#weirdly i've been there and it's a really pretty bit of the country

[stressfulsloth]

A thing most people probably know already, but this is Lullington church, the real-life church that the Smallest Church in Susssex (or Saint-Saens) is written about. There's been a church there since the 12th century, and this version of it was built from the burnt out ruins of its predecessor following a fire in the 1400s. It's near the Seven Sisters cliffs which are referenced in the song and in the game, although in game they are changed to become les Sept Soeurs- the seven Dolorian stave churches on the coast.

[katiascraft]

Hi!! I've been obsess with your works

Now, hear me out because your poll stroke an idea in me 👀👀

How about: Argentine!Reader x Oscar Piastri, and starts teaching him spanish so he can understand Franco's Interviews

Thank you!!

Ooooh yes yes yes!!! Here it is and I hope you like it 💌 thank you for your requests and support! I really appreciate it mwak mwak 😙 (sorry it’s a bit late but better late than never!)

——————————————————————————————

“Indirectas Directas” | OP81

Part 1 -> “Made in Argentina: The Series” (Oscar’s Version)

Parings: Oscar Piastri x Argentine!Reader.

Summary: you and Oscar have known each other since your best friend Franco Colapinto started competing in F3. You always had a crush on the Australian pilot. You have been friends for a while now but the friendship got closer since Franco got in F1 and you can see each other every race weekend. The butterflies starts for both of you. Do you really just wanna be friends? You teaching him “piropos” from your country may have subliminal messages.

Now playing: “IMÁN (Two of Us)” by Maria Becerra.

Word count: +1.2k.

Warnings: a few curse words. Pure fluff. Not a native English speaker so there could be (so many) errors. Not proofread.

Author’s note: alrightyyyyy I hope this is good! And I really recommend Maria! I love herrrr my queen!! I did my best with the piropos jajaja Don’t forget to like or reblog! And follow me so we can be friends :3 (and drink mate together!)

MASTERLIST

“Hola, todo bien?” Oscar said carefully and weirdly remembering what you taught him a few seconds ago. You nodded proud of his Spanish.

“Todo bien, ¿qué contas?” You said in your Argentine accent making him open his eyes wildly panicking. He loved your voice in Spanish; it was slightly higher pitched than in English. In English you have a deeper voice for some reason. Of course he asked about it and you explained it may be because of the pronunciation of the words. It's really so different from one language to the other.

“What the hell did you ask?” He said giggling a little, making you laugh too.

“I asked you what’s up” you explained and wrote down that phrase in the little notebook he brought with a pen. All mc claren branded.

The friendship between you two has become closer with each race. You were good friends before but not that close. It was something either of you couldn’t explain. Like your bodies were driven directly to one another unconsciously. You didn’t want to think too much about it. You didn’t want to overthink it.

His face was like ‘oh yeah right it makes sense’. He smiled at your handwriting so rounded and legible. Unlike his. His was a little messy.

“Yo estoy carrera hoy” he tried to answer it without asking how to. You laughed and he blushed. “This is embarrassing, it's really hard to connect the words” he said shyly and you found it so cute.

“It was close though don’t feel bad. Spanish it’s super complicated for non-Latin language speakers. We have like 20 tenses and shit. It’s a mess” you explained to cheer him up. He loved the fact you knew so much about languages because you also knew how to talk Portuguese and Italian pretty perfectly in his opinion. He has heard you even trying to speak French with Pierre last weekend. He was impressed.

“Yeah I get it now” he said grinning. “Must be nice to flirt in Spanish like I don’t know like you automatically sound sexier and more interesting” he said, making you laugh. “No really like I heard Carlos talking to an interviewer the other day and I think I am in love actually” he said, making you laugh even more. He loved making you laugh. Your laugh was like a drug to him. You looked way too cute doing so.

“Well I don’t know actually but in Argentina we have some top level flirting like really great phrases. Let me teach you some. Wait I’ll look for some on google so I can help myself remember” you said excited about it because you knew it was gonna be bizarre and funny at best.

“Phrases? Like roses are red and that kind of stuff?” He asked curiously and you nodded looking at your phone.

He couldn’t help but get distracted by the way you looked. Like every other race weekend you were wearing one of the million Argentina tees you have in your wardrobe. Your skin was glowing because of the sunscreen making your freckles stand out even more. You dyed your hair blond a few weeks ago and it looked incredible on you. He wouldn’t have expected that change but it looked so good on you. Anyway, he was convinced that anything you do to your hair will always look good always. Because you were beautiful. And he thought that was dangerous. You’re supposed to be friends right? And he knows Franco will kill him if he finds out he likes you. But he couldn’t help it. You were so interesting to him. You went everywhere with your mate and sang a lot of football songs he didn’t understand but you looked so happy singing them with Franco. Like he was captivated by your foreign beauty. So different from Australia or Europe or even the United States. You were loud and always laughing. Your bright smile always makes everyone so happy. All of the boys loved you. You were the life of every party. And you also knew so much about formula 1 it was impressive. Then you told him you were studying for an engineering degree and everything made sense. You loved the sport. And you were the proud friend. He loved that you were so passionate about everything. Even now that you have this teacher and student dynamic, you take it so seriously. He loved it. And he liked it even more because he knew that you were a teacher back in your country. And he could see how much you love to teach and you were actually really good at it.

“Alright I found the first one!” You said already laughing. “Okay ready?” He nodded, smiling, waiting for your magic voice to pronounce the weirdest shit but sound amazing.

“Mi amor, quien fuera cemento para sostener ese monumento” you said and started laughing because his face was a poem.

“What the hell?” He said laughing as well. “What does it mean? It really sounded terrible, " he said dramatically.

“It means: my love, who could be cement to hold that monument” he bursted out laughing.

“What? I don’t know if it’s geniuous or rude to be honest” he said sincerely making you laugh.

“Oh my god that was so cringe I love it” you said looking for another one.

“Don’t even try to make me pronounce that last one please” he warned you funny. You denied with your head.

“Okay I found another one listen: tu con tantas curvas y yo sin frenos. Try to translate it” you said because there were words you already taught him.

“Oh my god alright. Repeat it please?” You repeated it and he thought for a few seconds.

“Uh tu curvas y yo frenos?” He said confused. You giggled a little but applauded proudly.

“Yes! You're getting better Oscky” you said sweetly. “It was: you with so many corners and I have no brakes” you said, smiling funny.

“Oh like the curves of the body right?” You nodded at his questions. “Oh alright I get it! So is like double meaning”

“Exactly” you answered. “Alright last one: besar es el lenguaje del amor, te importaría comenzar una conversación conmigo?” You said blushing. Your subconscious chose this one without leaving you a warning.

“You said something with kiss right?” He asked and you nodded. He blushed too. You were like two teenagers blushing and giggling.

“I said: kissing it’s the language of love. Would you mind starting a conversation?” You explained.

“You wanna kiss me?” His words slipped through his lips.

“Maybe I do” your words slipped through your lips.

You were both so red. An awkward silence made its presence.

“Oscar, sorry to interrupt but Zac is calling us both. Hey y/n, you good darling?” Lando appeared out of nowhere so save yourselves from the worst silence situation you’ve ever been into. Lando hugged you kissing your cheek and you smiled at him. Oscar took his things ready to go.

“All good Land. Hope you have a good reunion. See you after the practices!” You said waving to him. And Oscar gave you a cheeky smile.

Holy shit you’re fucked.

[twopoppies]

Hi Gina!! First of all, I wanted to thank you and Daisie and everyone else here for the amazing Larry masterlist. I'm a new larrie myself, though I've been around the fandom since 2011 (tho not super closely) when WMYB MV was released. I was deep diving on receipts, and as per usual, I took it all in with a grain of salt and kept all my conclusions rational and unbiased. I just wanna add something you might consider a receipt, connecting to one of the tour receipts ones I’ve read on Daisie’s tags (I dove into both yours and Daisie’s tags lol). This isn't so big and new at all but I thought I'd add. Sorry in advance if I am too vague with this lol

A quick context: I had worked with small event productions here in my country, and had become pretty close with suppliers (tech, security, venue, etc). I got curious about an entry I read from your receipts tag which happened in an international tour here. Anyway, I am pretty close with our security supplier, and I thought I'd check if there were traces of them working with the boys. After a few google search, I saw them with Louis on a video during his tour here - confirming that at least for that show, they did work with Louis. He has been very open to me ever since we met, so when I DMed him about being involved in the show, he enthusiastically answered that they did all 1D-related ones in the country.

