisses him off, honestly. What a waste!

And Akon's like, yeah, cool, fine. It was heavily implied that he did a lot of the work on Nemu 7, it's just a matter of digging out his old notes and cleaning out some vats.

Except that, right around the same time, Rukia and Renji decide to have a baby.

Babies are super rare in the Gotei, and it’s not like those stuffy nobles are gonna let Akon look at their precious offspring. But Rukia is a rank weirdo, and Akon is their pal, so she’s always like “I hear they have these things in the Living World where you can pee on a stick and tell if you’re pregnant, can you make me one?” and Akon’s brain goes, “Wow, what even is the first detectable sign of a newly formed soul, this is very interesting.” So, at the same time he’s trying to grow a new and improved Nemu, he’s got access to the developing fetus of two captain-class shinigami. So when he has to pick between eight good candidate embryos to move to the next vat, he picks… not the one with the strongest reiatsu signature, like they did last time, but the one whose reiatsu looks the most like a real baby.

Akon reminds me of a lot of programmers I know, so I always sort of headcanon him as particularly interested in whatever passes for programming in Squad 12, and I think he takes special interest in revamping Nemu’s artificial intelligence system, which is primarily based on taking in information about the world and building up a realistic personality based on people she observes. In particular, it gives extra weight to “people who resemble her”. Nemu 7 was raised by Squad 12, so she came up very Squad 12, just like Mayuri wanted. Unfortunately, toddler Hachigou Nemuri’s algorithm unexpectedly decides that she has much more in common with toddler Abarai Ichika than any of the adult soul reapers around her.

Nemuri 8 is a very successful sample in terms of power and intelligence but she’s also very boisterous, and the rest of Squad 12 is like “Akon do something” so Akon takes drastic measures: he asks Renji for parenting advice. Distressingly, Renji is full of useful ideas like “tire her out” and “only fight the important battles” and “we’re signed up for baby yoga, you wanna start comin’ to baby yoga? Your back is gonna thank you.”

Akon didn't mean to let them hang out so much, but Ichika is a very useful data point and also if he takes Nemuri over to the Abarai house, the girls will entertain themselves (i.e. chew on each other) long enough for him to have a beer with Renji and Rukia and honestly my man really needs that beer.

I don’t think Akon thinks of himself as Nemu’s dad past the first time when she calls him ‘Daddy’ and he corrects her (she only did it because that’s what Ichika calls Renji, very predictable quirk of her programming). She’s just a work project. She’s not even his project, she’s Mayuri’s project, he’s just handling the little details. Fathering just happens to be an adjacent field of study that he’s found to contain a number of very useful best practices.

I would prefer not to get into the detail of the physical abuse that Mayuri uses against Nemu 7, but I would like to think that Akon finds ways to protect Nemuri 8 from the same, or barring that, maybe this is what finally drives Akon to murder Kurotsuchi and become Squad 12 captain himself.

Other Nemuri Headcanons:

Her favorite book is Rejection of the Twin Fishes!, Captain Ukitake’s posthumously published children’s book.

She prefers to be called “Nemuri” over “Nemu.”

Nemuri’s second favorite person in Squad 12 after Akon is Rin, because he always has candy. Rin actually likes having someone to share his hobby with and helps her make a World of the Living Snack Bucket List. When other shinigami come in for gigai, Nemuri constantly tries to con them into bringing something back for her.

Rukia teaches her to cuss, but tells her never to do it around Akon. Nemuri never actually cusses around anyone, but really enjoys having Forbidden Knowledge.

Speaking of Forbidden, she is mildly obsessed with Urahara, even though she’s never met him. She’s constantly on the lookout for thumbprints of his work in modern Squad 12 technology.

The one thing she does have in common with Mayuri is an absolutely batshit personal aesthetic. She starts painting her face as a tween and is somewhat inconveniently both into piercings and inflatable outfits.

The true proof that she has surpassed her predecessor, at least in terms of humanity, is that she is able to learn the name of her zanpakutou.

Oh, if you want to read any of my fanfics with Nemuri, here's one where she and Ichika play football and here's one where she tries to con Byakuya into buying her shaved ice. I really like writing Nemuri hanging out with Byakuya because I think an adult man who navigates social settings via rigid system of etiquette and class hierarchy and a small child with a pile of Markov chains for a brain would be natural friends.

#nemuri hachigou

49 notes · View notes

teamfreehoodies · 4 years ago

Text

teamfreehoodies masterlist

The Witcher (TV)

See below the readmore to find links and summaries for all the fics I’ve written to date in this fandom.

and we will be elided by the people that we love most

de-aged!Jaskier, hurt!jaskier, hurt!yennefer, exploration of motherhood, families of choice, panic attacks (jask)

“What did you give me?” he growls, burying his fear beneath a burst of anger. The room around them splinters, making gravity an uncertain principle: vertigo makes him drool and he spits, falling over, digging his fingers into the ground in a futile effort to make everything just stop spinning. “Oh fuck, wha’ ‘id you do t’me?” he slurs out past a suddenly numb tongue. The icy burn has spread out from his throat and chest to take over his whole body, sending lightning strikes of pain zinging up and down his limbs.

“You’ll find out soon enough, I think.”

Yennefer is healing after Sodden, trying to pull her chaos back inside herself. She doesn’t actually have time to chase down wayward bards, much less take care of the child-sized version of one she’s never particularly liked all that well. She really is quite tired of being forced to save this fool.

darling, dearest, don’t you see (voices left inside of me)

follow-up to ‘elided" above: After the events of and we will be elided, Loretta writes Jaskier a letter. How do you forgive the kind of betrayal that’s made to save another life? How do you learn to live with the ways your family has hurt you? How do you heal without betraying yourself?

idk man, read the fic.

the heart electric (beats a half-time measure)

Jaskier drops the torch and the dagger, rushing forward to fall to his knees next to Geralt. The light sputters briefly but holds, and Jaskier curses himself even as he hesitantly reaches out to try and wake Geralt. The leather armour of his shoulder is cold under Jaskier’s palm, and weirdly tacky with something; arachas venom pings in the back of his mind like a warning, and he hastily wipes his palms off on his already ruined doublet, reaching forward to cradle Geralt’s face instead. “Geralt?” he whispers; the horrifying truth of Geralt’s stillness catches in his throat, preventing him from being any louder than that. “Geralt?”

It’s not that he hadn’t thought it possible… but Geralt was a witcher. No one had ever mentioned that witchers could die.

Five Times Jaskier Thought Geralt Was Dead, Plus One Time It Was Reversed

this life that we’ve created (inundated with the fated thought of you)

Gods, but this is very nearly intolerable. He’d been ready to forgive him, even then, waiting for Geralt to take it back, for him to turn around and apologize; and he’d been ready to forgive him two years ago, if only Geralt’s path would cross his again, one year ago, traveling slowly from town to town, chasing whispers of the white wolf in between his bardic circuit. He does not know if his heart can take it again, if Geralt once more decides him too much of a burden to bear traveling with. Injured, now, needing to be saved, he could not have engineered a worse reunion had he written the fates himself.

if you could let me inside your heart (could I be enough?)

Post-coital realizations should never be had alone. AKA Jaskier questions his place between these two powerful, immortal, destined-to-be-together beings, and he finds it hurts to be just… human.

this our winter of love (a gift from one above)

“It’s weird but I don’t think it’s witcher-weird.”

“Oh, it’s witcher-weird, alright.” Lambert interrupted, pulling up something on his phone. It was one of those ‘smart’ phones, paper thin, supposedly able to think for itself; seemed like more trouble than Geralt cared to deal with, but Lambert was half in love with the damned thing. “Look,” he said, thrusting the lit-up rectangle in Geralt’s face.

Geralt had to pull comically far back to actually look at what Lambert wanted him to see. The screen showed a small parcel of people milling about a city center. They were all dressed like either they had walked off of a movie set, or they were genuinely from the 1200s. There was even a bard, holding a lute. A distressingly familiar bard, for all that Geralt hadn’t seen that face in eight hundred years.

i carry your heart (i carry it in)

Witchers don’t have soulmates. That’s been true for as long as Geralt’s been alive, a necessary sacrifice for a life spent on the Path. There’s no place for the attachments that humans define themselves by.

It may not be worth it to Geralt, but love has always been the single most motivating force in the world for Jaskier. Unrequited or not, he’s a bard, and there’s a story to be told. He’ll be the one to tell it.

(Who’s the more tragic figure here? The loved or the unloving?)

