#variant mu

[pleuvoire]

why’d they name a covid variant after a star though. that’s such an odd decision

[jmeldog]

@milgram-valentines-exchange art for @verity-clover!

Sorry I took one-sided MuuRei angst and ran. + some variants

Attempt at explaining the flowers under the cut

I wanted to convey a message of remorse, pining, and “what could’ve been”—still tinged with feelings of jealousy.

I’m not very good at flower language, so please excuse me if there are any mistakes, misunderstandings, or misinterpretations. I tried to use mostly Victorian sources or some that I otherwise vibed with. Some flowers have other meanings that also fit, but I didn’t list here for the sake of keeping it concise-ish. Please interpret however you enjoy most 🙏

Asphodel

“My regrets follow you to the grave”

Bramble

Lowliness, envy, remorse

China Aster

Jealousy, afterthought, wishing things had happened differently

Gardenia

“I love you in secret”

Honey Flower

Love sweet and secret (and well, how could I not use the honey flower for Mu?)

French Marigold

Jealousy

Spindle Tree

“Your charms are engraved on my heart”

[yuk-tepat]

Diachronic change in Yuk Tepat

Yuk Tepat is often presented here as a fixed entity - “Classical Yuk Tepat” - but beneath that has undergone evolution like all languages. The following sentences both mean “A man I didn’t know came in.” The first represents the most archaic layer of old Tepat, and the second is a relatively modern colloquial version from the late Conciliarity period.

Ci niw yan-uk syow mi-yat ku hyew.

*[tsi niw ja nuk sju me jat ku hjew]

PAST enter person 1P REL NEG know to room

(Alternately: Ci niw yan syuk mi-yat ku hyew. (syuk = syu + =uk)

Hûq-khal yan i-wat ôl-yat mul nt’ôl-nyul hyew-iw.

[hɯʔ kʰal ja ni wɒ ɾl̩ jat mu ln̩ tl̩ nyɬ çø wiw]

one CLASS person of 1P PAST know NEG 3P PAST enter room CIS

Let’s unpack this. First, a couple of very notable things:

The modern sentence is much longer.

Only three words are the same in both sentences: yan, yat, hyew.

Digging deeper….

Ci was the normal particle expressing past tense in Old Yuktepat, but it has been replaced by ôl in the second sentence.

The second sentence begins with a subject noun phrase Hûq-khal yan i-wat ôl-yat mul, which is normal SVO word order. The equivalent subject noun phrase in the first sentence comes AFTER the verb. In archaic language, this is an acceptable ordering for INDEFINITE subject nouns (but actually, it would still have been unusual for a complex noun phrase like this).

The subject noun yan in the second sentence is modified by a numeral-classifier phrase hûq-khal ‘one.’ This kind of specification of number - such as ‘one’ for any old indefinite noun phrase - is more common in later Yuk Tepat.

The first person pronoun. In the first sentence, there is a clitic form -uk. In later Yuk Tepat, everything has been leveled to the invariable pronoun wat.

The subject contains a relative clause. In the first sentence, it is relativized by syow, in the second sentence it is relativized by i. I also means ‘of’ and has been generalized to all kinds of situations, while specific subordinating particles like syow - which is only used to relativize objects - have fallen out of use.

(Additionally, syow and -uk might occur together as a fused form syuk.)

The negative. The first sentence uses mi before the verb, the second sentence uses mul after the verb.

The second sentence contains a pronoun nat (contracted to nt) which follows the subject noun phrase, before the verb. Kind of like ‘The man I didn’t know, he entered the room.’

Niw and nyul ‘enter.’ Niw and nyul are the same verb basically. Niw is an older intransitive form. Most verb pairs of this sort have been leveled to only one form. In Yuk Tepat, the originally transitive form nyul has taken over everything.

The first sentence has a preposition ku ‘in, at, to.’ This is missing in the second sentence. ‘To’ is considered implicit in the verb nyul. Ku is no longer used except in fixed expressions.

The second sentence ends in a clitic -iw indicating motion toward the speaker. This is derived from the verb khiw ‘come.’

These examples are very different, but the reality may not be that extreme. Although only 3 words are identical, most words in either sentence are found in all stages of the language, although their usage may have shifted. For example past tense ci is still used, but it has a very archaic sound. It is used for DISTANT past, or in say, historical textbooks, but ôl is now the neutral past tense marker. Hence, either (written) sentence should be interpretable to someone from the other time period. Through this we also see one trend of the language’s evolution, that of reducing morphological variants to a single uninflected form.

[copperbadge]

strictly-script

Hey can you backwards engineer some gender neutral version of sir/ma'am

I can! And I will. But I’m going to walk you through it because you guys can do this too. I have no special skills other than having taken Latin 20 years ago. :D 

Bit of a plug first: this is a technique that I am using to de-gender a number of royal ranks in my books -- for example, the retired king has declared his nonbinary partner “Caez”, shortened from Caesar, to replace king/queen. In a book not yet published, his granddaughter is offered prince, princess, or the gender-neutral princeps when she’s adopted, and although she identifies as female, she chooses princeps because she doesn’t like the word princess. Ledan came about because I was trying to decide what one character, a duke known for his irreverence, might call a person at the rank of lord or lady if he wanted to make fun of himself a bit for not knowing their gender.

Okay, now that I’ve got the obligatory “Hey look, queer romance novels” out of the way, let’s dive in... 

So, what you want to know is the origins of the words Sir and Madam. With Lord and Lady they came from the same general place -- Old English derived from the Germanic -- so it was easy to just go “Bread watcher? Bread maker? Sure let’s find something else you can do with bread” and go from there. This will not always be the case, and it isn’t here, but that makes things extra-interesting.

What you’re going to do is go to Wiktionary.org and search the terms you want to work backward from. In this case we want to search Sir, and we also want to search Madam, which is what Ma’am comes from. 

On the page for Sir, we click “etymology” under English or scroll down to it, and we get the history of the word. How far back you go in this history can vary by what kind of word you’d like to use. In this case we know the history goes sir > sire > French Sire (master, sir, lord) > Latin senior (elder) > Latin Senex (old). I like to go all the way back to the Latin, but let’s hold that thought. 

Now that we have Sir identified, we’ll check out Madam, from which we get the history ma’am > madam > madame > Old French madame (”my” and “lady”) > post-classical Latin mea domina, which also means generally “my lady” although it has a more specific meaning we’ll get to shortly. 

So we have a couple of options! 

We can take “Senex” which is more closely related to the masculine “Sir” but is in itself generally neutral, and come up with “Sen”, which has no meaning in Latin on its own but we’re not speaking Latin, we’re speaking English, which shortens everything anyway. 

We can also look at “ma domina” and take that apart -- domina and dominus concern the home, the physical building, using the same root we get “domicile” and “domain”. So you could click through from domina to dominus to domus, and go with “ma domus”, since domus has connotations of household, family, etc. Ma Domus might shorten to M’us. It could also shorten to “ma’do”, but that’s two syllables and I like to retain the syllable count of the original words. And also M’us or even just Mus sounds like you’re saying Moose. Which, Moose is a pretty cool name to call a nonbinary friend, but may be taken amiss by strangers. It strikes me that M’us could be used as a term of respect specifically for someone in your family -- a parent or grandparent, a cousin or zaza. There’s a hint of familiarity there. 

We could go one step further and look at the implications of the word origins -- both are addressing a superior in rank, but “sir” emphasizes age, while “ma’am” emphasizes economic power. Now, if we want to break away from both of those we could decide that instead we want to respect a different kind of power -- say, the power of a teacher we trust and look up to. Wiktionary tells us that teacher derives from the verb “teach”, and at the etymology of teach we find several variants including techen, taecan, taikijan, taikijana, and deyk (as a prefix). I rather like Deyk, because a) it shortens nicely to Dey, b) if you’re talking to someone you respect it’s sincere but if you’re talking to someone you don’t respect it’s easily sarcastic, and c) if you’re talking to someone you don’t respect you can throw a little k in, so that it sounds like you’re calling them Dey but you’re actually calling them Dick. 

