#very long post but i didn't want to make 3 different posts for this oops

[rininis]

231231 | Xiao Zhan Studio Weibo

[bookatans]

This is probably going to be a very long post but the more I think about the rise (and subsequent fall) of the New Mandalorians, the more that I get wrapped up in not only the colonialism committed by Satine and the movement, how it began in such a horrifyingly understated way, but also how it paved the way for Mandalore to be destroyed thanks to the almost-complete erasure of their culture.

First of all, Canon verse deciding to remove the True Mandalorians (and placing the "Old" Mandalorians in a similar, though less prominent position) feels particularly underhanded and paints everything in a black and white manner. Satine: a sympathetic character who is the only one standing against Death Watch, the last shred of peace left for Mandalorians to cling to. Which. Last standing? Yes, definitely. But not the only one.

A war where Death Watch and the New Mandalorians were the major players, only to have Death Watch defeated – even with the assistance of the Jedi keeping Satine alive – makes little sense from a technical standpoint. Is it impossible? Probably not. All sorts of things can happen in history, pure dumb luck makes every difference, but it's unlikely. A party which seeks peace is not going to survive against another ultra violent, volatile party that's pissed off at you because you want to erase the culture that they so deeply value.

Which, yeah I don't buy it. Even with the Republic stepping in later on, it's fishy. But for the sake of my sanity, I'm mostly focusing on Legends, because the more you try to create a coherent timeline (seriously, how is Clone Batch Math easier than this?) for the Mandalorian Civil Wars, the harder it is not to give up entirely.

Anyways. Satine did not survive years of conflict due to mere smarts and perseverance, and did not end the war by being charismatic and having good people skills. She was the LEAST THREATENING PARTY in a three-party war, hunkering down with her Jedi protectors and playing politician while the actual warriors in the conflict weakened one another and – for the True Mandalorians – were wiped out.

True Mandalorians. Death Watch. New Mandalorians.

So, okay. The approximate dates of the beginning and end of the Mandalorian Civil Wars don't necessarily make sense with Satine’s age. She'd have been slightly younger, and Canon seems to have a tendency to just wave their hand in the general direction of a time period and deflect onto another topic.

Which, you know what? Fine. I can work with that without having to think too hard about the dates. It kills me not to delve into it further, but. No. It's not like Disney's gonna pay me to fix their broken timeline.

(But if I had to, I'd shift Jaster's death to 47BBY instead of 52BBY, and push the Battle of Galidraan a year back to 43BBY, and—)

Here's what's important to remember, though:

- There are two Mandalorian Civil Wars. The first being True Mandalorians vs Death Watch. The second being the much shorter, and quickly solved Death Watch vs the New Mandalorians.

- The massacre of the True Mandalorians happened shortly before the beginning of the second civil war.

- The True Mandalorians had already been dealing with Death Watch for years, and they were winning. Death Watch wasn't just on the run, they were weak, they had to resort to TRICKING THE JEDI into killing the True Mandalorians for them.

Who wasn't weak? The New Mandalorians, the people that actively choose to turn their back on a culture that had survived for centuries. And yes, Death Watch remained even after the True Mandalorians fell. Tor Vizsla targeted Satine and the New Mandalorians viciously after that, there was even more destruction, but it wasn't with the severity with which he'd prosecuted the True Mandalorians.

Here's what happened next: Jango Fett escaped his enslavement. He hunted down Tor Vizsla, and he killed him. Whatever strength Death Watch had regained in those few years didn't matter, because the second their leader was gone they were certainly left unorganized and at a disadvantage.

Giving the New Mandalorians the opening they needed to cement in people's minds to their beliefs and convince the House and Clan leaders that abandoning their old ways was the solution. After all, how much more of Mandalore was left to destroy? How many more had to be lost?

With the public's approval and the Republic’s help, Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians scavenged the corpse of Mandalore, and they took what they deemed fit, left the rest to rot and – given time – be erased completely.

What's worse is that Satine's activism and speeches made it sound like that made sense (because, to Satine, it did make sense); abandon what Mandalore once was because that's the reason we've been destroyed, isn't it? (Not entirely untrue.) And these people, whose world had been ravaged, who's clans and families had wrecked everything with in-fighting, were tired and desperate enough that they listened.

Actually, here's what's really worse — Satine got LUCKY! The first time! It should not have ended like that. But because she got lucky, because it worked once, she tried to do the exact same thing when the entire galaxy went to war. And she ignored the suffering of people whom she should have known empathy towards, who were going through the very same torment she experienced as a child. Because her position of superiority where peace is the only answer was so ingrained in her beliefs, because she was ARROGANT.

And because peace was the only answer, because she'd disavowed any sense of warrior culture from her people, Satine had as much a hand in dooming Mandalore as everyone who went in with the worst intentions. Does it matter that it was doomed regardless, because Maul was the great evil that came to destroy them? No. Maul was just the most convenient means to an end the resurrected Death Watch could find, but if not him it would have been anyone — anything – else.

I do feel for her. She had to experience her father's death so young and step into a role he'd left behind, didn't get a proper chance to grieve because she had to be strong for everyone else who was grieving. She gave up the possibility of love for duty. Satine was a good leader, I won't argue that, and she was the last stand between Mandalore and total annihilation, but she was also deeply flawed.

[taffywabbit]

oops i accidentally wrote a review for zelda II: the adventure of link

(originally posted to Cohost on Feb 22, 2024. you can ignore this if you want, i just wanted it archived somewhere before that site disappears)

Finally beat Zelda II for the first time last night (I forced myself to finish it before starting Splatoon 3's Side Order DLC, because I knew if I didn't push through to the end of the Great Palace THIS time then it'd be years before I tried beating it again. This is probably my 4th or 5th attempt at this point). Not that this is a particularly hot take by most people's standards, but I don't think it's all that good, at least from a gameplay standpoint.

I don't regret playing it though, because I think I'm finally able to put my finger on the stuff I actually disliked about it vs the stuff that was honestly fine, or even (very rarely) actually good? I'm kinda fascinated by it, honestly. Sequels where they immediately screw around with the first game's formula (to mixed results) are neat! FE Gaiden is another example that comes to mind (hey they should give Zelda II the Shadows of Valentia treatment, that could be really cool actually).

Obviously Zelda II has a reputation for being kind of a rough experience. It's an NES game, and NES games are often susceptible to being frustrating, buggy, hard to control, or overly punishing. Sometimes, all of the above! And for what it's worth, the original Legend of Zelda was a tough and sometimes very cryptic experience as well. But I feel like the two games are challenging in drastically different ways, and I think TLoZ ended up being the formula that was retained in the long term primarily because its method of challenging the player overall did a better job of inspiring curiosity and exploration. Despite narratively being a direct sequel (with a really badass story premise that is unfortunately not really conveyed at all in-game) Zelda II took a different approach to nearly every element of the original's gameplay, which is a pretty bold move I suppose. Whether or not it succeeds at anything is fairly subjective, but it's undeniably had a lasting impact on the series, as well as the people who grew up with it (and then they went on to make some really excellent mid-2000's flash games inspired by it that I frankly enjoyed a lot more than this... and also a weirdly solid licensed Adventure Time game on the 3DS? I should go back and play that sometime, it's really fun).

Where to start with this...? Uhhh, the EXP-based leveling system where you choose what stats to put your points into is interesting! It creates a risk-and-reward system for fighting enemies instead of avoiding them, whereas in most other Zelda games besides BotW/TotK, the only reward for killing monsters is "they are no longer bothering you while you solve puzzles, and also sometimes they drop rupees/hearts/ammo". It also introduces a bit more player choice in what areas you'd like to get stronger in first, which is cool! I just wish it actually mattered in a way that let you feel powerful for even a moment. Instead, leveling Life (which is functionally just defense) is never enough to actually make you feel like you can afford to take a hit - the expectation seems to be that leveling Attack, Life, and Magic is something you do purely to keep up with how badly every single thing in this game wants to stomp you into the ground and soak up a million hits and waste all your magic. You CAN skip out on leveling one stat to prioritize another, or even try to evade tough combat situations entirely, but if you aren't leveled enough and in the exact things the game expects you to be WHEN it expects you to be, you'll immediately bump into some new asshole who jumps out of nowhere and can cut you down in 2-3 hits. Leveling doesn't make you tangibly stronger, it merely keeps the game barely playable.

This actually ends up being the core problem I have with Zelda II's design, far more than just the combat being clunky and overly punishing or the levels being visually samey and super hard to navigate. In most Zelda games (and also in a lot of other RPGs!), you get a better sword or a new power or item, and it opens up exciting new options for both exploration and combat. In Zelda II, you level up or earn a new item/spell, it's useful for maybe 20-30 minutes, and then it's immediately nullified. Wow, you got the Fire spell! Now you can finally deal with Tektites and Basilisks (which are immune to all other attacks) on the way to the next area! Well, I hope you had fun with that, because Fire doesn't work on most things you run into afterwards.