Jaskier and Geralt are soulmates, bound by the Red String of Fate. But just because it’s written in the stars doesn’t mean it’s an easy path to tread, and it takes more than a nudge from fate to make a soul-bond work. Between the way Geralt feels about destiny, and the trials and tribulations of the path they have to trudge, it’s going to be one hell of an adventure.

the prairie is vast (the train is quicker) | Into the Jaskierverse, pt. 14

Geralt and Ciri are still trying everything they can to find Jaskier. After… a traumatizing split, they come back together in a new universe entirely. They’re offered a chance to distract themselves from their worry over Jaskier, and the perilous journey they’re on, by helping a female version of their favorite bard steal a wagon, rob a train, and, just maybe, come to terms with a worry that’s been plaguing her.

Featuring; much talk of guns, someone getting shot (on accident), a murder! (on purpose), Jaskier the Horse!Girl, one (1) dissociative episode, one (1) panic attack (though not the same character), and just enough fludd and banter to even it all out.

if i loved you (could you stay?) | QF1

He knows the way to Jaskier’s lodgings, knows by heart how to find the tiny row of cottages reserved for the professors and their families, knows too that Jaskier might not even be there; he’s not heard of anything from the bard in months, not since—

He shakes himself, turning away from the uncomfortable memories. What’s done is done. He only hopes he isn’t too late.

A love confession gone wrong leads Geralt to try and fix his relationship with Jaskier.

Go Get Your Mage | Yennfri promptfic

When Yennefer portals into Blaviken instead of Geralt, a more… mutually beneficial arrangement is made.

fate makes fools of us all (she plays the longest game) | QF2

It’s not that she’d meant to become a witch, but… well.

Sometimes these things just happen.

a willing ear (a hand to hold) | QF3

A little town in the mountains calls for the aid of a witcher, and Geralt and Jaskier take on a contract that’s more than it first appears to be.

Even the divine have friends, strange as it may seem.

breathe with it (bleed with it)

Fringilla was the first. She flexes her hand, feeling again the phantom tendrils of chaos crawling up her veins as her arm had turned to dessicated ash and bone in recompense for her glory. That was what being noticed got you. That was a lesson learned in blood and pain. That was a lesson learned hard and fast and once.

a Fringilla Vigo character study; “There is no such thing as dark or light magic. Nothing in this world is as simple as that.”

#amber writes fic #posting for posterity #this also exists as a page on my comp theme #but now it shall exist as a pinned post on my mobile theme as well #witcher fic #fandom creators make some noise ayyyyy

46 notes · View notes

wellextrudemeprincess · 3 years ago

Text

Sitting here in nostalgia hell thinking about how my old PGMD OCs would fit into FFXIV setting simply because I miss them and I’m currently obsessed lmaooo

I already have Naira as a Xaela Au ra from the Azim Steppe, part of the Gharl clan (the tiny tidbit of clan lore we get for them fits for her with the bonus of Gharl being very similar to Gorral) She still has the bad history with Besnik but uh, things ended earlier and not near as tragically so she’s only bitter about the betrayal, and not the whole. Loss of the baby thing too.

Aubrey would absolutely be an Ishgardian Elezen, son of some minor noble house that is just high enough in society for there to be a good bit of gossip when word gets out he ran off to join his bastard half-breed cousin as an adventurer, completely dropping his training to join the clergy. And then coming back with a foreign commoner that he announces he is formally courting. Likely headed straight to Limsa Lominsa because the Arcanist guild sounds like a good fit to build on the skills he has, and it being a port city means that if he decides the area isn’t a good fit, he has access to many other options.

Oliver would be that bastard half-breed cousin. Lominsan born, and likely only as acceptable as he was amongst Ishgardian “polite” society because it got out he spent a lot of his time before being brought to Ishgard running errands and doing work for a convent (lmao). Aubrey’s father kept him around out of love for his younger sister and a desire to keep some part of her alive, and because his late wife adored her nephew. He would have known the truth about the “convent” and desperately wished the boy had been less an influence on his sickly son (even if Oliver was actually the one tagging along for the ride.)

Maggie and Adri would both definitely be Viera, likely sticking together when Maggie spots this young AF boy dressed in garb like that of the village she left behind so long ago, who is...distressingly naive and about to get scammed out of what little gil he has, and she ends up intervening and then taking him under her wing, maybe even helping him pick out his new name.

Solita is ????? I’m not sure but there’s a part of me that is torn between her being a Raen Au ra for looks alone, moonkeeper miqo’te who was part of a very secluded, now mostly extinct tribe, or possibly part of that one Xaela tribe that worshipped Dalamud. She is still a big sad and might be carrying around her brother and mother’s bones still. Might be extra haunted. Might be dabbling in necromancy.

3 notes · View notes

zosonils · 3 years ago

Note

about the sonic/mega man crossover, how would Sonic figure into it? would Sonic be like a player 2, maybe have his own separate side story, or what?

i was like 'hmm i haven't thought about it much so i guess this'll be a quick ask' and then the part of my brain that's thought about sonic level design every day for the past ten years awakened and i wrote so fucking much [and tragically it's not even illustrated this time] so this is gonna be under a cut again bhjfkngbkjg

there's a handful of ways you could go about this but i imagine it'd work like classic and modern sonic in generations where every stage has one act for sonic and one act for mega man that you can play in either order! alternatively the sonic rush approach where they both have their own story and you beat both to unlock the final boss could work. there's also the idea of doing it like sonic rush adventure or mega man and bass where you pick one character at the beginning of each stage and can go the entire game only playing as one of them, but this wouldn't really work for the same reason it didn't work in mega man and bass dialled up to 11 - sonic and mega man gameplay are so fundamentally different from each other that it's almost impossible to design a level that's equally fun and fair to play through for both of them. either sonic has to slog through a slow-paced level filled with enemies that can attack him from afar with no way for him to counter from a distance, or rock is constantly tripping over his own big ol robot boots as he stumbles through a level that's throwing shit at him from every possible direction faster than he can reasonably react

sonic's gameplay would probably function more or less identically to sonic colours, i'm thinking for consistency's sake it'd pull from the ds port rather than the wii version so that the entire game is a sidescrolling platformer. all the wii-exclusive wisps [cube, hover, spikes] work in two dimensions and two out of those three are exclusive to the 2d segments so there'd be no issues with squeezing those down to a purely sidescrolling experience, as opposed to the logistical nightmare of making up a way for every single colour power to function in 3d - sonic lost world on 3ds kinda did that for red burst if my memory is correct but it's just not as fun. also i think the thing modern sonic does sometimes where it switches between 2 and 3d mid-level is clunky but that's just me

the reason i talk about wisp logistics is that of course sonic's still gonna have the wisps. nearly all of them would function pretty identically to their ingame incarnations, but unlike in regular sonic colours where you can only use certain wisps in certain spots in certain levels, they'd act more like mega man's weapons where sonic can activate and deactivate them at will until an energy gauge runs out. [i say 'nearly all' because as i mentioned in the last post about this au i think blue cube sucks ass and that'd be even more apparent if you could use it whenever you want. keep some optional ring/cube puzzles for funsies, that's fine, but i'm envisioning a heavier emphasis on the ground pound aspect of it that the game sorta glosses over so that it feels less underwhelming]

just as rock unlocks a new weapon with every robot master defeated, sonic unlocks a new colour power. of course this means that even sonic's levels would have to be almost completely reworked so that you can beat any of them without a single colour power, since i wanna keep the near-total non-linearity from mega man, but honestly i think you could make just as fun a sonic colours experience treating wisps like this. side note, i think i heard a rumour or leak or whatever the kids call it now that sonic colours ultimate is leaning towards this approach, and i have no idea if it's true or not [after all the playable tails rumour [which i had a very vivid dream about while staying at my grandparents' house one summer when i was i think 9 or thereabouts, i wanted it to be real so bad] turned out to be not real :(] but if it is that'll fucking rule

also this should've gone earlier but i can't find a good place to insert it so i'm just saying that both sonic and mega man's gameplay styles will probably lean a bit closer to each other so it doesn't feel too jarring for fans of only one series. since i love both i could just rip straight from their respective titles and it wouldn't matter but unfortunately i care about game design. the core gameplay would be pretty identical for both of them, it'd just be little differences - mega man levels naturally flow faster and the punishment for charging in headfirst is a little more gentle, sonic levels have tighter platforming and encourage a slightly more thoughtful approach without sacrificing the momentum-based gameplay. sonic's stages are a bit trickier than usual [at least on par with the genesis games] and require deliberate skillful movement, mega man's stages are more forgiving and give you more room to breathe, striking a tough but fair balance between 'sometimes challenging but rarely distressingly so' sonic and 'for the love of god please help me' mega man. each character still plays distinctly like themselves, but with adjustments to make it easier for a fan of specifically one series to ease into the other's playstyle, and also so that the constant shifting between two different gameplay styles feels more natural and less jarring