 Of these options I really do prefer Sen. It sounds nice, it’s not a homophone for anything weird, and it implies respect for the person’s experience. If I were writing a novel with a nonbinary honorific I might go with Dey just because there’s more scope for wordplay and nuance, but in actual life I think Sen’s quite nice. 

So yeah it’s fun and interesting and you get to learn the weird-ass histories of weird-ass words. I encourage everyone to make their own! 

[yxstxrdrxxm]

SYNOPSIS: Faes and humankind are never meant to be together, but Coviello has plans to prove that wrong.

TW/S: Yandere behavior, non-canon to original Coviello, variant of twst! Coviello (huge inspo to Malleus from twst!), stalking, somno but not the sexual kind??, major character death/s (debatable but if you squint, you can see it), huge reference to the original cover of Once Upon a Dream by Lana Del Rey, delusional mindset, lol they're pulling some sleeping beauty shit here.

NOTE: Coviello is not from me, its from Meirin (@zhongrin/@meimeimeirin)! Also, this was something that hit me so hard after hearing the cover of once upon a dream... And drawing Coviello as Malleus did not help my delusions.

As a dragon fae, Coviello is no stranger to the waking of death.

They have attested this by seeing how humans can only live for so long, be it by decades... Or a few years, if they were unlucky. Some were even unfortunate to have their lives snuffed before they were given the chance to live.

To them, they were birthed from an egg, and although they had the temper worse than of a common fae, their family took care of them. At least... To the best of their abilities.

As they grew up, their eyes have witnessed tragedies. Some fell on their kind, while others fell on themselves.

It was when they achieved their signature spell: one that is so tied to the song that they heard their mother sing. However, there was a catch to that spell.

That is... Coviello must know the person's name, for this spell needs it as a payment of it's own.

If it doesn't... Well, they didn't need to remember. They knew what the payment was in return of the lack of name. Who's to say they didn't experienced it themselves?

And so, they lived on. They've watched as times change, but they remained the same. If anything, they were quite displeased with how things seem to happen so quickly.

There was nothing to catch their eye. Nothing that could make them slow down, to admire, aside from the sweets they get or from admiring the simple scenery... Or even with their animal companion.

That is, until they met you.

Housewarden of Ramshackle and Crowley's little helper.

You were the light of their life, something that made them stop to look twice.

And you two met at a time where they thought it was impossible, which was Night Raven College.

At the time, it was a simple nightly stroll for Coviello. They were out to see the abandoned ruins of Ramshackle, to simply get away from the chaos of Diasomnia. And in such a time, they had simply thought they would get a sliver of peace.

However, they were displeased to see that they weren't... And it was because of you.

Still, they held their tongue and became cordial. In their mind, you were simply there to be like them: to escape from whatever dorm you were stuck in, or to get your bearings over something else before heading back to rest.

However, they were gravely mistaken. They realized that, no, you weren't doing that... And you were an insomniac.

That, and you LIVED in that abandoned, dilapidated of a dorm.

Coviello had to reel in the urge to ask you to repeat yourself. That was a shock they never expected, and they were one to have witnessed the horrors of it all.

And yet, from the look in your eyes, you weren't kidding. And you were even more bold to ask them of their name.

In the folklore and basic knowledge of faes, one mus not tell them your real name. This was so to limit the possibility of them taking some form of ownership, a title of their claim on you.

However, Coviello what they didn't expect was for you to willingly give up your name, and even give them a nickname of your own.

You called them 'Vii'. A playful iteriation of their name, but they had no heart to correct you.

You were a peculiar being, but maybe... It was better you stay oblivious.

For their sake.

That day, Coviello was not the same as others had noticed.

If anything, it would seem as though they changed. The once feared leader of Diasomnia had their heart softened over someone that no one knew, but those who did were left confused.

Who knew that one human could make them feel like this? And yet, they did.

Every time Coviello was with you, you made it clear that it was simply to be with them as a friend. You weren't going to restrict Coviello for what they should or shouldn't do, and you were there to support them.

You made the fae feel human. Someone who was worth hearing out for.

And for them, they got addicted.

However, it wasn't long till they have witnessed your struggles. You were still human, so it was clear that you had your own issues, too.

One was how people took advantage of your kindness.

You have your heart on your sleeve far too many times, and Coviello had to witness that happen. It was almost like you never learned how it feels to be used, and when you did... You were hurt.

They hated it. They hated seeing just how miserable you are sometimes. And they hated how you seem to act like your misery was not a big deal.

Still, you trudged on, just like a soldier is to the sight of a war.

As for Coviello, they stayed... Waiting.

Waiting for your walls to crumble.

What they lacked back then was patience, but oh, Coviello had enough time in the world to remain patient. They knew in themselves that the time will come that you'll admit defeat.

And each time that things happened, the burden was placed on you. Each time you try to justify it wasn't your fault, people never believed you.

You were a magicless human. You don't deserve to have a voice, they told you.

And each time, you swore to yourself that you felt someone was on you. Someone who kept watching you from a distance, far from your untrained eyes.

Coviello truly didn't mean to scare you, but they were curious. They wanted to see if you were able to understand the predicament you were under, and how each one of them would let you take the blame.

They were all cowards. You and Coviello knew that. But did you believe them?

No. No, you didn't.

And to see them resort to it after all the warning they gave you was... Disappointing. But maybe it was worth for the beauty that they've seen.

That in some way, you were stubborn to prove their words wrong.

However, Coviello has seen it. Each time that you went through it, they could see how difficult it is to remain the same perception.

Which leads them to now, with cradling your body in their arms after they had the entirety of Night Raven College under their control. Under their power, slumbering as peacefully as they can.

"... But if I know you, I know what you'll do," they whispered by your ear, pulling your body closer to them. "You'll love me at once, the way you did..."

"Once Upon a Dream."

And just like that, your body went limp, your rushed breaths becoming quiet. Coviello could only imagine what pleasant dreams you have under their spell as flowers bloomed, traversing to cover your eyes to keep them 'closed'.

Once Upon a Dream— a signature spell only they can wield, which renders whoever hears those words in a deep slumber. And the worst part?

All they need is a name of the recipient for it to work.

@.throw-letter-away | do not republish or repost my works anywhere | 2023

[onepiece-oc-archives]

Oda-approved questions to help build your OC

If you head to the One Piece Wiki page of the Straw Hats and take a look at the Miscellaneous section, you'll find a lot of trivia questions about the Straw Hats that Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, has answered in the Q&A portion attached to some manga chapters, called an SBS. I like to call those answers "Straw Hat Fun Facts" and I love them, because they work really well if you want to flesh out your OC and give them a bit more life and depth.

So, even if you're not planning on making your OC a Straw Hat, these questions might still be helpful for you to think about.

The way I'm gonna structure this post for the sake of avoiding spoilers is I'm gonna list all current LA Straw Hats with their facts and all future confirmed Straw Hats will have their facts mentioned without their name, if it makes sense to mention them. That way you can avoid duplicates within the crew if you want to do that and still have no clue about who's gonna join. I'm also gonna comment on how the various fun facts apply to the live action adaptation wherever applicable.

If you're looking for people's birthdays, I'm gonna make another post about them, don't you worry. But you won't find them here.

Animal Resemblances

Luffy: Monkey

Zoro: Shark/Tiger

Nami: Cat

Usopp: Armadillo/Chameleon

Sanji: Duck/Bighorn Sheep

Others: Reindeer, Red Panda, Crane, Falcon, Bull, Rhinoceros, Horse, Giraffe, Whale Shark, Bear

I don't think any of them were mentioned or referenced just yet in the live action, aside from Luffy's name having the word Monkey in it, but that doesn't count. I'm pretty sure we'll get some hints in the future though since these just have such great potential for easter eggs.

