#very long and rambly post. apologies

[glitchbirds]

started watching the his dark materials tv adaptation earlier this week- something that i had meant to do back in 2019 when it began and never quite got around to. started s3 yesterday so i should get the remaining 7 episodes under my belt within the next few days genuinely it is fascinating to watch an adaptation of a series that i read only once, when i was ten years old, but which left such a profound impression on me that i have consistently cycled back to it for years and years (esp when its such a complex, sprawling fantasy world-or several worlds, really- that its adapting)

as ive mentioned Several times over the years- maybe not on this particular account though-, i was gifted an omnibus copy of all three books in one by my older brother, either for christmas or my birthday i cant remember, sometime before the 2007 movie came out (meaning i had to have been 10 at the absolute oldest when i started reading them, though maybe 11 by the time i finished?). i also very clearly remember The Controversy surrounding them among christians, mainly because of a few comments by classmates but more importantly because my (fourth grade, iirc?) teacher pulled me out of class one day to tell me the book i was reading was sinful and atheist and against god and etc (which made me cry very hard </3 even though she told me i could still read it. this was back when my dad still took me to (catholic) church on a semi-regular basis to appease my grandmother as well as sunday school (run by my older cousins) and at least a year or so before i started to develop a modicum of critical thought towards deep south church teachings. i was petrified of the idea of going to hell and scared to do anything whatsoever to jeopardize my chances) (this did not stop me from reading the book however, because i enjoyed it too much. but i also have a clear memory of reading the book every chance i got w/o paying much attention to what was happening around me and one day realizing that i was reading it while at church service and mentally freaking out that i was doing something sacrilegious and trying to force myself to stop reading. i think i spent about 10 minutes bored out of my mind before i, internally apologetic, went back to reading) luckily my parents seemed unaware or unphased by the fearmongering- i assume my mother never noticed, or this was before she started to become insane from fox news poisoning; my dad i think brought it up briefly because of a flyer he saw but wasnt overly worried about it- because i saw the movie in theaters (i liked it ok; have never seen it since, i want to now though) and also acquired the ds game (tbh i enjoyed it despite it being tie-in garbage and me being v bad at video games as a kid; i never managed to beat it though) and later the wii game (bad </3 never got far into it)

Anywayyyy. again i have never since reread any of the books or read any of the other novellas and the like philip pullman has written set in the same world, though im itching to do that now; and ofc while ive skimmed through wiki articles and the like to refresh my memory on things, my memory of most of the plot points in the books are heavily based on My Perspective As A Ten Year Old Child. i remember the first book the best, a decent amount of subtle knife, and can only recall a few specifics of amber spyglass, and its only now while revisiting the world by watching the tv show that im getting a proper, more well-rounded view of the symbolism and messaging and Authorial Intent(tm) behind the series, because of course a lot of this shit flew right over my stupid little child brain as a kid. once i got to the third book i started to understand, vaguely, why my teacher didnt want me reading this book and why there was a backlash against the movie, but a lot of things that are obvious to me now (and would have been obvious if i read the series just a few years later, really) just did not compute for a 10 y/o. which ofc does not mean that i think its a Bad thing i read them that young but all of ^ that turns watching this series into a mix of "oh i remember that" "oh i know whats coming up" "oh my god i forgot that this is from HDM, this has influenced so many creative projects over the years w/o me even realizing it" "oh they skipped over it but i know in the books there was a scene here that i loved and that has stuck with me forever" "i dont remember this from the books but it extrapolates perfectly from what i remember about these characters" "oh my god was the symbolism here really that obvious and i still didnt pick up on it" etc etc etc ANYWAYYYY. my actual review of the tv series so far: -season 1 in particular is sorely lacking in how it portrays daemons and it made me increasingly sad. daemons were without a doubt my favorite thing from these books and one of my favorite things in a work of fantasy Ever to the point where over the years i have Repeatedly decided to sit down and spend a ridiculous amount of time painstakingly plotting out what daemon i think (x) character from (x) piece of media i enjoy, would have. many of which are still committed to memory. i fucking love daemons as a concept and i wish this shit was public domain so any piece of fiction i write could utilize them forever. i get budget issues exist or w/e but whyyyy would you adapt a series where every character in a world would have a cgi animal with them at all times if you couldnt actually show those cgi animals in more than a handful of scenes per episode and only for (some) major characters and only if they had a speaking role in that scene and also occasionally just have them teleport instead of showing them walking from one room to the next and also crowd shots are fucking barren. its like watching a live action pkmn tv show where pokemon are onscreen for a combined 5-10 minutes out of 60 minute episodes. s2 is a bit better about it but it also spends significantly more time in other worlds where daemons arent visible so ig its easier to budget in more daemons in scenes that take place in lyras world. no idea about s3 yet though ofc the mulefa are coming so We'll See how they handle the cg there

-i do think the cg animal animation looks good though. like its not "i believe there is an actual snow leopard in the room" photorealism but not only is that something i do not particularly care about, i think daemons looking a little unreal is actually perfect. they are physical manifestation of human souls and are in-universe immediately distinguishable from identical animals of the same species... it works

-s2 in general is a significant improvement on s1 not just in the daemons but in the overall pacing and character exploration imo; which is surprising considering its the season cut short from covid lockdown; and also a bit sad since, again, most of what i remember is from the first book and thus many of my fondest memories of the books were things that were either skimmed over in the first season or cut out entirely </3 ALAS.

-iorek and iofurs fight didnt go as hard as it shouldve </3 they didnt even show iorek ripping iofur's jaw off... he was killed in the blurry bg behind lyra. how are you gonna let the 2007 pg-13 movie kick more ass at talking armored polar bears fighting to the death

-am i crazy or is the alethiometer just not used much in the tv series compared to the book... maybe the movie+games clouded my memory, or maybe its the fact that in the show there's rarely any elaboration as to what the symbols could mean or which symbols lyra is using for her questions/what she's interpreting. almost every scene of it being used blurs together and i wouldnt be shocked if some show-only fans think its a stupid plot device with no rhyme or reason behind the symbols, when imo i think you can at least roughly intuit many of the meanings, though obviously not to the extent that a reader could interpret full accurate sentences

-some really really strong casting for like 99% of the roles in this show, i love most of the changes theyve made from the books wrt to casting decisions, my only significant gripe is of course. why did you have to do lee scorseby like that. i loved lee a lot. i remembered him so fondly. why'd you have to give lin manuel miranda that one. just absolutely devastating to me personally (though the choice to have andrew scott as will's father was v funny to me because lin manuel miranda and moriarty from bbc sherlock hanging out together for a huge chunk of s2 has to have appealed massively to a very particular subset of tumblrina)

-again i read these books when i was 10 so the concept of "characters can be bad people but also really well written and enjoyable to spectate" hadnt really settled in my mind yet so i really have no idea if this fully applies to the book version of her but oh my godddd i love mrs coulter in this series. yes she kidnaps children and rips their souls apart from them yes she drugs her own daughter and holds her captive yes she murders people indiscriminately without remorse etc. and she rules <3

-similarly the changes theyve made to the golden monkey are Fascinating...

-i loved lyra and pan with my whole heart when i was her age and it is really :,) to now be fully an adult and see her again. waughh. i love how almost everyone she meets loves her too (i will not stand for ppl watering it down to found family fanfiction tropes. but She Is So Loved.)

-i think its cool that boreal went from being a fairly minor character in the books to one of the main antagonists for a hot minute. he was fun :)

-i dont remember having strong feelings about mary malone as a kid but i really like her here. i havent gotten to this point in the show yet but im aware they tweaked her backstory to make her a lesbian as well, which is just delightful to me

-will's relationship w/ his mother and particularly the way the book describes her mental illness from will's perspective was so, So important to me as a kid and the thing i remembered best from subtle knife, and i wish the show had dwelled on it a liiiittle more? in particular, the bit where will thinks about when he first realized something was up and his mother wasnt just playing a "game" with him and was actually terrified of a nonexistent threat, when he was seven and they were shopping for groceries, and how he realized then and there that he needed to take care of her and protect her- that stuck w/ me very strongly as a kid and i wish the show had found a way for will to talk about it with lyra, there were a couple points where i thought he was going to bring it up. maybe this season??

fun fact i started writing this post at like 10 last night. i gotta put a stop this rn

[starriesse]

[ID: A fifteen striped flag. The first and last four stripes all have small bumps facing inwards. The stripe colors, from top to bottom, are desaturated orange-yellow, pastel desaturated orange-yellow, desaturated orange-yellow, pastel desaturated orange-yellow, dull pink, light pink, pale pink, white, pale pink, light pink, dull pink, pastel desaturated orange-yellow, desaturated orange-yellow, pastel desaturated orange-yellow, and desaturated orange-yellow. In the center of the middle flag there is an icon of a halo with wings, while the other flags do not have said icon. End ID]

♡ ⁔⁔ IMPURANGELIC ... !!

[PT: Impurangelic. End PT]

— A gender related to impurity and angels. This gender is the feeling one may have of feeling defiled or impure, while wishing they could go back to when they were pure. This gender is also related to the song "Pure as a Lamb" by Baby Bugs, fallen angels, mourning over what could have been. It embodies mourning, melancholy, and a wish for a softer reality.

— This gender was created with trauma survivors in mind, and I would prefer if only trauma survivors use it. Despite the religious themes to it, it is not exclusive to religious trauma survivors. This term was not created to aestheticize, glamorize, or romanticize trauma; it was created for coping reasons. The use of the word "impure" is not meant to be derogatory, nor is it meant to promote or romanticize unhealthy mindsets. Once again, this is a term created by a trauma survivor to cope with feelings related to their trauma.

[cry-ptidd]

I don’t really see Laura as evil, if someone was evil they wouldn’t ya know feel some remorse or feel terrible at the shit they done. They would move forward without a care. Laura to me was deeply hurt and took out it on the world with cruel force. She would have continued if she wasn’t stopped, but still. It really calmed her down just a tad bit and kills by orders now. Doesn’t feel bad about it but it does get to her at times. That I do love, i would probably tell her,”so after what happened to you-you just took it out on the world on innocence knowing you were innocent too?hypocritical aren’t we?”yeah i would be lunch.

Yeah she'd probably dislike being called out like that. I mean she's THINKING it but hearing it be said out loud always hurts and monsters are often immature in their ways of solving things.

I REALLY like this character analysis of her. I was a bit skeptical at the first couple words but I agree completely. She's not inherently evil, her mind was irreversibly fucked up by another's doing which broke her view of the world and herself and led her to either hurt herself or others. She chose both but moreso the latter.

When you think about it it's actually a bit hard to categorize her, like Alucard. Yes her crimes are countless and yes she fucking eats people and kids and innocents but she's also like... an animal. Her human instincts have been almost completely overtaken by her new werewolf ones and it's kind of a fucked up situation for her because she'd HAVE to eat human meat to keep her strength (in my werewolf lore hc). It's like vampires, their existence is inherently tied to hurting people, and especially to people (them) getting hurt and changing into something terrible. Seras is the only creature shown in the series that kept her morality because her mental backbone is made out of titanium and Integra rejected that altogether so we love them.