really the biggest issue that this hypothetical crossover poses in terms of gameplay is bosses. of course the robot masters are gonna be the main bosses, but who's gonna fight them? rock could take on the robot masters while sonic fights his own guys, but sonic bosses aren't nearly as interesting as robot masters by nature of each series' core design [sonic is all about the levels themselves whereas mega man is pretty much defined by the showdown with each boss]. is the boss a separate, self-enclosed act 3 you can choose either character for? what's the point of a mega man level that doesn't end in a boss fight, though? is there a forced structure of act 1 as sonic and act 2 as mega man? do they BOTH fight the robot master at the end of their act? if so, how did he come back when he got beaten the first time, but not the second? i guess i'll go with they both fight the robot master and he just teleports away from whoever beats him first or something, but it feels like an incomplete solution and it bothers me lmao

obviously the boss issue only comes up with the robot master stages and the boss rush [would you even want to do a boss rush if you've already had to beat them twice] because the obligatory egg/wily stages at the end would be fine with more generic bosses - maybe the actual bosses from sonic colours repurposed for the final levels, at least on sonic's side of things. the true final boss would naturally have you switch between the two of them in a completely different gameplay style that you have to learn fast or die trying a la sonic adventure 2 or the rushes, and almost definitely is the nega-mother wisp from colours ds

#this devolved into word vomit so fast lmao whoops #i have something of a special interest in game design theory. if it wasn't glaringly obvious yet lmao #too bad i can't code. if i could i'd be making this game already #sega is clearly fine with sonic fangames and i think capcom officially stated that you can use their assets as long as it's not for profit #so if i COULD code this together i don't think any poor innocent corporations would be scared of my big scary fan project and c&d me lmao #just fucking whatever #sonic the hedgehog #mega man #sonic colours #mega colours #sonic forces me to answer questions #aprofessionallurker #op genuinely thank you for giving me the excuse to infodump paragraphs of absolute nonsense about the funny special interest crossover

6 notes · View notes

auncyen · 5 years ago

Text

I: have yet to actually play p5r, even if I know the big spoilers

My brain after midnight: AU where Yusuke has Kasumi’s role though? In very broad strokes (though still specific enough to be... somewhat spoilery for Royal canon):

Yusuke learns the truth of the Sayuri before p5 starts and is still in the room with all the copies when Madarame returns. Madarame panics and tries to throw Yusuke further off-guard by telling him about not just the whole painting scheme but the truth of his mother’s death, then tries to kill him so he can’t reveal everything and ruin him. There’s a struggle. Yusuke either thinks he killed Madarame or genuinely does kill him, but it’s judged to be an accident. He’s not arrested; he is compelled to go to therapy. He opens up to Maruki enough to confess what he did (or thinks he did) and talk about his guilt and still conflicted feelings about Madarame, expecting to have the police called and be arrested at the end of the session, but Maruki instead, realizing Yusuke isn’t a threat to anyone else, decides to resolve things for him in a way that he forgets what he learned about Madarame that day, genuinely believes the story of the ‘accident’, and goes on as a tragic young prodigy carrying on the legacy of his esteemed mentor.

Needless to say Yusuke hates the spin of the attention he’s getting, but at the same time he does want to do his late mentor proud...but he’s having a nasty case of art block. He notices his brushstrokes getting violent on paintings that are meant to be a tribute to his mentor distressingly often, and one or two former pupils have approached him with ugly insinuations about Madarame. He dismisses those as jealousy/bitterness, remembering what Madarame said about them as they left, but still finds those run-ins upsetting.

He still follows Ann, this time enough to accidentally get pulled into Mementos by the group, thinking her beauty might make a wonderful painting, but he accepts her refusal after she gives it--he does find it regrettable, but he has no need to pressure her. Besides, he finds Mementos quite fascinating, even if the feelings it invokes would be utterly inappropriate for a tribute to Madarame, and starts painting it as a way to exorcise his own ‘inappropriate’ emotions.

The PT...are really unsure what to make of him. He’s way too absorbed in his art for them to consider him a threat for very long, and Ren even strikes a deal with him to help him with his art block in exchange for skill cards being duplicated, but while he’s willing to help the PT to try getting past his art block, he’s dismissive of their efforts, saying people should help themselves, which the PT find rather cold and off-putting, and then confusing on the rare occasions he helps them outside of the deal. They start to understand better in the third trimester, when his idealized recollection of Madarame slips to reveal the truth and they realize the abusive situation he was in and how he was discouraged from seeking outside help (and the time he did get it was of Maruki’s somewhat questionable kind...)

...There are more details to consider but again I only know the big spoilers for p5r lol

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 royal spoilers #yusuke kitagawa #I regret being awake but I don't feel tired enough to go back to sleep yet #hypothetical au posts it is then

31 notes · View notes

dying-suffering-french-stalkers · 4 years ago

Note

If you don't mind me sending in some more about the ask game: 24, 40, 41 and 50? :3

(Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition ask meme)

Under a cut for length and for spoilers.

24: Favorite ship? ;)

The Havres The transport pods that look like whales Oh boy, the can of worms has been opened now! I’m a proud multishipper and am cool with a lot of different ships/headcanons, but some that I enjoy are Melia/Fiora, Reyn/Sharla/Gadolt, Dunban/Dickson, Dunban/Mumkhar, Shulk/Reyn, Shulk/Alvis, and Alvis/Kallian. Shulk/Fiora may be basic but it is also cute, so I don’t have any problem with the implied “canon” ship either. They’ve clearly got something going on and I find it heartwarming no matter how platonic or romantic you read it.

40: Feelings about Future Connected?

To be fair, I didn’t play FC personally, only watched my brother play it, but my overall impression was *shrugs*. I was glad to see more of Melia, of course, and Shulk was fun too. Seeing a bit of the postcanon world was also great. I knew from hearsay/my brother that the Bionis’ shoulder was intended to be in the game proper, but since I myself am quite new here I didn’t get the same excitement from seeing it finally realized. I mostly loved seeing Alcamoth again. It was one of my favorite inhabited locations and the tragedy of seeing it post-Mechonis Core was a standout moment to me in the original game, so I was happy to go back. I actually quite liked Kino and Nene but couldn’t help but think they felt...out of place in FC’s narrative (same goes for the Ponspectors), plus it’s too bad we didn’t get to finally see them interact with Riki after all that. Gael’gar was underdeveloped as hell and ultimately wasted as an “antagonist”; his ending was tragic but almost distressingly unemotional since there was so little buildup. The use of the track “A Tragic Decision” (which had been used for highly emotional scenes with Egil and Zanza) felt incredibly forced and almost insulting considering how little they’d developed him. His whole “arc” was awkwardly integrated and poorly executed, which was a shame since, had he been a bit less cartoonish, he might have been genuinely interesting. Frankly, FC just tried to address too many things in too short a runtime. I never found the Fog King particularly threatening and made Eye of Sauron jokes the whole time. According to my brother the ending implied some kind of multiverse with XC2?? I know nothing about 2 so I just thought it was underwhelming. Seeing Melia and Tyrea interact again was probably my favorite part of FC, though I thought that ended a bit awkwardly as well. I’d like to think that Tyrea continued to heal after FC because hoo boy, does she have some stuff to work through. I loved the two main encampments and Radzam the Machina chef is my new favorite NPC.

41: How did you come to know Xenoblade Chronicles?

My little brother had been a fan of the Wii game for years, but I just never bothered to ask him about it, I guess! I think the problem was I conflated what little I knew of XC1 (which was that Fiora “dies” almost immediately) with what little I saw when he was playing XC2 (which was the human(?) Blades, the creepy Nopon, and the even more fanservice-y women’s outfits). I just assumed they were one and the same and thought it was one of his more invalid interests. I knew it must have had some redeeming qualities since he doesn’t go for fanservice but I didn’t care enough to find out. Oh, how wrong I was, at least about XC1! He preordered the Definitive Edition as soon as he could, and since I had free time and he had talked it up, I decided to watch him play it. The rest, dear reader, is history. As soon as he finished his playthrough I dove headfirst into the fandom and started playing it for myself! I had to finish it quickly since I was in the process of moving and the Switch was his, but I completed the main story just in time and had an absolute blast. I’m utterly in love with this world and am so glad I gave it a chance.