Specific Numbers

Now, this is a category that's a bit more complicated because each Straw Hat has at least two signature numbers, for very different reasons. Everyone has a main number based on when they joined, with Luffy being number 1. The second number is the same but it skips Luffy, making Zoro number 1, but this version is rarely used, if ever at all. Then there's the possibility of a Straw Hat getting a number assigned to them based on a pun, whether that be based on their name, their devil fruit, or something entirely different. I'll explain pun numbers in a bracket.

Luffy: 01, 56 (go-mu)

Zoro: 02/01

Nami: 03/02, 73 (na-mi)

Usopp: 04/03

Sani: 05/04, 32 (san-ji), 59 (ko-kku = cook)

Others: 06/05 - 10/09, 110, 87, 26, 43

Now, you may ask: "Evie, I wanna have a pun number for my OC, how do they work?" I got you, buddy. You can make your own pun numbers using a technique called goroawase, using this handy chart I made based on a Wikipedia chart. Everything I added is in (brackets) and consists of variants that would technically be possible due to my own understanding of goroawase, but might not be commonly used.

On a very basic level, all you have to do to create your pun number is to grab the readings from this table and glue them together. I took some work off your shoulders by adding the phonetic changes you can use, indicated by the arrows. You can also only use the first syllable of a reading or add or remove an n at the end of readings that end in vowels or n's. As you can see whith Sanji's ko-kku, you can duplicate consonants, and you can also turn short vowels into long vowels (tsu -> tsū, for example), both for spelling reasons. If you need to transcribe a c, either use an s or a k (or whatever else fits), depending on the pronunciation.

Here are some examples with my OCs:

Cora: 96 (ko-ra) or 25510 (a-ka-i-to - would be very unusual due to its number of digits, but I think I'll use this as a plot device in a future fic!)

Luna: 67 (lu-na/ru-na)

Inari: 576 (i-na-ri) or 53 (ka-mi)

Create away!

Specific Colors

This was in the live action! And I think we'll definitely see something similar again later.

You can't really see it that well but here are Luffy, Nami and Zoro lit up in their respective colors - red, orange and green respectively! I tried to take a better screenshot but, alas, Netflix will not let me.

Luffy: red (aka)

Zoro: green (midori)

Nami: orange (orenjī)

Usopp: yellow (kiiro)

Sanji: blue (ao)

Others: pink (pinku), purple (murasaki), light blue (mizuiro), white (shiro), black (kuro), ochre (ōdoiro)

As you can see, we pretty much have the whole rainbow here, which makes picking a unique color for your OC pretty hard, BUT it's completely allowed to use different shades of the same color (see: blue vs light blue), which is why I listed the Japanese color names for you. I did some digging and it turns out that these are the names of some of Japan's traditional colors. Those traditional colors don’t always match up with what my impression of the character's color is, BUT I made this handy little graphic for you:

In case there are any animal-related characters around and for those of you who like describing smells in their fanfic (me too, me too), this might be very useful!

These are all of the Straw Hats' specific colors (top row) according to the overview of Japanese traditional colors I linked for you above, their color names underlined with my perception of what color Oda might actually have been referring to, in modern terms. As for the grey names beneath orange and pink, those are the traditional colors from the overview that I used to replace the romanized English colors, based on what the first translation that popped up was. The columns directly underneath are a selection of different shades of the same color, also with their names. It just goes to show that you have a huge variety of colors to choose from for your OC - Japan's traditional colors alone are about 1,000 different colors and you can definitely play with hex codes some more. So, go wild!

Specific Smells

Luffy: meat

Zoro: steel (and probably blood, let’s be honest)

Nami: mikan (tangerines, essentially) and money

Usopp: gunpowder

I'd say everyone smells of the sea at least a little bit, realistically speaking, since they are pirates.

Sanji: cigarettes and seafood (and I'm willing to bet he wears some type of cologne or aftershave or something)

Favourite Type of Island and Season

Luffy: summer but he also loves snow, basically everywhere with meat

Zoro: autumn on an autumn island

Nami: summer on a spring island

Usopp: summer on an autumn island

Favourite Food

Sanji: a spoilery gag, so get creative!

We either directly see some of these in the live action or can easily guess.

Luffy: any kind of meat

Zoro: white rice (specifically in the shape of onigiri aka rice balls), sea beast meat, any food that compliments sake (though he's also pretty fond of beer, at least in the live action)

Nami: mikans (tangerines) and most other fruits

Usopp: pike from an autumn island and other fish of the season

Sanji: spicy sea food pasta, food that compliments black tea

Others: not really relevant but maybe interesting; cotton candy, chocolate, sweet stuff in general, sandwiches, not-too-sweet cakes, food that compliments coffee, basically anything that you can find at McDonald's, curry, mozoku seaweed with vinegar and fruits

Basically, Sanji gets to juggle around a whole lot of different flavours and cultural influences - and he does it really well and finds a way to make everything special, by the way! He generally favors the ladies in his cooking though.

Least Favourite Food

Even Sanji can't make them like everything. Their reasons for not liking something are very different, so they probably still eat it, especially if it's used in something Sanji prepared because he's their cook

Luffy: Cherry pie

Zoro: Chocolate (yes, chocolate! Adds a lot more depth to the scene of him eating Rika's rice balls, doesn't it?) - it's too sweet

Nami: orangette (candied orange peels) - she prefers actual fruit

Usopp: mushrooms - he got sick once

Sanji: konjac (Japanese konjac gel is usually made by mixing flour from the konjac plant with seaweed; it pretty much tastes like nothing and is used mainly for its texture) - it's not nutritious

Others: anything spicy, chewing gum, marshmallows, lemons, parfait

As a Family

This is part of the reason why Oda said there would be no romances within the crew in canon - but this is fandom, he has no power here. Feel free to ignore any of these roles and substitute canon with your own

Luffy: fourth son

Zoro: first son

Nami: daughter

Usopp: third son

Sanji: second son

Others: another child, parents and grandparents

Real-world Nationalities

Now, this is interesting, because these played a part in how the Straw Hats were cast for the live action!

Luffy: Brazilian (Mexican in the live action)

Zoro: Japanese

Nami: Swedish (her actress is American, but she was kept as white)

Usopp: unspecified African (his actor is Jamaican-American, so it sort of checks out)

Sanji: French (Sanji's actor is very international, but he's not French - I do believe Sanji is still supposed to be at least part French in the live action though, at least he still has an affinity for the language and he may very well have grown up multilingual)

Others: Canadian, Russian, American, Austrian, Indian

Inner Brain

Basically: What are the five words their brain/subconscious circles around?

Luffy: meat, meat, meat, meat, pirate king

Zoro: sword, sword, strength, train, sleep

Nami: money, money, money, money, beauty

Usopp: warrior, lies, lies, run, run

Suited Flower

Sanji: You guessed it, it's a spoiler-y gag. But, to summarize, he thinks about cooking and women

These were actually answered by one of the voice actresses for the anime (except for Luffy and Zoro's alternates) but they're Oda-approved! I know fanfic writers love flower language, so rejoice!

Luffy: cosmos, sunflower

Zoro: thistle, wisteria

Nami: sunflower

Usopp: daisy

Sanji: delphinium

Others: tulip, casablanca, anemone, rose, peony

Blood Type

-> this is a topic for another post since it's more of a life fact than a fun fact, isn't it? Maybe, I'll put the blood types in with the birthdays and make a sort of Straw Hat info post?

How often do they bathe?

Bathe, not shower, I would assume. Zoro showers after training... right?

Luffy: once a week

Zoro: once a week

Nami: every day

Usopp: once every three days

Sanji: every day

Typical Hours of Sleep

The only reference to this we have in the live action is Zoro's habit of napping. An interesting thing to note is that the Straw Hats' sleep schedules largely coincide in just such a way that someone is always awake - except for during one hour. Maybe this really is a coincidence or maybe this is a habit they built while travelling together. They do still have night watches though, I believe. But that means there's usually always someone to keep the night watch company :)

Luffy: no set time, but usually sleeps around 5 hours

Zoro: 4am to 7am (3 hours) + naps

Nami: 11pm to 7am (8 hours)

Usopp: 1am to 8am (7 hours)

Sanji: 12am to 5am (5 hours)

In conclusion, more than half of the crew has no idea what a healthy sleep schedule is. This is a pattern that's gonna continue, by the way...