Easily the biggest game-changer is when you unlock the Downward Thrust sword technique, and finally have another option for combat besides just crouch-hopping and poking monsters with a dull butter knife. It's satisfying to use, it looks cool (by this game's standards), and it even has some utility for crossing hazards or defending yourself against swooping enemies! Cool! Unfortunately, they don't let you play around with that for long either, before nearly every enemy you see starts rolling up with helmets or shells that make them immune to attacks from above, and you never really get anything like that again (the Upward Thrust exists later, but it's far more situational and frankly not very fun or intuitive to use). Rather than feeling like you're being given tools to overcome challenges and stay above the difficulty curve, it feels like you're constantly just slightly underequipped for everything (even if you grind to earn extra stat levels) and any edge you're given is swiftly taken away from you. (Except the Reflect spell, which is ALWAYS a banger after you get it because it makes your shield Actually Do Its Damn Job after nearly every enemy starts shooting projectiles you can't block. Good work, Reflect spell.)

I feel like I grew up hearing plenty of people talk about the overall difficulty of Zelda II, though most of the complaints about its puzzles were surface-level jabs about the short cryptic NPC text, and none of that prepared me for just how ridiculously obtuse its mandatory puzzles/secrets can be. I genuinely have no idea how anyone would EVER find the Life spell - pretty much your ONLY source of healing outside of towns, since there are no hearts to pick up in this game - without some kind of guide. I was FURIOUS when I finally looked up where to find that lady's mirror and discovered that you have to walk into one of the houses, go over to the table that looks EXACTLY like every other table in every other house in the entirety of Hyrule, crouch, and press B, and you'll just pull the mirror out of nowhere. This type of interaction does not exist ANYWHERE else in the game and there's no in-game hint to indicate that you should try this. Absolutely maddening.

This and its predecessor are both games that seemingly expect you to have the physical manual on hand to help you find secrets, but at least in the first game, the way the game was designed was consistent enough that you COULD feasibly find your way to the end of it without a guide. Bombable walls in dungeons always being located in the center, things like that. It had rules and it could generally be trusted to follow them. Zelda II, in comparison, has a final level (the Great Palace) in which there are numerous rooms that look IDENTICAL and if you make one wrong turn you can go through the entire [very difficult and dangerous] dungeon on a path parallel to the one you need to be on, only to hit a dead end and be able to see the spot you're supposed to be reaching on the other side of a wall. Except you would also never KNOW you need to get there, because it looks like another dead end full of monsters but there's actually a completely invisible hole somewhere in the floor over there that drops you into the hallway leading towards the final boss. Also there is no map. TLoZ had a map. I don't know why this game doesn't have a map. Possibly because if you try to look up maps online, most of the dungeons feature non-Euclidean spaces? Idk, even a Super Metroid-style grid map would've done wonders here.

The combat is... fine? I truly don't understand how anyone thinks it's GREAT though. Zelda II is kind of like a version of Castlevania where you don't have a whip and instead have to stab everything at extremely short range, and also sometimes enemies have shields so you have to crouch sometimes to stop them from blocking you. It feels tense and high-stakes but only because, as I mentioned earlier, you really cannot afford to take stray hits in this game. Most enemies chew through your health at an alarming rate, even with the Shield spell active, and there's almost no way to replenish it unless you use a Life spell (which costs a huge chunk of your magic, possibly softlocking you if you end up in a place that requires other spells to progress). I got better at the combat over the course of my playthrough, but I never felt like I got good at it - most of my victories against strong enemies felt like pure luck and there were rarely consistent strategies for success. All of this combined with the fact that Zelda II has limited lives (and I mean LIMITED - there are only six 1-UPs in the entire game, which can each only be collected once) and getting a Game Over anywhere outside of the final palace will send you all the way back to the starting area, and it makes for an incredibly stressful experience. Even making use of savestates to lighten the fear of death can only do so much to improve it.

Overall, I think that Zelda II is a game that has a lot of really promising ideas, but then just absolutely flops when it comes to the execution. I didn't have a better way of organizing these but here are a few examples of elements I DID particularly like, even if they didn't always stick the landing:

I like the idea of the RPG leveling system in theory, but wish it was more empowering in practice and actually let the player make meaningful choices instead of just being required to survive. Choosing to hold off on a Life upgrade and instead save up just a little longer to boost your Attack feels awesome, until you time one of your inputs wrong and get destroyed. In a game with better-tuned difficulty and combat, this system would be great!

I REALLY like that Zelda II introduced a magic system to the series! I think it's cool as hell to have Link learning and casting spells to protect himself, solve puzzles, and exploit enemy weaknesses, instead of relying purely on items. (It's honestly weird to think that a system I associate so strongly with classic Zelda gameplay has only actually showed up in 4 of the games?? I guess you could consider the runes/hand abilities in BotW/TotK to be kind of like modern spells, or the slowly-refilling energy gauge in ALBW to be the most recent iteration of a Magic Meter, but both are highly debatable. Anyways I just think they should let Link shapeshift into a fairy again, that was cool.) But most of the spells in this are fairly situational and your access to magic refills is so limited that you rarely have the freedom to experiment with the spells' secondary functions (hey did you know the Spell spell turns most enemy types into slimes? that's wild. I wish I'd known that sooner).

The overworld functioning like a traditional JRPG, with top-down exploration broken up by semi-random enemy encounters, was something I honestly didn't hate. It's a little weird for Zelda, sure, but I could see it working well to support other systems in a more polished game. Overworld encounters that switch you into a type of gameplay other than turn-based JRPG combat are something I've always been fascinated by!

Anyways, weird game! I'm glad I finally got closure so I could figure out how I personally feel about it, independent of whatever the random youtubers I watched as a teenager thought. And now I never have to play it again :)

[mgmm-shifts]

SHIFTER INTRO

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

HELLO

I'm new to shiftblr, so I wanna introduce myself :)

PSA: If you stalk my account and see my past reposts and likes, no you didn't lol. This account is hello old and I'm trying to cleanse it. I had an intense sports phase when I was 14-16, dw bout it...

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀:¨ ·.· ¨: ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ `· . ꔫ

About me:

☆General: I'm Mel, Leo, She/Her. I moved from shift tok to here! I want to find fellow shifters and continue my journey! I don't really have shifting friends so I figured here was a good place to find some mutuals :) ☆Shifting journey: The first time I shifted was in 2022 (or 2023, it was winter i don't remember which month) and it was by accident. I had no idea what shifting was oop. Since then I've, although I hate this term, "mini shifted" a few times since, but my mentally has definitely gotten better! I have been lucid dreaming since I was a kid, so when it happened I knew immediately it was different and I was so confused lol.

☆Main Dr: Attack on Titan (My script is pretty diff than canonverse, practically no titans left, no war, peacetime, much more modern times etc. I will explain script in a later post if ppl are interested) I had other DRs like JJK but lost interest in that (in the show in general tbh) and DBZ (the one I shifted for the first time ever to). Don't ask but it existed lol. Still love the show though, it was my first anime 🕺🏻. Tbh I'm just focused on my main one, I may make one with L Lawliet in some way eventually. Otherwise I haven't really been inspired to have anything different. ☆Hobbies: I love to draw! I haven't really began my dive into digital art (it's on my to do list) so I mainly stick to sketching and occasionally painting. I'm also trying to learn Japanese right now which is quite hard but I love it. I could already speak Italian and English and they're soooo different. Aside from that idk, I'm currently in school so I don't have time for much. I write some fanfics from time to time and read (manga/books) or play xbox occasionally. I also love to shop and collect anime shit lol. ☆Fav shows: -Grey's Anatomy -AOT -DBZ -Death note -Chainsaw Man -Nana -Gossip Girl -Spy x Family (I'm currently watching but still at the beginning, so spoilers pls) -Demon Slayer -The Vampire Diaries (a good fall classic) -Friends -Alice in Borderlands (where tf is s3 oml) -JJK (I've watched, used to be obsessed with, now I'm pretty disinterested but always love me some Toji lol) -Jersey Shore (a true italian-american classic 😩) -JoJo's (also still at beginning oop) -Hunter x Hunter (i stopped mid way) -Black Clover (there seems to be a theme here... stopped mid way) There's prob more I just can't think rn ☆Why I shift?: Tbh, since I was a kid I would make DRs without even understanding what that was. I am a very creative person with a huge imagination (thanks ADHD woo) so I've always wanted to be a part of these realities I would make as one does. I've also struggled with a history of depression and to be candid, my home life sucks. I've done a lot of maturing and mental work on myself so I'm a lot better now, so my reason is not necessarily for an "escape" but like yeah. I don't like wording it that way because I feel as though it's a bit dangerous to just completely toss your CR aside and rely on shifting as a end all be all fix, but if that's not the case then escape away :) I've been on the other end of that journey before so I'm speaking on behalf of my experience, but that's just what has worked for me and my mental health personally. As long as you are happy and healthy, do your thing <3

Okay this is already long af but if you made it this far, thank you🥹. Now that I have started up this page, I hope to interact with you guys and post about my DR and shifiting journey! Also most importantly...

WE WILL ALL SHIFT TONIGHT :)

[arintheman]

A bunch of art I've done

I don't post as much of my art as I want to (for a couple reasons) but here's some of it.

I got back into Warrior Cats and joined an rp group (through aj lol). It was kind of a way to get back to my art roots as an artist since WC is a bit of what made my friend group in school and I had some art of. Admittedly I am rusty to drawing cats.