50: Any advice/other words for any prospective/future fans?

Welp, I’m not sure how many made it this far since I dropped a ton of spoilers in here, but do what I did and give XC1 a chance! I know they throw a lot at you right out of the gate but boy does the narrative Go Places you’d never imagine at the start. It’s a fantastic journey with a delightful cast of characters and some really neat worldbuilding. Even if you can’t play it, you can watch all the cutscenes here and tag along!! If you are able to play it, I recommend completing sidequests in an orderly fashion instead of ignoring them like I did (due to my limited timetable) and having to go back and one-hit a bunch of enemies for by-then-underleveled armor/gems/extra skills/etc. Just get the EXP and area affinity when you can, plus you might end up completing a lot of the quests by accident just from wandering around! Learn to use Melia’s elementals, especially leaving Aqua in the initial slot to help keep everyone alive.

#anyway here are some very long replies!#thanks for the questions :D #xcde ask meme #peopleofmechonis #asks #xenoblade #spoilers #personal #future connected

3 notes · View notes

whosewoods · 5 years ago

Text

(Potentially) Unpopular Theory – The growth of the incel movement is directly proportional to the rights of women in society

So allow me to state this right off the bat: I am not blaming women for incels. I stress: the incel movement is in every way the fault of the incels themselves. It is my hope that in seeking to advance a possible explanation, I am not justifying their motives or their behaviour. In fact, it is their singularly entitled mindset that will (hopefully) bear out my argument.

(I apologise for going off-tone with my Tumblr page, too; I feel that this is worth offering to the community for your thoughts. Sorry for the poor essay!)

But why do I tie the growth of incel ideology with women’s rights? Misogyny, and the segregation of the genders (and indeed, the belief in binary genders) is as old as agriculture. It’s certainly older than the incel movement. And yet, it is in considering this history that we can begin to unpack their ideology, and it’s easier still when you frame it all in a single word: “entitled”.

Incels are entitled. The word is so wrapped up in the incel culture that it’s practically impossible to define the movement any other way. Their brand of hatred is driven by their belief that a woman exists to provide sex, and that men both require and deserve sex; by their reckoning, the differences between man and woman are intrinsic, biologically driven, and the role of each is determined by this biological imperative. It’s completely wrong, and yet the uncomfortable truth is that this ideology draws from a long-established source: from the attitudes and beliefs of the majority of men throughout any point in history up to this one.

The only reason, then, that we see the incel movement as unique or new is because this sense of entitlement is no longer reinforced by society itself. The monumental efforts of so many brave women have created the beginnings of a society, of a culture, in which the sorts of attitudes even our own parents may have experienced towards women are no longer considered a matter of course. This is not to say that these beliefs do not still exist, or that “sexism is over”, but there are increasingly negative consequences for those men and women that continue to maintain them. And yet, this leap forward towards equality is still new, and the movement still comparatively young.

Consider that in recent history, even as recent as a generation ago, the expectation was that a woman would inevitably marry and have children, regardless of what she may have actually wanted. Her role in life was tied into this expectation – she was the keeper of the house, which was ultimately the possession of her husband. She was, by the mindset of the times, a possession.

A man, in turn, was raised to believe that one was the result of the other, that he was entitled to it. Of course, like any sort of property, a woman had to be earned – get a good job, get a house, get a car, get a wife. Tick these boxes and, inevitably, socio-cultural pressures would drive a woman into your arms. Forget your behaviour, your personality, your past, her consent or willing companionship – you would still find yourself with a wife as long as you’d passed the above checkpoints, because you were entitled to one. And distressingly, the underlying expectation driven by these attitudes, demanded as a consequence, was you as the man were also entitled to sex.

It’s horrifying that a person could at one point reasonably view a woman as you would a car; earned, asked for and received, to be used as you wanted when you wanted. Indeed, a car will start for a violent rapist, for an entitled man, as it does for anyone else. Would those same creatures, viewing a woman as an object, be expected to behave towards her differently?

The consequences of this history of entitlement, of this ticking of societal boxes are still borne out today. Think about the surprise Weinstein et al have expressed when “innocent flirting” is subject to prosecution; Brock Turner’s father, shocked that his son could be facing prison time for “20 minutes of action”; Elliot Roger, a virgin at 22 years of age, heartbroken that he had “never even kissed a girl”. We all know the consequences of their entitlement, of the tragic outcomes almost masked by such benign statements.

The one thing that unites these men, however, is their inevitable surprise that one action does not lead to another. Being a kingmaker in Hollywood; being a promising member of the Stanford swim team; owning a fancy car and fine clothes; whilst in many tragic, stupid ways they each got away with their behaviour, not one of them ultimately got what they expected, and yet they did not change. Rather than back off, than reconsider his identity, each man entrenched himself in his behaviour, to varying degrees of success, and to the detriment, to the suffering and even death of others. And why? Because such entitlement had worked for them before.

And this is my key point. Society is changing, slowly and by tiny, agonising steps, but it is changing. In spite of so much, the rights of women in the 21st century are greater than they have ever been at any other point in time. The right to own property, to vote, to express her opinion, to travel safely, to take ownership of her body are no longer a matter of argument – these rights are not even close to universal, stupidly, but they are enough to effect monumental change where it concerns the expectations of men. As a man, one increasingly cannot be a shitty person without experiencing some form of backlash. Those men so utterly lacking in the ability to socialise or treat another human being with respect regardless of their gender are finding that they cannot lean on their possessions to mask themselves. They cannot simply tick the boxes to get a reward. They cannot rely on the old institutions of power to demand it; each is being stripped away. And all that is left is the sense that they still deserve something, someone, for it.

Incels are effectively the detritus of the third wave of feminism, and the fight for women’s rights. These men find themselves left behind, marginalised, as close to being living figments of history as we have ever seen in our lives; as their expectations are not met, the inadequacy, self-hatred and self-pity that each feels is redoubled against the world. Rather than confront themselves, than take the daunting step of self-improvement, they seek out like-minds that reinforce their own behaviour and validate their beliefs. They stunt their own growth, rather than face the world and the truth, the fact that power of their gender is no longer a matter of course. They have every opportunity to change, and they do not. The outcome is loneliness, and violence towards themselves and, tragically, towards others.

This is not to say that one should pity them. Incels are not victims. The consequence of every progressive step we take as a society is that those unable or unwilling to change are left behind. The consequence, then, of women’s rights is the incel movement.

I want to state this: what I have observed about incels is by no means a suggestion that the fight should end. A disease will resist the medicine that inevitably kills it. There is so much more to do, and we have so far yet to go, but the violence of a minority should spur us forward, not hold us back. As a rule, what old men decry is worth fighting for. What young men in isolated chat rooms condemn is worth supporting. We can hope these men will change. We can even seek to cure them. But foremost, we must keep moving forward.

#incels #womensrights #sexism #misogyny #essay

6 notes · View notes

clevelandrocklovesick · 6 years ago

Text

YandereDev: I’m trying to think of an idea for a game that’s played from the perspective of some kind of “evil” trope from a dating simulator. YandereDev’s friend: You mean like a delinquent simulator? YandereDev: No, it has to be darker than that. I want it to be like a horror game where you play as the monster. Oh, I know! How about a yandere simulator?

YandereDev: OK, I’m working on a game called Yandere Simulator. It’s for mature audiences only because it’s going to contain some dark and disturbing content. Babies: We promise we’re a mature audience!

YandereDev: The game takes place in a high school full of people between 16 and 18 years old. Babies: That’s gross! YandereDev: OK, I guess I’ll make them between 18 and 20 years old and change the setting once it’s convenient.

YandereDev: If you look up a female character’s skirt, you can see her panties. Babies: That’s gross! YandereDev: OK, I’ve added an option to censor the panties.

YandereDev: One of the rivals will be Senpai’s sister. Babies: That’s gross! YandereDev: OK, I’ll make it so she doesn’t have any romantic feelings for him.

YandereDev: I’m considering adding a feature where you can kill a kitten to hide dead bodies from police dogs. Babies: That’s gross! YandereDev: OK, I’ll just make it so you can take a picture of the kitten.

YandereDev: Here’s an Easter egg that turns all the characters into naked giants like in “Attack on Titan.” Babies: That’s gross! YandereDev: OK, I removed their skin, because that apparently makes them less gross.