I just REALLY like "wounded predatory animal" type of characters. How much of your instinct is inherent and how can you fight it. Were you pushed to hurt or did you always have it in you and it has an excuse to let out. The aggression that comes with being a terrified creature with only your teeth to defend yourself. Delicious Give me 14 of them right now.

(.) Another note about Laura calming down after getting nearly killed is the realization that people can retaliate even when her attacks are justified in her mind. Yes she knew the concept of paper but never really understood it (like many people that don't even realize it). In her rage she had a "i got hurt, now I hurt them back and the cycle will stop" mentality that was kind of what happened in the abbey, with her killing her abusers and the physical harm stopping because their mangled remains literally inside her guts right now. It was a very childish attitude she had that made the silver bullet more a wake up call than an execution. It didn't really teach her that what she was doing was wrong (she knew it was wrong, all of it, and she still did it, which is very reprehensible and should be condemned), it taught her that hurting innocent humans (or rather, those with loved ones) will result in them retaliating against her.

[thedrotter]

One of my favorite things about how Re:Kinder is written and how it tackles its themes is the way that Yuuichi and Shunsuke can be seen as parallels to each other. Shunsuke could have easily ended up like Yuuichi, feeling trapped in his pain and eventually breaking down. And the knowledge of that makes Shunsuke choosing to be kind to him in order to be kinder to himself really meaningful. That could have easily been him, so despite how he did not owe that kindness to the kid who killed his mother, the kindness just goes to show the strength of his resolve to be kinder even to the person he could have ended up as.

Albeit in a different way I think Killer End also showcases it in a way as well, with Shunsuke murdering Yuuichi for all the pain he endured because of him. It showcases how he too, if broken over, could end up committing such acts...

This also works viceversa. Yuuichi, in a better world, might have managed to fool his pain and anger successfully and keep moving on. But his unfortunate circumstances only led him to fall deeper into that despair. You can see him attempt to lighten up painful situations through acting absurdly, but ultimately being unable to fool himself once he falls victim to the helpless belief that this pain was entirely his own fault.

[hana-bobo-finch]

OKAY!!! GUESS WHO SPENT THE WHOLE DAY WRITING THIS OUT. THATS RIGHT, IT’S PUMPKIN DADDY TIME. this is gonna be a (VERY!!!) long one so be warned

So. Finch. Pumpkin daddy. Whatever ya wanna call him, he’s a complete maniac!!! (I WILL BE REFERRING TO HIM AS PUMPKIN DADDY THROUGHOUT THIS BUT PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU, JUST CALL HIM FINCH. YOU DONT HAVE TO GO AROUND SAYING PUMPKIN DADDY UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO) Yippee !!! There’s no easy way to begin explaining this fool but it is what the people want so ok.

As the name of pumpkin daddy’s book club implies, he’s essentially the main character meaning there’s the most to go over with him. I’ll try to remember everything but I’ll probably forget some stuff, but what I do forget will probably be pretty unimportant so it doesn’t really matter if I don’t go over every single detail. Also I’ll be retreading some things I’ve already went over so skip over those if you’re a seasoned pumpkin daddy expert. Also might be a bit messy because I’m really just piecing together random parts, I’ve never actually made a full timeline. WHATEVER pumpkin daddy rant begins now

Brief timeline summary before I get into the miscellaneous side details.

FIRST OF ALL. as a young lad he was chillin in a pumpkin patch for some reason and OH GOOD HEAVENS he got attacked by some pumpkin-patch-dwelling-feline-like-creature. With the power of plot armor he was preeeetty much fine, somehow, but the creature (still don’t know what it is uhh I’ll think of it someday) had remnants of gourd on it and thusly poor little soon to be pumpkin daddy got an infection that made it so he could turn his head into a pumpkin (and part of his upper body I guess) and thus, the monster known as Pumpkin Daddy was born.

Sometime after this his parents just kinda checked out of existence. That makes it sounds like they’re dead, they’re not. I briefly touched upon this phenomenon in a previous post and I don’t expect you to dig back to find it but essentially, TBYTF (fairy thingy) can make people go into catatonic states where they’re basically stuck inside their own head so. That is what happened to them. Functionally dead but eh they got a heartbeat I guess. It’s called a catatonic illusion, keep this in mind for later. Point being, they were outta the picture. Ya’d think that’d traumatize ol’ pumpkin daddy but he legitimately could not give less of a fuck about any of that. is he repressing his emotions is he denying it? NO he just does not care for whatever reason and is Very confused why people think it should’ve messed him up. Anyhoo he still needed SOME sort of legal guardian so he went to DINO MA’AM!!!

yeaaahh that’s right his grandmother is a literal dinosaur!!! I do NOT know the logistics of it but she is a dinosaur of unspecified species and you’re just gonna have to accept that. She’s called Dino ma’am. Not much is known about her as she’s not really that important, except that she used to be roommates with Turtlemeister and she loves making people dinner. No other meals, just dinner. She will get very sad if people don’t show up for dinner. Unfortunately for her, pumpkin daddy rarely shows up for her dinners because he doesn’t really like/care about her all too much. The two have like. No real bond. Dino Ma’am also (potentially) has an evil twin named Dino Maim who killed Dino ma’am and sent the polaroids of her corpse to pumpkin daddy but…..I do not know the validity of that plot point because I made it up as a joke because I wrote “maim” instead of “ma’am” once. So who knows if that’s actually true to the plot. Doesn’t really matter.

I hate writing backstories in childhood because I hate writing about children. Thusly he hasn’t much backstory in earlier years. All I really have before the actual story starts is all of that stuff and also he would break into spillways to go swimming. “Isn’t that Extremely Fucking Dangerous” YES!!! truly by some miracle he never drowned and instead he developed great swimming skills after doing this for years and years. He also encountered the legendary Ginji Way, the warden of the spillway, a wannabe cowboy who rode around on his horse Jerry patrolling the area. You’d think Ginji would kick him out and you’d be wrong! Ginji is there illegally too, he has no permission to be there either. He just does it for fun. Not much came of their interactions though except that pumpkin daddy developed an intense hatred for Jerry the horse. He may have kidnapped Jerry and given him laser eyes but I do Not know yet.

Aaaanyway the main timeline begins now okey dokey. At the ripe old age of 17 he formed a group dedicated to studying TBYTF. It was a very small group, only consisting of him and two others, Bingo and Mole (They’re important but not to this). In a desperate attempt to get any sort of information on TBYTF he told his co-workers at the crappy drink joint he worked at to give anyone who mentioned TBYTF his contact information. Somehow this worked and he managed to recruit Gourdie!!! woaaaghhh his wife BUT ALAS their initial meeting was not love at first sight. Gourdie didn’t think the whole pumpkin head thing was as cool as he did. Woe. Also she accidentally made him cry by mentioning King Arthur (will get to that later on). Nonetheless Gourdie agreed to join his group and they pretty quickly fell in love (EEEEEWWWW). Also during this time he somehow managed to become a fucking Olympic swimmer?? We can only assume the swimming competitions in this universe are sorely lacking in any true talent. Either way it certainly made Gourdie impressed with him.

Anyhoo, being the unfortunate combination of brash, obsessed with doing things as soon as possible, and slightly stupid, the pair decided to get married when they were both only like 20. Awesome idea, I’m sure this will end well for them!!! Buuuut for the time being they were happy together and continued their studies of TBYTF.

Sometime after their marriage (which went horribly may I add, long story there. Their vows were sabotaged. By uh. O’chunks from super paper mario. I will have to change that eventually but for now I’m keeping him as a placeholder because I think it’s funny) our old pal pumpkin daddy got into some trouble! Eeeeeyikes! He was a pro wrestler but WHOOPS his friend tried to kill him during a match!!! Uh oh!!! To be fair he miiiiight have been demonically influenced at the time but still!!! Not cool man!!! Pumpkin daddy’s plot armor finally failed him and he was hurt pretty damn bad! He survived of course but his back ended up being, in simple terms, all screwed up, among other things. So that pretty much put an immediate stop to his prior careers, considering it’s rather hard to swim when you are constantly going “eeeyyyoowwch my back :(“

But moving on!!! Alas, as if he did not have it bad enough already, the doctor with him was my beloved bellona (I have yapped about her before, don’t remember where or when but I have before). They felt nothing but pure contempt towards one another!! They essentially tried to make each other’s lives hell in an eternal loop of revenge. Ironically it was through this unending revenge cycle that they ended up being able to tolerate each other’s existence (though they definitely weren’t friends. In fact they never did really each that level of toleration). This eventually blossomed into, as I said, not exactly a friendship, but more of some mutual respect and backwards enjoyment of each other’s company, in a “I hate you so fucking much it fascinates me and I want to hang out with you” kind of way.

Skipping over a lot from that time for the sake of keeping this at least somewhat brief—crabs. Crabs are a protected species in this universe and thusly eating them is strictly prohibited. But pumpkin daddy wanted crabs. He NEEDED crabs. And so he discovered a black market crab restaurant atop a mountain which, coincidentally, was in the same mountain range where his group was studying TBYTF—in fact the restaurant was on the point nearest to where TBYTF resides. This restaurant was surprisingly very fancy, like marble floors, chandeliers, grand pianos, this place was ELITE for being an illegal crab restaurant. Pumpkin daddy would of course go here often, generally every weekend. After a while and after growing a bit more tolerant of her, he agreed to show Bellona the place as she wanted to go there too (aka she followed him there despite his constant yelling to go away and stop following him and he’s going to call the police and blah blah blah. He eventually gave in and let her come with him but for the first few times she was, for all intents and purposes, just straight up stalking him). So they’d go there along with, occasionally, Gourdie, and they’d just hang out and study TBYTF I guess (there’s a lot more to it but again this is just a brief overview of things, if I were to get into the details we’d have to go over tridents and the song arabesque by friedrich burgmüller and astronomy and broken guitars and attempted murders and blah blah blah that’s all just not important).

The Briar Zome was also discovered during this time (again I have a post on that, one of the first PDBC posts I made I think) which led to the creation of the Alcoves, which are a series of pocket dimensions similar to the briar zome. Creation might not be the right word for it, he more so discovered how to reach the alcoves. Point is he made this huge discovery and what he did with it was simply make a pathway to the alcoves in his house and simply treated the alcoves like just another area. Could go into further detail but it’s not really important right now.

During this time pumpkin daddy truly earned the name pumpkin daddy, as he and Gourdie had a kid!!! Woah!!! awesome right? WRONG. turns out, to the horror of everyone involved, the whole pumpkin head thing is hereditary. whoops. Didn’t really affect too much at first, I mean despite the kids head being a literal gourd he was otherwise just an average human being. But pumpkin daddy gave him a terrible name! Extraordinarily!!! Shortened to Extra!!! What kind of name is that!!! Now that I think about it, it’s kind of stupid that it’s seen as an atrocious name in-universe when there are characters named stuff like mole and parasite. Ah well.