This is Twistertail! He is part of Asterclan (or was a part of, he is now a member of Surgeclan read about the clan HERE) I'll try to keep his about brief but he is roughly 36 moons (3 years) and he's a little weird personality wise. He lost is tail in a bit of an accident right after he was promoted to a warrior. He does kinda have a mate, Bleakspot, who he constantly thinks about as well as an apprentice, Fernpaw. Please send an ask if y'all want to see his whole bio.

AND OF COURSE I HAD TO MAKE A HUMAN VERSION OF TWISTERTAIL LOL. >:) His name is Scott (for now. I don't have a last name for him.) I am a bit horny for him but for good reason. He works as a mechanic and is a recreational sharp shooter. (He also has a crush on the Domino's pizza delivery boy as you'll see later.)

🚨🚨 BOYS KISSING🚨🚨

🚨🚨 BOYS KISSING🚨🚨

(I'm including the sketch version because I like it more.) That's human Bleakspot btw. Their owner is much more creative and his name is Blake Spott. I just realized I'm making this post like how I used to post art on Wattpad. I don't care honestly. If this post gets more than 5 notes I'll be surprised.

🚨🚨 MORE BOYS KISSING🚨🚨

🚨🚨MORE BOYS KISSING🚨🚨

I'm honestly very mixed about how this fully turned out but :/ posting anyways. I also think Scott has a bunch of different meme tank tops he just ordered off Redbubble. (One of the people in the rp group does go fucking ape for human Twistertail and it's lowkey funny. Salt you're great)

And of course I turned this gay boy into a meme, based off that one clip from Gravity Falls. Again, I really liked the idea for this one but I know it could be so much better. (Hollyhush btw is another cat who gave Twistertail a super hard time about his totally not apparent crush. I feel like I might revisit all of these in a couple months and just. Redo them.

I have a BUNCH of stuff in my sketchbook though. I will include it here but to avoid this post being too long its under a read more.

Hollyhush often uses Twistertail as a ride. I’ve also included Twistertail’s dad, Owltooth. Owltooth is also based off Ogata from Golden Kamuy

Meme of Twistertail and Gloomsong (I want to color it soon)

There is something that happened called the Lunar Procession where everyone had to wear a mask and this was Twistertail’s

A little bit of Twistertail being aggressive, especially against Hareskip (who is now Harestar) Big shout out to the WC manga for helping me with the poses and stuff for these

This is Magpieheart. I would have loved to bring her into Aster/Surge but I couldn't as Magpie was already taken for a very important role character, which I was fine with. I do have a bunch of cat ideas and I want to make my own clan thing but that will probably never happen.

Of course more art of Twistertail and Bleakspot. I am obsessed with them oops.

This is all of the art I've done in like the last month or two and I hope y'all don't mind me sharing all of it in one post. I didn't want to make a separate post for each one. (Unless y'all want that.) It is like 90% of just one character who has been rotating in my mind and giving me brain rot.

[starrcrossrose]

Omg, Idk if my previous ask got through, it just said „hello“ so if it did, ignore that please, if not…please ignore this too?? XD anywayy, as more and more pieces of the Villain Leo Au/Story are being released, I was wondering, might you share a bit about your writing process? I noticed that the Aftermath is built very differently from other fanfics since you change perspectives constantly, but you also „rewind“ a bit every time you do that. And I was wondering, when you have an idea for a story, do you immediately write prompts or do you plan out the story before you write anything and how do you do with the Aftermath and Villain Leo? Thank you in advance <3

Hello hello! I didn't get your other message so this works hehe.

As far as a writing process... it definitely differs from fic to fic and story to story. Usually I imagine a scene and that's my springboard, and that can be at any point in the story. I've even had something as simple as a song painting a vivid picture in my head and have built entire stories off of that before -- like my Project Kitsune story.

In fact, I have a LOT of stuff planned for the V!AU already but everything I've actually written is too far in the future of the plot for me to share just yet. (oops LOL)

The Aftermath was originally only supposed to be 4 chapters *wheeze*, so that one... I was already handling differently. But then it continued to form and grow into the monster (/aff) that it is now. But I still wanted to stick with the theme of diving into each character and how they were handling everything post-invasion. That means I wanted to see how they felt during the time they thought that Leo was gone, as well as how they were feeling AFTER. Also, switching POV's per chapter was pretty normal for me as a kid! It's been nice to write that way again as an adult.

Ironically, the V!Leo AU isn't much different. I watched a video that sent my brain into a "what if" spiral and it just continued to grow from there! It also pulled in some of my good friends and they have been a HUGE help and lots of fun to plan the story out with. I had some ideas but having others to brainstorm with has been extremely fun and useful. Also, one simple question changed a lot of the trajectory of certain relationships and now there are characters in this AU I never expected to put here. But it made it so much more interesting.

If there's one thing I love to do, it's to write character studies. I love world building and such in my original works too, but my favorite thing to do is write characters. If you have strong characters that make you feel a lot of things, sometimes even a weaker plot can still work.

Uhhh this is probably a longer response than you intended to get LOL. But, my writing process tends to be centered a lot around "what if's" in fanfic, and in original works, it's a lot of "what's fresh but also familiar". I also used to not make notes and now I HAVE to or I write myself into a corner. Having a spot for notes and ideas is important bc even if they change, at least you don't get lost as easily. Especially with something like the V!AU which uh... takes place over several long years.

[rriavian]

Part 2 of this post from an ask from @altair214. So. Battle tactics! I must also add a disclaimer that I’ve never read the art of war, but it fits and so I’m gonna quote it. Also this got very long, as always, and I have to admit I feel a little arrogant for writing meta about my own fic. But! Hopefully will be an interesting read <3 

I've realised that I mainly use differing combinations of three specific tactics when I write. So in terms of the accidental alignment of my writing to Dream’s comic brand of subtle manipulation we have the following:

Manipulate what your enemy views as orthodox and unorthodox behaviours. By feigning orthodox behaviour, you set your opponent up for attack through unorthodox action. Eg. Appear weak when you are strong.

I’m a fan of subversion. I like unconventional ways of approaching things. I’ve always been fascinated by how a comparatively smaller action can have a lot more weight than a larger one depending on how it’s framed.

Like one TV show might have a dozen or so sex scenes that make you yawn, but another has one person holding another’s hand and you just about die because it’s so powerful.

One of the reasons why I love Dream is because he's a character that is so often the opposite of what is expected. He’ll let someone’s assumptions of him act against them, play into them to a certain extent. It’s applicable to what vulnerability means to him too. Weirdly it’s more accurate to say that when Dream seems vulnerable it’s someone else that is actually in trouble. Prime example is him meeting with Lucifer in hell, Dream is not at all bothered by the disrespect of the exchange because he’s secure enough in himself not to be, and he’s more than willing to take advantage of the view to achieve victory.

I saw something recently about how Dream could have chosen to make himself taller in this fight, but doing so would have been akin to a kitten puffing their fur to seem more threatening.

Lucifer would have loved it.

Dream didn't need to do it here, but I think he would have if he'd gone into hell at full power and wanted to seem weak...again, that subversion I love mixed with the unorthodox/orthodox actions. The example you used of the question asked by Odin and Dream’s response is such a perfect illustration of this. Dream is not going to let someone else cheat so easily by telling them what he is.

Or giving them a hint at how they should see him.

It’s not something reserved for enemies either. He has a moment with Lucienne where she’s upset and hurt by what she sees as her work being dismissed, and it could be argued Dream leans into what contrition is expected to look like. It’s the most overt display of ‘oops’ we’ve ever really seen in Dream, his solemn mannerisms put aside for the moment. Not because he’s lying, not that he isn’t regretful that he hurt her, but because he is willing to use her view of behaviour to ensure his response translates properly. He uses that perception to make his feelings visible, to put them in the context that is most accessible to her.

You could say he does similar with Johanna when she mentions Burgess, though I don’t think he alters his behaviour here, just lets her respond to it. Then when Hob accuses him of loneliness Dream does absolutely nothing to hide how nope he is about that. And while it might seem like it breaks my theory on vulnerability because of how extreme a reaction it was, what Hob said was actually an equally extreme insult.

And Dream’s reaction to it resulted in Hob running after him, displaying his own desperate vulnerability, panicked at losing the only constant in his immortal life. Perhaps at having the gift itself revoked.

And he's lured to it because the power in that interaction very much remains with Dream.

While Hob clearly spends time ruminating over that meeting, Dream is very interestingly nonchalant the one time we see him reminded of it, in the scene when Death asks if he’s going to see Hob. There's more to say on this but I will skip to the end of my thought. I bet that if Dream hadn’t been caught by Burgess he’d have turned up to their meeting 100 years later and gotten an apology. Or skipped that meeting just to prove his point.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Your analysis of Dream making a deal with Loki aligns with this. It seems to me that Dream used this idea in a very unorthodox way to get what he wanted, knowing Loki as he did, and predicting that he’d kidnap Daniel as a way to force Dream to waste his debt. Loki thinks he’s been given the tool to defeat Dream, thinks he’s the one acting in a way that’s unorthodox, but he’s completely misunderstood what victory even is for Dream. He doesn’t actually know what Dream wants. As Odin highlights, it’s unclear whether Dream is victim or manipulator, and this inability for anyone to really know what they are fighting and what his motives are makes Dream so difficult to attack.