YandereDev: I added a new character and made it possible to crush his head. Babies: That’s gross!

Where does it stop? When does YandereDev say “screw you guys” and just make the game the way he wants to make it? The worst things you can do right now are dismember corpses and torture people, but the game doesn’t actually show graphic depictions of either of these things. I don’t actually want to see them, but if you can’t stand things like this being in the game, it’s not the developer’s fault. It’s just not your kind of game.

He’s been streaming Red Dead Redemption 2 lately. It realistically depicted a horrifying and tragic event. A man was given a death sentence via public hanging. A woman watched while she screamed and cried at the top of her lungs, “NO! DON’T TAKE MY BABY! PLEASE DON’T TAKE MY BABY AWAY FROM ME!” After his death, she dropped to her knees where she stood and just knelt there, sobbing in front of the man’s dangling corpse, while everybody else walked off. Before that, he played Lucius 3, which featured a similar scene with a distressingly realistic depiction of the Ku Klux Klan hanging a black man. Oh yeah, and he played Outlast, in which you play from the first-person perspective of a naked man getting his genitals mutilated.

And yet Yandere Simulator is somehow the offensive game. For some reason, Yandere Simulator is the game that’s banned from Twitch. YandereDev is the one who gets called disgusting scum. I just don’t understand people.

#Yandere Simulator #YandereDev #YandereDev drama #Red Dead Redemption #Red Dead Redemption 2 #Lucius 3 #Outlast #Twitch

510 notes · View notes

filthysweetie · 5 years ago

Text

TAZ drabble Taako-centric

Prompt: “Well, that’s tragic”

day 7!! crushin’ it

———————

Taako loved cooking, always had, always will—and when that whole shit with Sazed cleared up, he felt like he was allowed to love it again unabashedly, like it wasn’t some dirty secret. Once that veil had lifted, and they had finished saving the whole plainer system or whatever, Taako went back to it with relish (pun deliciously intended).

For the first week of it, Taako just made the plainer-saving food ‘tacos’. Taco after taco after taco. Angus couldn’t look at them after day three (“they’re so good, Sir, but if I eat another of Taako’s tacos I will become a taco!”; they had had a long talk about how transmutation actually worked after that one).

Magnus and Killian stayed strong, but by lunch day five they were approaching each meal like it was a battlefield. Lup was still a lich, so she didn’t count. Barry would take a plateful every 8 to 10 hours and disappear into the lab he’d crafted—Taako couldn’t be sure the fate of his beautiful tacos.

Merle was still eating them like they were the best thing (they were), but Taako feels as though that may be down to Merle...well, being Merle. He sometimes forgot his arm about the bureau and that thing was supposed to be attached.

Taako was getting sick of it, and he was the one making them.

It took Kravitz giving him a hug and asking for a grilled cheese to snap him out of it.

But none of that matters! What matters is Taako loves cooking, and now that he’s not in a state where his anxiety is making him continually make tacos as though that will keep the plainer system safe forever (okay, he and Kravitz may have done more than just talk and eat some damn good grilled cheese) that means he can make anything his heart desires.

His heart desires lasagne.

It’s perfect, really, fresh made pasta layered with tomato sauce, ricotta, mushrooms and eggplant, repeating in an elegant pattern until it reaches the edges of the stoneware pot. Add a sprinkle of cheese on top and then it’s ready for cooking.

Taako washes up (okay, he burns a spell slot to clean, what’s the point of magic if you don’t use it?) and the smells of his delicious lasagne waft through the space. When it’s finally ready, Taako takes it from the oven and just has to admire it. Man, if he weren’t doing a fantasy-social media cleanse, this would be all over fantasy-instagram. Some grade A food right here.

Taako picks up the dish—he is going to bring this to the couch, sit down and eat through it until someone comes in and judges him, or he feels sick, he’ll let Istus decide. He closes his eyes for a moment, taking a big whiff and sighing in content. This is his legacy.

Taako takes a step forward and the world falls apart.

Something…yells? At his feet. But more distressingly, the beautiful dish of lasagne goes flying through the air as Taako yells out ‘Nooooooooo!’ in what has got to be slow motion. Taako sees every heartbreaking second of the dish landing face down on the floor, sauce flying around like a bloody splatter. And it may as well be—his lasagne was murdered.

Taako catches himself on his knees, eyes still glued to the beautiful remnants of perfection, “Well,” stiff upper lip Taako, you saved the world, “that’s…tragic.” Whether or not a tear was let loose is up for debate.

Taako turns to see what monster did this to him. What foul creature is so heartless?

“A cat?”

A fluffy ball moves closer and gives a pitiful mew.

“How did you get here? You’re not allowed on the moon base.” Taako scratches behind the fluff’s ear. It starts to purr.

“Wait, does that rule only apply to dogs?” Taako brings his other hand in on the action, grinning widely, “Oh Magnus will be piiiiissed if all it took for him to get a pet was have anything other than a dog.”

The cat purrs harder, coming closer to lean into Taako’s touch.

Taako continues his idle petting, eyes drifting back over to his sad masterpiece before coming back to the cat. The cat was orange.

“Well, how would you like to be my cat, Lasagne?”

#taz #taz taako #taako #the adventure zone #drabble on #i fancy myself a writer

3 notes · View notes

collusioncomics · 6 years ago

Text

Nicholas Warner’s Agents of S.E.A.L.

Nick Warner, [Maxwell Lord/Nick Fury] was an adept businessman specializing in the marketing of superhero identities in mainstream media, and in many cases even engaging as a kind of talent scout and manager for various well established heroes and their teams. In many ways he serves as the primary adversary keeping the subversive tactics of [G.Gordon Godfrey/Master Pandemonium] in check. But he is also a megalomaniac, and as his career grows he quickly finds the level of control and amount of credit he’s given unsatisfying. To quench this thirst for recognition he establishes his own super hero team, under his direct and explicit command, The Great S.E.A.L., which he markets heavily as an “All American” hero team. His need to control all facets of his team results in manufacturing backstories, personas, drama, and even adversaries and crises for his team. He scripts their lives and careers like a reality TV show. Invariably this turns him into as much a benefactor of super villains as heroes, and as such his competing hero team, in their various incarnations, tend to walk the line on being rival heroes and themselves villains.

As pillars of his original team he recruits...

[Manchester Black/USAgent], The Brand: Wielding the team’s titular Great Seal of the United States of America, the original figurehead team leader; [Lord/Fury]’s loyal lackey. He uses telekinetic powers to control his flying shield as a weapon. He doesn’t often do much of his own thinking or decision making, but when prompted to offer up his thoughts, he is quick to reveal himself as a fanatical extremist of nearly every description.

After a series of media debacles and a subsequent shuffling of team roster, he is recast as the stoic and silent big brother of the team briefly before being replaced entirely by a second Brand. The mantle would be passed down through a long line of very short lived successors, all trying to redefine the character in some way that could prove marketable, yet the legacy would be continually marred by scandal.

[Hawk/Cloak] & [Dove/Dagger], The Talons Dexter & Sinister: The Brand’s wingmen (hurr hurr...) and eagle themed lieutenants. They were selected for their marketable qualities as a duo, and as thematic accessories to the Great Seal gimmick. They possess opposed powers of temperament influence, allowing them to either inspire aggression or passivity in the people in their immediate area with focused intent. Ironically this makes Dexter, with his pacifying powers, the most effective vanguard in battle and Sinister a better support, buffing his teammates with rushes of adrenaline, bursts of confidence, and even temporary invulnerability.

They would eventually be discharged after sustaining debilitating injuries in a tragic defeat that [Fury/Lord] orchestrated to introduce an element of drama and edge to garner public sympathies and retain interest. The battle however would escalate out of control and go largely off script resulting in the unintended lasting injuries: Sinister would be blinded and lose the ability to aim his powers at specific individuals (and gain the involuntary ability to use them on himself), and Dexter would develop PTSD and selective mutism. But surprisingly they prove themselves quite effective as actual heroes after seeking therapy following their departure from S.E.A.L.

[Stargirl/Firestar], Firecracker: A somewhat distressingly young girl unwittingly roped into the superhero persona to fulfill [Lord/Fury]’s perceived need for a token female with sex appeal in order to sell the team’s image. She is scouted from [Court of Owls/Massachusetts Academy] by the headmistress Li’l Birdie [Penguin/Emma Frost], and outfitted with some rudimentary equipment to amplify her underdeveloped and largely untrained [meta/mutant] powers, but is relegated largely to posing for photo ops.