Things were fine for a bit until pumpkin daddy and Gourdie broke up. Mostly because pumpkin daddy was like “look, research shows that you should not create a fish child nor should you get involved with an extremely dangerous demonic entity” and Gourdie was like “screw you man I can do whatever I want.” As people they still loved each other but boy is it hard to stay together when your significant other worships a being that your studies have shown is Very Bad and she doesn’t believe you!!! Another issue was putters. yall remember putters? Putters was Gourdie’s dog. Pumpkin daddy absolutely despised putters. I won’t go too into putters because she really isn’t important but yeah. Putters would live in the floorboards and screw things up. She also had eyes that pumpkin daddy thought were incredibly frightening. I’m actually really pissed off because I wrote a poem about putters from pumpkin daddy’s perspective at a writing camp and at the end of the week they were SUPPOSED to send out the finished book containing all the work, but I haven’t gotten it yet. And it was supposed to come in early September and it’s almost November now. Screw you unnamed writing class I can’t say the name of without doxxing myself. So who knows if I’ll ever see it. Very unfortunate because even though the poem itself was kinda crappy I still loved it, and I don’t have a physical copy of it. I can only hold out hope someday I’ll see it again…anyway

The final straw was when pumpkin daddy decided to buy the island they lived on. She was incredibly pissed off by that and they split up. Did pumpkin daddy end up buying the island? YYYYUUUPPP. the former island owner was a total pushover and pumpkin daddy basically just waltzed in and demanded the island and the old owner was just like, yeah sure dude go wild. And thus he bought the island (when Gourdie found out about it she was INCREDIBLY pissed off and started a clan out of pure pettiness, but I’ve talked about all that before). And thus Fincg island was born. He made a typo while typing out the official name, whoops. Don’t ask me how fincg is even pronounced cause I dunno.

As Extra grew up, they became VERY resentful of pumpkin daddy. Pumpkin daddy was a legitimately good father but Extra had to deal with the fact that their head was a fucking gourd because of him and they were incredibly ashamed of that to say the least. Basically they hated pumpkin daddy for creating them because WHY WOULD YOU PROCREATE WHEN THERE WAS THE CHANCE YOUR CHILD WOULD BE A PUMPKIN. so extra went to live with Gourdie until they could move out entirely.

Around this time, pumpkin daddy developed the Patch. I got a post or two delving more into that if you want to waste more time reading through my nonsense, but yup he discovered how to create customized life forms and growing them like they’re trees or somethin. Why he did it in the first place? Excellent question!! I have no idea!! Probably for the same reason he bought an entire island, out of pure curiosity if he could. Alas he never considered if he should. That or it came from that fact that he always wanted to be able to asexually reproduce like fungi. Oh to be a mushroom, spreading spores everywhere….anyhoo, somehow for a first attempt he did a pretty good job at doing the seemingly impossible, and on October 31st whatever-year-it-was he harvested the first hybrid, whom he named Fina. He loved Fina SO MUCH. he made hundreds of hybrids over the years but Fina was always his obvious favorite, she was basically his new child now that extra absolutely hated him. But things did not stay well with Fina!!! She ended up falling in a vat of what is called TBYTF gel (again I’ve yapped abt this before but for a summary! It is the excretions of TBYTF, and being in it for too long causes one to permanently be in a state of semi-influence from tbytf. This is called being an “arm” as they’re essentially now a mini version of tbytf). Pumpkin daddy fell in as well because he’s an idiot and has a tendency to fall into large vats of liquid, but he got out before he sustained any permanent damage. He managed to get Fina out after a couple minutes and she was seemingly fine aside from slight hypothermia, but YIKES!!! SHE WAS NOT FINE nobody knew right away because there was no research into that type of thing at the time, but you guessed it, she was an arm of tbytf now!!! Unfortunately pumpkin daddy was completely oblivious to the fact and even when many years later it was brought up like “your child is probably going to kill someone” he was like like nooo not her!! she’s so awesome she wouldn’t do that, why would you even think of that :(

MOVING ON there were no major events for a bit, at least ones that would fit here in this brief timeline. Mostly just the beginning of traditions, conflicts starting to arise, etc etc etc. Clan tension was already brewing as one of the clan leaders sorta went off the deep end and fell in love with a sentient eyeball which resulted in her ripping out one of pumpkin daddy’s eyes. But he was fiiiiiine. Also around that time, he and Gourdie got back together!!! Briefly!!! For a while it was on and off but yeah he managed to convince her that he wasn’t completely incompetent. Good for him. Whilst they were back together, Bellona decided to move back home, meaning they’d proooobably never see each other again. Gourdie was heartbroken and pumpkin daddy was…somewhere in between sad and indifferent. Either way they all spent the next couple months hanging out together (simple way of saying they almost got arrested in paris). But yes she eventually moved back home and life continued on as normal, just without someone to constantly torment 😔

Again, nothing too major around this time, things mostly calmed down (at least for pumpkin daddy) and things became stagnant for a few years. On and off relationship with Gourdie, new hybrids being made each year, trying to prevent civil war from breaking out, being a complete menace to society, such things like that. He also might’ve kidnapped two people and ripped their eyes out but he apologized so it’s ok (NO IT’S NOT). Political unrest was brewing. Obviously, there was the unending tension between the clans—especially between he and the Ramsay clan, as they were constantly in controversy, and they were put in charge of his old TBYTF-studying group and they were running it straight into the ground—but there was an overall consensus towards pumpkin daddy that “yeah this guy is wack, he needs to go.” This sentiment was founded by one of his own hybrids, that being one named Mercury. Mercury was tampered with by Fina while he was being created. Fina turned mercury against pumpkin daddy, mostly by convincing him that pumpkin daddy was the one who screwed him up while he was being created (sort of harkens back to extra and the whole “father, why the fuck did you create me” kind of thing) and mercury went on to lead a campaign to get pumpkin daddy publicly executed. Put a bounty on him and riled up the people to capture him and hang him. People were slow to accept this but they soon agreed with mercury’s sentiment (especially those in rivaling clans) and there was a nationwide competition to find and hang pumpkin daddy. Mercury eventually realized that Fina was completely lying to him, and despite still being against pumpkin daddy he attempted to quell the mob. It was too late though, and soon many were after the fame and reverence that would come with being the one to capture this monster. They never did, of course, turns out he’s incredibly good at escaping, but the point remains that there was a huge amount of people actively trying to kill him.

He tried, and mostly failed, to patch things up to avoid complete war breaking out, but things were looking grim.

Firstly there was a consensus between the clans that yeah, the Ramsay clan needs to go, so they mutually decided to revoke its status as a clan, and bomb the headquarters for good measure. The Ramsay clan was NOT happy about this, and to make things worse, the other clans began to get upset as they realized more than ever before that pumpkin daddy was just in general absolutely screwing everything up. Pretty much everything was falling apart at the seams after years of keeping it together with duct tape and a prayer. Tensions were at an all time high, huge companies were falling, all that fun stuff. During this time a prominent member of a rivaling clan mistakenly ended up in the alcoves and was utterly traumatized by it! Turns out the alcoves are extremely dangerous if you don’t know where you’re going and pumpkin daddy pretty much just watched like “idk what to tell you man” as this poor guy tried and failed to escape over and over. Didn’t end on a bad note though, as pumpkin daddy eventually stopped just watching the guy flail around and nearly get killed and decided to help him. He didn’t help him get out, mind you, he just helped him not feel ashamed for being dyslexic but HELP IS HELP. the two were thusly on good terms which was NOT helping the situation considering they were supposed to be sworn enemies. After a bit more fighting and raiding places because some butterfly-freaks stole precious artifacts, and other plot points I legitimately forgot about because they never went anywhere, whoops, it was decided that the pumpkin clan and fish clan would merge in an attempt to smooth out issues. This did the opposite!!! Long story short the one guy who was holding everything together was killed and all out war broke out, and pumpkin daddy and Gourdie’s relationship fell apart once again after a decade of being on good terms. Whoops!!! Very bad timing too, as it was right before the harvest festival, a week long celebration starting on October 31st. Incidentally, he did actually did get captured during this time and was about to be hung, but the person who captured him was a good friend of the guy who died and she was so broken up about it she didn’t have it in her to, you know, execute him. So he lucked out there. In fact he managed to befriend her (maybe not befriend, more so she lost the only friend she had so eh why not cling to this weirdo who’s trying to help me through my grief) so he was off the hook once again.

It soon became very apparent though that pumpkin daddy had zero idea what he was doing and was just making things worse, so Bellona, who heard of all the shit going on, decided to go back and try to knock some sense into him because CLEARLY he was not handling things well in the slightest. This was a terrible idea!!! Uh oh!!! When she went back there she was recognized as being affiliated with pumpkin daddy and was killed. Whoops!!! The news of course reached pumpkin daddy and Gourdie (AND ONE OF MY FAVORITE JOKES IN IT ALL HAPPENED AT THIS POINT BUT THE JOKE DOESNT MAKE SENSE ANYMORE BECAUSE I HAD TO CHANGE SOME STUFF AROUND NOOOOO RIP TO THE JOKE ABOUT COOKIES AND CREMATED REMAINS, YOU WERE A REAL ONE) and that absolutely screwed up pumpkin daddy. The illegal crab restaurant was also discovered and was reported, being burnt down and the owner was arrested. That was probably for the best though, that guy was a bit of a jerk. But again THAT didn’t help things at all cause now his precious crab restaurant was gone. At least he still had the harvest festival right!!!???

Uh wrong!!! Due to Fina being a little shit, the patch was completely destroyed and a hybrid he had who reminded him of Bellona was killed in the process and uhhhh yikes he did not take it well!!! He still had to put on a show while he was pretty much dead inside and it was quite uncomfortable for everyone!!! He pretty much lost literally everything he had in like a week so yeah he was not having a good time! But there was one glimmer of hope! Sort of!

Yeees that’s right, the negotiations. It was decided upon that the clans (mainly the pumpkin and jørgan clan) would come together in unity as a last ditch effort to stop the war. It would all be one big happy celebration, except it wouldn’t, because it also doubled as a funeral for some of the people who died. Still though, some were hoping it would ease things and life could go back to normal

You guessed it, it did not!! Extra heard of all this and, despite still being on rough terms, decided to go to the negotiations. Not to celebrate or anything, to warn pumpkin daddy that Fina is absolutely trying to kill him, and to try to tell Gourdie to please stop denying that tbytf is bad, it’s obvious to everyone. He mostly knew of fina’s antics due to befriending some of the hybrids and they were like “yeah she’s kinda suspicious.” So he reluctantly went off to be the bearer of bad news, because he could tell things were coming to a head and things werent gonna end well. And he was pretty much spot on, pumpkin daddy barely got to do anything at the negotiations before Fina trapped him in a catatonic illusion and stashed him in a bathroom stall! Catatonic illusions are, as I’ve explained before, basically being dead to the world and stuck in some hellish illusion in your mind. So pumpkin daddy was stuck in one for like, 3 weeks? The illusion mainly consisted of these acid-trip-like experiences with Christmas music and snoopy and Roman soldiers but that’s not really important right now. Outside of the illusion, everyone was incredibly confused on where he went and growing very impatient because they couldn’t start without him. How did nobody find him? Well they did, actually. Extra did, to be more specific. But nobody believed him because by that point they had gone full on lord of the flies and were more interested in creating child fighting tournaments than listening to him. So extra did the only logical thing to do and slapped the shit out of pumpkin daddy. This of course worked, and he managed to explain the situation. This is a very inaccurate way of describing it but in my defense, this was one of the longest sections of it, and when I looked back at my notes to see what I had for this part I had almost the entire script for it soooo I’m not gonna write it all out.