Anyway, bottomline, I tried to ask if it's true that Louis was here during Harry's concert because I've kind of heard it somewhere (being the receipt I read from Daisies' account). That’s when he got weirdly super silentl and left me on ‘seen’/‘read’ (which had never happened EVER before). I waited with the chat box open; he se seemed type after a few mins - and then stopped completely. When I realized he (c)wouldn't reply, I didn't push it and said he doesn't have to respond and that I respect if he’s bound by certain contracts. After that, he immediately replied, basically just saying "Thank you" (for understanding, essentially). We just chatted a bit more before ending the convo.

So I guess I'd say it somewhat solidifies that theory in my head because I personally know them, and if there's really something super big they cannot share at all, they WONT. I knew there was something because it was almost comical for me how he suddenly left me on ‘read’. So if it's not a big deal at all he would've shared because we've talked about other works they've done in the past (he was so enthusiastic and shared all the names of the shows they've done with 1D a few mins prior lol) - but when I specifically asked if Louis was with Harry here for his tour, he immediately closed off and stopped replying - and THEN thanked me when I said he didn’t have to reply lol (I didn’t ask anything else, just that exact wording, straightforwardly asking if L was there during H's show, and I didn’t phrase it in a playful or teasing way like I am implying there’s smth gossip-worthy between them I'm fishing out of him)

ANYWAY, I’m not even sure if this is worth posting but I needed someone to share it with and I thought it could be like a backup info for the future hahahaha I am trying to be vague because I do want to protect myself and my (in a way) source (?). But if you need any clarification from me - I’d be open to elaborate more in the dms (I’m rusty with tumblr so I hope I can navigate this properly lol)

Ofc, a part of me wish I could've gotten something, but I also respect them for staying quiet. And even if they did share something big, I might've had second thoughts on sharing bcs I was mainly asking it for my own sanity tbh, knowing that I knew who the security team was lol So I guess my point of sharing this with you is to basically share that the usual NDA thing with H&L, whether as a whole 1D unit before or as solos, is definitely enforced here. That the silence somewhat solidified my belief of other Larry receipts such as 1.) in relation to the Argentinian security confessions, and 2.) the receipts pointing out that those two fly together sometimes in the tours.

Idk if this is worth posting at all, but I just really needed to let it because I feel like I might be getting biased but also not (it was very fishy for me for sure lol). Thank you!

Hi, darling. No, it’s totally worth posting! I agree with you that it says something without saying anything. Are you able to tell me what year you were asking about? Or what country? I won’t post anything you don’t want public.

I’m really glad to hear that people take their NDAs seriously and even if it was from years ago they would still be professional about it.

Thank you so much for sharing this. If you think of anything else you can add, LMK. Or send me a DM. I’ll keep it private. 🩷

[our-trans-youth-experience]

Is there any way I can make my dysphoria even a tiny bit better

Like I get really dysphoric about my thighs and ass and my chest and binding hasn't worked I always get misgendered and the only way I can sound even a tiny bit more masculine is by talking with absolutely no emotion and it's tiring to keep up

I can't get on puberty blockers or anything because I'm too young and it's getting banned in my country sometime this month

I've decided to play around with more masculine names that can't be mistaken for girl's names (from the time I went by Alex and a hairdresser thought I said Alice and refused to cut my hair too short so it's more "feminine") and while it feels boring I like it? I mean my transmasc friends have more stereotypically tmasc names and I'm just Matthew I like Matthew but it feels basic idk that's more of a side tangent lol I have a habit of rambling sorry

But looking more at the thighs and shit angle of dysphoria can I have some tips? Thanks to puberty I've been outgrowing a lot of my trousers and the ones that do fit either fit weirdly (like either clinging to my thighs or being really baggy around the top) or just don't really fit that well (like they're baggy but the kind of baggy where I can't run or they'll fall down and for some reason they don't have belt loops?)

Hey there,

Honestly I absolutely know the feeling, however I do have a few tips which might hopefully help (though I apologise if they're what you've already heard). First thing I'd recommend is getting straight cut trousers/ jeans from the men's section if you can, as these are pretty good at hiding thighs and hips, as well as button down shirts, which when the sleeves are rolled up can enhance the appearance of arms [in turn can take attention away from chest]. Neutral and dark tones are also usually seen as more masculine for some reason so that may also be useful to note.

Another thing I'd recommend is getting some makeup like contour and things like that as that can help with face masculinisation and, if possible, getting a binder [I will like some websites for free binders] though I am unaware if you have been using a proper one.

You also mentioned your name and honestly I think both Alex and Matthew are both really nice names- I wouldn't worry too much about it being 'basic', but I'd say go for what you feel suits you.

Binding Resources Masterpost

How to Get a Binder Without Your Parents Knowing

Hope this helps and stay safe :]

Also if Sage or Kay have anything to add they can write it in the notes[/nf]

-Jon[he/him/they]

[witchyfoxelf]

gencon 2024 after action report, part 1: pregame (wednesday) & day 1 (thursday)

under the cut for anyone who doesn't care about all the cool indie rpgs i played over the weekend lmao.

the players!

me!

mommy! ( @vi-the-deer )

grammy! (my & mommy's partner)

cj! (grammy's husband, our metamour)

grammy & cj go to gencon nearly every year, and as grammy had accompanied us to magiccon chicago she figured she'd return the favor by having us along for this year's gencon!

mommy & i flew to st. louis tuesday night to meet up with grammy & cj. our hotel that night was pretty nice in a weird way, it kind of reminded me of a really upscale college dorm with a very modern/ikea aesthetic? it's one of those hotels that's trying really hard not to look like a hotel. but yeah, it was nice! not weirdly, shockingly bad. ([hbomberguy voice] foreshadowing is a literary device--). we belatedly celebrated mommy's birthday with some cake and got some rest to get ready for an awesome roadtrip followed by an awesome convention.

on wednesday we originally wanted to go to the st. louis science center, which i had been to & loved decades ago when i went to college in springfield illinois, but sadly it is not open on wednesdays! so instead we went to the st. louis zoo, which is apparently the biggest free zoo in the country? and i gotta say, it offers an experience that's pretty comparable to most non-free zoos i've been to. (also, yeah, i'm a bit ethically dubious about zoos, but my going to them or not going to them isn't really going to affect whether they exist or not, and from what i could tell this one was very well-run by people who genuinely care about the animals there.)

we saw a number of awesome animals, but i think my favorite part was probably the bird house as birds are among my favorite animals. we spent a few hours having a very pleasant (other than it being extremely hot outside) walk through the zoo, but eventually it was time to get on the road.

i'm not necessarily going to talk about everywhere we stopped for food, but i would be remiss if i didn't mention that our day 1 dinner stop was the burger king. no not a burger king, THE burger king, a tiny restaurant in a tiny town in illinois that won a lawsuit to keep its name because it existed before the larger chain that shares its name. (well, minus the "the.")

i will admit that while i lived in illinois for fully more than half of my life, and even having spent my college years in central illinois rather than the comparatively more progressive chicago area, i was somewhat unprepared to be back in a small town in the middle of nowhere where 90% of the population is white and it feels like you're being stared at when 3 of the 4 of you are very visibly trans. it kind of felt like being back home in a not entirely pleasant way, but no one was outright hostile. and to be honest if you like extremely unhealthy cheeseburgers you can do MUCH worse than the original burger king. the food was kind of incredible.

