#this look very silly i love it already

[monkesupreme]

Maybe i SHOULD draft out my ‘Clark is a SuperPlant’ propaganda post

[xxplastic-cubexx]

If you were to like redesign Magneto's classic outfit in a way that both suits the character and your own tastes, how would you redesign it?

uhhhh errrmmmmm i dont know i really couldnt improve upon perfection but i have still tried for you my friend !!!

[corviiids]

THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

[n0bluev]

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

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

okay wait laughingstock concept Incoming: so im imagining some of the neighbors (maybe Julie & Frank) noticing that Barnaby & Howdy are a lil fruity, yk yk. and Julie's like damn, i guess we have to play matchmaker here.

so naturally they wind up getting the whole neighborhood involved. everybody's a wingman here. Poppy's dropping hints when Howdy drops off groceries, Wally is constantly asking Barnaby to go get him things from the bodega, etc etc. Howdy and Barnaby are facing this sudden change in town-wide behavior with slight concern and bemusement

eventually - lets say Julie, Sally, and Wally - get Barnaby into the bodega and then abruptly leave like "don't have too much fun without us you two *wink wink nudge nudge*". once they're gone (read: very obviously hiding outside & watching through the window) Barnaby & Howdy turn to each other like:

Barnaby: you think we should tell them we're already married?

Howdy: let them have their fun - they'll figure it out eventually

[vaguely-concerned]

just going about my day idly contemplating how some of the ways hawke can interact with a romanced anders are not at all unlike how they interact with leandra (and a bit of carver too, especially with a purple hawke), and then thought about my hawke in the timeline where he romances anders and was hit straight in the face with 'was he ever actually in love, or was he just desperately trying to renegotiate with his mother's ghost in any way he could' and now i need to lie down. this is the power of dragon age 2

[jabeur]

ok i got a little emotional bc i have gotten so much better at putting on nail polish and it's 😭

[silusvesuius]

i legit love when a character's gender is so integral to their personality (and perception obviously.) like so concrete that if genderbent their whole shtick would just be absolute dookie. anyways i'm just writing this text so i can talk in the tags (My beautiful safe haven)

this 14 minute song is soooooooooooo FYRE

[asterroth]

Just decided when i make my custom Long jacob horse plush im going to give him magnetized eyes so i can switch them out and place them on his head in increasingly silly ways

[palaceoftears]

Magnificent Century Rewatch: One Picspam per Episode

Episode 17: The Double Joy

-My dear mother used to say "walk barefoot on earth and it shall take away all your troubles and sorrows, earth shall give you happiness and joy"

-Your mother spoke well, one can only find peace in earth. But I'm not sure if it is on earth or in it.

[wat-zu]

bada bing bada boom hits you with a broom aka your ocs

thx for letting me borrowing them grabs them in my pocket and gives them back to u

Pinkie by @mary-games-and-arts

Avion by @thedancingartist

Cross by @nzn43

Emerald blue by @applesaucify

Dorado by @toon-melody

Alvia by @flairya

[sysig]

I can’t stop drawing tiny Watchdogs (Patreon)

[carcarrot]

'Spark-ling Russ Writes To You': A collection of writings from Russell Mael's column in Mirabelle magazine, 1974, pt. 3 (pt.1, pt. 2)

[not-poignant]

Hi! I apologize if you've spoken abt this already, bur how come ruts aren't really a thing in the UtR verse? Anton mentioned he's never had one, and they're very rare - is there a biological reason for it? Did Gary ever have one? (Starting to see what he is like during regular sex, I feel like he'd commit actual murder-by-cock during ruts fjfnfjnfjf) Anyway, love your writing to bits!!

Hi anon!

So I'm gonna write an essay, buckle up (I always write an essay on this stuff, I can't help it, I signed a contract at birth that said I would)

Firstly, ruts are sort of a 'new invention' in the omegaverse landscape. And by new I mean I'm really old and some people don't remember omegaverse without it. But I sure do! Only omegas went into heat, because heat indicated hyperfertility, and alphas were already hyperfertile without a rut. That was the whole point. You know, that's why they make such a perfect match. Hyperfertile mate meet hyperfertile mate.

They didn't need a rut.

Ruts came along later, and honestly in most of the fiction I've read that have them, ruts are very rarely written, and are often more like a threat hanging in the background. A sort of 'lol make sure you have food and water because like people go to hospital if they're in rut / heat at the same time.' Literal just about fuck-or-die situation. Or fuck-and-die. Probably more like fuck-and-who-cares-about-anything-else.

Anyone who has ever fucked a lot in a marathon session knows that eventually you just need carbs. *coughs*

Ruts are conceptually a TON of fun to think about. It's like authors went 'you know what hyperfertile alphas need? Something like a heat, that also makes them completely out of control.'

The thing is... alphas could already go completely out of control around an omega for a lot of reasons. It happened in fated mates stories. It happened in 'an omega is in heat and I just can't help it' (oh bless all those noncon omegaverse stories we have which are literally 'you just smelled so good you had to be mine'). A lot of the things ruts are supposed to achieve, already can easily be achieved in omegaverse.