In reverse Dream is astounding good at getting the measure of people and using their in character actions for his own ends without even manipulating their behaviour.

In canon he knows Rose will draw the arcana together, knows her search for her brother will lead him where he needs to go. And he's secure enough in his assessment of the threat she poses to let things continue. So in Baiting the Trap Dream uses everything he knows the Corinthian is to assure his victory, achieves it just by letting the Corinthian do his own unhinged thing. As you said, Dream knew right from the start that he was going to win.

The only way the Corinthian could have won is if he stopped being himself.

That’s how Dream fights his enemies – he tailors your defeat to be a road you will always walk. He finds your fatal flaw, your hamartia, and he makes defeat inevitable. Dream gets you to choose it. Again, bringing this back to my point about Orpheus, Dream seems to ultimately arrange this very same thing for himself. He uses his own fatal flaw, his own unavoidable prophesy, and engineers both his defeat and his rebirth.

The most effective trap is always the one you don’t see coming until it’s far too late. The one you only see at all because the victor has allowed you to know you’ve lost. But it’s also one you willingly walk into, even fight to walk into.

A large group striking a small group is not held in high esteem, but a small group striking a larger force is.

There are canon examples of this—such as Dream’s way of dealing with Rose, and his missing creations—but I’m going to focus on BTT so this doesn’t get too long. This point really explains why I’ve always presented the Corinthian’s desire to provoke an extreme reaction as a way to get Dream to show weakness. It’s also why Sweetening the Deal had to be what it is.

It’s essentially point 3 in sex form.

It isn’t strength to throw all your power around when you don’t need to. There’s no achievement, no satisfaction, to be found in defeating a far weaker opponent. It’s why Dream is so expectant of victory, why he takes it as just a matter of course, takes pleasure from it for sure but doesn’t act like it was difficult. He plays fair enough to still brag a little though, handicaps himself enough that it's satisfying, because Dream and the Corinthian are both approaching their relationship with exactly the right assessment of their enemy.

They use exactly the right tactic to match what they are up against.

In the show the Corinthian doesn’t engage at all until he has too. In my series he's finally is forced to engage, goaded to it, thinks he’s facing destruction anyway, and his method of brute force/going all in against Dream is exactly what he’s supposed to do to fight something so powerful. Dream’s relatively measured response—his tendency for non-engagement, his avoidance of a fight—is exactly what you’re supposed to do when fighting something weaker. The Corinthian is so incensed by it because Dream’s tactics prove inequality, prove what he’s being assessed as, and he’s trying to goad him into fighting/engaging with him as an equal.

Trying to find a weapon that will make Dream treat him as such.

The series spun out from a canon divergent idea of what would happen if Dream decided to engage in the way of ‘I will give you exactly what you want and you’ll still lose’. And that's so frustrating to the Corinthian because on the surface it looks like surrender. But it’s an enemy that surrenders at full strength—lays down all arms and smirks at you across the field—undermining the strength of the assault by rendering it meaningless, revoking the right to really test it for real because they won’t let you try and beat them. Won’t let you prove that you can.

So Dream, in a lot of ways, actually flips the dynamic by presenting what he fights back with as the weaker force and taking the 'prestige' out of the Corinthian's victories. It’s why the Corinthian likes to stage/arrange a bit of a fight. Imagine a struggle. And it’s why Dream likes to get him to ask for what he wants (ask when the Corinthian wants to just take) and is very strategic with when and how he indulges him in the staged/arranged fight.

Previously I mentioned vulnerability and this adds another layer to that. When you fight against something so much weaker than yourself with full force it looks like fear. It looks like vulnerability. Perhaps incompetence. Inefficiency. It’s insecure. It’s what you do when you’re not sure you can win, unwilling to risk a test of more even footing, overwhelming with numbers rather than skill. You punish a threat that way.

It lets an enemy know they’ve made you flinch.

(Though I must also add that if you wanted an enemy to think you were scared coming at them full force would be a good way to do it.)

Dream is very obviously goading the Corinthian into positions where it's easy to make this mistake while effortlessly holding back from doing it himself. He is always tempting him to leap at the chance for guaranteed victory—in the first fic, then in the binding etc—luring him with a display of vulnerability in the throne room. Getting him to try and strike when Dream seemed emotionally unstable. But also very powerful, luring with the prestige of what it would be for a smaller force to overtake his larger one, revealing just what a prize there is on offer.

The Corinthian has been learning the balance throughout the whole series. He is still going all in but not being stupid about it, not pulling his punches but definitely not wanting to give the impression of a lack of skill. Assessing what Dream is setting the board with and what level of strength is required from his own responses. I could have written the Corinthian doing the most nasty fucked up sexual stuff to Dream—he definitely indulges but for all my work is explicit I remember being like ‘is this too vanilla for them?’—but for me it would have overplayed the Corinthian’s hand. Overplayed determination and intellect into desperation. I didn’t want to take the power out of what I was writing.

Guess I’m using these battle tactics on my readers too haha because I definitely manipulate the view of unorthodox/orthodox behaviours. I will layer them in different ways, weight an encounter differently depending on how I'd like it to feel. As I said earlier…I’m a fan of subversion. And I will usually write something in exactly the opposite way of what’s expected.

The binding circle was the culmination of the first ‘arc’ of the series and it’s essentially a combination of all three of these different tactics. An unorthodox action, strength shown as weakness, Dream seemingly handing the Corinthian the means to beat him, allowing him the chance to attack him from a position of strength.

It evened the field yes. But it's also an example of when Dream presents himself as a 'weaker' force.

It made the Corinthian the larger army in a position to strike at a smaller one. The Corinthian realised that and didn’t attack with overwhelming force. He very much indulged but he was still strategic. He could have done some very nasty things to Dream in that binding circle (believe me I had a lot of imaginative ideas). It’s all about balance and flow for me, where my gut tells me the equilibrium needs to be. And there’s loads of character quirks on both sides that balance that.

(Especially since these little 'battles' are essentially a love language as much as a power struggle)

So the series is shifting the Corinthian to a more measured approach. Fun little skirmishes. Enjoying the game of it…the stages of the battle. In a way, Dream is very much teaching the Corinthian to play by the same principles I use to write, to play chess with him properly—testing his ability to do it—to come at him from an unorthodox position, to use his weakness (Dream allowed him the Binding Circle, then gave him further examples in CtK). To perhaps not be so stressed at not being engaged with (though this is shifting in the next arc because the Corinthian has definitely earned it), Dream not using full force for a reason. The battles able to have some equality because of that adjustment. 

Anyway. That’s how I write power (and that leads into how I write explicit fic too because, yeah, I feel like you might start to notice some battle tactics influencing all of my prose).

It’s why as much as Corintheus could call for some delightfully dark stuff, I will probably never write that unless the scenario is exactly right. (I have planned/considered what some of those scenarios might be). For me it can tip things too far. It’s the question of is this actually showing power or is it just disproportionate brutality? Is it a hammer instead of a scalpel? Also I agree with you about explicit fic—for all I’ve written so many of them! this is my first, and only, series of explicit works—and Dreamling was also one of the first ships I read for, though I am quite particular about it.

(It's also really really lovely to see someone share my love of Dream! So if ever you want someone to ramble excitedly with I am always ready to talk about how much I adore him!)

[mrpenguinpants]

YOU POSTED A THING! Ignore how long it took me to write this up, I've been,,, honestly? I've not been doing things, I've also not been doing this, but-

So the two plots stolen from Genshin is the Chenyu Vale story quest, and I've forgotten the second one, oops- I thiiiink it's kinda like the Mondstadt festival (the one where u have to pick that fuckin flower and it didn't matter abracafuckyou /lh)

LOOKING AT MY THINGS THERE WERE MORE okay hold on-

So the concept of the campaign is every character is a fallen god who's forgotten their divine life, and they regain a shred of their memory and now must find a way to ascend due to the fact that only Whole Mortals can reincarnate/be reborn, but if you die as a mortal-body divine-soul That's It (yadda yadda, non-dnd approved type shit; there are actually multiple ways they could go about it but I have no idea what they'll do beyond revive the sun) - One player didn't do that, but it's fine, he is instead POSESSED by a goddess, it's chill, and I adore his backstory and he's the only one with a backstory tightly interwoven with the world's lore and local area the campaign takes place in he is THE ONLY MAN WHO MATTERS T O M E (/j)

The Genshin Quests that I have plots for bc I stole them are as follows; Natzissenkreuz Ordo, Chenyu Vale, and the Windblume Festival. I won't get into it rn so you don't have to tag this ask as spoilers (unless... thinking emoji) BUT oooOOOOooOoOOo you wanna hear abt my dnd So Bad sdfsdfsdfg (I just wanna talk abt it SO BAD bc we're on a month hiatus bc one player's in the middle of bumfuck nowhere for a while)

I ALSO HAVE A ONESHOT PLANNED FOLLOWING/INSPIRED BY THIS YEAR'S SUMMER EVENT IN GENSHIN! I'm planning on running it at two tables (different groups) and potentially even a third when I get to sorting it out, ASK ME ABOUT IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE asdfgh

DND ASIDE- I recently found out one of my irls plays Genshin and I've been talking to him about it and honestly??? very nice, very fun (very demure /j) asdfgh I got into genshin to play w/ some other irls but now I am the last,,, genshin player standing,,,, and we're gonna help eachother farm when Natlan comes out bc I love running domains >:3 I'm a lil domain fiend

-Lucky

Ignore the fact that I'm responding backwards. But the pressure did work 👀 now I just need it to happen again because I blinked, and a month rolled around. I thought it was at most a week but no, my sense of time is fucked.