Suitable Careers

Basically what careers they would have if they weren't pirates. Their actual careers in-universe also don't count.

Luffy: firefighter

Zoro: police officer (I will not accept this slander)

Nami: childcare worker

Usopp: graphic designer

Sanji: beauty salon worker

Others: elementary school teacher, cabin attendant, pilot, detective, train station attendant

Cooking Specialities

What are they best at cooking? According to Usopp in the live action, none of the guys besides Sanji can even boil water, so I'm willing to assume Sanji may have taught them a little. A lot. Not Luffy though. He's still a disaster.

Luffy: raw meat on a plate

Zoro: sashimi - a dish consisting of variously cut raw fish and meat

Nami: roasted duck with mikan sauce

Usopp: fish and chips

Sanji: literally anything, but he prefers seafood

Who would win a 50m sprint?

Only the current Straw Hats count here.

Fifth: Nami

Fourth: Usopp (he's already fairly fast, mind you)

Third: Zoro, slowed down because he got lost (but I still don’t think he could beat the people ranked higher than him, I'm sorry, Oda)

Second: Luffy

First: Sanji

Alcohol Tolerance

Another very useful one for fanfics! Tolerance doesn't equal how much they like drinking, by the way. I'd be willing to bet that the Straw Hats' alcohol tolerances got toned down in the live action, or at least Zoro's, judging by him stating how he woke up under a table once. With his manga-level tolerance, he would have had to drink gallons worth of alcoholic beverages before that happened. Still, I think the ranking holds up.

Fifth: Luffy

Fourth: Usopp

Third: Sanji

Second: Nami

First: Zoro

And finally one last bit that doesn't really fit anywhere else:

Sanji is currently the most qualified to give the crew a haircut. This makes sense if you read about his alternative career choice earlier and due to him generally putting a lot of thought into appearances.

So, that's it! Hope these help you!

[thelaithlyworm]

META The King Mu of Zhou/Iron Mask Scholar Theorem

[ID Head-and-shoulders of a man in a fancy hat looking with satisfaction at a pill taken from a small box. Below him, a man in alchemist’s robes bends over a recumbent form that looks like a large jade figurine. The right side of the picture is filled with curlicule ornamentation.]

Okay okay okay, I wrote a version of this with quotes and chapter references but it’s quite long so I suspect not many people have read it. (No judgement, I know it’s long, I feel it.) But this definitely is something I want to talk about, so I’m doing a paperplane version for tumblr.

So! The very first adventure in this series, Wu Xie encounters a double-layer tomb with a (living) man wrapped in jade armour who is promptly murdered by Zhang Qiling. The closest thing we get to an explanation is:

– Lushang-wang raided a Western Zhou tomb for immortality secrets, then built his own tomb over it so he could peacefully bake in the armour for a couple of thousand years, to finish the immortality process.

– Lushang-wang murdered by his advisor, a fengshui expert named Iron Mask Scholar, who also put on the armour.

– Iron Mask Scholar killed some time later by Zhang Qiling.

– The map to this tomb is one of a set of famously-encrypted documents sometimes known as the Warring State Silk Texts or more specifically the Lu Yellow Silks, or some variant in-between.

[ID Overhead view of a sarcophagus under a great tree, with various lids and layer scattered around it, and inside – and sitting up – is a body dressed in armour made of laced-together plates of dull jade. Wu Xie etc. recoil in alarm. End ID]

Come Vol. 4 Snake Marsh Ghost City, Wu Xie explicitly identifies the author of these Lu Yellow Silks as Iron Mask Scholar. He describes him as “the Leonardo da Vinci of Lu State” who encrypted documents to get important secrets distributed against the wishes of a higher power. (This is also the book that introduces King Mu of Zhou as a relevant historical figure, in the form of a stone mural which heavily implies his account of a diplomatic visit to the Queen Mother of the West was an outright lie.)

There are some bits and bobs throughout the rest of the main book series, specifically, part of the history of the Jiumen going on a super big raid to find a whole stash of Lu Yellow Silks to decipher for secrets of immortality on behalf of their current patron. The novel version of this arc doesn’t really dig into who wrote them and focuses on the effect they had in the 20th century. The Ultimate Note version changes the author to King Mu of Zhou and brings in a story initially written for the Sand Sea novel – King Mu of Zhou obtained an immortality elixir from the Queen Mother of the West but didn’t want to stay in her country to complete the process by sleeping in jade. Instead he made jade armour of his own and… put a baby in a jade box: “He built two figurines with jade meteorite. One figurine to contain himself, with another to contain a baby. After taking the pill, he planned to break the figurine in a few years under certain conditions. He would be reborn as a baby and attain longevity.” (UN, Ep 35, iQiyi subs).

[ID A painting of a great cavern with rough pillars, with the irregular shape of what might be a meteorite in the background. In the midground are two upright lumps of jade of equal proportions. Vague shadows inside indicate an adult in the left one, and a child in the other. End ID]

Skippy skip through some Jiumen stuff and some Tibetan Sea Flower stuff that suggests Zhang Qiling was the baby in the box… we get to Sand Sea proper, in which the chief antagonists are the Wang Family, descendants of Wang Zanghai from the Ming Dynasty.

But, say the Wang Family, we didn’t start this. Actually you need to go back thousands of years to King Mu of Zhou. The drama version of this revelation is a very clipped lecture, albeit with some interesting art, which mostly focuses on the snake eyebrow copper fish and the snake pheromones etc. etc. (It’s a fair call – sometimes you just gotta focus.) The novel version is very, very long, placed in the novel where you would normally expect the big climax/plot resolution/massive multiplayer final action scene to be. Some key points:

– Wang-laoshi keeps explaining that he isn’t lying but he is leaving gaps in the story for his student to figure out.

– We go right back to the story of Lushang-wang raiding a Western Zhou tomb, this time specifying that it belonged to King Mu of Zhou himself. Also that Iron Mask Scholar incited Lushang-wang to take up graverobbing from the start. He wasn’t an opportunist but a strategic planner who provided a “ghost edict” in King Mu of Zhou’s handwriting explaining that it was totes okay to dig up his tomb, the ghost of King Mu of Zhou thought that was fine, break out the shovel, kid.

– Story interrupted by a student explaining that for the handwritten edict to exist, King Mu of Zhou must still have been alive somehow to write it. (No forgers in Ancient China.) The teacher agrees, explaining that King Mu of Zhou took the Queen Mother of the West’s immortality elixir but could not by himself find jade armour to neutralise the deleterious side effects.

– FROM THEN ON Iron Mask Scholar is not in this story. This is now a story about King Mu of Zhou manipulating Lushang-wang from the shadows, creating the mechanism of a baby in a small dragon-pattern box as a timer and synchronous key for his own coffin, creating the Lu Yellow Silks which as we know were written in the Warring States Era and explicitly attributed to the guy who hid his face all the time………

– In addition, the rather odd (but fun) movie Time Raiders also features Iron Mask Scholar as a key player, this time writing his secrets on copper tablets not silk and also creating a box which is both a timer and a key, like that dragon-pattern box attributed to King Mu of Zhou.

My Conclusion:

King Mu of Zhou and Iron Mask Scholar’s deeds were so often conflated because they were the same guy. This is the truth hinted at by Wang-laoshi and Xu Lei.

(to be continued)

[willowreader]

Story out! An albumin fused ACE2 design that blocks all SARS-CoV-2 variants. The design has a long plasma half-life and can be delivered in a needle-free manner across mucosal surfaces.

This is fantastic news. A COVID blocker is exactly what we need.