Not long into the gig she becomes a target of sexual advances by her older male teammates, which she takes up with [Lord/Fury]. He dismisses her concerns and instead advises her to pick a team mate to date publicly, as he thinks it will make for a better team image. Instead she takes it upon herself to reach out into the hero community outside her team to receive proper training —not willing to accept being both exploited by and then run out of the hero business, she becomes hellbent on making it as a super heroine for real.

She makes her way through several different mentors at Birdie’s recommendation, putting all her effort into tackling her self designed crash course in heroics until she becomes a competent heroine in what all her mentors regard as a shockingly short amount of time. She returns to the team hardened and with a dramatic make over, and the next time one of her team mates sexually assaults her, she puts him in the hospital. [Lord/Fury] isn’t especially upset however, and actually tries to leverage the whole incident to make him look like the hero for siding with Firecracker over her assailant. This hypocrisy proves the final straw, and Firecracker leaves to join [Batman/Prof.X]’s private academy and the [Batman Family/X-Men].

[S.T.R.I.P.E./Blue Streak], Old Glory: A retired Olympian and war veteran recruited for his existing public image and appeal with older demographics. Well past his prime as an athlete, he’s aided by an exoskeleton and armor facilitating superhuman speeds, but really he mostly keeps to clean up duty, crowd control, and publicity stunts; often just running to create a blur of red and white stripes for effect. (literally just running in circles) He’s fine with this of course, because he’s mostly in the gig to relieve his glory days in the public limelight, rather than see any real action. He becomes notoriously lazy and entitled, with a bad attitude even by S.E.A.L.’s notoriously low standards.

His time with the team ends, when he sexually assaults the underage Firecracker after her return from training and she overloads his exoskeleton with her powers, overextending its joints and breaking both his legs. [Lord/Fury] drops all endorsement of him following the incident.

[Red Tornado/Beta Ray Bill], Red Chief (Later, Red Condor): The product of a private contract with [T.O.Morrow/Baron Mordo], secretly being used to serve his larger machinations. He was initially presented to [Lord/Fury] as purely robotic and under his full control (a premise which would later prove false when the Native American wind spirit trapped inside him would gain control of his machine prison) and was deployed as an appeal for superficial "diversity points.”

After the eventual dissolution of the first S.E.A.L. team, [Lord/Fury] pushes for a more “authentic” hero team, employing cutting edge research into the study and manipulation of the [Meta/Mutant] gene to create a line of “designer” heroes, catered to his specific marketing needs.

[Major Victory/Citizen V], The Brand II: Initially recruited in a pinch to replace the original Brand, he’s actually the agent of the corrupt Atlantean noble, [Black Manta/Baron Zemo], working to help spur anti-American sentiment in Atlantis through subtle false flag tactics.

[Lady Liberty/Atlas], New Colossus: A female body builder hired after Firecracker left the team. She was chosen to fill the new found niche appeal factor for a muscular heroine that Firecracker brought to light after her intensive training.

[Silent Majority/Screaming Mimi], Anthem (aka Vox Populi): An unsuccessful opera singer who volunteered for [Lord/Fury]’s designer [meta/mutant] gene project in hopes of attaining fame an fortune. He has the power to create duplicates of himself (but only up to four, and not capable of autonomous thought) as well as bionic implants to weaponize his voice.

[Mayflower/Amazon], American Beauty: Another of [Lord/Fury]’s designer [meta/mutant] with the ability to control plant-life and a penchant for tormenting men, hero, villain, and civilian alike. (Honestly I don’t know what to do with her that’s not just Poison Ivy...)

[Skyman/Mach-I], Full-Mast: A kind of informal legacy character to Old Glory. His flight suit is based on Old Glory’s speedster exoskeleton. The unfortunate euphemism of a name after the circumstances of his predecessor aside, he earns the nickname Half-Mast, because he frequently makes a point of flying low to make sure his face is seen in public.

[Sparkler/Techno], Hallmark: Tech whiz, boy hero put in charge of the team’s equipment, he’s basically a superhero ball boy. Marketable as cute and chipper with a kind of old fashioned boy-ish charm. He’s the first to die when [Lord/Fury] decides his new team needs some drama. (think the iconic death of Bucky, Jason Todd, and Supergirl covers.)

In [Lord/Fury]’s quest for wealth and acclaim he also becomes well acquainted with [Toyman/Norman Osborn] and his son, [Dollmaker/Harry Osborn]. The family of toy manufacturers are at first rivals and later accomplices in [Lord/Fury]’s marketing crusades. Their compulsive and often manic love of superheroes fuels their stalker-like fanboy tendencies and feel the need to insert themselves into the lives of heroes by any means, even as antagonists. They become in turn [Lord/Fury]’s crisis engineers when he begins more heavily scripting S.E.A.L.’s adventures.

This was definitely not meant to be as long as it turned out, or involve as many specific character combinations. This team is such a heinous mess of a concept and got so wildly out of hand before I really noticed. I can’t help but love coming up with these disastrous characters, though. I definitely meant for them to be more of a joke than a tragedy at first, but something about the tone of it all had me inadvertently channeling a little bit of Garth Ennis’ The Boys. I just like the idea of a bunch of delusional wannabes, glory hogs, and narcissists posing as super heroes.

Hey, there newcomer! If you are in fact new to this blog, I’m sure you’re a little confused. But if this has been the kind of confused you enjoy, then check out our about page to have maybe less confused and more enjoy?

5 notes · View notes

doctor--chaos · 6 years ago

Text

I tend to avoid interacting with the Yugioh community for several reasons, but regardless, I’ve heard quite a bit about the whole “Aoi is a victim of the Lost Incident” theory, because it tends to come up whenever the topic shifts to Aoi, which is pretty often. I Personally, I find it a bit redundant. Wasn’t her obligatory dark and tragic past supposed to be about having lost her parents and house and being all alone on the streets, while Akira did progressively less legal things so they could get money? Do we really need to pile the LI on top of that, too? I get that this is Vrains, where tragic backstories are used in lieu of actual characterization, but that’s just overkill. Also, regardless of victim status, she’ll still end up with Aqua (probably.)

So I didn’t really think much of it, after all the Yugioh community cranks out a lot of theories of varying levels of plausibility.

And then I find out the upcoming episodes are more or less addressing that theory.

Oh dear...

Remember back with episode 60, where I said that it was kind of a lose-lose scenario? This is like that, but multiplied by 200%, because the focus is on Aoi and to put it bluntly, Aoi fans are really intense, it’s almost disturbing at times. The bad part about this is since this is a theory that nearly everyone has an opinion on, things will get messy regardless of whether or not it gets confirmed, because either her backstory gets more or less retconned or she gets shafted for the sake of this Miyu character, who, as far as we know, is off somewhere herding goats, completely removed from the action. Or maybe she got in a car accident. Those are distressingly common in Vrains. Of course, there is the possibility that she will be brought into the cast, but, considering Vrains’ record with its cast, that would just mean another character to neglect.

It’s Yugioh, I’m not gonna act like it’s high art or something. Sometimes things that seem like they should happen don’t and sometimes things that seem like they shouldn’t happen do and sometimes things that work one way just... don’t anymore. Changing a character’s backstory wouldn’t exactly be the most extreme thing they’ve done. We haven’t reached Alco levels yet.

Either way, we’ll probably have people mad or glad about which theory did or didn’t get confirmed (and there will probably be some friction between them) and people who are mad about them being mad or not mad about it. What I’m trying to say is: There will be venom. Loads of it. A good amount of it will be directed at the staff. And by the staff, I mean the writers. And by the writers, I mean Yoshida- the fandom’s punching bag, and the rest will be directed inward at themselves.

Of course I could be wrong. In fact, I’m hoping I’m wrong and that everyone will be happy with these episodes. I really don’t want to watch this community turn into a seething, angry, frothing mess.

If nothing else, I have the GG vs. BS match to look forward to. That’ll be pretty sweet.

#vrains #vrains spoilers #vrains speculation #tomorrow is gonna hurt ain't it?

2 notes · View notes

dandelionpie · 6 years ago

Text

Okay @mentalwires all I can say is you fucking asked for it. This is

Madeline’s Lengthy and Mostly Very Positive Track-by-Track Review of

Off to the Races

by Jukebox the Ghost

(feel free to follow along at home on your Personal Listening Device; it’s all on Spotify or wherever)

(and I’m not going to follow any formatting rules because this isn’t being graded so fuck it quotes are in italics)

I don’t know if it’s just because I listened to it over and over again, but this album is an album. Friends, there are motifs in this album. There are themes. There’s something that’s not quite a narrative, but a strange awakening to the crises that plague people who have reached a certain stage of human development just beyond the beginning of real adulthood.