Point is, pumpkin daddy was passed out in the bathroom for weeks while everyone else was fighting to the death. But anyhoo, once he was awake (and extremely disoriented) Gourdie and Extra (mostly Gourdie) decided it was a probably bad idea to tell him Fina was…the way she was immediately after he woke up, so they decided to let the matter go for just long enough for him to get his bearings. That plan fell through though, because of course it did, because the second they looked away from him for one second, pumpkin daddy had vanished. Fina of course took the opportunity to put him in another illusion (she didn’t have the power to do another catatonic illusion so now he was on the loose and not knowing what the fuck is going on). The negotiations begun and, to prevent Gourdie from helping pumpkin daddy, she sicced her army of trained squirrels on her and disappeared.

SO UH things were not going well!!! Pumpkin daddy was looking everywhere for Fina, climbing on the ceiling like a spider monkey, all while also hallucinating that snoopy was mauling everyone. Everything pretty much went to shit at this point and nobody had any idea what was going on. Pumpkin daddy was on the loose screaming about snoopy, extra was trying to calm him down and explain the situation, Gourdie was gravely injured and trying to figure out what the hell to do, and Fina was trying to convince pumpkin daddy everything was totally fine. He eventually snapped out of his illusion though and was, once again, very disoriented and attacking people. Nevertheless, the negotiations went on. But right as they were about to be finalized, he made a grave mistake.

He coughed on the cake. Yes, that’s right, Fina had a cake for the celebration (what better time than a funeral to have a sugary confection?). A wonderful cake, custom made by only the best bakers. And in pumpkin daddy’s ill, confused stupor, he coughed on it. For whatever reason, this is what pushed Fina over the edge. She completely snapped and let go of any facade of being this innocent confused hybrid, shoved him against a wall, took off her heels and threatened to slit his throat with them. It all clicked in an instant as to what was going on for pumpkin daddy, but he couldn’t get himself to fight back. Extra and Gourdie (and one other guy who I haven’t really mentioned yet) successfully restrained her, while everyone else was still in fighting-tournament-mode and were making bets on who’d win. While everyone was fighting, fires and mudslides came in and resulted in everything being somehow even worse (long story there, just go with it. There are fires and mudslides).

Once the dust cleared, pumpkin daddy was just…gone. Completely vanished. All that he left in his wake was a small book with some writings in it and a cryptic email. But what actually happened to him, nobody knows. It’s unlikely he’s dead as no body was ever recovered despite months of searching. So uh. Who knows what the hell happened to him? Gourdie led multiple attempts to find him but again, he just never turned up. Over the next few months the island was renamed, the clans disbanded…pretty much any mark he left was gone, yet his legacy is still painfully lingering everywhere.

Definitely not somewhat inspired by song lyrics hahahaha speaking of which have I ever mentioned how much I love the song can’t catch me now (YES I HAVE) I think I should talk about it more (NO I SHOULDN’T) ANYHOOOOOO that’s the basic timeline. This turned out way longer than I expected so I won’t be able to go over as many miscellaneous details as I’d like to. Eh. Maybe sometime else. But for now:

•HE’S SCARED OF GLOVES!!! Nobody knows why despite numerous attempts to find out or to get rid of the fear entirely. It’s not just WEARING gloves that’s terrifying, being in the mere vicinity of one is terrifying. This applies to all gloves of all kinds (with one singular exception who I will get to soon). This aversion to gloves results in, predictably, him getting frostbite a lot as he lives in a colder environment, which earned him the nickname “the frostbite maestro.” He has somehow avoided any serious cold-related injuries. He just has excellent plot armor in that regard I suppose. The worst glove of them all is Hamlet, a demonically possessed, foul smelling ski glove who tormented pumpkin daddy by making his life hell and then laying completely still when he would try to show Hamlet’s sentience to anyone. So basically, hamlet gaslit everyone into thinking pumpkin daddy had gone completely nuts. Hamlet was eventually thrown into a fireplace to burn, but his smelly ghost remains. The BEST glove, on the other hand, is Lucretius the magic nitrile glove!!!

Nobody exactly knows why pumpkin daddy sees Lucretius as the one “good” glove. Most likely it’s because he first saw Lucretius while high off his ass on anesthesia but again, who knows. Either way, Lucretius is an allegedly magical glove who is a simple blue nitrile glove with a mustache and bow tie drawn on. Luckily, for you Lucretius lovers out there, I have a visual representation:

Real life Lucretius, I love him so much. Anywayyyyyy Lucretius is the one “good” glove. Pumpkin daddy loved him. I say LOVED because Lucretius met an unfortunate fate as he was eaten by a woodpecker, dubbed Mr woodpecker. Fortunately, Lucretius was rescued, as pumpkin daddy tracked down the woodpecker and killed him (and maaaaybe ate him afterwards but that could’ve just been an empty threat) and saved Lucretius, though Lucretius was heavily damaged in the incident. Lucretius soon got a “replacement” (nothing could truly replace Lucretius, but pumpkin daddy found a second glove similar enough to Lucretius that he found it somewhat tolerable to be around, so it was Lucretius’s spiritual successor) but that replacement was once again stolen by a woodpecker, assumedly the previous woodpecker’s wife, Mrs woodpecker. The replacement was, again, rescued, but Mrs. Woodpecker’s fate is unknown. Alas, no other gloves have been tolerable to pumpkin daddy, something he is very harsh in letting it be known. like he called someone a sadist for knitting gloves. Although he could probably outlaw gloves all together he for some reason keeps them legal (what a good leader) but insists they stay far away from him and that the word “glove” be censored in the media.

• He has way too many pets. Like an absurd amount. Yet somehow he still manages to take care of all of them. Most likely he has the hybrids help him with all of them. For one, theres a herd of llamas. He uses their fur to knit sweaters and scarves. There’s a fox who’s name I can’t remember, and a second fox who’s brown. There’s Derrick and Didi the deer who he’s more so sworn enemies with, and their reindeer cousin. There’s a spider, a ladybug (deceased), a bumblebee named stove (also deceased), a black cat, a chickadee, some fish, some other miscellaneous birds, some turtles (whom he ended up giving away), and probably some others I’m forgetting. His favorite pets by far are his mice. When they die he puts them in a MAUSoleum (AHAHAHHAAHAHHA). His favorite mouse, Dinkles, was tragically killed by an evil home improvement company. But yeah he likes mice.

• He has an abnormally low body temperature?? I don’t remember what it was exactly, I think like 95 F? Point is he is extremely sensitive to any form of heat and will be downright inconsolable if it’s above 70 F. Extra is a weatherman and he specifically told them to issue warnings if it’s going to be over 70 degrees. Speaking of medical mysteries he has a plethora of them. Well maybe not mysteries per se but MAN having a gourd for a head is the least of his concerns!! He has low iron levels, low copper levels, arrhythmia, mild hyperhidrosis, severe allergies to horses, turkey, and strawberries, he has had thousands of mini-strokes, probably a heart attack, and a brain aneurysm. What is wrong with him. How is he still alive. Fun fact about the brain aneurysm though, that part actually came from the comic I sent to the author themself! They said it was funny so I can rest at night knowing that the very creator of pumpkin daddy approves of him having a brain aneurysm! And the panel where that was said I put a pikmin in the background. Idk just a random fact lmao

• HE’S SCARED OF KING ARTHUR. LIKE SO SCARED. UNREASONABLY SCARED. like with the gloves, nobody knows why. He always says he’ll explain and he never does. Whatever the reason, he cannot handle knights, royalty, and worst of all, round tables. He sincerely believes that King Arthur is real and that he’s coming after him. It’s easy to write it off as an irrational fear, but king Arthur’s sword was discovered alongside some stolen artifacts some freakish butterfly people stole, so……could have some merit to it. But yeah you can’t even mention King Arthur around him without him crying.

• He hates the number four!!! It’s his unlucky number, or so he says. It all stemmed from when he, in an attempt to reconnect with his son, played a game of Yahtzee with extra. He lost by four points and has never been the same since. The number four haunts him. He cannot stand it. SHAKES YOU AROUND VIOLENTLY. HEY. HEY. LISTEN. have you ever noticed I draw ears inconsistently? if you look at em, different characters have different numbers in their ears….yeah….you can easily disguise them in there….pumpkin daddy has a four. Idk. that’s unimportant I just want to draw attention to it because I spend way too much time thinking if a number to associate with a character.

• He has bugs in his cardiovascular system. He’s not the only one.

• Despite following his tightrope morality as he calls it (perfectly balancing good and bad thinking it’ll “even things out”) he does have the occasional moment of actual regret. Notably, he once stole a little penguin’s snow tube and was so wracked with guilt that he gave it back and didn’t show his face for like a week. He’s not a bad guy, really, he’s just…well ok he is

• He feels the need to do morning announcements every day like he’s Isabelle from animal crossing or something. Somehow his announcements are even worse than Isabelle’s as half the time something goes wrong and he almost gets himself killed somehow. They all follow the exact script yet somehow no script at all.

• There’s a gaggle of insects who harass him incessantly. Mostly consists of a bunch of mosquitoes. At first he hated them so much that he tried inhaling insecticides to rid of them (spoiler alert, did not work) but eventually he grew fond of them. The bugs are now his therapists.

• HE’S OBSESSED WITH TIME. LIKE SO OBSESSED. To the point where it is unhealthy. The reason he has managed to do so much is that he spends every waking moment doing Something because he’s terrified of wasting time. He trained himself to specifically fall asleep at 2 am and get up at 6 for the least amount of time wasted possible. He has it down to a science. Very literally in fact, he’s developed multiple time theories and ways of measuring time. He also unsurprisingly owns a lot of custom made clocks. Point is, the guy likes time maybe a little too much. He capitalizes Time in every sentence (like that) because he thinks it’s of upmost importance. He should probably chill out a little. Fun fact, I made his birthday September 17th because it is apparently “times up day” which is fitting because with every passing year he is very literally running out of time. patting myself on the back for that one, that was a lucky coincidence actually because I randomly declared his birthday as September 16th before I knew that so I just had to move it up a day. Anyway

• He’s really into astrology and stuff for some reason. Wholeheartedly believes in it to the point where he lets it dictate his opinion on things even if it goes against what he actually feels. He also was formerly friends with a genie named greenie who made his life hell but disguised it as sage genie advice. Greenie knew just how to make him tick, he’s a complete menace. After years of believing greenie’s every word, pumpkin daddy caught on and brokenheartedly cut greenie off and stopped believing in horoscopes. Woe.