anyway, we got back on the road, and crashed at a hotel most of the way to indiana. this was another totally normal hotel that wasn't weirdly bad with a staff that was weirdly preemptive about it being weirdly bad. (foreshadowing is a literary dev--)

we got up super early thursday morning, and headed for the con. i've actually been to indianapolis for multiple conventions because when i used to live in chicago the two furry cons (yes i used to go to furry cons & it's not inconceivable that i will do so again at some point) it was the easiest for me to get to were midwest furfest (which was in chicago and huge) and indyfurcon (which was in indianapolis and not nearly as huge, especially considering i went to the first few iterations of it, no idea what it's like these days if it's still a thing). this is the first gencon i've ever been to, and it's markedly larger than any other con i've ever been to. i'm used to a con taking up a fairly large conference hotel or (at most) part of a city's convention center. gencon took up an entire convention center plus multiple nearby hotels plus a literal nfl stadium??? (see the pic above the cut lmao.)

that also wasn't even the only way in which it was larger than any other con i've been to before? it's also the first con i've been to that had a full slate of thursday events as well as the more typical all-day friday/all-day saturday/half-day sunday. heck, most furry cons i've been to don't even have all-day fridays since the first thing that happens is usually an opening ceremony in the early afternoon.

mommy & i booked a couple mtg events on saturday because of course we did, but i was really looking forward to playing a bunch of indie rpgs considering that we have a rather embarrassing pile of them at home considering we've never actually sat down and played one. (tbf i am working on a solo run of the almanac of sanguine paths, but i think that's the first rpg i've played that isn't d&d apart from playing like one session of shadowrun that ended up not going anywhere.)

the first thing mommy & grammy & i did on thursday was play a session of yazeba's bed & breakfast. already we were starting with a game that's drastically different than any i've played before. it's sort of a cozy, queer, story-heavy roleplay experience with predetermined characters & scenarios. you keep track of character progress by making physical changes to the book & character sheets with stickers and such, and you can "unlock" different characters & scenarios & features of the hotel as you play through various chapters.

the vibe of the game is very much that you're taking on roles of already-existing characters and playing through their choices in a storybook, and i have to admit that prior to playing this game i had never really understood the appeal of these sorts of games as creating a very specific character to express myself has always been a big part of the appeal for me with rpgs. this reminded me more of the kind of enjoyment i got from one of my favorite pc games, beacon pines. it's less of a big world where you have adventures and more of an already-written story that you get to participante in and shape with your choices.

the chapters in the book are intentionally given fairly arbitrary chapter numbers and arranged in the book in a pretty random order, which resulted in our gm saying the highly enjoyable words "we'll go ahead and start with the first chapter in the book, which is chapter 3."

each chapter starts with a pretty detailed prompt that reads like the opening few pages of a chapter in a book, ending with a jumping off point for the people playing to take over deciding what their character is doing. there doesn't seem to be any kind of initiative or turn order, but everyone at our table was pretty polite about making sure everyone was getting roughly equal chances to make their choices. the game is also diceless, with chapters having some kind of fixed way of resolving their various actions including taking & giving tokens, flipping coins, picking playing cards, etc.

after you've played through the chapter, there's a passage for the gm to read depending on how successful you were at whatever mechanic the chapter is based on, and you might unlock some boons for your characters, the hotel, or unlock new characters & chapters altogether.

the game also seems to actively encourage you trying out different characters. each chapter seems to have one or two mandatory characters and then allows you to pick any characters you've unlocked, though our gm was super nice and offered to let me use a character who wasn't technically unlocked yet because they had come up in my brief research of the game and i liked the sound of them, but i was too shy to take them up on that in our first chapter.

for the first chapter i played gertrude, and while she wasn't as natural of a fit for me, me playing a moody, anxious teenager also certainly wasn't the biggest stretch anyone's ever asked someone to make while roleplaying.

the character i really enjoyed playing, though, was the moon prince.

i know a big part of the game is probably "trying on" different characters, and i do genuinely want to give more of them a try, but i feel like if i get a chance to play this game a lot more i'll likely end up "maining" the moon prince in a similar way to how i mostly played mercy when i played overwatch but side-mained d.va or lucio at various points in my "career." (yeah, cannot imagine anyone else is out there comparing this rpg to overwatch, but it's the point of comparison i have for this specific aspect, leave me alone.)

i really do enjoy the vibes of this game so i do hope i get to play more of it! mommy did buy the book so there's a decent chance we'll be playing more of it. fingers crossed!

after this, which was our first scheduled game, we kind of flailed around looking for stuff to do. we did end up spending a good amount of time in the exhibition hall but that was hella overwhelming so i was only able to tolerate it for so long. we did get to see wyrmspan being demoed and i get what people are saying when they say it's more crunchy than wingspan. while "wingspan but draogns" is still a phenomenal concept for a game, i will admit that as i saw it being demoed no matter how cool the new mechanics seemed, i kind of found myself missing the cozy vibes & lightly educational aspects of wingspan? i especially wish they had replaced all the bird facts with fake dragon facts rather than just using the whole card for gameplay stuff, but ah well. i'm sure i'll enjoy it if i get around to playing it.

eventually we ended up checking out the "games on-demand" room, and ended up playing a game i've seen a bunch of times at work but never actually played, untitled ghost game.

this game is normally gm-less, but at the convention with players who had never played it before, we had a really awesome gm facilitating it for us. and honestly i think that was a big part of why the game went as well for us as it did, because mommy & i were matched up with an extremely normie couple one of whom unironically said "just don't call me late to dinner" when asked for pronouns which is basically the 20s equivalent of the 90s "i just don't see color" for those who are fortunate enough not to know.

that being said, we managed to tell a really great story together thanks largely to the guidance of our gm but also just... not to get too hippy-dippy (that's for a later game! you'll see.), but this really reminded me of the way games can often bring wildly different people together. everyone is just here to have a good time, and... i don't know, there's something really encouraging about that.

so yeah, basically you all take turns describing different aspects of the setting and then us as a ghost and then the person or place being haunted, you decide if you want to intensify the feelings that the person or place is having or if you want to help them overcome them, and then you flip a coin to see how you do. and in the case of our game we very quickly established an identity as a ghost who, while somewhat mischievous, really did want to help, and it ended up being incredibly wholesome.

i don't know that this is necessarily a game i'll come back to unless i end up thinking someone else will really vibe with it, but i really am glad i had the experience i had playing it. it was genuinely lovely.

once we finished that, grammy had finished her gm shift and it was time to meet up for dinner and chill until the first game all four of us were playing together, weird heroes of public access.

whpa is a 2d6 game in which the players take on the role of a host of a local public access tv host in a town that's about to experience some supernatural fuckery. your can host something like a cooking show, a variety show, a talkshow, etc. i named my character kenny kaiju and gave him a monster movie review show called kaiju kino.

our scenario saw the town being taken over by some kind of demon who was using the station to hypnotize its denizens into slaves. i had very normal feelings about this!

our gm (sorry, "station manager") was pretty cool and i had a lot of fun with this game. it wasn't my favorite of the weekend or anything, but i think it solidly delivered on its premise and i wouldn't mind playing it again sometime.

anyway, that was a wrap on day 1! i was pretty exhausted thanks to a combination of jetlag and getting up early to drive the rest of the way to indy, and i think all of us were in a similar boat (even though grammy & cj weren't dealing with jetlag, having only crossed one timezone). so we headed to the hotel which was... pretty awful tbh.

like, it's genuinely fine, it's not like we were going to spend much time there doing anything other than sleeping, but the weird preemptive defensiveness of the staff made it much worse. my favorite part was when we were surprised that there wasn't an elevator and the front desk clerk who was nowhere near us yelled that um actually this was built before the americans with disabilities act so it didn't need an elevator. um, ok, cool? really set a tone there. (they also made some really weird choices like actively removing chairs from the breakfast area on sunday like they were actively trying to shoo all the convention attendees out of the hotel faster. like, y'all, DON'T worry. we were NOT planning on lingering.)