1. Jumpstarted

Our speaker is awfully self-aware for someone who admits to a chronic lack of self-awareness. This song is like the “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” by Tom Waits for a new generation, except instead of tragic it’s just, like…incredibly goofy. It also follows in the footsteps of many other songs (the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” springs to mind), it rehashes a very familiar theme: Young Man sees Young Woman*; young man becomes instantly fixated on an imagined future with her; young man admits that his imaginings are the product of his deranged imagination but, though he fully admits to his own emotionally compromised state in great detail (and your gravity / my depravity / won’t take my advice), he refuses to relinquish the fantasy and face reality, even as he does so in the utterance of the lyrics. Rather, he accepts his eventual heartbreak to be as inescapable as the laws of physics - what goes up must come down, after all, and as foolish as his infatuation seems, it’s even more foolish to try to change something as immutable as that. It’s too ridiculous to be properly sad, but we feel for him all the same.

There’s definitely a gender element happening here. I’ve been that guy, but far more often, to greater and lesser extents, I’ve been that girl. We have this idea in our culture that women are obsessed with love and will throw themselves into relationships with men at the drop of a hat, but I’ve seen it played out far more often the other way. In my (limited! human! biased! don’t @ me!) observation, women may throw themselves into the emotional side of a relationship, but the planning part (this person fulfills everything I want from a spouse/life partner/parent of my anticipated children) and therefore it must be Fate)…well, I haven’t done that since I was about ten. I’ve seen grown-ass men do it on multiple occasions, to me and many of my female friends. So like…make of that what you will.

The song also does that cute thing where it name-drops the title of the album in the lyrics, and I love that.

*the object of the speaker’s affections in this particular song remains mostly ungendered except for one she pronoun in the bridge. If you ignored that one tiny “she” (or changed the gender of the speaker), it would be easy to make this song about a very real and serious problem facing today’s LGBTQ Youth: Queer and Here syndrome**. That is, when you see another person of more-or-less your persuasion and they are around your age, breathing, and moderately attractive, you tend to fall in love with them regardless of actual chemistry or lack thereof. Again: I have been the speaker, and I have been the object.

**EDIT: Ben Thornewill, who wrote the song…might be queer? I can’t find any info either way, except for he helped with a fundraiser for Everyone is Gay one time. Someone with a longer attention span should google this for me.

Enjoying this nonsense? Click below for the rest!

2. Everybody’s Lonely

This track continues the theme of powerlessness in the face of one’s own self-awareness (dragged into another heartbreak / like a moth into a flame) while implicitly making the way for a gentle interrogation of the music industry. Are we programmed for broken romance? Probably, but we’re sure the hell not going to stop singing about it. And we have to admit, it’s more than a little diverting. The singer is having a marvelous time with the vocals for how much he’s complaining, and the track switches up the speed and time signature more than once (there’s some sophisticated musical term I’m failing to call to mind here, but dammit Jim I’m an English major not a music doctor).

The title itself is a simple statement on the nature of humanity, and a somewhat comforting one (to me, anyway). It’s hard, but if everybody’s lonely, then…well, no one is, right? And, of course, the lyrics could also be read (heard?) as a comment on the content of this very album, as well as the greater Jukebox the Ghost canon, which, self-admittedly, mostly concerns either love or drinking too much (and often both). Lampshading? Probably a little, but I think it works.

3. People Go Home

I will admit: I hated this song until I saw the album performed live. It’s just so damned cynical, and at the same time describes a lifestyle (car! boss who wears a watch! wife and children and a house and a dog!) my generation seems to have given up on aspiring to. Because the American Dream is an illusion, etc. But the thing about it is, despite its dour outlook on the life of its subject, the song itself is just so much fun.

The metaphor of the calendar pages being torn off and thrown away would be a bit too cliché in a more serious track, but the irrepressibly catchy beat makes it work somehow. The repetitiveness is really artful - of course it’s repeating itself; it’s a song, but it also evokes the passage of time and the subject’s own mortality (the tick of the clock / and the tick of the clock / mark the moments ’til the ticking stops). And the abrupt end of the song is…well, actually a little unsettling in light of its lyrical content.

Another motif arises: are we becoming who we hate? Is it inevitable that we should do so in growing up? And, again - if there’s nothing we can do about it, should we perhaps make an effort to enjoy the ride?

4. Fred Astaire

First, a confession: this song is primarily for me about the Blupjeans pairing in The Adventure Zone, so like…I’m gonna do my best to ignore that aspect in my analysis but no promises.

I love this song.

I think it’s the strongest track on this album From the very first bars, it’s psyching you up for something, and the powerful opening vocals do not disappoint. This is an excellent showcase of Ben Thornewill’s raw vocal power.

I’m also a huge sucker for the “man who has landed the partner of his dreams hardly daring to believe his luck” trope (cf: Blupjeans, Jake/Amy from B99, tons of other cute pairings I can’t call to mind just at the moment). There’s something so beautifully pure about watching someone realize how fortunate they are to have someone great in their life. In this case, the speaker seems almost playfully resentful as he wonders at his partner’s inexplicable admiration of him - “what are you even doing with a dork like me?” he seems to ask.

But in the bridge, he contrasts that playful exasperation with a genuine admiration of his beloved’s clarity of insight - when I lose myself / there is no one else / who ever sees through me quite like you, he points out, and something about his tone feels genuinely grateful. So for me, this resonates on a personal level as well - in my life, I’m continually astounded by the people who have seen me at my worst and continue to refrain from telling me I suck.

Well, that was distressingly sincere. Don’t worry; I turn back into a snarky pumpkin in just a sec.

5. Time and I

If previous tracks have hinted at themes of growing up and having way too many feelings about it, this track drives those concepts home with a freaking sledgehammer. I have less trouble with it than “People Go Home,” but it’s still a bit too relatable if you ask me. There’s a deeply sympathetic undercurrent of frustration (try as I might / it ain’t no friend of mine) - this guy’s been making an effort, and he’s announcing a sort of surrender, even as he continues to beg time to slow down for him.

I’m intrigued by we’re not the way we used to be - is he talking to a third party, or to time itself? If the former, the feeling t is one of those universal heartbreaks we all go through at this point. People don’t just change - relationships do too, and that can be even more frustrating and harder to pin down. And if it’s the latter, isn’t there something too beautifully futile about the act of begging an abstract concept to act against its nature?

This whole album is so wonderfully human.

Overall, the lyrics feel a bit weaker than the rest of the album to me, but I love the way it sounds. The vocal tracks in the bridge layer on top of each other one by one in this really evocative way, piano is perfect for a track like this - since it’s both percussive and melodic, it invokes bittersweetness of the inexorable passage of time. Maybe? I dunno, just spitballing here.

6. Diane

I hadn’t actually paid much attention to this track until I saw it performed live and the singer got the audience to sing part of the chorus for him. Neat trick, dude. I still didn’t like the song all that much until I saw @mentalwires spin very enthusiastic rope dart to it. Anyway - like many songs by Jukebox the Ghost, it would be downright obnoxious if it weren’t such a jam.

What really grabs me about this song is the line about not being able to focus. Maybe it’s just an ADD thing, and it’s certainly not an original thought - of course you can’t focus, dude, you’re basically worshipping this chick - but it’s true that people we like are distracting, and it is highly inconvenient. And it’s way more fun than most of the other inconvenient things that afflict our little species, so that doesn’t help matters. I relate similarly to I can’t sleep / why even bother, although that probably has more to do with my insomnia than anything else.

Damn I love power pop.

It’s another self-imposed tragedy — our dude doesn’t know how to let go of the idea of this girl, but how well do they actually know each other? The bridge (You make me feel like I’m alive / you make me feel like I’m the only one) brings home what the speaker’s been hinting at since the start of the track - it’s much more about how he feels than about the person he feels it for. Sometimes / I don’t even think you know my name could be read two ways - either she knows him but acts like she doesn’t (rude), or they’ve never even actually met.*

All the while, he begs her to tell him her thoughts, but does he actually want to know? And if they haven’t met, then how could she tell him she’s thinking about him at all? How is she even going to hear what he’s saying? Well, of course, she can’t - the classic futility of the pop ballad returns. So much in this song is about being unheard, and that fascinates me.