[noxporium]

What Does The Deck Say? August 21, 2024

"It will be difficult to accept the help when it appears. After all, the person that delivers the much-needed assistance isn’t exactly known for their goodwill and altruism. But while the offer is legitimate, it will not be available forever. Feel free to scrutinize the offer, and also feel free to make your own conditions for acceptance, but don’t just take it at face value. Remember how they came into their position, and make sure that you aren’t making yourself another place for their feet to rest."

A Baraja Española deck, the Baraja Azteca is a 48 card deck of playing cards used for such games as Brisca, Tute, and Mus. This 48-card variant of the deck contains four suits; Oros (Coins), Bastos (Clubs), Espadas (Swords), and Copas (Cups). While the deck is made primarily for play, it functions well as a divination tool. Each reader uses their own personal understanding and intuition to interpret the cards.

“What Does The Deck Say” is a weekday series of 3 card pulls from a cartomancy deck. No context or query is given to frame what the cards say as the posts are reading samples and not personal instruction. The result is sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, and usually surprising. All readers are invited to leave a comment about what they perceive in the random spread as each person will interact with the cards in their own way.

Personalized, direct, and private cartomancy readings are available via Ko-Fi: Noxporium.

[almonddirge]

She’s not Himeko Murata.

Probably, anyway. New Natlan teaser dropped and when I checked the VA section for the Chinese version none of the VAs seemed to be Himeko Murata’s. Not even the one who seems to be the archon.

Actually, there’s an entire Reddit post from quite some time ago debunking the pyro archon being Murata. The conclusion they came to was that it was a mistranslation and Vennessa should’ve been referred to as “Mu Natlan”, not “Muratan”.

I do like Himeko in all her variants I’ve seen but personally, at this specific point in time, I don’t think she’s Mavuika.

[ephemewra]

Media: Tokyo Mew Mew Real Figure Collection Cards Source: Personal Collection Full Resolution Download: ♡

Commentary: These are scans of the cards that come with the Tokyo Mew Mew Real Figure Collection, showing a photograph of each figurine. A weird little bit of trivia ... The monogram that appears in the border is actually a vertically flipped variant of the Greek letter Omega. Greek lettering is used one of Mia Ikumi's illustrations (×), and the Greek letter Mu tends to show up in the anime depiction of the Mew Project scientists' software, too (×,×).

[dawns-beauty]

Re: current mod plans:

I still don't feel too excited to return to modding. There are plenty of things I could fix, but I just don't feel like it any more.

If it ever changes, I plan on:

Releasing the full version of Lunar Lattice Tweaks. I still have a bit of work to do on it, but @/littlemissf has been kind enough to go through and fix a bunch of stuff!

Adding CBBE/Himbo support for the Dark Lunar Armor in Khajiit Has Wears

Potentially rebooting Project ja-Kha'jay with a new system that allows for better compatibility with mods that edit the Khajiit race. It would also allow for simpler editing. Also, nicer assets. See after cut for details

I don't know about my ideas for humanoid overhauls (like Elderly Elves.) I just don't want to deal with the crap I dealt with for my orc overhaul.

TL;DR: Redoing PJKJ will give mod users who want to put in a little work an easier time editing things.

-

Will call the reboot Children of the Moons, because to heck with it. Let it match my other NPCs mods.

It will not be a direct update to PJKJ, I don't want to break a gazillion patches/LOs etc.

Will require (at least) two additional mods:

Mu's Skeleton Editor and Dynamic Armor Variants

Why Mu's Skeleton Editor (MSE):

It will allow me to use separate skeletons for a single race. This way, I can keep all Khajiit types the same, default Khajiit race. This will be done by assigning keywords to each NPC that determine a few things, including what skeleton they use.

The real beauty of MSE is that users can create their own edited skeletons in RaceMenu and export them and then replace the undesired skeleton file with their own (OR another modded skeleton, like Bestial Beast Races, etc.)

Optionally, they can edit the .ini file and remove the undesired skeleton from distribution completely.

Why Dynamic Armor Variants (DAV):

DAV will let me distribute digitigrade feet to toe-walking Khajiit and simply replace their shoes with their bare feet (since boots look pretty bad with digitigrade skeletons). This is also easy enough to edit/remove via DAV's .ini.

It will also allow me to force Ohmes/Ohmes-Raht to use humanoid armors without changing their race (theoretically. I need to test this.)

Caveat: modded armors may need to be added. I believe the use-case for this is pretty rare: most variations from humanoid to beast race are in helmet shapes, not the torso part. Most Ohmes/-raht Khajiit NPCs I've edited don't use helmets.

I do plan on adding compatibility for Lunar Guard Armor and Moon Monk (both have tail edits.)

Better Assets

I will replace the Ohmes/-raht with High Poly Heads, and play around with sliders again, as well new eyes, that are able to have proper glowing irises while having proper reflections.

Nearly all of the bestial heads (outside of the serval-like Tojay and 'regular' Khajiit, like Kharjo) will be replaced with versions based on the high poly Khajiit Overhaul heads. I just think the older assets look awkward and don't emote super great (anger looks particularly silly on most of them.)

Additionally, I want to play around with KCCE, and I've also come up with a few complete redesigns. ideas. Heights will be assigned directly in the NPC records (easily tweaked via SSE Edit)

[zyuna-arts]

💙 UNDER THE SEA 💙

Had the idea for a long time of drawing all my current Ikea plushies in an underwater scene and finally did so while at work ✨ Kept it deliberately stylised and simple and I'm thinking of turning it into prints 👀

Second image is a collage I made using my own photos of the plushies featured in the artwork 🐟 Background is a photograph of the sunset sky at sea I took in December 2022 during a cruise trip 👁️ The hamster on the trio of Kosig Mus in the photo collage was my lil gremlin Storm, who passed away in April 2020. He was already an elderly ham when that photo was taken but still acted like a youngun full of energy 🔥

I got Kosig Mus as a 'rat family' a long time ago in the 2000s/pre-2010s. Mine came with all three mouse tails tied together in a knot and each mouse was sewn together by the paws so they can't be separated. I liked them a lot as a kid!

Fast forward to the present time and Blåhaj took the world by storm - I was no exception to their appeal. However, I chanced upon a small grey dolphin named Genomblot that was on sale and bought one for myself and some friends, later finding out this design had been discontinued. Afterwards I got the large Blåhaj variant and searched everywhere for the smaller ones until an outlet stocked them 👀

Blåvingad was my latest addition to my Ikea plushies and is the name given to a collection of children's products based on various sea creatures. My bed is now occupied by only sea creature plushies and I had to evict previous occupants like a large Shiba Inu plush and a cafe/butler Alpacasso I got from gacha machines 😔🙏

NAMES: 🦈Blåhaj (100cm): Finn 🦈Blåhaj (55cm): Finn Jr. 🐬 Genomblot: Wave 🐼🐬 Blåvingad (orca): Manta

Finn and Wave are shark and dolphin characters in a childhood comic I made called Dolphin Island, while Manta was inspired by the stingray-like monsters in Code Lyoko called Mantas!

SOCIALS: Linktree

Art © zyuna

(DON’T REPOST/USE MY ART & OCS)

[supersupersounds]

Flood City Trax by Nondi_

Nondi_ - Flood City Trax

Planet Mu once again leading the way with new footwork variants. Nondi_’s sound is so hazy and dream-like, a big wash of sound and emotion, backed with skittering beats and lots of saturation. Really cool, really interesting, love it. -Kris

[sebastianswallows]

Dangerous and Delightful — Chapter 5 — Old books and brandy

— PAIRING: Sebastian Sallow x F!Reader

— SYNOPSIS: Sebastian is a purveyor of forbidden artefacts, a dark arts researcher, and a curse-breaker for hire. Ominis, desperate to save him from himself, hires Reader in secret to persuade him, by any means necessary, to leave his illegal activities behind.