again, it was fine, it wasn't wildly unsafe or anything, i don't want to come off like i'm being overly complainy. but i will say that it is NOT very obvious from their website that the hotel is completely inaccessible to anyone with mobility issues. which fortunately isn't really any of the four of us, but like... i've literally seen events be more clear about the accessibility of buildings they do not own than this hotel is about the place you're relying on being able to sleep at? (heck, i've ORGANIZED events at older venues that unfortunately weren't accessible, and we were always VERY clear about that in every form of advertising. as far as i can tell, literally the only way you can tell that about this hotel on their website is that there's a small tab on the features that's greyed out instead of white. i know most people with mobility issues likely check very closely for this kind of thing so hopefully no one has ended up in an unfortunate situation, but like... seriously, do better.)

and like, yeah i get that it would be kinda difficult to install an elevator in a building that wasn't meant to have one, but you know what's not difficult? adding as many power outlets as a modern hotel should have. having walls that don't have holes in them. having mattresses that aren't lumpy & stiff as fuck. bringing new towels a single time? or failing that, when we ask for more towels at the desk giving us towels rather than not being able to find any and just giving us bathmats instead??? having dressers that aren't literally missing all their drawers?????? this was a hotel owned by a large hotel chain. there is no reason it should be this crummy & depressingly poorly maintained.

again, it's fine, but absorbing all this while we were all super sleep deprived and overwhelmed from the con was kind of a... Moment. we did our best to take it in stride, though, and crashed to get ready for another day of gaming!

[viridiave]

A little love post to HORROR JRPGs

Content Warning:

So I'm gonna be talking a lot about some pre-Undertale era RPG Maker Horror games, and this post is gonna contain both spoilers and the discussion of the following:

Blood and Gore

Psychological horror

Child abuse

Sexual assault

Suicide

Violence

Fictional minors being put into very messed up situations, because that's just the kinds of games these are

Other upsetting themes

Hetalia (because I can imagine that all of us have very complex feelings about this fucking franchise. It existing feels like it needs a warning)

This post is a nostalgia trip and exists purely because uh. I have literally no one else to talk to about these games, and please just click away if any of the above makes you uncomfortable in any way. Some of this stuff can't exactly be handwaved as just being products of their time.

I'll draw smthn real quick later just to make up for it I promise

I'm like days late to Halloween but I just wanted to write this after getting a bout of nostalgia lmao

I absolutely fucking love Horror JRPGs - the freeware ones, even though I haven't touched one in a LONG time. I'm talking about the pre-Undertale era freeware games by the way, and in the first place I don't think I can consider Undertale a horror game but that's a topic for another day. OneShot also doesn't count aksjak OneShot gives me existential dread and a nonzero amount of guilt sure, but never terror

But let's dial that back a bit.

To begin with. 'Vir, you're a fucking coward, you run upstairs when you see that someone on TV has a gun. You can't stand watching horror movies. How the FUCK did this happen'

Weirdly, you can thank Hetalia for that. Specifically, the freeware Hetalia fangames that used to circulate on DeviantArt - that shit led me down this rabbit hole. And I guess it made sense, most Hetalia fangames are a coin toss between a horror game and a fantasy JRPG with countries getting isekai'd. I also played the fuck out of those.

For a bit of background, I love video games, but neither me nor my family ever really had that much spending power to buy game consoles, so my selection was pretty limited. Before I turned 18, I remember that we owned a GameBoy, a GameBoy Advance, a PSP, and one of those Fun-Sized Nintendo consoles with built-in games. We never bought cartridges either. I got my first DS from my dad on my birthday when I turned 18, and that's all the consoles that my family has ever owned. Still kinda jealous of my friends who have Switches, but eh - one day.

I just played a lot of Harvest Moon growing up, that's been my object of interest in my elementary days. The most of a horror game that I've been exposed to was watching my friends play Five Nights At Freddy's back in 5th grade.

Then high school happened, and I got new friends and shit - and was introduced to both more conventional horror games and Hetalia. Which is. A really weird combination when I think about it now, but everyone who was alive and kicking around in the early 2010's would know what HetaOni is, and you can see how that slope led to me playing freeware horror games. I'll always be grateful to these games, seeing as I never had easy access to mainstream experiences growing up.

I think I played HetaOni exactly once, on my first laptop. I played most Hetalia fangames exactly once, but they all just stayed on my old hard drive. None of them really had anything interesting going on gameplay-wise, I mean it's RPGMaker and these were people who just really wanted to make Hetalia fangames, but I remember some of them just sticking with me. I'd play them while I was away on trips to my grandmother's house, then watch let's plays on YouTube when I wasn't otherwise occupied with schoolwork. Really when I say Let's Plays I only mean KyoKoon64's - and that's how I was actually introduced to horror JRPGs.

CLOÉ'S REQUIEM

There's been a couple of times where they played some of the more recognizable horror JRPGs on their channel, but the first one I REALLY saw a playthrough on was one called Cloé's Requiem. I don't know what exactly it was about this specific game that stuck with me, and at the time I didn't know that this had like. More warnings than you would usually find on a horror JRPG. Calling it now, please look up said warnings before you try ANYTHING with this game - I can't promise quality and nuance, but I can promise great moments. Those moments stuck with me to this day, SOMEHOW, even after encountering games with better story and gameplay experiences… it's about a cursed 12 year-old boy trying to free a cursed 13 year-old girl, never getting a shot at the normal life he wanted and playing the violin because he can't do much else.

I think this game changed my life. Not in like, any grand manner mind you - but I feel like it's the game that best represented this time of my life as a weird high school outsider who obsesses over games that nobody's ever heard about. I was introduced to a lot of things through this game, it's just this whole volley of firsts that I wouldn't trade for anything else. Baby's first horror game, first jumpscare I ever consented to, first taste of games containing disturbing themes of sexual assault and gore, first trips to Pixiv and NicoNicoDouga - just all the fucking firsts. I wouldn't call it a great game, but it IS important to me.

When I think about it now, it's a game about curses. Michel D'Alembert is a talented violinist at 12, and his alcoholic father milks the shit out of this talent because they're not exactly what you would call well-off. His twin brother Pierre is a pianist, is nowhere near as talented as his brother, and hides his misery over this situation under a big-little brother façade. Cloé Ardennes is a pianist too, she's wealthy, talented, and still plays with her stuffed animals. She is cursed with an insane father who rapes her, and a mother who hates her. Charlotte is a young maid with nothing and tries her best, only to be killed because she happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unsurprisingly things fall apart for everybody very quickly.

Pierre's frustrations with his spoiled, lazy brother boiled over, and he curses Michel out in a heated moment. This drives Michel to murder their Charlotte by accident, and she becomes his curse - he runs out of the house, kills cats, and finds himself in the dilapidated mansion that Cloé inhabits. Cloé by this point is already dead, and so is her dad, her parents, and the maids. Cloé's father may be her curse but she is the curse of this mansion, and it transforms into something hostile until Michel comes along and saves her from the shadow of her father. Michel plays her a requiem, and resolves to go home to confront his crimes - and back to Pierre, who regrets everything he's done. Watching the sun rise with a disappearing Cloé in the True Ending will likely be the last peaceful moment he will ever have in his life.

That's like. Not everything that happens in this game, but this post is already so goddamn long and I still have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about. But the gist of it to me nowadays is that these children are cursed with loveless lives and the whims of the adults that have power over them. In the end, their lives are all ruined. Cloé and Charlotte are dead, and we have no idea what becomes of Michel and Pierre when word gets out that Michel killed a maid and assaulted several others in the house in a fit of emotional instability. In every other ending, Michel is killed and Cloé remains an evil spirit, so really this is the best that anyone ever gets out of this experience.

I remember watching a playthrough of Con Amore on YouTube, but I understood none of it because it was in Japanese, and the game itself was untranslated at the time. It follows the cats Noir and Blanc and basically serves as an addendum to the base game - honestly it made me feel sorry for Charlotte, who was nowhere near as psychotic as Michel thought she was. There's also light novels, but international shipping is expensive and I don't know Japanese so. I'll just never figure out what happens to everyone after the game ends I guess

One of these days, I'll buy the remake on Steam - which exists, and I can't say I recommend it if everything I just listed bothers you in any way. But I can't shake the attachment I feel towards this game no matter how many years it's been, nor how uncomfortable its themes are, so you know - maybe one day. I'll go back to it.