I'm so bad at names, and I barely do the story in any game I play unless I'm forced to (I missed an event in ZZZ because I wasn't on the third chapter yet ;-;). So I don't remember if I've done, seen, or even heard of the Chenyu Vale story, but I do know Mondstadt, at least.

I love it when my friends actually get invested enough with my imagination/ideas that they actually tie things into the ever-working narrative ;u; sometimes I feel like people don't do it because (they don't fucking care lol) they don't want to overstep on something that's made up by you. I understand, but man, it feels so uplifting when it happens. Keep that man alive. Are you planning on revealing parts of their divine life as the campaign goes on? I remember watching this youtube short about DND where they basically say that each player is given a blank sheet, and as they progress through the story they learn more things about their characters based on outside reactions.

I only know Windblume Festival but if it's a required quest/event quest, then I've most likely played the others. But yess, feel absolutely free to dump all your DND lore since I know you can't say it to your players unless you reveal too much. I'll tag spoilers in case you want to get more specific with the genshin quests because I do not remember any of them.

Here is your spotlight Lucky, lay it on me. What is this summer event-inspired oneshot?

I was talking to an old anon on another blog and it kinda makes me sad how the genshin community died out. Not in the sense that there's no fandom there, but that old players have either quit or lost interest. It makes me wonder if I even like genshin or if I write it because it's what I've been doing for so long.

[morikawamirai]

um hello! i'm really curious, is there like.. an introduction post for victimgram or official blog or anything? i want to learn more about victimgram; i just don't know where to start!

OH YEAH!!!! id (takamitakao) made an introductory-ish post in response to an ask a while ago, but i can try my best to kinda. explain it?? in my "guy who literally never shuts up ever" kind of fashion

basically, victimgram is KIND OF? what it says on the tin. a milgram au where MOST? of the victims swap with the prisoners. and I say most bc like… 1- there were some scenarios where we couldn't really picture their "confirmed" victim to actually manage to commit murder? (shidou, fuuta and yuno are like. the best examples of this) and 2- this au was admittedly… pre-triage, so we didn't have much to go for either LOL (it's the main reason aoi looks so different!!)

also yeah this means the main cast for milgram is dead so... oops

umm. i was putting a long desc for them but to summarize

warden killcheroy = fuuta's victim

mirai = the braids girl from haruka's mvs

coney = one of yuno's clients

rumerie = the pink haired guy from bring it on. most ppl know this dude

rei = rei

sayu = the middle school girl at the beginning of throw down. and also one of muu's friends in her mvs!!

aoi = mappi's boyfriend

hinako = kazui's wife

meowy = the cat in magic

eagle = mikoto's victim in MeMe

takao = the child kidnapper in harrow

we have a twitter too! which is where most of our posts go (which for the time being is mostly timeline convos until we actually have the undercover stuff ready!!!! (yes we have a victimgram undercover :muscle:) we used to have a bot too, but then m*sk killed twitter bot functionality </3

more than anything it's mainly an AU that me and some friends p much made for funsies?? but like. literally anyone showing interest makes us very very happy!! to the point you might have seen victimgram in passing in the live chats LOL. i could go for hours, but tumblr has a character limit on asks unfortunately </3

[endlessthedestiny]

for a long time now ive been thinking about the HS typing quirks and what would the quirks be for sandman characters, so im making this long ass post just to eliminate this from my system

disclaimer: english is not my first language (classic) and if you disagree or have a different headcanon pls share i want to hear (if some may seem ooc my deepest apologies)

Morpheus

Writes in italic.

Bold for emphasis. can also *rarely* use asterisks.

No emoticons, but probably used "*-*" in some conversation with Death.

Normal capitalization and punctuation. If mistype, corrects expressively (ex. "I meant afternoon, sorry.)

If comfortable, uses keyboard smash (ex. "Ahshsnsbj") to laugh.

Death

Doesn't capitalize the beginning of the phrase or utilizes final dot unless she wants to be taken seriously.

Sometimes use the emoticons ":)", ":(", "^_^" only with those she is intimate/trusts. Uses frequently with Delirium.

Emphasis is CAPITALIZED.

When mistypes corrects with *asterisk.

Avoids sending a wall of texts, preferring send small texts to form a big text.

Desire

Italic.

Not severe with capitalization or punctuation. only cares and uses it perfect if wants to be taken seriously.

If sending a big message (+3 lines) ends with a "~ <3", otherwise, only uses "~".

Syllables repetition only to annooooy, with ellipsis at the end. . .

Only emoticon used is ";)"

For emphasis, utilizes *asterisk*.

Also corrects mistypes with *asterisk, and sometimes adds a "oops" or similar at the end.

Despair

Capitalization In Every Word, but the punctuation is perfect.

Bold for the emphasis.

Uses ellipsis in the end of most phrases. . .

Also only send ellipsis if doesn't want to answer.

Rarely mistypes, but if do, doesn't correct.

Destiny

Again, italic.

Capitalization and punctuation perfect.

Doesn't mistype, and corrects the others faster than the person themselves.

Bold for emphasis.

But when angry and wants to be taken more seriously, uses exclamation marks at the end!

Sends empty messages if doesn't want to answer.

Answers in a unbelievable speed. Sometimes send multiple responses almost at once.

If wants to laugh (which RARELY occurs) sends "Ha, ha, haha."

Destruction

ALL CAPS. Inconsistent punctuation.

Double square brackets to [[EMPHASIS]].

Laughs with "OHOHOHO" and similar.

Sometimes uses ":DDD" by influence of Delirium.

When mistypes, very rarely corrects, and corrects expressively (ex. "I MEANT TOMORROW").

Delirium

wRiTES cApITaLiZiNg RAndOmly. punctuation.. it's complicated. she knows how to use question marks that's much I guess

She starts every phrase (when she remembers) with "@ - - >"

For emphasis, she alternates between ****ASTERISKS****, (((TRIPLE PARENTHESIS))), bold and FULL CAPS.

When more controlled, she capitalizes less (ex. "iTs Me."). But the more she is angry or ansious, the harder becomes to understand what she's saying (she replaces some letters with random symbols, keyboard smashes mid phrase etc).

She uses every type of emoticon possible. But her favorites apparently are ":D" and "@__@". Kaomojis are rarely used.

Sometimes Barnabas translates what she's saying. (Ex. Del: "@ - - > iM sOOOoOooy hApPPY!!!! ajahshshhshd". Barbanas: "She said I'm so happy.")

Laughs with keyboard smash, the longer the funnier.

When she mistypes, she doesn't correct. Also dislikes when someone excessively corrects her.

okay now some extras, I didn't think much about them so yea

Lucifer

When he mistypes, he corrects himself as fast as he can. But Destiny always corrects his mistypes first and faster which pisses him off. But Lucifer also corrects the people when they mistype to annoy or simply to correct.

Sometimes simply answers "A" or "K".

Also laughs with "Hah". Already laughed with ))) at some point.

Corinthian

He uses ";)" and "B)".

Begins the phrases with < less than and finishes with greater than >

Hob

When sending a long text, finishes with "~ H."

The one who said that Morpheus is the "*-*" emoticon, and insists in using it with him.

okay im tired, if anything I will edit this post or simply reblog with additions. also now im feeling guilty of tagging cori and hob but whatever

thank you if you read allat

[queerdraws]

i love your postcard artwork for the zolu playlist SO much!! the colours are so so good and i love the brushwork! i think my favourites are a tie between the one for chikai and the one for simple song <3 also, I was wondering if you could share what brushes you used + how long they took you! looking at your art makes me want to draw again after not doing it for so long

Thank you!! and wow i think this is the first time someone's asked me for my brushes, this is like a digital artist rite of passage!

Answers n screenshots n stuff under cut (I went a little to ham on this oops)

While we're talking settings I want to give a quick PSA to all digital artists:

CHECK UR ASPECT RATIO!!!: (MOST IMPORTANT SETTING BY FAR)

DO NOT DRAW WITH THIS ALL MESSED UP, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY. It's probably good to check this after every system update (I don't, but, you know...). Windows likes to mess w your shit when it updates.

If you have a really tiny tablet you might need to trace outside a bottle lid or something.