An observation: Songs in this vein hardly ever give any detail about the ostensible (usually female) subject. This is probably at least a little bit to make it easier for everyone involved to identify with them, but it also makes it clear that the speaker’s love has far more to do with his own hang-ups than with the supposed object of his affections. And doesn’t the way we love say so much about us? Maybe that’s why I’m such a sucker for romance.

*The tertiary Queer and Here interpretation makes itself available yet again. I mean, the whole bit about sweaty palms goes all the way back to Sappho, you guys.**

**Fuck I’m such an English major send help

7. See You Soon

Imma be real with y’all for a sec - I couldn’t handle this song at first. It’s about losing a person, and not even in a way that’s final. It gives me sort of the same feeling as “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (read it; it’s short and will tear your little heart from your chest). In both that poem and this song, the ambiguity of the addressee’s identity makes the loss all the more poignant - is the speaker addressing a lover or a friend? Is it both? And which is worse?

The painful wisdom imparted by the passage of time is another motif that keeps coming up in this album. Our dude used to get mad at the small things, and he’s realized what’s actually important, but like every lesson learned the hard way, it’s too late to apply it to the situation in question. And perhaps he never would’ve come to that revelation without the accompanying loss, but that doesn’t make it any less excruciating.

Remember when your life felt like it would be never-ending - if you enjoy the particular kind of masochism brought about by that sentiment, I’d encourage you to check out “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers. Not to get too philosophical, but grown-ups have this thing where they lecture kids about how they think they’re immortal. And we don’t believe it when we’re kids, at least I didn’t - I wasn’t particularly inclined to take dumb risks, or so I thought. But (dammit) somewhere, we actually do realize that life isn’t permanent, that the place we grew up isn’t the entire world, and that there’s so much of that world that we’ll simply never experience. Wondering how a relationship could have gone differently is more than just a painful (and arguably necessary) experience - it also calls to mind all the different directions our lives could take, and forces us to watch as all those paths converge into one.

It’s another special mid-20s crisis - by that age, we’ve had a few close friendships and relationships, and we’ve experienced the end of some of them. And after that end, we have to change, both as a result of the loss and - you guessed it - the unstoppable, unbending passage of time. If I say it enough it might come true, the speaker says as he leads into the final repetition of the chorus, and we get the sense that he almost believes it. Is it denial, willful self-delusion, or genuine hope?

8. Boring

This is the track that really got me thinking about this album. If “People Go Home” stands on a soapbox wagging its finger at The American Dream™, this song drunkenly embraces it in a bar a few hours later. And, like “People Go Home,” I sort of hated it until I noticed what a great time Tommy Siegel was having with it.

We begin with the inexorability of time again - the seasons are changing / but my world always stays the same. Of course, the use of “lame” to describe undesirability is crummy for obvious reasons, but it also reads as delightfully teenage - our friend is desperately clinging to whatever vestiges of youth remain to him. There’s also a charmingly youthful tendency to exaggerate - I guess they’ll procreate until they die / everyone is boring / everything is lame / everybody thinks they’re not the same could have come straight from the mouth of a fourteen-year-old in the back of a car on a family road trip.

What I love love love love about this song is how smoothly the speaker seems to come around over the course of it. He begins with a distressing observation: all my friends are having kids / but nobody’s sure why. And by the end of the song, he’s worked out exactly why. He’s a little ashamed to say that he’s figured out just what the big deal is. And he’s going through some internal conflict, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to be shy about how he feels.

After wondering for a minute how he got this way (I webmd myself but somehow nothing’s ever wrong has to be one of the most #relatable lyrics I’ve ever heard), he smoothly switches from lambasting the Nuclear Family™ to flattering his addressee:

Baby let’s get boring

Let’s get old and lame

Let’s get a house and kids and change your name

‘ cause I don’t think you’re boring

I don’t think you’re lame

Let’s get a house and summer up in Maine

(kind of a lazy rhyme there at the end, but still sorta cute)

While he acknowledges his frustration with his desire to become that which he most detests, he also acknowledges that the alternative is much worse: I’d rather rot in hell / than watch you become someone lame with someone else.* And yeah, growing up resolves a lot of exciting questions into formulaic predictability, but if you find someone to share it with who’s interesting, you can enjoy it anyway. It’s either a cute little bit of poetry or the most adorably fumbling marriage proposal in the history of time.

We could be so boring, he promises his intended, and he sounds, well, sort of excited about it. Because if everybody else thinks they’re not the same, he asks, why should we bother pretending? It’s not important if we’re actually boring. It’s that I don’t think you are. And I think I agree - the most important parts of any relationship only matter to the people in it.

I’m not sure what he’s doing to that guitar at the end there, but he sure is doing it.

*There’s another reading that he’s settling but I’ll go with the optimistic one thank you.

9. Simple as 1 2 3

I found this to be sort of a weird tone shift, but the more I listen to it, the better it fits. The lyrics are all about how you can’t fall in love without taking chances - a played-out theme that still meshes beautifully with this track’s youthful simplicity. When I saw this performed live, the singer literally counted on his fingers while he sang and played the piano, and it managed to be incredibly charming. Or maybe it was just his pretty pretty eyes.

When you feel your pulse / knock you over like an animal is so simple but so vivid and I’m not sure this is going anywhere; I just wanted to point it out.

The second verse,

So take a risk

and find a little love

hidden where you didn’t see it

‘cause the time you have is all the time you’ve got

briefly brings it back to the existential crisis that dominates most of this album, but it’s somehow much more optimistic with this new spin - life is short, so you might as well give the whole falling in love thing a whirl. And if it goes badly, hey, there’s always Track 7.

Lyrically, the bridge doesn’t do a whole lot, but I like how it just sort of sits there building on itself - it increases the tension, like, well, the moment of waiting in a corner before going over to talk to someone - and when the musical track drops out to leave only the singer’s voice, it’s like the strange silence that seems to accompany a difficult utterance, and okay, I’m definitely reading way too much into this. Whatever. Death of the author.

10. Colorful

So this is gonna get pretty sentimental, because that is the sort of track this is, and for that I halfheartedly apologize. In an album full of glibness and cynicism, this song stands out relatively devoid of artifice or dire warnings of death.

This song, to me, is about being an artist, and an aggressively happy one at that. I dunno if you’ve seen my art, but, well, it’s downright obnoxious. I mean - Wanna feel like a light in a dark place? Why yes, as a matter of fact; where do I sign. And For the lovers and the broken-hearted feels almost like a call to action - it’s important to bring out the beauty of the world for the people who want to revel in it and for the ones who might be too sad to notice it. All that stuff about trying to paint the world in a new way is probably meant to be a metaphor, but I like taking it literally. It makes me feel better about how I’ve chosen to spend the vast majority of my free time, dammit.

And while this track is pretty repetitive, it forms a perfect conclusion to an album that’s just as much about the ways we talk about romance as the romance itself. It’s one more frame to fit around the first two, if you like.

The bridge is a blatant and transparent excuse to show off Thornewill’s vocal range, for which I can hardly blame him. That man sings like a god.

Bonus Notes:

Stay the Night (single)

I know this one didn’t make it onto the album but I fucking love it. It’s so catchy, and I love that it doesn’t sound like “Pretty Woman” or “Come on Eileen” - I don’t feel like the guy is being coercive or weird. Sure, he’s lamenting that he can’t sleep with the object of his affections, but it’s very much a lament of circumstance - he can’t stay the night because they don’t have time, or they’ve got work in the morning, or it’s only their first date and they’re taking things slow, and you get the sense that he understands from the second verse - I’m singing Journey on the highway / I’m still believing; I’m still believing / that I’ll wake up beside you one day - it almost feels like a reassurance.

It also brings home a lot of themes that come up later in Off to the Races. We’re not getting any younger, and yeah, we might as well have fun with it. But again - I’m not getting a “To His Coy Mistress” vibe here. It’s feels much more along the lines of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Perhaps it’s just the evolving sexual mores of our society, or perhaps it’s that the speaker spends absolutely no time convincing his date - he simply states the obvious. It’s that universal thrill of something starting, and I am, as they say, here for it.

Anyway that was approximately 2.73 million times longer than I meant it to be. I guess I like talking about poetry? Who could have predicted this? (Really, I actually had a lot of fun with this, so if you liked it, let me know and maybe I’ll do it again sometime. Although, fair warning, it is liable to be about Fall Out Boy.)

#mentalwires #music #jukebox the ghost #music reviews #are apparently a thing i do now #sort of #i dunno if i'd call this a review

3 notes · View notes