IB

So - following that, I got pretty curious about the other games in this genre of freeware horror. Ib is the one that everyone knows the best, both Markiplier and Pewdiepie played it so you KNOW it gets press, but even in Japan this game was a hell of a hit. To me, it's a simple game that I can finish in an hour, but man what an hour it can be.

If you were to play this game right now after seeing how much press it gets (which I think you should, it's on the Switch now! Go get it!), you MIGHT be a little disappointed. It's nowhere near as gory or disturbing as Cloe's Requiem for one and you know - a bunch of blood and guts and ghosts on the walls does not a good horror game make, but make your choices accordingly. Nah - instead this game's staying power lies in its atmosphere. Like how many games can you say take place inside of an art gallery where most of the pieces try to fucking murder you? I mean there's probably a lot, but something about Ib's almost ambient sense of dread and exploration just kind of sticks in people's brains. Everything's a little scarier when the shapes are so close to being discernable but aren't, and I guess that's the appeal and horror behind Guertena's gallery.

Ib herself is a mute protagonist, pretty typical, but she's also NINE, and the game will let you know that no matter how unfazed she gets or how precocious she can be, she is a child all the same - and children break very easily. I personally love how the game barely has to say anything about how shaken she actually is about her situation, because it will show you how - she has nightmares that you can't escape, she sees herself getting hanged, Garry will need to shake her out of her shock when she sees a picture of her parents in the gallery that should not exist. She loses all of her will to live when she loses Garry to insanity. And speaking of Garry…

There's one standout room in this game and it's the Doll Room. 10/10 would NOT recommend it to anyone who suffers from anxiety because WOW I did not think the RPG Maker 2000 engine could ever have been capable of that. Nobody blames Garry if this room fucks him up. I mean come on the dude has to literally rip open the stomachs of dolls to find a paint ball. Those sound effects make it sound like the dolls are made of skin and flesh and all the while the giant fucking doll is creeping out of the goddamn painting while some of the most anxiety-inducing background noise is playing -

Yeah no I don't know why I ever said you'd be disappointed by this game. Or maybe you still would, this is a low-res game made in 2012. But my god does it TRY to scare you in the best ways it can.

One of the best moments in this game I think is the one where Mary and Ib are alone together, and the conversation gets increasingly unhinged with Mary asking Ib questions non-stop with no background noise other than their steps. At this point, they're separated from Garry, and they're trying to find a way back to each other. Garry meanwhile is slowly piecing together the truth about Mary and how dangerous it is for Ib to remain alone with her, all the while still trying to figure out how to get back to both of them.

The section after that is in the Sketchbook which honestly? The vibes of this place are impeccable. Somehow it's fitting that one of the tensest areas in a game about a fine arts gallery is the place made entirely out of childlike scribbles.

Overall, I'd say the experience is well worth an hour or two - I'd recommend it happily over Cloé's Requiem, if only so you can have a taste of what Horror JRPGs were like before Omori came along. Yes I know that Omori isn't Japanese but it's very much in the same vein as these games.

OTHER GAMES

Those were the safe two that planted my feet firmly into the Horror JRPG fandom, but there's a lot of other titles out there, so let's go - lightning round!

Ao Oni is the ubiquitous one, like chances are you've at least HEARD of it in passing at some point in your life. Like this shit made it to the big screen in Japan, that's how much of a deal it was. I've never played the original myself, but it's partly because its formula of stuck in a mansion with a horror that chases you around is present in pretty much every Horror JRPG after its release in 2007. If you want some classic fun with the big blue demon though then you can't go wrong with the freeware version.

Mad Father and The Witch's House are part of what I like to call the Big 3 of JRPGs starring preteen girls experiencing the Horrors™, mostly because back in the mid-2010's I couldn't go three posts without seeing them all together. Mad Father is the only other one of said Big 3 that I've touched, because I was too coward to touch The Witch's House and Ellen's whole deal remains a mystery to me to this day. I think Mad Father got a remake a couple of years ago, so you can check that out if you want, but keep in mind that these two games in particular might not stoke the same kind of magical staying power that Ib somehow retained years after its release, and I know those two rely on jumpscares a lot more than Ib does.

I'll eat my fedora right here by the way, because one of my cardinal sins of being a Horror JRPG fan is that I've never played Yume Nikki. As far as these freeware games go, this is probably one of the more avant-garde ones - it's artsy, atmospheric, and a game best experienced by getting lost in the strange environments it provides. Out of every game on this post, this is the one I'd describe as the most Earthbound-esque, with its horror lying mostly in the surrealist ambience of just… wandering around in Madotsuki's mind. The end is just as quiet as the beginning, but is no less chilling to watch happen. Then you fuck around a little bit on Youtube and you find out what's actually going on, and uh - yeah that checks out, cosmic horror sounds par for the course at this point.

Yume Nikki and OFF are two of the games I think of when I hear about Horror JRPGs being talked about alongside Undertale - and nope, I haven't played OFF either. That's my other Horror JRPG sin. I was a picky teenager, but I've grown now and wow I need to find a time to play these games in peace. OFF actually isn't even Japanese, it was developed by Mortis Ghost and released in French back in 2008, making both pretty old and already pretty weird in the library. The reason I bring up OFF is because it's one of the older examples I know of that also incorporate Earthbound's precision 4th-wall breaks, and that it's a game about judgment and interrogates the player (more you than the Batter you play as, serving more as a vehicle that the game uses to ask questions through) about the choices they make in the game. OneShot is probably the one game in this genre of indie RPG that I know so far that employs this metaphysical idea of the player existing in the game in any kind of charitable fashion (aside from again, Earthbound and to some extent Mother 3), so between it, OFF, and Undertale they're what I'd refer to as the Interface Screw-RPG Trio.

Some other titles that I like are between the same devs, even some that I haven't really played to completion. Cloé's Requiem for example was made by Buriki Clock, and they've made other titles like Fantasy Maiden's Off Hideout and Trauma Traum - the latter I can't play because it doesn't have an English translation rip. Miwashiba is another dev which I think people who have a taste for light lolita goth-pastel colors would like, because my god the character designs in both Alice Mare and LiEat are peak. Don't even get me started on the fashion of 1BitHeart because everything in that game has such an impeccable aesthetic. I think I saw something at one point about 1BitHeart that like. Might count as a shared joke between Xenoblade fans, but I'd be hard-pressed to give context because again… packed schedule, who dis?

Just to talk about Alice Mare a little more, I've actually played this one - it sports a heavily storybook-inspired cast with some unique tastes on the tales. Most of my actual experiences with Alice Mare were from the English Light Novel, which I do still have! I really recommend it to people who have a couple of hours to spare on some light, relatively bloodless horror. Most of these games have Light Novels, come to think of it - hell Ib even has whole audio dramas, one of which was fanmade in English, and from what I remember of it the voice acting for Mary was PEAK.

One last dev I want to talk about is Segawa. I've saved them for last because their brand of horror is reserved mainly for one game, but their other games Farethere City and Tower of Hanoi are no slouches either. I don't know much about Tower of Hanoi (or if it even has an English translation right now), but Farethere City is a pretty cute experience as far as pseudo-horror games go from what I've heard, which is probably good for us because their other standout game is anything but cute.

END ROLL

Ah, End Roll. The last of the Horror JRPGs I've played before school kicked me even harder in the shins and I had barely any time for it. Out of all the games I mentioned on this list, this is the one with the most staying power in my brain - and also the one that influenced me the most.

So, I don't talk a lot about my original works. Nobody asks, so I don't overshare. But some of the prevalent overarching themes of my personal mythos are those of guilt, self-love, and the burdens of love. All of these themes were lifted directly from End Roll - which is to say, End Roll actually only deals in guilt, my brain just ran buckwild with trying to wrap itself around the logistics behind InfoRuss. One of my main protagonists, Rosso, is a dead-ringer expy of Russell - the same goes for Blanco with the Informant. One of the only ways I can describe Rosso and Blanco's relationship is 'selfcest as a metaphor for the painful coexistence of self-love and self-loathing', and how this relationship reached this point was largely thanks to the Informant and his role in Russell's dream.