Okay now on to the meat of the post

-- Brush Stuff --

I use Clip Studio Paint. For my playlist drawings I think I only used these brushes (these are my main 3 in general) (p.s. they're all default brushes! but i've adjusted the settings):

1) Gouache This is most of what i used for the postcards. I nuked Color Stretch because i hate it (it blends colors together as you're painting, like painting over wet paint. I prefer things to look more crisp)

2) Real G-Pen Used this as little as possible, to keep the painterly effect. My preferred fine-detail pen, has a nice crunch to it. I've fine-tuned my setting further in the thickness dynamics / brush size dynamics settings because I mostly use this brush for linework and wanted it to handle really, really naturally and precisely

The random box is checked by default, probably to make this brush feel more like handling a real inkdip pen (I don't like that)

3) Mapping Pen Least used. I generally keep this brush at the 50-70px range. It's unpleasant to use for detail work (the taper is really fiddly at my tablet pressure settings) but good at filling in large areas very opaque very quickly, with a crisp edge (Also, doesn't lag as much as the gouache brush at large-ish sizes). Has enough wiggle room that it can be used to approximately fill tighter spaces at large brush sizes. Used for when I needed to quickly color over an area that wasn't working or quickly fill in background color that didn't need paintbrush texture. Did not realized the stabilization was set to 10 until just now. I usually turn that waaay down to prevent lag (my laptop isn't very old but it's a sensitive beast)

Other stuff that'll help:

General pen pressure: (under File -> Pen Pressure Settings)

tweaking how CSPaint handled my pen pressure helped a lot with making lineart look more natural. It's worth messing around with this and trying out different settings for a while to see how they feel.

-- How Long it Takes 2 Draw --

I don't really keep track of how long art takes me from start to finish, and making the playlist drawings was kinda nonlinear 😅 sorry!

-> I started out sketching really quick composition and color ideas as the songs were playing, limiting myself to just the duration of each song (so like, 5 minutes for this part) -> i did that again at least 2 more times per song -> after that, idk. I would work on one pic then get stuck and move to another. Some I could hammer out in like... 5 hours? Some took me upwards of 20 (30?) hours for no real reason (I have "will graham clock" days, where I'll try to draw a face over and over and it'll look really strange, like will graham's clock drawing every time) (this seems to be either a vitamin deficiency or a brainfog inflammation type thing 4 me 😵‍)

I'll use ur two favorites as specific examples: -> Chikai was one that went pretty quickly (with the exception of their arms and the clothing folds there giving me trouble). Probably took 4-6 hours? -> Simple Song had a couple different versions, partially because I initially had the cards all laid out landscape-style, and I decided I actually wanted them all portrait-style & repainted it after it was already done. That aside, the colors /atmosphere on that one gave me trouble and the general composition / perspective had a lot of tweaks (I was trying to figure out if I wanted it to be a kinda flat stylistic perspective or if I wanted it to make more literal sense, trying to figure out what to do with luffy, trying to make him not look Too baby boy sweetie pie). Probably took 7-10 hours...?

In-progress landscape versions: (varying levels of in-progress)

Misc in-progress of Chikai and Simple Song:

Simple song looks kinda sequential like this lmao. Luffy looks like he's A-posing and floating away to the boat and then sitting down pleasantly in it. Wonderful. --

Anway -- hope any of that was helpful!

[nexo-nex]

Been thinking about the EAH x Selfridges merch Mattel did around 2013... It's certainly something that existed. I never see people bring them up on here, so why not write a long post about it? A little thread below about this rather obscure collaboration:

The EAH x Selfridges was a rather limited time edition designer collaboration that was made for the Frieze Art Fair, which was held in London on October 15th 2013. They created a total of 8 exclusive items: 3 shirts, 4 bags and 1 doll.

Let's take a look at the shirts first. They made only 3 white shirts with Raven, Apple and the main core cast girls using watercolor paintings made by Princess Julia. They costed $30 each. More info about this can be found on Princess Julia's Blogspot.

(Apple and Maddie being mishmashed together on that 3rd shirt is kinda cursed ngl)

There were also carrier bags with these same paintings that were given away around the time of the event.

There was also these bags. According to the little info available about it, they costed around $250 each, and were made by four different designers in the Selfridges team: Claire Barrow, Ashley Williams, Ryan Lo and Bobby Abley, which were all inspired by EAH characters:

The first one with the racoon bag was created by designer Ashley Williams inspired by... Apple White? This is what Williams said about the design choice:

"I was inspired by Apple White who is the daughter of Snow White," said Williams. "I thought it would be cute for her to have a woodland creature as her pet, so the handbag I've designed is in the shape of a raccoon as I thought its stripy tail would be cool in multicolour." Source: Vogue

The shattered mirror looking one is inspired by Raven Queen and was created by Claire Barrow, whom quoted:

"I've been inspired by the daughter of The Evil Queen in Snow White. I wanted to do something with a smashed mirror to show rebellion against her past and against the traditional norms of beauty."  Source: Vogue

We also got these three tea bags designed by Ryan Lo and who were inspired by Madeline Hatter (mostly based on her color pallete)

And last we have this bear-bag designed by Bobby Abley, and which it was inspired by Blondie Lockes.

(Personal opinion: I think it was a rather weird design choice to make this bag's colors red and white. Aside from the bear theme going on, It doesn't bear much resemblance to Blondie's design, I think it would have looked better if they gave it a Blue/Yellow scheme to it, but this is just my opinion lmao)

And last but not least, we also got this ""Blondie Lockes"" exclusive doll (let's be real that's not Blondie that's an Apple doll ffs) which was also made by Bobby Abley. According to the very first pic in the thread, the doll was sold for $120 (apparently).

(Also I've never seen anyone with this doll in their collection, it's so obscure that not even pictures of her doll box are available online, very interesting indeed).

Like I said before, there is not much information about this collaboration online, and I could not find any pictures or posts of people owning these merch, aside from the ones that were took in the aforementioned Frieze Art Fair, like the ones below:

Source: Wonderland Magazine

More pictures from the art fair, including the last two can be found on this link. (I didn't want to include all photos of the event cause it'll make the post even more longer than it already is oops)

Anyways! I think this was a really interesting collaboration, and I wanted more EAH fans to know about it, cause again I feel that it's not really brought up much (and I can see why, there's not much info about it online) I hope this thread was worth the read :)

[azelle-intermisson]

Echo vn review

i have finally finished echo as my second ever visual novel after adastra. i really loved this vn and it was a super interesting read. for anyone who hasn't read it if a furry horror vn with very human feeling characters peaks your interest then i would 100% recommend echo its a really good story with some really strong characters that i enjoyed thoroughly. in this review im gonna be going through all the main cast and some of the side cast so its gonna be a kinda long post where i just gush about parts of each route i really liked but there will be titles before each section if you want to see what i have to say about one character in particular for whatever reason.

this review is all my opinion and is not going to be exhaustive so i will end up missing some things (mainly because i did not take notes while reading and forgot a lot oops). so if there is something i missed you wanna hear my opinion on ask :). also this is my first time writing something like this so lmk if there are things i can do better if i end up doing this again.

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE GAME AFTER THE READ MORE

before i fully dive into the review i wanna go over some of the external factors that have influenced how i view this vn. during flynn's route i was the most sick ive ever been in my whole life and im pretty sure i missed out on some vital details because of the brain fog during that sickness. i am not well versed at all in vns the only other vn i have played is adastra, however i am familiar with romance tropes so even though i feel like i missed out on some cool moments simply because i haven't played many vns i did not miss out entirely. also about halfway through my playthrough i learned that there is kinda an order you are supposed to read the routes in which is:  Carl > Leo > TJ > Flynn > Jenna, i ended up reading it in this order: TJ > Leo > Flynn > Jenna > Carl. i don't really know how much this ended up changing how i view the story but thats how i did it. i also made chase gay i don't really know what that ended up affecting since i played all the routes as gay chase and whenever i got something i considered a "bad ending" i would reset to my last decision and do something different. the last thing that might have some sway on how i feel is how sweet the community has been to me so far, i don't usually get myself involved with a community before i finish something but this time was different since i was making fan art and everyone was super nice <3

Visuals/Music

I really loved the music and artwork for this game. i feel like the music did such a good job of creating an atmosphere whether it was chilling in the diner with jenna and tj or getting kidnapped by brian it always did an amazing job at really putting me in the shoes of the characters. i adored all of the fully rendered drawings throughout the game i love the colors i love everything about it. of all of them i think the one below is my favorite i just love how serene it looks.

this was my favorite track i feel like it does such a good job of capturing the tone of the whole game so well or the one that plays whenever they are just chilling idk what its called and i can't find it for the life of me it is driving me crazy.

Misc

there are a few things i couldn't quite fit into any of the next sections so i wanted to put them here. i really loved every character in this game i feel like the reason why i loved them all was because of how human they felt. whenever someone did something i didn't agree with i always defaulted to sympathizing with them because of how human they felt to me. also after writing this i have realized my ranking of each of the routes is just how much leo is involved with each of them i guess i just really love the guy.

Prologue

this part of the game is a little less fresh in my mind since i only read through it once on my first playthrough but from what i remember it did a really good job of establishing the setting and getting me interested in the lore of these characters. the first river scene was such an amazing moment i love how the route split happens in a way that makes you choose between emotionally comforting someone or going after who you want to romance. my only issue with it was that i did not realize that this was a route split in my first playthrough and ended up picking tj since he seemed the most affected by flynn and i was really worried about him even though the character i really wanted to romance was leo. even though i did not realize it was a game with so many diverging paths at first i still think the prologue was really good and got me very invested in the lore of echo.