Conceptually, ruts can be interesting as 'the alpha is also super vulnerable and helpless and needy during this time' but it's almost never written that way and it's not how I like to think about it. And in terms of worldbuilding, the places where it's made the most sense has almost always been as a dystopian thing that's almost dreaded by both the alphas and omegas (and everyone else) alike, and is just as much likely to be controlled by suppressants as heats, because no one likes to turn into an Automatic robot rapist. (Even though that's basically what many alphas become if they smell an omega in heat, I'm not saying ruts are the Department of Redundancy Deparment or anything, but they're a little bit like City of Redundancy in the shire of Redundancy population Already Covered In General Omegaverse tropes in the country of But It's Fun Anyway continent of Redundant.)

I love reading stories with rut worldbuilding but I have to suspend my disbelief so hard. And I know, I know, you kind of have to do that with omegaverse anyway, but there just comes a point where it's like 'but...the heat...triggers a response in alphas...thats mean a rut...is not needed...because that's what the heat does.' In some ways it takes some power and strength away from the symbolism of the omega's heat (romantically it's very interesting as the trope that renders the often hypermasculine character as so helpless to the omega that they basically have to have sex with them (guess what a rut is? Same same not different! Okay it can be different. It's often not though.))

As a result, I personally like worldbuilding that differentiates a general alpha response to an omega's heat, to a rut. And therefore if a rut is the more extreme version of a general 'must fuck' alpha response, it's likely to go pretty not...great. Much like unfulfilled heats are often characterised as agonising, I like to think of ruts are potentially very fatal. (Warning! Warning! The hypermasculinity levels are critical, boss! He's gonna blow! This time his heart! Not his cock!)

The worldbuilding mentioned in the chapter you're referring to - in the Underline the Rainbow universe - states that ruts are vestigial. It's killed too many alphas who have experienced it.

It basically knocked itself out of the genetic line, in the same way that peak alphas are going the same way because people just don't do great living like that in a functional society.

Also consider the...setting of the story if you will. This is a place where we're rehabilitating omegas and helping them recover from extreme trauma. The professional response to 'I go into rut all the time' alpha companion candidates is 'see a health professional, you can never ever ever ever ever be a companion here, because we...care about our omegas, and don't think your rut takes precedent over their health during a heat. Go away.'

None of these alphas go into rut! None of them should! It would be terrible from a story perspective (I mean, for me. I'm writing trauma recovery).

The only alpha on the grounds who potentially could go into rut is Caleb, I think he has the disposition for it. And I think it would be speedily suppressed with heavy doses of medication for the safety of any omega near him.

The thing that really frustrates me from a worldbuilding perspective is that in some ways, heats make sense. It's a fertile period for an animal that cannot afford the physiological cost of being that fertile all the time. That's it. In humans who already have menstrual cycles (which create fertility windows so the woman or person with the uterus doesn't have to be consistently fertile the same amount all the time), this makes actual biological sense.

Ruts in omegaverse don't even mean what they mean in nature, it's so frustrating. In nature, ruts are sort of connected to mates, but not about fucking them endlessly most of the time. It's about competing with rivals. Going into rut is marking your territory, attacking fellow stags (sometimes to the death), and keeping hold of your herd or flock. This makes...much less biological sense. It's not how it's written in fiction most of the time, and it's really just 'what if heat but alpha.' I'd love if ruts were 'HHH I have to FIGHT every ALPHA I SEE to the DEATH or at least MEASURE MY HEIGHT against HIS or SHOUT to see whose VOICE is LOUDER we are DICK MEASURING NOW my dick is BIGGER I am going to FUCK AN OMEGA IN TRIUMPH. YOU! THERE! COME HERE! No wait where are you going? Stop running!' That's... that's the world I want to live in sdalkfjsaflksaj

I have no problems with that, most omegaverse is just pure mindless pornography for fun, or very thin worldbuilding for fun, and orgasms are had by many and it achieves it's purpose.

But I can't justify something like that making sense in the Underline the Rainbow as a thing these characters experience. I like it as a 'oh this used to happen but we couldn't just go around killing each other and also we died so...' I'm pretty sure it's taught about in schools, lol. In the same way that alphas dueling each other to the death is now pretty much illegal in most places, some things you either just culturally change for the betterment of society (which is...literally the purpose of Hillview), and some things you X out of your own genetic lineages because the thing itself kills you.

Since ruts are in most serious omegaverses presented as extreme events, and alphas are already hyperfertile (in worlds where betas exist), they're just redundant.

Fun in PWPs, and fun for angst, but not the kind of angst I'm personally going for.

Thanks for coming to my really-not-a-TED Talk! :D

(Er so no, Gary has never gone into rut).

(In webtoon Define the Relationship one of the alphas goes into rut but because he's like a submissive alpha he basically needs to be fucked like he's in heat by another alpha and I just actually do kind of love the subversion of 'what if heat but alpha' where it's like 'no literally what if they have to be knotted and they have a whole bunch of shame about that.' But almost no one is writing it that way so aslkfjdsa)

[itspileofgoodthings]

I was teaching Ophelia’s death scene this week and one of my classes spontaneously giggled when she died (because they are 16 years old and emotionally immature) and I said, in a shocked voice, “it is NOT funny” and they all insisted that it was and so I let it go but then the next day I showed them some Ophelia art, made them think about how sinister it was that her death happens offstage but is still described in such detail for the viewer, which tells us she was WATCHED but not HELPED as she died, and then played a clip from Branagh’s Hamlet of Kate Winslet singing a mourning song for her father and when I tell you how satisfying it was to hear a total and complete hush fall over the room

[technicalknockout]

which The character are you thinking of

take a guess (it's tko. it's literally always tko and im so unwell about that)