• Garfield once stole his lasagna when he was lost in the mountains, which led to him almost starving to death. He was so upset over this that he and Bellona went on a campaign to kill Garfield. She really didn’t want to but he was adamant Garfield had to pay. It’s really not important to anything I just bring it up because I once made lyrics for a song going over the situation and I giggle whenever I think about the line “Belle, this cat is straight from hell”

He pretty much runs the radio industry , among…lots of other things. He has a monopoly on almost every industry. But when specifically discussing the radio—he had a radio show called FincgLIVE that was a complete fucking disaster. He was overtired the entire time and purposefully spread misinformation like how you should “wash your hamburger meat with soap and water to get all the little maggots out.” He absolutely hated doing it but felt the need to continue it anyway. He eventually quit when his roof caved in live on air and he went on a total tirade while trapped under a bunch of rubble. After that he gave up entirely and just gave the show to his secretary, who actually enjoyed hosting it, so happy ending I guess.

HE’S A COMPLETE PYROMANIAC!!! SOMEONE STOP HIM he has lit so many fires for absolutely no reason. He once burnt down a historic hotel because he was bored. Why is he like this. Somehow he only got hurt from it once and even after that he didn’t stop. If sirens sound, it is a 50/50 chance he lit something on fire again. Somehow he has never injured anyone in the process which is a miracle. It’s not his fault that things are just so flammable, they’re practically begging to be lit aflame :(

That is all for now. if you have somehow read this far uh. thanks?. uuhuhrhhhbghgghgh

[realsorcerershit]

Hey, I'm gonna make a bit of a long post here. It's going to be ramble-y, it's going to be kind of a stream of thought deal, and I don't really know where it's going to end up as I'm writing this. It's personal, and it's something I feel strongly about, and it has to do with my last textpost.

So. The topic of today is:

I Don't Like Talking About Myself Anymore.

And no, this isn't going to be some post where I'm just venting, but moreso analyzing why. I need to get my thoughts out there on this, and I need to...talk about it, really. Just throw it off my chest, into a wild where maybe six people will read it. So let's get into it.

Last night, in a small bit of frustration, I made a post talking about people trying to over-analyze media, and give it an objective rating of it being good or bad, and indirectly using that as some high ground, telling people that they shouldn't like something because it's "objectively bad". If you want to read that, I'll put a link to it below.

Link to post: Fair warning, I use a bit of harsh language. I stand by it, though.

And ever since I posted this, I've been in a lot of thoughts about it. What brought this surge of emotion up? Why do I feel so particularly strongly about it? Why is this a belief I hold close to my heart? And - the answer isn't really simple. Like most emotions people go through, it ends up being a complex weave. So let's start with the absolute basics.

First thing's first. Part of the reason I feel so strongly about this is, that, there's a natural element of attachment to the media that people enjoy, and that includes myself. *I* have some form of attachment to the media I enjoy. FPSes, the dnd campaign I play in every week, the small bits of music and other games that I enjoy, the people I like watching on youtube or even the small amount of shows I enjoy watching. All of it takes up at least somewhat of a portion of my life, and as such, it becomes part of...who I am, in a way. Media sticks with people, it can influence them in various ways.

And now, we live in a world where people end up trying to analyze everything to a point where nobody can just admit that they *dislike* something these days. There always has to be some kind of justification for their dislike, there always has to be some logical, realistic reason for it that makes sense in their head. So, they come up with reasons why. And those reasons can range from a wide variety of things. For example, if I told someone I liked the genre of metal in music, I could get a response along the lines of, "Oh, metal (the genre of music) is too formulaic. Everything's the same, so it's bad. And, the lyrics end up sounding like a kid wrote them", instead of that person just saying "you know, I really do respect your tastes in music, however, I am not a fan of metal, because it simply isn't for me." The latter of these two responses would legitimately tell me, the person speaking, that, hey. I can respect that this isn't for them, and that I can disengage the topic on friendly terms. Not everyone's going to mutually like the exact same things, and that's part of being human. However.

The first response is where things get bad. Because now, suddenly, I feel confronted. I now have to sit there and justify my like for something, in a heated debate that I didn't want to have in the first place, because here I was, pouring my heart out about something I love. And now, that love is being attacked by someone who had no real purpose in it. And it doesn't even come out of a place of malice, most of the time. People are nowadays super trained into thinking that they have to fit into these very specific camps or else like...they'll be laughed at, or whatever.

So, this all leads me back to the topic at the top of this post. I don't like talking about myself anymore. I don't like going off about the hobbies I have. The OCs whose stories I think about every day, my favorite video games or movies or songs or...any of it. Because the default response these days seems to be that, if I'm not talking with someone who likes the things I like, that I'm going to be met with some form of backlash on it. And it hurts. It genuinely really hurts. I hold up something I genuinely love, and I want to talk about it with people. (At least, when people want to hear about it. Don't force things on people, that also isn't right. Something I'm working on myself, too.) I want to share it, and now I'm afraid to, because at the end of it all, I think I'm going to be...harassed, or chastised, or ridiculed, or some other thing, because that happens to be the default now. And now I feel backed into a corner, where I've put myself in some kind of shame box that I'm only now after maybe 15 years starting to slowly work my way out of.

Just respect other people's hobbies, as long as they aren't harmful. That's all I ask.

[rushingheadlong]

okay, last post about the tank top (for now, until we inevitably get more photos) but setting aside the flailing and thirsting and excitement and everything else for a moment here

more than anything I am just SO happy that Brian felt comfortable enough to wear that tank top out onstage again without anything else over it

because he's obviously been using tank tops as his undershirt for the entire tour so far but even with everything being posted from soundchecks and hotels and his stationary bike we haven't seen him in just the tank on this tour before. he's wearing these constantly now, nearly daily, and until Halloween every image of him from this tour had been with an overshirt on or wearing a different t-shirt entirely.

and we know that Brian had(/has) body image issues and if you look at his entire wardrobe over the entire course of his life it's pretty freaking obvious that at least some of those issues are with his torso and shoulders. yes he's allergic to buttons but how many photos do we have of him actually shirtless compared to, say, Roger or Freddie?

more than that, how many times has he performed with Queen while wearing a tank top? I'll tell you right now you can count it on one hand and it's never been during a Queen concert specifically. the closest he's ever gotten has been rolling up his sleeves during the Q+PR years, or the handful of times he did the same in the 80s.

"we was glam!" Brian once said, and honestly that's probably a large reason why he's never worn tanks onstage with Queen before. because Queen's aesthetic is very different than that of his solo tours, and Q+AL is very different from Q+PR in that the glam vibes that Adam brings allow Brian to return to some of his own stage costume roots. Brian has a wild number of shirt and/or outfit changes during the show, and even the "street clothes" he wears on stage are sparklier than they ever were during the Q+PR years - not to mention that he's actually wearing costumes again, with the borhap solo outfits and the military jackets and everything else he does.

Brian may not be "fashionable" in the sense of being into fashion, following trends, etc. but he has always been extremely aware of how to follow the fashion in Queen specifically (and one day I'll write up that post about how Brian and Freddie continued wearing "costumes" onstage long past the point where Roger and John stopped....). it's really obvious when you look at Brian on the Magic Tour, where his stagewear is mostly just street clothes that vibe with what Roger and John are wearing, but he still pulls out those fabulous coats towards the end of the show to match the grandeur and spectacle that comes with a Queen finale.

Brian is clearly comfortable wearing tank tops in general but it's a very different matter for him to a) wear them publicly, where there will be photos and videos of it on the internet forever and b) wear them during a Queen show in 2023 when they match nothing else going on with his stagewear for this tour.

and I don't want to spend a lot of time on Point A because I am sick to fucking death of trying to get this fandom to understand that cracking "jokes" about the visible signs of natural aging (like the shoulder hair) isn't actually funny, especially when people are doing it on platforms that Brian himself is on like instagram

but with regards to Point B, like... there was just no reason for Brian to do this. there's no reason he couldn't have worn the Frank mask with the mirror ball suit, or if there was a reason he still could've worn an overshirt like he did when they had timing issues and he couldn't do his quick-change a few shows back.

but clearly Brian wanted to do this. he wanted THAT to be his Halloween costume specifically - not the mirror suit or his stagewear with a mask added, but a full outfit that was specifically unique for that moment in that show even if it was pulled from other clothing pieces he already had on hand.

it's a choice that, for about 20 seconds, made him completely visually different from anything anyone else had worn during that show. it's a choice that doesn't fully match Queen's aesthetic, either then or now, and it's a choice that's already generating some questionable "teasing" at his expense.

Brian has always had his physical appearance put under a microscope. from his height to his hair, the clogs to the unbuttoned shirts, by sheer virtue of the fact that he exists in the public eye Brian cannot wear anything without getting comments and critiques on it to some degree. and as he's aged those comments have naturally shifted to be about his aging - about his decision to dye or stop dyeing his hair, about how much skin he shows and how appealing the rest of the world finds that, how much body hair he now has and the small belly he's gained and everything else that comes along when you're a human being who's been alive for 70+ years.

but despite all of that, Brian wore that tank top on stage.

despite the dozens of reasons why this could have been a bad idea, despite the wildly varying opinions I've already seen, despite the aesthetic of Queen and this tour, despite the routine they already have for his outfit changes, despite the fact that this was always going to special because of the green lights and the Frank mask...

despite everything... Brian stripped down to that tank and stepped onto the raising platform without wearing any of his glam overshirts or special-made costumes, knowing that the thousands of people in that venue were waiting to get pictures and videos of that solo, and that he'd be opening himself up to very specific criticisms about his appearance by doing this.

and Brian was still confident enough, comfortable enough, in himself to do that during possible the highest-stakes moment in the entire show.

so yeah, I'm excited because there's new tank top content and I'm not above admitting that I personally find this sort of confidence very sexy even on a man of Brian's age

but I'm also just happy FOR Brian with this - happy that it went off without a hitch, happy that it has mostly been well-received by fans, happy that he seems to have had fun with it and, above all else, happy to see that any lingering self-doubts or body image issues aren't enough to stop him from giving us a moment like this.

[familyofpaladins]

I HAD A REVELATION

okay so I was thinking about gender. My gender. And my feelings about being a cis girl over time.

When I was little I used to wear all kinds of dresses and wore nail polish and even occasionally makeup (but like. Sloppily as a 7 year old would lol) and how overtime I stopped wearing nail polish and stopped wearing dresses and despised make up. I dont really remeber why I stopped with nail polish. Maybe because it flaked off too easily or maybe I was sick of the few colors we had idk. I know I gradually stopped wearing dresses and night gowns because I was sick of being told I couldnt "put my legs up [up against the wall or just straight up in the air] or that I had to sit a certain way while wearing one. So I wore more and more pants.