— WARNINGS: angst, smut, male masturbation

— WORDCOUNT: 4.2k

— TAGLIST: @bloofinntoona @sarcasticpluviophile @estrotica

Sebastian spent the whole night after meeting her awake, thinking about her, keeping the cursed necklace she had given him to destroy on his bedside table. It was only the third time they met, but for some reason, there had been a different quality to it. Perhaps because it had not been planned — he hadn't expected her to write to him... Or perhaps it was because he had been in her home, seen the inside her of it, felt her touch on every item, every little book, every old picture...

And then, there was the matter of her family. Who was trying to curse her? And what had happened to her brother? Was he really missing in the Aeolian Islands, or was there something else at play?

Sebastian took his layers of stiff clothes off thoughtfully, his thoughts always circling the same — her, her company, her words, her scent, the taste of the skin of her little hand, her warmth, her home, her pleading looks and prying questions — and once he had taken everything off and his skin chilled in the coolth of his room, he walked over to the liquor shelf and poured himself a generous glass of brandy.

He lay in bed, waiting to feel tired. It never came.

Eventually, he sat up and stretched his back as he walked around the room. He stared at the necklace on the bedside table as if it were the solution to it all... Well, if he couldn't sleep, maybe he could at least get through some of the research he had in mind. He only needed to inspect it more thoroughly to get a hint as to who had cast the curse on it. And, to keep his word, he could destroy it afterwards. He’d thought of all manner of spells to try on it while they had drinks at her house, and had worked himself into somewhat of an enthusiasm to apply them.

“What she doesn’t know won’t make her mad at me,” he muttered, sitting at his desk in the nude.

For the next few hours, he piled books upon books beside him, reading up on decryption spells and incantations, the alcohol blurring his vision ever so slightly every time he took a sip.

She had asked that he destroy the necklace, seeming uninterested in finding out who in her family wanted to curse her — or her brother. Sebastian thought it was a bad idea… If he could get to the bottom of the curse, wouldn’t that be better? Would it be more helpful? Wouldn’t that be of more service to her?

Why would she deny it, anyway? Probably to spare her family… She seemed terribly protective of them — which he both did and didn’t understand.

Well, whatever it was she felt for them, he was spared of such limitations.

He turned the necklace in the air with a light levitation spell, examining it closely. Several detection spells bounced off it, but there were a few that stuck.

He had a lot of respect for what it took to make an item like this… Whoever was trying to curse her was clearly a witch or wizard of skill. It had been cursed calmly, without malice, almost with a sweetness to it — and yet the curse would be lethal, he was sure of it. Sebastian pulled out a thick tome on the nature of curses and a notebook, flipping the pages of the heavy book and searching for any mention of something that matched the item before him. He hadn’t studied anything like this since his days at Hogwarts… Most curses he’d dealt with in his work since then were strong, showy, even explosive. There was an ego behind them that was lacking here.

After half an hour, he found a description that closely matched the kind of magic employed on this piece.

“A variant of the Curse of the Lost Soul. Interesting,” he mumbled to himself as he took a few notes. He took a deep pull of brandy and rolled it on his tongue as he thought about it. “Not as original as I first thought, but the power of these things is often underrated.”

Having identified it, he now knew that it was safe to touch, just not to wear around one’s neck. Taking it slowly, he traced a finger over the incantation markings and tried to get a feeling for the amount of magic put into the curse.

There was something cold and cloying about it, he’d felt as much when examining it at her home… Like hands reaching out from a grave, ivy crawling up stone, or a greedy siren in the Great Lake at Hogwarts. It would grab hold of whoever wore it and sap them of all warmth and motion, leaving behind the coldest, dries corpse. It was slow but penetrating. If not for the chill emitted from the gemstones, one might think nothing of it. He found himself greatly relieved — and impressed — that she detected it in time.

Sebastian scratched the back of his neck as he focused his bleary eyes on it, the muscles in his back unwinding. There was no prying the curse off or disenchanting it — at least, not if he was being realistic. A spell that took so long to act took even longer to undo, and he didn’t have weeks to spare for it. There was nothing left to do but to destroy it, as she had asked him to. And yet…

He looked at it. It was a pretty piece, if a little plain. And it was something from her, an heirloom of her family even… Those things had a certain significance beneath and beyond the magical.

Yes, he could keep it a while longer, and reveal all of its secrets in time. Maybe he could discover who in her family hated her so. She was certain to think more highly of him then — not just as a smuggler or dark wizard, but a true friend, a loyal companion, and more…

More... The word ricocheted between his ears and sent a shiver down his spine.

His legs tensed beneath the table and he spread his legs a little wider, settling himself more comfortably on the chair. He thought long and hard, sitting there at the desk with an empty bottle and a still-full glass. He needed to make a profile of whoever crafted that curse, and then match it up against the most likely suspects from her family. It had to be somebody skilled, and comfortable with curses, familiar with old ones too, but likely not in the business of using them often. Someone with more delicacy and patience than the sort of people he’d meet around Borgin and Burkes. It was likely to be hard to learn their identity without giving up his own, if he decided to go asking around…

He rubbed his eyes, feeling them burning from the late night light and alcohol, then looked at it again laying supine and curled up on his desk. This necklace was something of hers, a link she had to her family history... How could he possibly throw it away?

“Oh, bollocks,” said Sebastian, standing up and starting towards his trunk. He grabbed the necklace, placed it back into its box, then tucked it in a corner of his trunk between other cursed and precious things. Standing up, he closed the trunk again and locked it firmly. “I'll deal with you later,” he muttered.

He went to sleep thinking about her.

He woke up thinking about her.

He’d thought there was a certain loveliness about her ever since they met, but after last night, there was a petulant, greedy, needy feeling clawing its way out of his chest, and every moment was spent missing her, wondering what she was doing, wondering what she would think of his little flat or his bed or the street he lived on…

He imagined himself making her laugh, mimicking and making fun of his neighbour who practised the flute every afternoon — he’d been doing it ever since Sebastian moved in two years ago and had only gotten worse. Or pointing out to her when the cat from the little old witch in the building opposite, Mrs Cloke, took a tour of the rooftops. He was a chubby tomcat in black and white named Sweetie, and he loved to stalk the birds. Sebastian enjoyed watching Sweetie play with his victims, or when he clutched them in his mouth to bring as a present to his mistress.

Perhaps they would just lie in bed, slipping in and out of sleep, his fingers curling in her hair, her legs wrapped around him… Would she stay with him after she woke, or hurry to get up? He’d make her stay anyway, and keep her amused, keep her in a state of constant pleasure if she’d let him, kissed and caressed and pampered and worshipped… A rage of thoughts battered his conscience, but he could think of nothing better than to start the day by loving her.

Why couldn’t she just be there?

Why had he left the night before without saying anything? He’d demanded to see her again, the only form of compensation he wanted, but now that she asked for the necklace to be destroyed she had no reason to. He didn’t know if he’d ever see her again but, well, he knew where she lived, so he could always — no.

Sebastian turned in bed and looked out the window. Cloudy, foggy, rainy day, unworthy of spring. It was a Friday, and quite late in the afternoon judging by his pocket watch braced on his bed table — not an unusual time for him to wake up, as he was usually home late on most days. On Friday evenings in particular he had a business meeting with two enterprising gentlemen in Knockturn Alley. Sighing, he turned around the hugged his pillow. His sheets felt warm, too warm, and damp with sweat as if he had been feverish during the night. A rush of hot and cold trickled like waves beneath his skin to pool at his loins. He grunted in frustration at what could have been a pleasant feeling, turned bitter by his loneliness.

Sebastian slid a hand beneath his stomach, down to his hips, down to his thighs, and gripped the throbbing length. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sensation, his manhood far too sensitive and sore, as if it had been working hard all night long — if only. Gingerly, he felt around the head and was embarrassed to find it damp, a trickle of wet seeping all over and making his thighs stick. Sebastian buried his face into the pillow, then trailed the tip of his fingers along the underside. He moaned. Another rush of slick got pumped out of him just by the slow, hungry throb... His skin felt pliable and warm there, soft as velvet and as hot as fiendfyre, as he began to move his hand up and down.