MAIN CAST

Chase

i walked into this game not really expecting to care for chase too much since i kinda didn't like marco in adastra and i was expecting him to be more of the same type of guy but i was pleasantly surprised. i hate it so much when player inserts are just blank slates so im very glad that chase is an actual character who interacts with the world and people around him. he never had any moments where i was frustrated with him and wished he had said something different(aside from the ending of tj's route) and for the most part he reacted the way i think i would in his situation so i really liked him in all of the routes.

TJ

in retrospect i really like tj's route for how subversive it is as a romance with tj not reciprocating chases feelings and how nasty chase's jealousy felt. while playing it i kept waiting for leo to show up and whenever chase would try and romantically pursue him i would get kinda sad because i wanted to hangout with big wolf man. however i feel like this gave me a really interesting perspective on this route since before chase even kissed tj i never expected them to actually get together since it didn't feel like tj was all that interesting to me. this made chase's jealousy over julian feel even more scary than it already was and that final confrontation at the lake with flynn horrifying. i loved how the horror aspects where handled in this route and how subtle a lot of it was in comparison to other routes. chase drowning flynn and the description of it is one of the most haunting things from this game for me. overall i thought tj's route was pretty good even if i spent the whole thing wanting to hangout with leo because i was dumb and didn't know i had gotten to the route split. its in 4th place in order of my favorite routes in this game.

Leo

leo's route is my favorite i love him so much. i love how you get the bad ending of his route for trying to stay with him. his route was also my first time seeing the hysteria in full swing so that was a crazy twist. every single scene with brian made me feel so anxious i never really knew what to expect from him. i loved how his unhealthy obsession with chase was treated with the weight that it really deserved. the way he reacts to kudzu and chase's relationship not only feels like a natural progression of his character but also adds so much to the horror of his route since his jealousy often ends up causing serious harm. it was so sad to see him unravel and act the way he does during the hysteria because i really wanted to see him be happy and somehow move on from chase. the final scene of the "good" ending gave me what i wanted in the most evil way possible. i had wanted him to move on so bad that i had forgotten how brutal moving on can actually be. leo ends up losing the person he is closest to in the worst way possible i say this with love though it made me cry real hard. and the implication that he is planning on staying in echo is too just heartbreaking. i could go on forever about all the things i love about leo's character but i don't want this section to be too long so i will end it here and say leo is my favorite of the main cast and he has my favorite route of this whole game.

Flynn

i feel super conflicted on flynn's route, it does so many things so well but the ending left me feeling weird. i wanna talk about the things i liked first, which is most of the route. aside from leo he was the character i was most interested from the prologue mainly because i could tell that he wasn't just going to be a one-note mean guy and i thought he had a ton of potential for a really interesting story and i was right . i really enjoyed how his mean demeanor was written the times when he decided to be nice never felt out of character, like the way he helps carl with his interview and really wants his friend to do well and when things don't turn out well he still supports carl but does it in such a flynn way i just loved it so much. flynn and chase's relationship during this route stressed me out the most out of all of the routes mainly because of how they hid it from leo i really wanted chase to just talk to leo about everything but i can understand why he was avoiding it so much. i really loved the reveal of chase killing sydney and how flynn reacts to it. the way everything in that scene plays out was just amazing i can't be mad at either side of the it since i can understand why jenna and leo don't want to believe that their childhood friend killed someone but i can also understand flynn's immediate reaction to this and wanting to lash out at chase. the sydney flashback really got to me everything about it felt so real to me and flynn trying to take a big brother role for sydney and try and protect him from seeing the corpse anymore was so heartbreaking. my favorite part of this route was when you get the perspective of flynn rather than chase it was not something i was expecting in the slightest and i was so happy to be able to see some of his thought process when he does stuff. i really liked the hysteria portion of his route but im a little iffy on the ending. on one hand i like it for the story the fact that flynn dies kinda makes sense to me i just really wished he had lived and we had gotten to see a healed flynn who now knows the truth of what happened fully, even though i know this vn doesn't like giving out easy solutions. overall flynn's route is really good i just wish it had ended differently i would put it at 3rd place in my ranking of the routes in this game.

Jenna

i almost adore jenna's route as much as leo's. i really like her personality and aside from leo she is my favorite character. learning that she likes manga and watching anime with her was such a fun little moment that i thought was cute. it really surprised me when carl went missing in this route i was kinda expecting his birthday to play out the same in every route but i this was a really good plotline. i liked that this route forced jenna and flynn to interact more since the tension they have is always so fun to read. i loved the side characters in this route micha was my favorite out of all of them(even though i think jeremy is really cute). i want to give micha his own section in this review but to put it shortly his relationship with leo made me super happy. i really liked the tension between jenna and leo it was such a good conflict that i enjoyed reading. the whole fake cheating prank was such a gut wrenching scene that i was honestly having a hard time getting through. i liked the section where they are kidnapped by brian more in this route than in leo's mainly because brian getting rocked by the ghost thing was really satisfying. the implication that carl was tortured the same way chase was for multiple days is unfathomable to me. leo and chase being sewn together made me feel sick because anything remotely body horror related gets me and micha having to sever that tie was really cool foreshadowing for leo and micha's whole thing. the whole van section was also really incredible and seeing leo start to move on from chase warmed my heart in an otherwise very intense route. i liked heather she is such an intresting character to me since i really want to sympathize with her because its clear she has a lot of unresolved trauma but she was also an asshole to jenna and tried to flood all of echo. i really loved her trying to flood the town it is such a crazy plot point but i still really loved it and jenna having to put aside how shitty heather was to her to talk her down was a really good moment. the dinner scene after everything also felt very satisfying and it was good to see micha be apart of the group for a bit his interactions with everyone made me smile. i really liked jenna's route all around it is my 2nd favorite and was a super fun read.

Carl

i really liked carl's route i relate to a lot of his struggles and even though there where less scenes that scared me it was still really good. this was the last route i played so i was feeling kinda melancholic while reading since echo had become my nightly routine for about 3 weeks and i was really loving the characters and story. i liked how much lighter(in comparison to the other routes) of a tone carl's route took staying over at his big haunted mansion is such a silly concept on paper but it ends up playing out super well. i thought raven was a silly guy even if he didn't really add or remove much from this route and he helped keep jenna somewhat in check so that was nice. the escape room stuff was so interesting to go through. i found myself feeling scared that they may not actually make it out or they would end up killing each other. my favorite scene from this route was the hanging tree stuff. i had such a vivd picture of everything happening and it was really hard to watch jenna and carl to do things that i know they wouldn't. this route also had a ton of echo lore so i kinda wish i had played it first since i feel like i missed out in other route because i was trying to piece together things that are revealed in carl's route. i really liked the james hendricks and john begay stuff . even though carl's route is my 5th favorite by no means do i think it's bad.

Side Characters

i'm not going to only talk about the ones that really stood out to me and in a much shorter way than the main cast (other than micha)

Micha

micha is my favorite of the whole side cast and i really adored him and leo's relationship that i interpreted as romantic during the last bit of jenna's route. at first i didn't really like him and thought he was kinda an asshole. as the plot kept going i kept getting more and more attached to him since he was still an asshole but he was working with the main group. normally i don't like characters like him but i feel like he was written in such a realistic way that i found it hard to stay mad at him. i really loved him and leo's relationship their connection felt so real and i think they could be soooooo good for each other. the van scene was so incredible the way the player and chase have to fill in the blanks as leo and micha talk about what happened between the two of them really immersed me in the story .leo feeling guilt over never reaching out to micha after he was disowned was such an interesting thing i never really expected leo to want to help someone who was a bully to his friends but i still feel like it makes sense for leo to feel this way since he just wants to protect people. i think its really sweet that leo ends up leaning on micha more after the van scene. also the scene in the dinner at the end of jenna was really sweet i loved seeing micha being added to their group dynamic and i wish i got even more. in conclusion leo and micha should kiss and live happily ever after <3.

Brian and Clint

i don't have a lot to say about these guys other than the fact that they are horrifying antagonists. before i saw brian fight i was under the assumption that if leo is present then we are probably safe but brian ends up breaking that sense of safety in such a horrifying way. i like that even though clint isn't physically strong the fact that he has the strongest character following his orders made him so intimidating

Jeremy

i wanna give him a big kiss even tho he is mean

Janice

i really liked janice in tj's route. i love the fact that we never get a clear answer for why she needed chase and tj to be digging holes. i almost want to trust that she isn't killing people but she clearly has a few screws loose.