I don't really know why I've come to associate the idea of self-love with guilt, because that's like. Not what the game is trying to do. The game's express purpose is to tell you the story of a boy who comes to love his victims and self-destructs under the crushing guilt that he carries from killing them. By some weird hand, I've fixated on the Informant and his determination in seeing that mission of the game through - AND his secret boss fight. Actually, I should. Go ahead and describe the build-up to his secret boss fight

You can only access it if you've purchased the optional villa, and if I recall correctly you can only fight him on the last day of the dream. The locked shed next to the villa is revealed to be a library of some kind called the Graveyard of Books and like - sure enough, there's books of every kind just torn apart and scattered about everywhere. The reason for all of this is because of the Informant's jealousy. He is created specifically so he can provide Russell with the necessary information to complete the Happy Dream Experiment, and in this regard he thinks Russell doesn't need anyone other source of information than him. So he does away with the useless other books, except for the strategy guides because that's the only kind of book Russell likes - and thus, the only kind of book that the Informant likes. Notes are scattered in the hallway leading up into his boss room, with the last one sticking out in my mind to this day:

'He thinks he's the most important thing to you.'

Which. I don't know why that line is so important to me. Whether it be because it awakened something weird in me, or because I myself was dealing with my self-loathing in a VERY complicated manner at the time, that line has gone on to dictate the way that I write about my characters even to this day.

It's such a visceral depiction of self-inflicted brutality. Russell Seager is a 14 year-old serial killer who grew up loveless and abused, and has no shortage of things that make every waking moment of his life fucked up. He killed people - some who just happened to be wherever he was at the time, some willingly by his hand - could not feel guilt about any of it, and when he lost Yumi to his drunken father while his nymphomaniac mother watched he snapped and killed both his tormentors. He then turned himself in to the police, a teen on death row. Happy Dream is him discovering guilt through dream versions of the people he killed. Happy Dream is what allows him to manifest the newfound emotions he felt through interacting with the kinds of people that his victims COULD have been. The world he creates morphs into the self-inflicted hell that is his guilt.

Russell has no happy ending, his guilt won't allow him that. Everything around him becomes a reminder of the lives he's destroyed, and how much of a living hell his own life was. Through feeling happiness and love from these fabricated visages of the people he killed, he learned guilt. It's such a weird exercise in sympathy, knowing that you're playing as this remorseless kid going through rehabilitation through extreme means. It either doesn't work, and he's deemed a failure - or it does, and he commits suicide either by confessing his crimes to one of his victims and stabbing himself to death with a syringe, or he stays in the deteriorating dream, never to wake up again.

At some point it honestly just turns into misery porn, if you look at it from a certain angle - this game is set on having Russell die no matter what. I couldn't tell you what EXACTLY it is about this experience was so impactful that it would go on to influence the way I want to spend my life - that is, I want to make games exploring these kinds of themes. Guilt. Sins. If loveless lives can be redeemed and made better. By the time the last day in the game rolls around, it's just a matter of giving Russell closure over his miserable life and choosing for him what his last freedom is going to be.

I think one of the reasons I like thinking about the Informant with regards to Russell is the scene that happens if you choose to go through with the first True Ending. Russell never really much liked the Informant, and the feeling is mutual. Russell is cold to him, and the Informant takes every opportunity he can to rub all of Russell's sins in his face - and that's his job, he represents the fundamental, uncomfortable truths of Happy Dream. If Russell chooses not to leave the dream, he is resigned to its destruction and waits for the inevitable along with the other denizens of Nameless Town. But if Russell chooses to get out of the dream, the Informant returns to Russell in tears, happy that he can finally be back to being a part of him - to this game, it's the ultimate acceptance. Russell then goes on to confess his crimes and the reality of the dream to one of the citizens, and he wakes up when they kill him in tearful retribution by his request.

He grabs the syringe next to his bed, and stabs himself to death, unable to handle the guilt. That's how the game always ends for me. The Informant succeeded, Happy Dream succeeded - and Russell chose to die as person who could finally feel remorse.

It's a regretful story with themes that really shouldn't be replicated in any fashion in real life, but somehow I found it fascinating in the way it explores the facets of the self. It makes me want to ask more questions and explore that angle of self-reflection to the furthest extremes that I can conceivably reach, and I guess that's one of the many reasons why I respect it so much.

SO… WHAT NOW.

Nah, that's kind of it. Like, OF COURSE this isn't all I have to say about the games that I mentioned, but wow this post is so long and I was just pining for the days of a couple of years ago. These games were present for the most transformative years of my life, and uh - whether or not that was actually a good thing remains to be seen, but I'll always be grateful for their presence in the void that I call my gaming experiences.

Horror JRPGs will always have a special place in my heart for how they tell their stories. Nowadays, I've developed more of a taste for fantastical RPGs that prefer to hide their horror in the margins of the narrative, fridging the terror for when the player wants to step back a bit and think about the implications of certain events in the greater world. Undertale, OneShot, and the Octopath Traveler games all tick that box for me - and all of those games are ones I hold dear. Like I'll probably ramble about OneShot some other day, because that's the other game that really changed my life in a way I felt like I can never come back from - but there's just a lot of special things to be said about these neat little self-contained, 6-hour freeware games. For now I'll close this long-ass post out. Happy late Halloween I guess - the M&Ms in our fridge have never tasted better.

[staringdownabarrel]

The Game hits differently as an adult than when it did when I was a kid.

Back when I was a kid, mobile games were still in their infancy. Like yeah, there was Snake and Bounce, but that was pretty much it. A mobile phone had the games it came preloaded with and while you could get new ones online, most people didn't. And while there was still that phenomenon of annoying little kids going up to random adults and asking if they had games on their phone, I feel like it wasn't as common.

For the most part, mobile gaming hadn't really gotten to the point where it was psychologically addicting the same way it is now. That kind of thing only really started up when I was in high school. Even then, I tended to write off the "oh, my mum's addicted to Candy Crush" stuff as just a meme-y thing rather than an actual phenomenon. It's really only been in the eleven-ish years since I finished high school, and mostly in the last five or six years, that I've really been aware of people getting super addicted to mobile games as a thing. (This isn't to say it wasn't happening at all before then; just to say I wasn't as aware of it before then. Keep in mind that I live under a rock.)

The other thing here is that back when I was a kid and watching The Game for the first time, it wasn't really as acceptable for people to just sit there on their mobile for hours on end. For a long time, the mobile phone was seen as a thing you had for emergencies only, and even then a lot of people wouldn't bother to take it with them when they left the house.

This did eventually change around 2009 or 2010, when even less well off people could get a mobile phone that wasn't just a Nokia brick that was really only good for texting and calling people. Once that happened, people started using them more. But before that? Nah, not really. The Boomer cartoons from the mid-2000s about Millennial teenagers always being buried in their phones were either making mountains out of molehills or based around the one kid they knew who was a bit more of a social butterfly.

So the first few times I saw The Game, I wrote it off as just being a product of its time. When I thought of video games at the time, I was mostly thinking of console games, not of Snake. I dismissed the idea that someone would get addicted to a video game as being something that didn't really happen that much outside of a few edge cases here and there where maybe a guy died at his keyboard after playing World of Warcraft for a week straight, and even then I thought it was mostly because they had no life outside of it.

Nowadays though, I think it was weirdly prophetic, and I'm not entirely sure the writers on that episode fully realised that at the time. People really are getting addicted to mobile games (and, to some degree, MMOs) much more than they used to, and that's largely by design. Those games really are designed to be addictive.

So while in 2007, I wrote The Game off as being a wonky fantasy written by a generation who were maybe a little bit out of touch, now I realise they were probably on to something. The idea that someone might design a game to be extremely addictive and try to weaponise it somehow doesn't seem as farfetched now as I thought it was back then.