As he teased himself, he slid his arm beneath the pillow and brought it to his face, burying his mouth in it to muffle the moans that came. He thrust up into his tight fist and squeezed tighter, punishing himself.

He was unworthy of her, completely unworthy of her. He was a murderer and a thief, his spirit soiled beyond cleansing, while she was sweet and gentle and good and deserved better, and he wanted to kill every last man that was more worthy of her than he was…

Feeling the strain of the position, Sebastian pulled his arm from underneath him and wrapped it too around the pillow, hugging it against his face with both arms, sinking his lonely, needy moans in its softness while he spread his legs and rubbed his swollen manhood on the sheets, back arching to better press his stomach against it. His heavy panting and the plaintive whines came out of him all muffled, and he wished he could hold her to him like that, and bury his pleas into her hair, and his lips into her neck, and not let her see him crying. He thrust faster into the empty sheets, pressing harder, making his tip ache and burn. None of it was enough.

“Oh, please,” he whimpered into the pillow, squeezing it tighter, “please please please…”

He didn’t even know what he was asking for, just that he felt out of breath and dizzy and he needed something, anything to happen, to end it.

His traitorous length was weeping steadily, wetting his stomach until the rubbing turned into a slide, and his sheets stuck to his skin after he pressed down into them.

“Please,” he whimpered hoarsely, begging, “please take it…”

His thighs were tense and burning, sweat pooled at his lower back, and he felt no closer to being satisfied than when he started. Weakly, he lifted his face from the pillow and gripped the headboard behind it, then pulled himself up to a slightly drier spot on the bed.

“Oh that’s it,” he moaned, looking down at his body, past the lost little freckles and the smattering of chest hair sticking to his skin. He could just barely see a hint of the dark red tip peeking from beneath his stomach, squeezed down, rubbed within its soft skin.

His face felt hot and damp, his arms flexed painfully at the angle he was working with, and he felt like he was drowning... Still hanging on to the headboard, he tilted his head back and let his lips part, sucking in greedy breaths as he worked himself toward his pleasure, canting his hips at sharper, deeper angles, letting himself press down more heavily over his manhood, teasing himself, making sure the head slipped completely out of its protective skin before it was covered again, then pressed out fully, rubbed raw and exposed, and back once more into softness.

He felt the lick of flames beneath the skin of his inner thighs, felt the little coil of something sweet and wet between his legs, and then his whole body was shaken by a rush of cold and then of warmth again and he had to bite into the muscle of his upper arm to keep himself from screaming and his thrusts stuttered and his stomach tensed and a dribble of something thick started seeping from his tip — and then the air of the room was stirred by the thunder of a knock on his door.

Sebastian caught his breath and stilled, listening carefully. Whoever was there knocked again louder, with a fist.

Gingerly, so as to not make a sound, Sebastian got up off the bed and wordlessly summoned a bathrobe with one hand while with the other he picked up his wand from the bedside table. His heart was still thumping in his chest, but it calmed as his skin caught the cool air of the room. The robe wasn’t much, but it conveniently concealed his hardened length. He was far from decent, but whoever it was that would pound on his door unannounced was hardly worth more.

He walked carefully to the front door and listened. A simple revealment spell told him there were two people on the other side — men, rather broad, stiff looking…

“Who is it?” he asked breathlessly, wand at the ready.

“Auror office,” said a gruff voice. “Open up.”

Sebastian bit his lip and cursed. He didn’t want to let them in, but running away now would only establish his guilt… And if they came all the way here rather than ambush him somewhere, they must have still had their doubts.

He removed the wards on his room and unlocked the door. Two moustached wizards with unshaven cheeks were on the other side, one brown and the other black-haired, around 40 and 50 years old respectively. They regarded him coolly, staring him up and down. Sebastian felt the last shiver of his unfulfilled pleasure abandon him, lost as the sweat chilled off his body, as his heart pumped steadily, and his muscles relaxed, ready for anything.

“Sebastian Sallow?” spoke the taller of the two.

“Who’s asking?” he said, then cleared his throat, his voice still rather rough and sounding a little choked.

“We’re from the Auror office —”

“Yes, I gathered as much. What is this about?”

They stepped into the room without waiting for an invitation.

After giving him another cursory glance, they began to look around his flat while they continued speaking. Their eyes went to his desk first, filled with a bigger pile of books and papers than they were perhaps used to seeing, a scattering of ruffled quills, and so many and varied ink wells that it looked like a laboratory.

Sebastian was, at least, grateful that their eyes weren’t on him anymore. He closed the door and watched them, his right hand stuffed in his robe pocket clutching his wand, while he shifted from one leg to the other, trying to look normal.

“What business are you in?” asked the black-haired one with the brown eyes.

“Curse-breaker for hire. And what are your names?”

“You’re employed by… whom?”

“Whomever’s paying,” he replied with a smirk.

“Pays well?”

“Not really,” he shrugged, half-lying. “But it’s one of the few things I’m good at.”

“Good at it, are you?” asked the Auror, levelling a hard gaze at him.

Sebastian swallowed the knot in his throat but shrugged and smiled charmingly. He still felt lightheaded enough to be a little dotty.

“A lot of people are good at a lot of things,” said the Auror, “but few are skilled enough in breaking curses.”

“Just haven’t tried my hand at much, then, I suppose.”

“And who pays for that sort of thing?” he asked, poking his wand through Sebastian’s pile of clothes.

“For what?”

“Curse-breaking.”

“I have a hard time remembering their names,” said Sebastian, scratching the sweaty back of his head. “Most sound awfully French or something.”

Their booted steps were heavy in his flat, dirtying up the carpet, kicking it aside at the corners to look for any hidden nooks, then bending down to leaf through his notebooks. They’d find nothing there but his research into salvaging the lady’s necklace, perfectly innocuous. Their eyes passed over his unmade bed and quickly move past it. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The brown-haired Auror with the blue eyes stared him up and down after a while.

“A bit late to still be in your bathrobe,” he said.

“You caught me just after my ablutions,” smirked Sebastian, threading his fingers through his hair that, at the temples, was so sweaty it looked wet.

The Auror stared him in the eye with his milky gaze, and Sebastian stared back — a poor attempt at Legilimensy, easily deflected.

“Do you happen to know a shop called Borgin and Burkes?” he then asked.

“Who doesn’t?” chuckled Sebastian.

“Decent wizards don’t.”

“Well, you did catch me in a moment of indecency.”

Neither of them appreciated the joke, but Sebastian couldn’t help but grin about it.

“They’re involved in suspicious activity,” said the taller Auror.

“You don’t say.”

“I would recommend you keep your distance, Mr Sallow.”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Say,” started the shorter Auror, “you don’t happen to be related to a wizard called Solomon, do you?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian stiffly. “Why? Knew him?”

“In his later years, yes,” he said, looking at Sebastian from the corner of his eye. “Was dishonourably dismissed, from what I recall.”

“Was he now?”

“Used the wrong spell at the wrong time,” said the other, frowning at his colleague. “Nothing more to say about it.”

Their hands were on their wands, but they didn’t cast any spells around his belongings while Sebastian was watching, although they clearly meant to. Their eyes at some point fell to his large trunk, a treasure trove of proscribed artefacts. Sebastian put on a disinterested look, leaning against the door and picking at a piece of lint beneath his fingernail while they picked his life apart. The two Aurors exchanged a silent look, but shifted their attention away from it — as they were meant to. Sebastian had never had cause to test the Distraction charm he’d cast on his trunk, a spell that made it thoroughly uninteresting to casual observers, but he was enormously pleased to see it worked.

“We’re looking into the legitimacy of some of their wares. There might —”

“Whose was that, again?”

“Burke’s.”

“Ah.”

“There might be a reward for any relevant information. We have ways of repaying anonymous sources too,” said the taller Auror. “If you hear anything…”

He extracted a calling card and left it on Sebastian’s desk.

Alistair Gray

• Senior Auror •

Level 2 • Ministry of Magic • Office 208

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Sebastian, opening the door and leaning against it, wordlessly inviting them to leave.