I think about how i used to stand in the toys aisles while my mom did grocery shopping and look at "The Boys" section and think how much cooler it was than the girls section.

And I think about how my music teacher told us one day we'd hit puberty and we'd grow and us girls would be like "[in a high pitched voice] OH MY GOSH I LOVE BOYS AND DID YOU HEAR ABOUT SO AND SO" and I looked over at my classmates and friends to see if they were also terrified of becoming annoying teenage boy-obsessed girls.

And i think about how when I was at my friend's house and we were building "tree forts" in the woods i would wish I had a penis for the convenience of being able to just go pee behind a tree, because squatting near the ground was Not Fun and I hated walking all the way back to the house. And I think about how I hated that I'd have to wear a bra once my boobs started to come in

Now you might be thinking. Friend I think you want[ed] to be a boy. But the thing is, i dont.

I may have hated being restricted in dresses but I dont actually hate them. I've gotten a couple dresses in the last 10 years (for prom and graduation and a [not my] wedding) and how I actually did like how I looked in them and enjoyed wearing them for that time.

I think about how I was jealous of the boys selection of toys, but also how I had a ton of barbies that I massively enjoyed and how if I'd been a boy I probably wouldnt have been able to enjoy them (thanks to pressure from society) as well as a bunch of other "girly" items and shows and movies. I think about how I'm actually Asexual and that I wasnt scared of becoming "a young woman", I just didnt understand the obsession with sex/romance/boyfriend&girlfriend stuff.

And while having a penis is more convenient for peeing I also remeber thinking that it would suck to get kicked in the balls and/or that trope of falling on soemthign between your legs that happens in so many movies (not that it feels any better with a vagina honestly). And that if I had been born a boy I'd most likely have to deal with all the toxic masculinity forced on me, and I'm glad I dont have to deal with that.

And while me and my boobs dont always get along, I remember that after getting my first cute bra, I thought. Oh well maybe this isnt so bad. And I mostly wear sports bras now because I do wish they were smaller and I HATE that so many bras (EVEN THE SPORTS BRAS) are already padded into cup shapes, and while I don't mind Having Boobs, i Do Not want to show them off. And sometimes i think that maybe i wouldn't mind chopping them off, but then i think how my figure/outline/silhouette would look with out them, and that seems worse.

And i think about the times I've accidentally been called "Sir" from tired fast food employees when wearing gender nonspecific clothing and felt happy about it. But not "oh it feels right to be called sir/he/him" , but more of "hehe I fooled you! You thought this was a dress but its pants!"

And really this is all to say. I was born a girl and grew up that way so it's what I'm used to. If I'd been born with a dick then I guess I'd be a guy. If you magically stuck me in a male body right now, would I feel like a Guy or feel like a girl in a guys body? I honestly dont know. So am I non binary? Maybe that that doesnt quite feel right either.

Being a girl is what I've grown up as and into, and it's what I'm used to and going by anything else is… odd. Maybe itd be better and maybe it wouldnt. It's like an old blanket. You've had it forever and maybe its frayed and patched maybe a little too small and it's not what people expect you to have for a blanket, and maybe you could do with a new one. But nothing feels right with out it. No other blanket feels the same. It's what you're used to and its familar. It's a comfort blanket.

And that's why being a [cis] girl is my comfort gender.

[trollbreak]

heehoo and aurrel neow!!! /lh

Ouh u pick an interesting pair!!! This going under cut bc teehee details to build to the Pondering. Also this is all very train of thought due to the heehoo Lore so :P

SO UM!!! First up, some things abt Heehoo our lad! And Boohoo, who’s um. Kind of inherently tied to him! They used to be the same clown. Teehee sometimes ur church worships eldritch things and sometimes u do weird magic shit that makes one person two. And it’s a whole thing!! Like um. With Gedian and Echo it was. Less than great in the end. But Heehoo and Boohoo had a great go of it!! They’re besties and holding hands and siblings and heehoo will kill u a million times if u try to hurt boohoo and boohoo will send a god after u for the reverse. They’re silly little clowns together!!! Smth smth comedy and tragedy masks, smth smth two sides of a coin, I love them in short

NOW!! I’m gonna face this as like, just swapping Heehoo and aurrel, rather than the person that was there before Heehoo and boohoo, bc um. I don’t have the braincells to make aurrel 2 guys rn lmao

SO UM!!! The base person would ofc b very different. But also? Aurrel is an ass. Even when he cares someone. He’d um. Be mean to boohoo without thinking abt it and it would Crush him Every Time that boohoo is so niceys kind and 🥺 until he like. Chilled out. He’s still very bitey tho, there’s just less baring teeth beforehand. U get faces and rude words when he’s angry and in a Mood as he is, but as a clown? He’d be very >:3 until he’s actively trying to murder u. Also, by VIRTUE of clownness, he would actually do murder!! Like he doesn’t actually do that as a Revant!! He feels like shit if he hurts someone too bad!! But um. He’d be. Violently protective of boohoo, and that would be a very easy way for him to just be. Very violent in general. Dudes living up to the murder clown image and then some. Sir please stop bringing folks to church just to murder them with your teeth, ur scaring the hoes.

He would eventually mellow out a little with time! …Eventually. And only a little. He um. Would get evil abt it tho. I think he’d dip from the church he grew up in the Second that the Gaze wound up as the host for their resident horrorterror, bc he’s like. Wtf, you’re nice. This isn’t how this shits supposed to work. Fuck off. He’d go kind of just churchless after that, and just um. Would do a lot of murder till he got accepted into the fleet to do cullings for a reason beyond ‘i wanna’ again. Dude grows up to be malicious and fucked up abt it. His thing abt body horror is a point of shame, and um. He goes exposure therapy abt it by being more fucked up. Bestie that’s not healthy. Boohoo is um. Going to therapy abt how she’s. A little glad he left. Dude got scary.

HEEHOO THO!!! Um. He’s still silly little guy :3 but now he’s Ferret instead of Corgi and he go BOING!!! I think he’s still doesn’t really talk much bc he doesn’t have much to say! But he makes a LOT of noises sometimes. Also: fidget toy collection. Cargo pants of em. And now he doesn’t do any murder mostly!!! Not unless someone else starts it for suresies. I think Junie def adopts him quicker, due to the hes more roam around and hang out with random folks. And they’re climbing into places they shouldn’t together!!! Please imagine for me junie and Heehoo Revant sat on a rooftop together. Heehoo is on a box or smth so he can kicky his feet. Are u imagining it for me? He’s so fucking ^-^. He’s also very much involved in rebel activity but shhh we don’t worry about thaaaaat, what he’s got going on with Bill is his business, we don’t need to knooooowwwww-

[spacecrows]

The thing that really sucks about ADHD and ADHD meds for me is that it’s so difficult to tell if I am medicated properly or not? Like I know I am very lucky that the only other meds I ever really need are the occasional ibuprofen for a headache or something to help with nausea a few times a year (and like contraception and vitamins lol) - but when I am in pain I notice the pain I think “I should take an ibuprofen” and once I do the pain gets better and if it gets worse again I notice and take another. Same with nausea. It’s easy. But with ADHD, most of my “symptoms” when I am unmedicated just feel like character flaws? So for 20-something years before I knew I had ADHD I just thought I was just a procrastinator and stupid for not being able to read long texts and that I was really lazy and that I just got exhausted way too quickly and had to try harder and harder and harder and if I couldn’t, that was on me.  ANYWAY, when I finally did get my diagnosis it was already such a relief and such a help and therapy has also been really really good. But. The meds! I started taking meds and at first I didn’t notice much of a difference, because for me ADHD means that I have very high highs and very low lows, both in terms of mood and in terms of focus, productivity, etc. So when I started taking them, I thought I just had a few rather productive high functioning days. And since even on meds, things can still be difficult and the highs and lows are not gone completely, things were sort of blurry. But after a few weeks I forgot to get my prescription and went a couple days without them, and I realized this huge difference. I have not found my perfect meds yet, so I still struggle. But it is such an enourmous difference. Things are so much less difficult for me. Functioning is so much easier. It’s not like I am suddenly great at everything, I still forget 50% of the things I need to do and still procrastinate and still struggle with motivation, but things are doable. And I feel better about myself. Well, a month ago I changed my meds (mainly because I want to find something that gives me some inner peace and quiet once in a while? if anyone has any recommendations please let me know! magic mushrooms worked like a charm but ideally i’d like something. you know. legal. a girl can dream I guess). And I started with the lowest dosage. And that was evidently not enough for me. But I didn’t realize that I was not medicated properly, because there wasn’t some sort of distinct “symptom” to alert me. Instead, my sleep pattern slipped. Food was a struggle. Chores and urgent paperwork started to pile up. I felt days slipping by where I couldn’t get myself to do anything, really, not even hobbies I enjoy. And because it was gradual, and these are all things I struggle with (to some degree) even on meds, I didn’t realize what was happening. Instead, I got frustrated with myself. I thought “Wow, I am so lazy, I can’t get anything done. How do all my friends have their shit together and I just can’t cope? Why am I so stupid? Why am I such a procrastinator? Why don’t I have any energy? I am so undisciplined! I just really need to try harder!”. Needless to say, getting angry at myself didn’t really change much - except making me miserable. Until I realized that when I forgot to take my meds, I didn’t notice any difference. So I tried a higher dosage and suddenly, magically, I had the energy to do one or two small chores a day and answer one email and get out of bed and read a book I like and hang out with friends a few times a week.  But even after all that! I forgot to take my meds this morning, and I had the worst day. I was completely exhausted, felt weird, didn’t manage to reply to urgent messages from friends, took a depression nap and felt worse. Read the same page in my book over and over and over and over again and couldn’t make sense of it. Hated every single person on public transit that even breathed too loudly. Wanted to break out into tears on the tram (and nearly did). Only to realize around 5 pm that I hadn’t taken my meds. Took them, and pretty instantly felt better. I think I’ll tidy up my room a little now. And maybe even read a few chapters before bed. Things are fine. But I really really want some sort of inner alert that tells me if I have taken my meds and if the dosage works for me. Something like that. Please!!!

