#three times is a bit odd

[sadkachow]

this is a general curiosity thing, because of a slight pattern ive noticed (of course i could also be making something out of nothing who knows)

im curious if there’s any other transmascs named icarus. cause i’m transmasc and i go by both connor and icarus, and other than myself i’ve also seen three other transmasc icarus’s, which, you know, isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened THREE OTHER TIMES (so technically four in total if you count me).

is this just a random coincidence? do other transmascs have an inexplicable connection to the name icarus???

[momocicerone]

the boobs be boobing boobily in this new tank top 💯

[y-rhywbeth2]

...Something that's been lurking in my brain, so I'm inflicting it on everyone else: Considering that illithid Durge is also viable for the feral ending, there's a whole brand new shiny level of monster fucking going on in there.

Illithid are oviparous. The many things Bhaal is playing mad scientist breeding games with are not.

"New creatures will be grafted... such is the power of the Divine Essence." "Think me not a slave to mere nature: the children will be most beautiful."

They're sure going to be something, yes.

[knightofleo]

Can I get an Amen.

[childrenofthesun77]

Were akira and tooru also orphans?

Mahiru never mentions maternal grandparents, at one point he realizes that when akira died his uncle also became alone and while it doesn't have to mean anything I did find it interesting that when they were still in school and tooru asked touma to come to his house to eat he said akira would cook for them and not their mother or father. When mahiru thinks about heroes always coming back smiling we saw a flashback of akira coming back after apparently leaving a very young mahiru in tooru's care, not with her parents.

The discussion at akira's funeral service also made it sound like the people were more extended family than close family? Where is the rest of the shirota family? Is it just them?

[darkstarcore]

Okay so clearly it’s the year to be a Mario RPG fan

[good-beanswrites]

Just wanted to plant an idea if you wanted a bit of fuel: Mahiru asking Yuno to come to her cell before everything goes down.

Edit: I forgot the ask didn't say it but this is part of Kyanako's incredible Order Of Attack AU!

Didn't mean for this to become a mini Mappi study but here we are ✨ Thank you for the request! I fully intended to write them hanging out, but it's more right before they hang out lol. Went a bit on-the-nose with foreshadowing, but isn't that the fun part? It has become Emotional Over Mahiru Hour...

I kept things vague, but TW for mentioning her boyfriend's state of potential self-harm

Mahiru tried not to act superstitious, she really did. As much as she loved the idea of little luck charms, or avoided easy signs of misfortune, it was easier to keep quiet about such ridiculous things.

Maybe catching a bride’s bouquet meant no guarantees; maybe there was no real harm in stepping underneath ladders, maybe a coin tossed into a fountain had no real magic to its wish. However, the one thing she knew for sure held power was a lucky presence. Being in the right place at the right time could alter everything. And today was the right time for something. There was this waiting in the air. The prison had been holding its breath. Mahiru knew it was time to release it all.

“You must be so lonely, why don’t you let big sis Mahiru keep you company?” She beamed at Amane.

She often recalled the good fortune that she and a certain young man had crossed paths on the university terrace. She used to laugh with him about the wonderful coincidence of bumping into each other outside of the bakery, then the convenience store. 

Though she’d never spoken about it to him, she was also grateful for many occasions where she walked in on him at the precise moment to talk him out of something reckless. She always told him that they’d do everything together. He didn’t need to be alone anymore. 

“I wish to be alone. I need peace of mind to think.” Amane turned away from the cell door.

It was a good thing, too. Mahiru’s smile wasn’t as convincing as she said, “o-oh. Of course.”

She made her way around the panopticon, hearing Fuuta pace his cell in anticipation. He must have felt it too, this holding of breath. 

Or perhaps not. He turned down her offer for a bit of company, including a few more colorful words than Amane had. Mahiru just apologized for bothering him and headed back to her cell. She wasn’t sure where Mikoto was at this hour, but she didn’t feel like smiling through a third rejection.

She shook her head back and forth. She wished the motion could rattle the voices inside, she wished she could shake them all away. With her arms secured in place she could no longer cover her ears. She used to hum to keep them at bay, but lately they’d been too loud to stifle. They just kept on talking.

Their words told her the two were right. Nobody needed her company. No – nobody wanted it. Being together hadn’t helped her boyfriend. In fact, being together had been the very thing that got him killed. No wonder Amane and Fuuta wanted to avoid her. 

So then, this was for the best. She would rather deal with the brief sting of refusal than stumble in one day to find them hurt… or worse. As much as she tried to avoid the superstition of it all, the voices reminded her that her very presence could mean life or death. 

“Mappi, are you alright?” Mahiru hadn’t realized a tear had slipped down her cheek until she hurried to swipe it away in front of Yuno. 

“Hah, I’m fine! Just fine.” It was impossible to fool her, Mahiru had learned, but that never stopped her from trying. 

At least she always spoke tactfully. “Rough morning?”

Mahiru shifted her arms in her uniform, making a small sound of agreement.