More to the point, there really are people out there who'll do remarkably stupid things because of an online game. It doesn't have to be some propaganda campaign or anything like that; they'll just be mad that a certain part of the game isn't realistic enough. War Thunder in particular has a bit of a reputation for this--there's been multiple military personnel from multiple countries who've leaked design specifications for their country's tanks online because of the game. I wouldn't be too surprised if most spy agencies have people keeping an eye on message boards related to it just because of that.

I don't know if I necessarily think The Game is a good episode. Of the Wesley Crusher episodes made after he goes to the Academy, this is the only one that really falls into that "Wesley the wonder boy" trap a lot of season one episodes had where he'd be pivotal to saving the day. It's still a more interesting take on that concept because it's ultimately Data who does it rather than him, but that honestly could have been incidental more than anything.

What I do think, however, is that it's an interesting episode. It's the kind of episode that's definitely made me think as I've gotten older. My opinion of it now is that while it's not really the best episode, it is good science fiction because it was remarkably on point about the general direction society was going to go down and it inspires thought.

[runwayrunway]

No. 37 - National Airlines

This post is about liveries, I promise! That is the only thing it's about. No tangents to be found!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! New* livery dropped from an established airline!

*not, like, brand new. Just relatively new. I was informed of it very recently.

It must be pretty hard to name an airline. I've never had to do it, but I have worldbuilt fantasy settings, and choosing names for things is broadly speaking very difficult. There's a reason so many surnames are either vocational, geographic, or patronymic. It's really hard to come up with something interesting and you just have to settle for "that's John from Over There. Yeah, the greengrocer. Yeah, Bob's kid," and that's how it's always been. When etymologies develop they tend to develop slowly and unintentionally. You usually don't just hit on a perfect name for something, but you need to put something on your tax forms, if you do pay those.

Flag carriers have it easy. They just get to use the name of their country, maybe with a 'royal' tossed in if they're still a monarchy. But private airlines? You have to mess around a bit. Some hit on something pretty good, like IndiGo or, I hate to hand it to David Neeleman, Breeze. And some, on the other hand...completely phone it in.

I have a soft spot deep in my heart for airlines with unbearably stupid names. Things like 'Jet2' and 'Fly2Sky' and my personal favorite, 'Fly Air'. Cargo carriers have their own brand of this, some combination of 'Cargo' and frequently 'Logic', leading to my personal favorite 'CargoLogicAir', which went defunct last year.

One name is really weirdly popular. Seriously, I don't get why it's popular, because it's a terrible name. I've done a lot of talking about national airlines, lowercase, adjective followed by noun, but it's time to talk about National Airlines, proper noun, capitalized.

Why would you name your airline this? It's such a silly name. National...to what country? Certainly it's probably clear based on what country it's operating in, but I don't think that's an excuse. And there have been an entire five National Airlineses in the US. Since 1934 there has never been a period of five years or more without at least one, and sometimes more, National Airlines in operation. It's a bizarre phenomenon and my only guess is that it's a side effect of the US's lack of flag carrier, where legacy carriers all wanted to have a name that sort of sounded like what a flag carrier might have. United Airlines, American Airlines, US Airways/USAir, Republic Airlines...National Airlines just feels like it belongs there.

I might cover this livery in future. Let me know if you'd want that.

Without question the most historically significant National Airlines was the one founded in 1934. Based in Miami, in the 70s it was one of the elite few carriers - the others being Braniff, TWA, and of course Pan Am - allowed to operate service to Europe, meaning it was actually an international airline. It was merged into Pan Am in 1980.

Today's National Airlines was founded in 1985. That's right, they've existed for nearly 40 years, likely without your knowledge! They fly charters, both passenger and cargo, though since 2015 they've also had a couple of scheduled routes - and yes, they fly internationally. Their fleet has ten entire aircraft. To be fair, they're all jets. The smallest thing they've ever operated is a DC-8.

For one whole year they had a Tu-204, for some reason.

If you know them, you probably know them for that one plane crash! And that's not important at all here and occurred in circumstances completely irrelevant to normal operation for basically all airlines, but I just want to point out that the accident plane was named for the owner's wife, and years on the company gave the name to another airframe. I'm not saying that this plane is also going to crash - it is so unlikely that it's not worth considering - but I do just feel like that's got to be tempting fate. Imagine telling your wife the second plane you named after her also crashed. I can see that ending in divorce.

Imagine if the plane was literally named after your wife, too. I could never do that to myself.

I didn't know there was a .aero domain. Huh! You learn something new every day. "We Deliver The World" is funny for an airline called National, and even funnier now that they're a scheduled passenger airline. Anyway, the livery. Nicely branded, not terribly many similar ones to confuse it with, big billboard wordmark in a legible and minimally offensive sans serif font. As for the main design...I look at it and vividly feel like it's familiar but can't quite place where from. Of course, it has quite the typical vaguely patriotic vibe to it, but that can't possibly be the entirety of it, so what...oh. I think I know what it reminds me of.

It's a shame the USPS doesn't have airplanes, because they could probably do something at least a little interesting.

It is far from an exact resemblance. But I think that has to be it.

The design on the tail also reminds me a bit of the IndiGo swoops even though they're definitely not related. It's just that sort of really long dramatic wave pattern in a similar color scheme. They even both have a sort of 'trim' on the side.

I do think the wave loses something by getting cut off sharply in the middle there. It reminds me of Airbus's carbon fiber livery where it starts to resemble a mermaid's tail...and that's something airlines should try to do on purpose, yes, but doing it by accident doesn't really do it for me. It feels like it stops the momentum in a way.

National made the...interesting choice of using both white and silver in the same livery. I think it...kind of works, if only because the white surrounded by the blue doesn't really blare out the way it does when it's the main color. The silver itself is...also interesting. It looks like the plane has been painted using metallic sharpie.

They probably use these to cover up chips in the paint.

This livery has a lot going on but it just feels kind of cluttered and boring, to be honest. It is undeniably USPS-y, so I think maybe somebody who doesn't live in the US wouldn't look at it the way I do, but it just reminds me of mail even though I don't think they even carry mail. The idea of being a passenger on a USPS-looking airplane is a bit strange to me.

Flag in the window not changing my mind about the feeling of the name.

This livery is one of contradictions. Clearly recognizable yet somehow generic; full of atypical features yet somehow still boring. It feels almost inexplicably cluttered, and above all it feels sort of sloppy. I think that's really a sign of the era it comes from. The 1980s were a weird time for airline liveries. It was in the early 80s when cheatlines really began to fall out of favor, and we entered an era of airlines trying to figure out what they wanted to do instead. They experimented with colorblocking, vertical stripes, all sorts of things that hadn't been seen yet. Not all of them were super creative. We got a lot of planes that were half white and half off-white, some early Eurowhite-esques like SAS's belly stripes and JAL's good-logo-bad-livery situation. It also produced a fair few liveries which really stuck out, enough to carry over to the modern day. Korean Air is a prominent example designed around the same time as National. Also designed around the same time is my second-ever subject, a livery I chose to cover specifically to discuss how a mostly-white livery could be done well: Kalitta Air. And a handful of these odd liveries are still flying right now, like KAL's.

Okay, but the all-grey, two-tiered wordmark DC-8 livery actually looks so much better.

That's where the sloppy feeling comes from, I think. Cheatline liveries, modern Eurowhite liveries, minimalist billboard liveries, even the transitional 90s horizontal colorblock - these were iterated on over and over again. They might be boring but they usually seem very deliberate. In the 80s, liveries were designed how I used to build characters when I was a preteen playing 3.5e. You add things and you don't really think about how they work together. And there's...some charm to it. But you know what? It's been nearly 40 years. Maybe they've refined it to something a little nicer.

No. No. How could you do this to me? You solved a problem by making it worse! Like, yes, it does look marginally cleaner at the cost of individuality, but just...why leave the red line in if you're cleaning things up? Before, it lined up with the start of the blue curve, but now it has no reason to exist! It looks less like part of the livery and more like, whoops, my monitor's yaw string is telling me my desk is slipping to the left!