[magentagalaxies]

I’m sure you’ve answered before, but HOW! did you get your hands on all of these scripts!!!

short answer: i'm friends with some of the kids in the hall, bruce mcculloch specifically let me help organize some of his old kids in the hall stuff in storage and as thanks he let me take home several of the original scripts for kids in the hall sketches!

long answer: somehow got in contact with paul bellini two years ago via the youtube comments for his band "mouth congress," we ended up meeting on zoom and becoming friends since i'm also a queer comedy writer and he's a huge inspiration to me. i ended up meeting scott thompson on new year's eve 2022 and about a month later after seeing a live performance of his buddy cole one-man-show i somehow had the audacity to pitch a buddy cole documentary to him (i was barely 20 years old at the time and had never made a documentary before) and somehow both scott and paul thought it was a great idea and said yes.

then i met bruce a few months later when he had a one-man-show at a theater next to the college i go to, i interviewed him on zoom beforehand (i told him it was for my school paper but that was a lie i was never involved with the school paper lmao) and literally by the end of that 30 minute conversation he was like "ok you are my mentee now please tell me all about the stuff you're working on because i want to help you succeed as a comedian" and i was like well actually the main thing i'm working right now is a documentary with scott and paul about buddy cole so bruce was like alright awesome i'm gonna sign on as an executive producer and help you get a budget and interview people

since then i've been traveling up to toronto on average once every two months (sometimes it's been longer between trips but i also spent literally the entirety of july in canada this year. i'm from the US btw and had never been to canada until i met paul) and every time i'm in town i end up seeing at least one of the kids in the hall during my trip. i'm actually planning on moving to canada once i graduate from college (it's my last semester) so yeah kids in the hall has very literally changed my life lmao

currently still working on putting together the buddy cole documentary - i'm traveling up to toronto next weekend to do my main interviews with scott and paul, then when the kids in the hall are all in town together in november i'll finally get to meet mark, kevin, and dave and interview them. making this documentary has been such a wild experience, i never expected to be able to genuinely call the kids in the hall my friends but now it's at a point where scott, paul, and bruce are basically my family. paul gives me feedback on basically every comedy sketch i write and i even got to perform with scott last summer (despite him never having seen or read my comedy before that performance, like what the hell how did he have that much confidence in me lmao)

i post updates on the making of my buddy cole doc on here all the time so definitely stay tuned for that, and i hope this context makes my random scott-posting make a lot more sense

[marshmallowgoop]

Excuse me, I want to ask a question. Is it ethical to like the Kill la Kill dub? I noticed some of the changes in dialogue between it and the sub. I ask bc the kill la kill dub is my favorite dub of all time.

Hi there!

This has obviously been sitting in my inbox for a while. I haven't been quite sure how to respond.

Maybe I can start by posing another question: is it ethical to like a movie adaptation of a book that makes changes?

A translation—be it of a book to a movie, or of one language to another—is always going to be different from the original. There's no getting around that. But I in no way believe that this means we shouldn't try to translate books to screen, or that works in one language should only ever remain in that one language. Translation increases accessibility so that more people can enjoy and engage with a text.

Of course, however, I do recognize that accessibility is also a concern for particularly loose translations. For those unable to read, a movie or an English dub of an anime may be the only way they can enjoy a story—and if there are drastic changes, is that really fair?

It's not a question I can definitively answer. But personally: though it's not Kill la Kill related, I eventually want to finish writing my report about Anime NYC's English dub premiere for the 24th Detective Conan film, The Scarlet Bullet, which released last month. And the tl;dr of my thoughts really boils down to how disheartened I was by the movie's script. Unlike the series's English dub from FUNimation, which changed characters' names (and occasionally dramatically altered plots and dialogue), Bang Zoom! Entertainment's dub is very accurate—to the point that I felt it was to its detriment. It sounded like the actors were simply reading subtitles, not speaking like actual humans; I scribbled down several lines during the showing with the thought, "No one would ever talk like that." While I certainly have my concerns with how many creative liberties FUNimation took, I desperately missed it watching the new dub. The script felt so stiff and lifeless.

So, another question: is it unethical to make changes to the source material to better fit the translated medium?

It's again a question I can't definitively answer. But as I've said about Kill la Kill...

. . . the dub script and actors are taking some liberties with the material—while still keeping it in-character, in my opinion—and coming up with stuff that maintains the energy and feel of the original lines but is still new and different. That’s what I like in a dub; it’s faithful, but it isn’t afraid to mix it up a bit.

And Detective Conan:

Loosey-goosey dubs that take lots of creative liberties with the material are my favorites. I think they’re so much fun and add so much flavor. Not to get too "subs versus dubs" here, but as I see it, a dub is an adaptation, much like how an anime can be an adaptation of a manga, and I like it when adaptations put their own spin on the work and breathe a new life into it.

I'd personally much rather a translation be lively and creative and different than try so hard to be as accurate as possible that it loses so much soul.

But that's just my take!

[drifloonz]

Hi! I'm usually not one to send asks all that often, but what the heck. I'm kinda curious about your thoughts on something too since I've seen a lot of differing opinions.

Steven. Obviously Miki's accident and Missingno annihilated his sanity, but I feel like Mike's ghost also haunts him. Not in a malicious way, but just by existing. He just really wants to understand why Steven had to do that to him but whenever he attempts to reach out Steven flips due to guilt. I've seen someone's headcanon where Steven is this cold-hearted bastard who never cared about Mike, even as kids, and idk. It just doesn't sit right with me. Nothing wrong with it I'm just wondering how many other people share that sentiment vs Steven feeling immense guilt at being so blinded by rage that he'd murder his own brother and basically sell his soul.

Sorry if this is too much, I tend to ramble 😅

HI!! you were my actual first ask but i didn't see this one at first until i was writing the other one and out of the corner of my eye saw this and went "wait a minute." funny how that happens.

ANYWAYS i can definitely do that for you and ALSO do not apologize i ramble so much as well its fine. this'll be so long i apologize so im putting most of it under a read more !

cw for Bad mental health, strangling/murder obviously, and also some suicidal ideation ( which is warned for in the paragraph its shown in ).

i think steven just sort of like... blocks it off and tries to forget everything about that ever happened, but obviously, you cant forget that stuff that easily. it haunts him but he tries to push it as far back to his head as he can and he tries to forget SOOO hard... he's in intense denial. i like the art of him immediately regretting it but i think he'd just stare at mikes corpse for a few minutes and then just be like. scarred by the imagery, and it'd make him breathe heavily and make his eyes widen in regret and he'd just keep staring for a few minutes. but he'd just run away afterward and it just burns into his mind sometimes, making him remember and regret it.

as someone with mental illness of Horribly Bad amounts, when someone you trust like that betrays you or you believe them to betray you ( which, its the ladder for steven and mike, mike obviously didn't intend to kill miki whether or not you believe he initiated the trade with slightly malicious/selfish intent or not ) it does bad damage to your psyche. especially when the murder of someone you care for is involved, which makes the thinking in steven's brain go "oh mike murdered miki. intentionally or not he's the reason she's dead." and then that makes him very upset towards mike mixed with someone he sorta looked up to betray him like that. he just regressed hard and went thru a depressive spiral for a whole year, having the thing he most loved taken away from him so suddenly almost entirely without his control, and then he got so tired of bottling it up he snapped ( lol ) and killed mike.

suicidal thoughts cw for this paragraph: and also during the 1 year without miki, steven obviously went through a major depressive episode and a sort of downwards spiral that just got worse and worse, and i don't think he wanted to get better. this is heavy but i sort of think he just hoped neglecting his self-care would eventually kill him and reunite him with his miki again, which is all he wanted. he didn't eat much if at all and he just sat in front of miki's grave, sometimes for days. he made a bed out of his misery, because it felt comfortable in a morbid way. if he died, he'd reunite with her, because at that point he didn't know anything could bring her back and all he wanted was her. it felt better than just... getting over it, or trying to. people convinced him to take better care of himself, but he still barely did anything past his necessities. this didn't help his mental state at all, as you can probably tell, which also fueled his hatred towards mike after the incident more and more. he made himself suffer this much due to an accident he caused, and he used that as further reasoning to dislike him, even though that was all self-inflicted.

i also like to think they didn't hate each other genuinely before this - mike never genuinely hated steven, but steven after the incident probably had Many complex feelings towards mike, mostly negative. but before the incident, they definitely had arguments and spats, and sometimes one would say something that would genuinely hurt the other ( usually steven did this to mike more than viceversa imo but both happened ) which both of them also probably bottled up and didnt talk about a lot ( although mike'd definitely apologize if he ever went too far - steven, i feel like would be too guilty and nervous to apologize ) which also sort of exploded in steven's face after miki died in front of him. those 3 things mixing together did not make a good combo for him.

the interp of missingno needing souls or steven at least thinking it does is fun but i like to think it never did and steven was just going through a horrendous downward spiral, and he went back home bc... where else would he go, he'd still have to pack the rest of his stuff to leave if he intended to, and seeing mike so vulnerable flipped a switch in steven's mind and made him just go [ steven voice ] "You know what would be funny?" ( worst way to describe that but u get it ). this can also arguably be missingnos influence or missingno possessing steven, which i feel is more plausible then it needing a sacrifice. but i think it just probably inserts or pushes forward steven's intrusive and aggressive thoughts, which i like to believe he always had especially after the incident, but never this bad. and then he just did it bc the thoughts wouldn't leave him alone and his mind convinced himself into it. even though he already had miki and didn't need to do that, it felt... fitting, to him. it was satisfying for a moment, especially because i like the interpretation that his mind warped mikes dying expression into him looking like he's laughing at steven ( explaining his hyplull sprites when hes being strangled being so weird ), until his mind realized the damage he just did, seeing mikes glazed over expression that was very much not smiling or laughing, and he went "oh. shit" in his head probably. his mind couldn't even comprehend what he just did. it'd take a lot of processing, and he didn't even want to process any of that, so after staring for a bit he just walked away from the scene and escaped to never be seen again.

i also like the interpretation that steven thought mike didn't actually care that much about miki dying or even did the trading thing on purpose - he clearly didn't kill her on purpose, but steven was so blinded by his own muddled emotions and rage and he needed an outlet, someone to blame, so he couldn't see it any other way and CONVINCED himself that mike did that on purpose. also because admittedly in canon mike saying that he needed a charizard implies he already had a charmeleon but thats muddy territory and probably just slightly a plot hole. but if that was the case i bet steven was like "... just evolve the charmeleon?" "but that'd take too looooong!" or something like that. mike is impatient as hell fr fr mans got adhd

if you want a good take on this and havent already, read faulty on ao3 . i hate ao3 for various reasons and only go there when im Parched for content. but goddamn that fic has the best characterization of the two imo, especially of this dynamic of them specifically along with their other relationships ( namely daisy and reds relationship to steven and mike too ) - steven even sometimes goes through like being slightly better around mike and then it all drops when he realizes she died for nothing, and mike didnt even finish the dex. fucking phenomenal fic tbh i love this characterization of them sm. a lot of this summarizes how i think they'd both act after the incident

____

as for the haunting... yeaaa. i think steven's just way too scarred and confused and scared to even allow mike to properly reach out, if steven even realizes it. i like to think he's paranoid and overthinks so he probably goes "oh god what if its mike" and then woopsy daisy! It is mike. and he just tries to pretend its nothing so bad and to ignore and avoid him because he's scared and confused and it makes him think far too long about his emotions on the situation that he was intentionally bottling up and pushing to the back of his head.