With another brief look around, the two wizards tilted their bowler hats and left.

Sebastian shut the door right after away and sighed, placing his wards again, and stronger ones this time too. He knew he’d caught the attention of the Auror office for a couple of years, but he’d never actually spoken to any before. His fears had nearly abated, until now… Very untimely too, since he was supposed to meet Caractacus Burke that evening to speak about a shipment coming in through Dover.

He went anyway to meet the man, although he arrived two hours in advance and kept his distance, watching from a building across the street for any unfamiliar faces. The evening was damp and a little rainy, and Knockturn Alley was hardly the best-lit stretch of street, but he didn’t notice anyone or anything out of the ordinary, thank Salazar…

Sebastian didn’t like Aurors. Didn’t like seeing them, didn’t like speaking to them, didn’t like being spoken to by them. His Uncle Solomon had something to contribute to those sentiments, but his business ventures contributed much more. He knew Mr Burke felt very much the same, which was why he expected him to be understanding.

“What do you mean you’re not going?”

“I don’t want to see them outside my door again,” said Sebastian firmly. “They know we’re working together. They must be watching your shop. Today was a threat.”

“A threat of what?” the old man sniffed.

The low candlelight in the backroom of his store shined off his balding head like a crystal globe. He always met Sebastian in the back, or far away from his store entirely if they were discussing something hazardous to either of their liberties. Caractacus Burke was a sleek and slimy peddler of the untoward, the dangerous, the forbidden… It had seemed earlier on in Sebastian’s career that he could put up with his more scrofulous traits in exchange for a promising window into the area of dark magic. But as their collaboration stretched on for years, mostly at Sebastian’s expense and rarely to his profit, he grew more and more impatient with the wizard.

“I don’t intend to find out,” hissed Sebastian. “I’m not saying I won’t work for you at all, just… not for a while.”

He didn’t exactly trust that Burke wouldn’t use this as an excuse to drop him altogether for someone younger and more naive, but Sebastian knew when he was needed. There weren’t many wizards willing to undertake this sort of work, and there were even fewer with his skills. Burke himself, in spite of the wealth of artefacts he’d amassed, was only skilled in bartering, and lying, and swindling, skills that even a filthy muggle could possess. He’d know nothing of the value of the artefacts that came his way if not for Sebastian to reveal them, and he certainly didn’t have the patience nor the brains for the research it required.

“How long, then?” asked Burke.

“That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?”

“There might not be any work left for you when you return,” he spat.

“Oh yes,” grinned Sebastian, stepping back toward the creaking staircase, “there will be.”

There was always work in bringing items safely to London, and for the finer things, Sebastian was sometimes even sent to see them brought to Callais from wherever they originated. He’d seen much of the continent like that, more than any of his Hogwarts peers did, even the wealthy ones. But it appeared those lovely days of travelling in secret through the cold night air or through dark waters were over, for now…

Sebastian looked left and right before going out of the shop, and cast another Revelio for good measure, but there was nobody suspicious tracing him — or so he thought.

Which was why he was very disappointed to have been wrong when he arrived back at his flat only to find the same pair of Aurors knocking on his door. Sebastian turned around in a heartbeat and walked the other way, down the stairs, down into the basement of the building, where he’d hidden his trunk of special items under a concealment charm as a jar of pickles. He walked outside, to the incinerator, and used the chimney in the back to Floo over to Ominis’ mansion.

[yourultraarchive]

i love love love your blog!! you have a few posts about japanese names, like how to make them and where they fit in but,,, i was wondering how an american name would fit in (like class number, alphabetically, etc.) or how to translate one, if at all. and do you think its a good idea to have an american oc actually attending UA at all? i know you've said you're not an authority, so its totally fine if you dont know. thank youuuu! your templates are amazing btw

Hi, sorry for the late reply! (I actually haven't been on tumblr in like... months. Life and all.)

Foreign/non-Japanese OCs attending UA wouldn't be weird at all--there are canonically at least 3 foreign exchange/transfer/descent/immigrant students (or something of the sort)! Aoyama from 1-A and Pony and Rin from 1-B are all foreigners in some capacity.

As for how they'd fit alphabetically--well, it'd be just like any alphabetical order you'd think of, it's just that it'd be based on the Japanese alphabet instead of English. Here is a good reference for the general rules of that order, including voiced consonants:

In Romaji, these kana are phonetically ordered as: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ga, ki, gi, ku, gu, ke, ge, ko, go, sa, za, shi, ji, su, zu, se, ze, so, zo, ta, da, chi, di/ji, tsu, du/dzu, te, de, to, do, na, ni, nu, ne, no, ha, ba, pa, hi, bi, pi, fu/hu, bu, pu, he, be, pe, ho, bo, po, ma, mi, mu, me, mo, ya, yu, yo, ra, ri, ru, re, ro, wa, wo, n (This is ignoring "little" variants since those are never going to be at the start of a word, but it does determine the order of words that do have them in the middle somewhere.)

It may look weird to people used to the English alphabet (you may think it's strange that "pa" comes before "bi" right?) but do keep in mind that Japanese is... well. Not English. This is normal to them!

For a name that doesn't easily fit the Japanese phonetic structure, you'd have to sound it out with kana (and write it out with katakana, since it's a foreign name). Some examples:

Pony, written as ポニー, is read "po-ni-i" (since long vowel sounds are translated in katakana as a long dash), and since it's a name starting with a voiced consonant (po), it would go after names starting with "he" (and its voiced versions) and before names starting with "ma". (If we were sorting characters by first name anyway.)

Peter Parker, written as ピーター・パーカー, is read "pi-i-ta-a / pa-a-ka-a" (again with long dashes translating as long vowels), and would alphabetically go before Pony (in either case of first or last name, since "pi" and "pa" both come before "po"). Also, in case you didn't catch the pattern, the "er" ending in English is most often translated as a long "a" sound!

Richard Grayson, written as リチャード・グレイソン, is read "ri-cha-a-do / gu-re-i-so-n". This is an example of sounds like "gr" that don't translate well in Japanese, so you kind of have to squish two syllables together to get it, with the vowel in the middle being somewhat "silent". The most common "silent" character in Japanese is "u", but I've seen "o" a few times too (see next example).

Mytho or Mute, written as みゅうと or ミュート, is read as "myu-u-to", and can be translated as either of the aforementioned "English" names (because translations aren't a 1-to-1 thing after all). In the example of the "Mute" translation, the silent "o" just kind of sounds better at the end than a "u" does in cases like this.

Thanatos, written as タナトス, is read "ta-na-to-su", and is an example of a name with that silent "u" at the end.

Anthony Stark, written as アントニー・スターク, is read as "a-n-so-ni-i / su-ta-a-ku", and is another example of translating sounds that don't exist in Japanese ("th" in English becomes "s" or "z" in Japanese, and "st[x]" becomes "sut[x]") and the silent "u".

Jason Stryker, written as ジェイソン・ストライカー, is read as "je-i-so-n / su-to-ra-i-ka-a", and is another example of translating sounds that don't exist in Japanese, with "Stryker" showcasing that it uses the "st[x] -> sut[x]" rule AS WELL AS a silent "o" rather than the usual silent "u".

Class number is just based on where they are in the alphabetical order (ie. Aoyama is No.1 because he has the earliest alphabetical character in his surname, "a". Ashido is No.2 because, while she also has an "a" surname, "shi" comes after "o" in the Japanese alphabet).

So for instance, if Richard Grayson was added to 1-A, he would have a seat between Kirishima and Koda since his surname starts with "gu" (in the Japanese writing system!), and his class number would be No.9! Koda and everyone else after him would have their number pushed accordingly. If Peter Parker were added to this same class, he would be between Bakugou and Midoriya!

I hope this helped, and will help others too. Thanks for the ask! (Also thanks for saying so, I feel like no one actually uses the templates at all...)

Anyway, plus ultra and all that!