Closing Thoughts

i really loved this furry visual novel and its really human feeling characters. i had way more to say about it than i thought and the more i write the more i love the story and the more i want to say but this is already such a long post. i liked adastra more but i don't really feel like it is a fair comparison because if i hadn't played adastra this account would not exist and i prob would not be drawing at all but maybe if i had played echo first it would have done that to me since it still is really good. this was super fun to write even tho i know some of it might not make any sense lol because this is just kinda stream of conscious. i might end up doing this with other things i read/watch since it also gives me an actual reason to take notes when i read/watch things. also i wanna say thank you to the community on here i haven't been involved with fandom spaces for a really long time and im still not very involved with this one but you guys have been super nice and i wanna continue making art and talking about this game :)

[bonesandthebees]

SHAKES UR HAND PRISMO !!!

together we can convince the bee tumblr community to become as obsessed with it as us

ALSO DAMNNN DEDICATED /POS

on a side note-

hold up

on a side side note: i get so distracted in these asks bee omfg im so sorry, i feel like my high energy can get too much sometimes KFDSJKDF pls let me know if u need me to turn it down a notch, i just get excited whenever i talk about fics soo aksdfjkSKJDF

anyways on the original side note: talking about the bee tumblr community just made me think about it, it really does feel like a sort of family <3 i love seeing all the random updates from the different anons here and getting to connect to you and to each other, it feels much more wholesome and secure than places like twt LMFAOO but idk it's just nice <3

i had tumblr for awhile but i never used it until i started reading the asks here, and it took me awhile to join in bc i felt intimidated skfdkjsd which is ironic bc yknow i could always go anon? but idk it just felt like everyone had their groove going and i didn't want to intrude, but i joined and i never felt that way

anyways oops this got long (as it always does kjfsdkj), but i just wanted to say that i appreciate you bee <3 for letting us anons n non anons ramble in ur ask box and analyze ur fics and/or just straight up scream noncoherent things

this has been a bright spot in my life lately and it's really special to me <333 and ur genuinely like . one of the kindest authors i've met, but you also have such a good sense of your boundaries n stuff, i admire you really. ur super cool

and also to all the other sillies in bee's asks, i appreciate u guys too <3 ur all super cool people, and i love hearing what you have to say :)) it's genuinely really nice and comforting to be a part of this community <33

lol no you're fine icy!! while it can be a Lot it always makes me laugh whenever I post a chapter of something that has sandduo in it and my inbox just fills with you screaming. it makes me so happy to know how excited my fics make you and the others though so :D

the thing you said about the tumblr community we have here is so sweet though and it's more right than I think even I realized initially. it's really nice when I see regular askers/anons pop up in my inbox and get to catch up on tiny parts of your lives and then in turn you guys talk to each other—it's just so sweet y'know? the thing I really love about having such an active inbox especially with asks about my fics is that it's a lot easier for me to respond to tumblr asks than ao3 comments. I rarely reply to ao3 comments because it's really just overwhelming and then I'm like "well if I respond to one person I feel bad about not responding to everyone else" but sometimes I just don't know what to say or there's just too many comments y'know? I LOVE my ao3 comments they mean so much to me but it's really nice to have people come into my inbox here to tell me their thoughts on my chapters bc it gives me a chance to reply with my own thoughts in a way that feels a lot more like a discussion I guess

so yeah. thank you guys for coming into my inbox to give me your thoughts it seriously makes me so happy and is definitely part of the reason why I have so much motivation to post so much.

also I'm really glad you decided to start popping in here one day icy you're very fun to have around :)

one thing I've always been very aware of since getting 'big' in this fandom is how to maintain things like boundaries while still connecting with the community and my readers specifically. because I wanna talk to you guys and I love interacting with you and all that, but also sometimes people in fandom who get 'big' can be a bit strange to others or get way too involved with discourse and just stir the pot and to each their own do fandom how you want but I don't wanna do that y'know. I'm here to have a good time and I want this little community we've built to also just be a nice, welcoming place for everyone

thank you for this icy it really made me smile to read <3

[dagursb1tch]

also another random thought i had about tnr while i was watching the finale episode. i wondered how different it would be if the humans and the dragons actually decided to keep living together instead of it basically having the same outcome as in the 3rd movie, where they separated and took on their own separate lives? ( this post became long asf so im just gonna put it under a cut oop, & it also contains spoilers for tnr s8!! )

lemme explain — when httyd 3 came out, i remember that there were (and still are) a lot of disagreements with its ending since the whole message of the franchise seemed to be about two different species living in harmony and working together especially after their centuries-long history of being enemies, and a lot of fans voiced that the ending of the 3rd movie kind of betrayed that message. of course, the franchise's argument was that it wasn't safe for the dragons and the humans to be together because there will always be greedy humans out there to harm the dragons — in the context of the show, sledkin's and buzzsaw's "arcs" (if you can even call them that) were sort of modern reflections of that danger that could come to the dragons with their existence being public knowledge. of course, we can see this throughout the original franchise as well, from viggo and ryker to drago and grimmel and their respective allies and armies.

basically what i'm trying to get at here is if this series decided to take an alternate route and have the dragons and the humans live in harmony together instead of separating (again), would that have been a chance to "undo" the 3rd movie's "mistakes"? or was it better for the series to go the more "traditional" route and take after the 3rd movie, expressing that even after over 1000 years of humans and dragons living apart, it's simply not safe for the humans and dragons to live together because of the loss of the secrets of the dragons, for the world not knowing about them and in turn not knowing how to take care of them and protect them from the evil of some humans? (of course, i'm putting everything in quotes here because i am attempting to describe everything from a non-objective standpoint, including opinions about the 3rd movie in particular which i am still grappling to come to any conclusions with for myself.)

my views retain a considerable separation between the original franchise and this show, mostly because, in this series in particular, we have. ahem. capitalism. particularly the really nasty late stage "i'm gonna control every aspect of your life" capitalism. as many of us may know, many capitalists will stop at nothing to procure their earnings, even if it means exploiting living beings for their profits and developments. sledkin's whole "arc" was a demonstration of this, her desire for fame and money and profit leading to an eventual disregard for the well-being of the subjects she was studying — and eventually using — to get her fame and her profit. her lack of ethics in her practice shows just how much she was influenced by this system, and in turn caused her to develop a disregard for the well-being of the dragons, the subjects of her study (besides the dragonsite ofc). to me, it kind of demonstrated how these systems make the ethics within scientific research very difficult. like sledkin, if you only care about the money, it's likely that you probably don't care about the safety and well-being of the subjects you're studying. which in a sense, is also a reflection of the villains of the original franchise — they wanted something so badly that they didn't care who they hurt in order to get it.

anyways i didn't mean for this to turn into a whole fucking essay, just a post for me to explore my thoughts about this show now that it's finally ended. and idk to those who bothered to watch this last season what are y'all's thoughts??? lol

[omniscientwreck]

Tell me about your special little guy and his philosophy :3

Thank you so much for asking I've literally been thinking about this all day! The special little guy in question is Xaryl and he's a Knowledge Domain cleric I play in a game with some mutuals (oops!all party this probably isn't gonna contain serious spoilers for Xaryl but it isn't all stuff that he's fully laid out in campaign so i'm putting it under a cut. Do with that what you will) (sorry there's a lot, I created my own hyperfixation when I created Xaryl and I'm incapable of speaking about him briefly)

So this question is in regards to the ideas expressed in this post about the Luxon and the part about the Luxon that always stood out to me is the questions of Identity and how does one Know themself.

So Xaryl is a reader and a philosopher. He was isolated from his family as a teenager and taken away from most peer interaction his age to go assume a role in the Den he didn't want or ask for. His anamnesis didn't go correctly and his memories of his previous life are fragmented and have plagued him his entire life. He's hidden himself away and acted purely out of self preservation for decades, as long as he'd been with the dens.

So Xaryl's thoughts are essentially this: we cannot know ourselves devoid of each other. People (humanoids) are social creatures, we form groups and alliances and forge collective identities on various scopes (for example, being a Communist, being a nurse, being a particular person's brother, being a part of a certain family) and those add to, and inform our identites.

Further, we have different identites to and around different people. Then the question becomes something more like: which version of me is real? is every version of me real? do I have one identity or do I have many? does my identity exist as mine or is it a way for others to interpret me?

So with the Luxon, it created the primordials and then they were lost to the darkness as they warred within themselves, and so it scattered itself, hoping that eventually life would be refined and those that were bound to its light would live and live again and teach it about itself. It went dormant after that, it doesn't talk, so Luxon worshippers are left to determine "who am I and why am I?" for a being that hasn't really had any contact with it's followers.

So like, through all of this, lonely lost little Xaryl determines, in the middle of 80 years of isolating himself for his safety, that our purpose, and the Luxon's in turn, is to be known and to know. He works his way around to community and love as the meanings of life, and things to aspire to (despite not having those things for much of his life) so the way he prays turns into becoming the Luxon's friend. For decades instead of like "praying" he told the Luxon stories about his life, he tried to send it sensations of flavour or the smell of rain on cobblestone, or the sound and feeling of music. And he fought with the Luxon in his mind and said things he regretted in anger. He formed this totally one sided (until very recently but that's game canon) friendship and relationship and identity based entirely on something that, if he didn't literally get clerical powers from it, he might think existed only in his mind. So what does that make him? Xaryl, friend of the Luxon? Does that make it his friend in return? Is the true answer to "Who am I?" contained in the viewpoint of a single person? Is it responsible for the things its followers have done in its absence and silence? Is that its identity? What about the other side of the world, where surely there must be beacons? Do the people there think the same things? Could the same being's beacons elicit two completely different and opposed schools of worship? Much to consider.

Sorry this isn't as coherent as I'd like it to be and also sorry it's so long but thaaaaaaank you for asking I had a very tiring work day and it's nice to just talk about my oc's :3