“Can I do anything to help? What if I stay with you for a bit? I can do your hair, and…”

The voices were right. Amane and Fuuta knew it, too. Presences did hold power, and Mahiru’s was cursed.

But she would sound foolish admitting such a fear to Yuno. She'd heard plenty from the voices about how stupid and airheaded she was, there was no use in getting the same lecture from someone as grounded as her.

Mahiru managed a weak protest, unable to explain her real reasoning. Yuno was insistent. She didn’t give much of a choice. Could she feel the strangeness of the prison, as well? 

At last, Mahiru allowed her shoulders to sag. Yuno was lucky. And kind. Having her nearby would do her good. Amane and Fuuta would be alright. Mahiru had tried spending more time with them after verdicts were announced. Now, she made a mental note to pull back. If her love couldn’t save anyone, at least she could spare them from her curse. They would be safe. 

“Yes. Please stay. The truth is... I don't want to be alone.”

[baycitystygian]

guys I just survived a ladder that wanted to kill me. cheers

[19871997]

.

[wizardofarles]

remember when i thought i would have lykmc chapter 16 done by mid-may? lol. lmao even

at this point i’d count us lucky if it’s up before the end of june. but if you want to save yourself the disappointment i wouldn’t expect it before july

[yeyayeya]

Jugdral jumpscare

[lapinparka]

I get confused (and bothered) by FES elitist-types in the ryo.mina side of the fandom who hate on Portable/Kotone. Not only did that ship (and honestly? Ryoji as the fleshed-out character he is now) not exist in FES, but we wouldn't have the ryo.mina content we do without Ryoji's iconic line from his social link

[rubberbandballqueen]

About your tags: is there more that you can share about the OW fandom and fics? This was a phenomenon I wonder about too. It was one of the most popular fandoms around 2017-2018, but the way the fandom stopped on its tracks around 2019 was hard not to notice. Especially from people who didn't play the game but were aware of it's fandom.

oh! overwatch is one of about 50-ish fandoms i track for this one spreadsheet project i do as a hobby (which i Technically blog about @fandom-data-scientist, but i've been too lazy to do a proper writeup to explain what the hell it is i do), wherein i try to answer the age-old question: when did the weebs move to ao3?

(the answer is late 2015/early 2016. most likely this was in large part a result of undertale and sports anime, but that's currently just my own conjecture)

According To My Research(tm), the overwatch fandom peaked in late 2016/early 2017 when it comes to the number of new fics posted per month. after this, it declined quite rapidly, as it didn't even get to enjoy a plateau period.

(there's a reason why the plots are really wonky towards the end of this graph-- it's bc i found the past dates for number of fics archived to a particular site via the wayback machine. since those snapshots are typically bot crawls, the number of fics shown on the fandoms listings will not include fics that have been archive-locked. although i technically started this project in august 2022, i did not add overwatch to my tracking list until this june/july or so. my current guess for the small uptick in the rate of ow fics published to ao3 in october 2022 is that the sequel came out? and then the rate plunged for january 2023 bc of the ai scraping scare that happened at around that time-- nearly every single fandom i track had a significant drop right then bc everyone was archive-locking their fics. the rate shooting up in like july 2023 on this chart is bc like i said, that's when i added ow to my list of tracked fandoms; because i'm logged into my own ao3 acct when checking these numbers live, i get access to the archive-locked fics and so the display number goes up.)

in my experience, fandoms will generally kind of plateau in their fic production after their peak, which will ofc normally gradually taper off. games that receive regular lore or story updates probably have fairly long or stable plateaus, although i haven't made scatterplots or made any comparing analyses to prove this rigorously. this plateau period generally represents a time of fandom stability as the fair-weather, casual, or migratory slash fans run off to the next big thing.

if we ignore the fact the plague and quarantine happened, we can see a nice, steady, and very consistent plateau period for the danganronpa fandom from about 2018-2020!

let's look at an older fandom, like my archnemesis final fantasy:

granted, the ao3 numbers are kind of all over the place these days, but you kind of get my point by now, right? that healthy fandoms tend to plateau as the wind carries away the faintly-interested and leaves the long-haulers behind to form their communities.

overwatch struck me as unusual when i was on one of my long wayback machine trips because of the way there was a net increase of only two fics published from 1 july 2021 to 1 october 2021, when before then it had usually been in the hundreds or so. i then went on a work tangent n googled around n more or less concluded it had Something to do with some kind of scandal with the development company, but otherwise i don't really have any more comments on it hahaha.

[teddybasmanov]

Blorbov from my late 1800s plays about the crisis of nobility.

[aeide-thea]

not to be like 'actually the real homestuck brainrot is the way in which it leads people to make nominally-innocuous posts that they later take deep joy in revealing were Secretly About Homestuck' but

[mageofminge]

idk why but i feel like brian's face looks wildly inconsistent across the years. like if i didn't know who he was and you showed me a picture of him from 2000, versus 2017, versus now, i'd think they were related but i'd never guess that they were the same person.