he also probably would think mike would try to revenge kill him because that's just how he thinks he himself would react if mike did that to him. Which makes him regret things further. he sleeps less due to this, usually on the defensive even though mike has no intent to harm him. i don't think mike ever had any room in his heart to ever hate steven. he's just confused or slightly upset at worst at anything steven's said or done to him... mike probably doesn't even really blame him, but he does just hope he's ok and prob lets out a sigh of relief when he finds steven, who is still a mess going through many things, and also murderous now, but he's still alive! which is a win in mikes book i guess!

he probably just tries to pretend mike isn't actually there or actively get rid of him, or he wouldn't even notice mike is haunting him in the first place, depending on how obvious the signs of the haunting are. his house is already sort of run down and haunted as fuck anyways, but in the back of his head he knows somethings off.

i also ... like the interp that steven took all of mikes team bc nobody was there to care for them anymore. so maybe when steven notices he sends out mikes blastoise or some of his other party members and hopes to god mike leaves him alone to go bother his own pokemon who he hasn't seen for years. after all, he basically never let mikes mons out of their ball, and even considered donating them all to professor oak or something ( probably just.. leaving the pokeballs out infront of the lab one day ) but that felt wrong, so he always kept them on hand. sometimes feeding them and not much else. mike probably had a ghost type ( gengar ) who can conveniently probably see him, and mike definitely would try to communicate to steven further through said ghost type. and he'd just be like. "gdi why did i send out the ghost type" in his mind.

miki can definitely see mikes ghost. mike is also like "OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU. WAIT YOUR ALIVE????" in his head, but he quickly gets used to it. he has no idea what the hell a missingno is or how/why she's alive but he just stops questioning it. they sometimes share a glance and nod. mike will sometimes avert his gaze from her due to guilt though. miki doesn't seem to care or hold resent, probably because imo 'M ( however you want to spell Missingno Miki ) isn't actually miki. it's missingno sort of possessing, haunting, or keeping miki's dead corpse alive, but her soul is no longer there anymore. at least most of it Isn't there. due to that she's a lot more emotionless. even if miki's soul was in there though, she would not hold genuine resent. if miki's soul was in there she'd probably be scared of steven ( specifically yk S!3V3N ) tbh

i definitely think steven has hallucinations sometimes, usually of miki or mikes corpses, usually much more horrifying looking than they actually were, so this doesn't help!

steven overall is just on the fence and regrets it all but doesn't even wanna think abt or interact w mike but if he somehow became more okay with it, he might start leaving mike notes or something. or talking to himself, assuming mike might overhear. small steps like that. and maybe if mike is able to sometimes steven just passes out on the couch or smth and mike covers him in a blanket while hes asleep and stevens just like. "That was not there when I fell asleep." in his head. stuff like that.

also mike might switch the tv channels or just Project an image onto it somehow. and steven just. squints at it. i think it'd be nice if they eventually got used to eachothers presence again and just silently hung around eachother. mike really wants to look after steven after seeing the state he's in and how much he didn't really help steven effectively when mike was alive. for an example probably, like, nudging the bathroom door open and turning on the bathwater and trying to make steven take a mfing bath and practice self care for once and steven just begrudgingly sighs and goes to do it since he might as well. and mike just walks away and is very smug about it. he Will make his little brother practice self care again and he's made that his personal goal. steven walking into the kitchen and seeing various pots and pans floating around along with a mess on the floor ( mikes getting used to his levitation powers still </3 ) and he just squints his eyes and leaves and comes back and theres a meal on the counter

steven making pancakes and he just holds out a plate for mike and he just takes it. and steven just sees the plate floating and goes "yea thats about what i expected" or smth. its cute, Although i cant see that happening very easily unfortunately </3 steven is very broken and very much Not wanting to think abt mike. so itd take very long for him to warm back up or even be ok with him possibly existing arnd him. but this'd prob happen eventually if mike is persistent, and by god, is mike persistent. its what got him into this mess in the first place.

i can write so much abt these depressed ex champions fr!!! anyways thank you for reading sorry for writing so much words. i hope this feeds you enough content for the next winter. i hope literally any of this made sense bc i just sorta typed my thought processes until it looked legible - wispy

[hiroshotreplica]

more side order rambling and pointless speculation that will probably be incorrect

WARNING: im rambling and not really thinking about it TOO hard. also this is based on like 50 different theories that have a good chance of Not being true. also ignore grammar/spelling errors (im bad at writing)

i believe ive talked about how i think there could be a metaphor/straight up depiction of healing from traumatic situations and/or learning how to cope with mental health struggles in the game in the past? anyway im gonna do it Again

this kind of hinges off the belief that the octoling shown in the trailer is octarian/not from the splatlands (whatever the correct term is i forgot). if the octoling is from splatsville then uh whoopsie. this is Not Relevant and will age like milk. anyway

octarian society definitely has a lot of strife. especially when in the military. suddenly trying to enter inkopolis and being met with turf wars suddenly being for fun and almost a complete lack of strife has to be wayyyy too much for some octolings. ive mentioned this in a prior post though thats from the perspective that the sr octoling is agent 8 (which im hesitant to believe but this is not the main point for this post specifically) id just like this to be true to contrast with what i think will be a revolving point around marina

and yeah, thats my main point, i think marina will have stuff to work through, too. i dont think she'll be an antagonist, but rather someone who's doing the wrong things for the right reasons or someone who caused a bad situation (which ill just call the death of coral here) on accident while trying to help. she was in the military at a very young age and escaped to inkling society, but the stuff after final fest is what im thinking about.

i can really only bring up NOA dialogue (aside from one thing, if i can find the source for it), so this may be off, but i dont have the resources to look up a 100% authentic translation

the fest stressed her out, and she was very worried about the band breaking up. this is clear in dialogue

though of course pearl comforts her that this isnt the case, i wonder if that fear still lingers in her mind. im not too knowledgeable on marina's characterization (i heard NOA isnt either so, lol) but it seems in character. she definitely hasnt unpacked(? i believe that is the right word) the fear on screen as far as i can tell, though, and i think side order might be about that, a little.

what interests me most is this unused dialogue from if team order won, though:

of course its unused so it doesnt hold as much weight as canon dialogue, but i wonder if she'll hold a similar mentality. she has control, and she sees that she can shape the world. i dont fully agree with her changing everyone to be the same, since she later says this:

if she were to do anything, i think she'd change the world that may try to be like this, but something in it would be functionally unsound and cause the whole thing to break. im not sure if she even would in the first place but i can acknowledge the possibility. itd be ironic, shes good at building machinery but not building a utopia.

i dont think she needs to be saved in this scenario, i think its best if she were to save herself. but this is verrryyy speculative so i cant say much.

tangent aside. marina understanding and moving on/healing from her fears being compared to the protagonist octoling's own journey on recovering would be great. itd be even better with agent 8 in my opinion, since theyve clearly gone through Some Shit and definitely need therapy for it, but i dont want to speculate too much. im expecting all of this to be Wrong but i cant ignore that ive been thinking about it like this lol

[tisorridalamor]

Better late than never!

As promised, I am here to discuss my thoughts on Goodnight Punpun and Psyren, the first and second place manga that won my "What manga that I know nothing about should I get from the library" poll. I'm still not very far into either, just a few volumes cause I got distracted by catching up with some other things, but I am enjoying both so far!

As another note, I've realized I really, really enjoy reading physical manga! There's something about being able to hold the book in your hands that makes me appreciate the art and story more. Idk, I read a lot of digital manga (often because there literally isn't an English or physical version), so it feels special. Highly recommend getting something random from your local library so you can feel some kind of way like this too!

TLDR: sometimes it's fun to read something totally new! I plan on finishing both of these series and can't wait to get back to them after I've finished my current diversions :)

Psyren

Psyren is a pretty typical feeling Shonen with fun characters and a neat mystery/setting. While you've probably seen a lot of its elements before, they come together here in a really satisfying way! Volume 3 in particular got me absolutely hooked, and I've been really enjoying seeing the world come together and the stakes get higher.

For a quick summary, Ageha Yoshina is a typical rowdy teen who gets tangled up the urban legend of "Psyren," a world connected to Earth that only accepts a chosen few, when an old friend goes missing.

Both Psyren and Goodnight Punpun are from the mid/late 2000s, and Psyren in particular feels nostalgic to me. I love the use of flip phones and payphones, and the rumors surrounding "Psyren" is like something born out of internet culture from that time period.

My favorite character so far is the punk psychic classical piano star who acts as the main characters' mentor figure. She's great, and honestly it's hard competition because all of the characters are super likable. The flow of the story is fun as well - I like narratives where characters have to balance another world / another life with the one they currently have and I feel like there's a lot of potential to see Ageha deal with "school life" alongside fighting for his life in Psyren.

Psyren is a super easy read, and it's blend of familiar tropes with 2000s nostalgia makes it feel strangely fresh. The Earth of Psyren has a lot "fear" about the current state of the world, from climate change to the economy, so it feels relevant to today as well. I can already see Ageha starting to care about things outside himself and I watch him grow further! If anything from the above sounds like fun, I recommend giving Psyren a read (at least through volume 3 please VOLUME 3 IS REALLY GOOD!)

Goodnight Punpun

So right off the bat, Goodnight Punpun is not what I expected and it's a bit difficult to describe. It follows Punpun, a young boy whose family all looks like little bird creatures as he goes through the trials and tribulations of childhood. He goes to school, he has crushes, he hangs out with his friends. He can talk to god (the giant floating head of the author shown above). Yknow, normal kid stuff.

However Goodnight Punpun is absolutely not written kids. It's about kids and adolescence and growing up, but it doesn't hide any harsh realities - abuse, divorce, addiction, puberty, sexuality, religion, and more. These topics aren't fully understood by the kids but are very clear to the intended adult audience.

Honestly I was a little put off at first. The art, while extremely detailed and often beautiful, is sometimes quite ugly as the creator likes to draw most adults like caricatures. The story felt disjointed, the sense of humor is hit or miss, and the overall tone could be described as an "acquired taste."

But as I neared the end of the first volume, the pieces felt like they were really coming together. The little moments between the kids, the honesty of childhood crushes, the glimpses into character's lives at home, and the struggles the adults are facing really do add up into something... And the slight dip into "thriller" territory didn't hurt either!

My library only had the first 2 volumes, so while looking for places to read online I found that this series is actually quite well known and it has (or at one point had) a proper following. Near the end of volume 2 or 3, there's actually a bit of a skip in time, so I assume each "arc" of the manga will cover a different important time in Punpun's adolescence and maybe even teen years. If you want to give Goodnight Punpun a try, I highly recommend at least reading through volume one unless you are really put off by some of the subject matter.

As the first volume said on the back, "Punpun is a normal kid. He wants his crush to like him back, he wants to win a Nobel Prize, he wants to grow up, he wants to watch some porn. That's what he wants, but what does he get?" Well I want to see what happens to him and his classmates, and I really hope it's good things, but it'll probably be a mix of good, bad, and weird.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Finally clearing out my drafts folder by reblogging all the "saved" stuff to a sideblog so my drafts can actually be for. y'know.

my drafts.