Like, it's such a minimal change, and in theory, yes, it addresses my earlier issues, but it doesn't actually manage to stop being generic or boring, and it doesn't manage to stop looking a little messy and lacking in direction, and honestly removing the singular color they didn't share with USPS didn't help them either!

I think what bothers me most, though, is that it doesn't feel much more deliberate. It might be the fact that they made such minimal changes, or the fact that they didn't manage to make it look that much neater, but it looks like they tried to improve their livery without knowing what makes a livery good or bad.

Once upon a time they were novices trying their hands at an art which was in a turbulent place for even experienced airlines, unsure of what they were doing but trying their best. I can't give them any sympathy for that anymore. They have committed to being persistently incompetent. They make lip service towards improvement, but they don't know what improvement would look like. They're out of their depth. They're washed up. They don't know what to do.

Airline liveries often seem to function on a trend cycle similar to clothing. Every ten years or so, large airlines do a brand refresh. Smaller carriers, maybe every twenty years. But some liveries stay longer, either through timelessness or through inertia.

Kalitta Air was timeless. They kept their livery for what felt like eons and it never stopped looking good. Sure, it's a little retro, but in a classy way. It doesn't look dated, it looks stylish. I mean, this company was founded by a racecar driver!

I really like this picture on their website.

Maybe a couple of little tweaks wouldn't be the end of the world. I think the cheatlines could be shortened a bit, maybe, since they make the nose look a bit like it's being pinched, or like the cheatlines are a very elaborate moustache, and maybe the wordmark could be moved a bit forward. Minor tweaks on that order have been made before. But the livery as a whole is fantastic.

In 2021, they released a new one.

The livery of a cargo carrier from Michigan is a very minor part of my life. But when I first saw this image, I really, for a moment, thought that I genuinely wished I had never been born.

I read a lot of comments about it on whatever forums I could find. Generally a lot of my opinions are actually a bit contentious, but I couldn't find anyone who disagreed with me. And one thing I saw repeated fairly often was that this plane looks unfinished. You can't modernise something by just taking away one of its most prominent features, if not its very most prominent feature, even if white is in fashion. This livery was designed with cheatlines. Taking off the cheatlines doesn't make it look like a modern livery, it makes it look like a charter plane midway through being painted for a wet lease. It's just miserable.

And National Airlines isn't as bare now, and wasn't quite as incredible before, but it feels much the same. You can't update something by just removing part of it. That's not new. It's not modern. It's not slick, or clean, or minimal, or whatever else you want to call it. It's unfinished.

So they start out sloppy and they end up looking like a shell of their former self. What do I rate these? Well, I definitely prefer the original livery, that probably won't shock anyone, but the difference is so negligible. Sloppy and inept. Being silver instead of white, or cleaner rather than messier, isn't going to save you.

So they'll both get a D+.

That feels like such an unfulfilling rating to give, but at the end of the day I don't feel like there's anything else to say. They were just figuring it out, and I am too. I blindly stumble into a tepid dissatisfaction that makes me feel nothing at all, really, to the point my own distaste for the revision feels phoned-in. But there's really not much else to say about it. It doesn't feel like anybody, in this process, really understood what makes a good livery, and they didn't learn a thing since 1985.

[eemamminy-art]

👻💻 For the fanfic ask meme!

👻 What is one WIP you think you may never pick back up?

I had started what was intended to be the final piece to my daughters of ishgard f!estimeric oneshot series, which was going to be set post-HW after Estinien had left the way he normally does in canon. The idea was going to be that she came back to Ishgard surreptitiously in order to visit Aymeric, who is still waist-deep in trying to enact real and meaningful change in Ishgard. Estinien on the other hand, has opened her eyes to a whole new world outside the Holy See. While in Ishgard she might have forced herself into a binary male role in order to keep herself safe and express herself at all, in the outside world she discovers all sorts of ways to exist. When she comes back she's had top surgery, she's as masculine as ever, but in embracing those things as being okay and acceptable she's found the freedom to feel closer to her womanhood than she ever dreamed possible.

I wasn't really sure how to go about it, but that was the central theme anyway. As you know I have super mixed feelings on how the relationship in canon between Estinien and Aymeric went from 5.0 onward, so I was trying to find a good balance especially considering like, the entire rest of those fics are set pre-HW or during HW which is a completely different vibe. It also felt a little bleak that like, Estinien would come back with this profound new sense of self while Aymeric is still willfully keeping herself in chains in order to see a better Ishgard at the end of it. I didn't want it to be an unhappy ending, but in an already really bleak setting of this AU, maybe there was never any other ending possible.

So I let it sit a long while. At this point I've been made to feel so alienated and bad about the ship and the AU I don't really think I'll ever go back to it. I don't even feel like a maybe is fair to say. Never say never I suppose, but if I ever were to go back, I think it would be a long long time from now, if ever.

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

I do! It's all fairly surface level for the most part, but I regularly look stuff up to make sure I'm being reasonable with what I'm writing. I look up quest dialog or replay quests in ffxiv pretty regularly when writing something relevant to it, and in my stardew valley fic I've looked up SO much stuff about homesteading, cooking, and sports lmao. I consider myself pretty well rounded in my interests and my dad was a country boy so I know a fair bit already about those topics but I've still double checked on a lot of stuff to make sure it was within the realm of possibility (allowing myself some wiggle room since the setting is technically not our own world so I can change things if it's more convenient). I've also been looking up character dialog a lot because I'm really worried I'm characterizing them all weirdly, like it's been genuinely a big concern of mine with this fic. Hopefully my concern will lead to me not writing them OOC, but I don't know! 😖

Probably the most in-depth research I ever did was taking notes through a replay of ARR with the intent to start writing Leigh's canon, since it's canon-adjacent and heavily focused on ARR and HW (ending at 3.4 before picking up again at 6.0). I ended up not writing that but I have a lot of notes saved of notable differences between the canon and how his story goes, if I ever do decide to do something with it.

-

Fanfic ask game

[transsexualraskolnikov]

this is just a personal rant, but i have this side gig where i write articles for this one slovak website about our country. i write mainly about history, literature, and arts and for the most part, it's super cool. yet there is this fine line i'm always balancing on whenever writing anything history related. slovakia was christianized in its very early days, we're talking 9th/10th century and the people, focused heavily simply on agriculture, had a bit of a hard time accepting this faith as eagerly as anticipated, as is usually the case. they still clung to their pagan faith and the result of that was this weird mix of both christian values and traditions and pagan ones.

and the thing is, whenever i write an article about ye ol' traditions this fact has to be brought up over and over and you can't help but slowly begin to realize how christianity was forced upon the oblivious peasants who did their best to accept it in their own ways because they had no other choice. and that in and out of itself doesn't bother as much as i might have made it out to seem, i mean it's a thing that has been happening for centuries all over the world and is not necessarily unique to christianization.

what is the thing that truly IRKS me is that in this awfully conservative country where people become weirdly nationalist the moment you say even one mildly critical thing towards its history (despite how CLUELESS everybody is in regards to history. like you'd be blown away by how LITTLE people here actually know of anything. everybody just knows that we used to be like... czechoslovakia last century and that's pretty much it) and also everybody claims to be oh so christian (but only when the moment's convenient) so i constantly have to watch my words and toy this line between truly pointing to the bastardization that chirstianization has done to traditional slavic pagan values as well as being like 'but it's cool!!!!! because we got THIS cool tradition out of it!!!! :)))) yay!!!! praise jesus!!!!!!!' just so i get paid and the people in the comments don't lynch me.

and as somebody studying history, it truly does pain me how the truth and reality has to be obscured in order to be made family-friendly and marketable and i know that i'm not saying anything new and ground-breaking here. i guess now that i'm feeling it on my own skin and am actually the one actively contributing to the myth of face-tuning history in order for it to be more easily digestible, i'm suddenly overtaken by the realization of what really goes down in this world.

oh. i've made myself depressed. well, a girl's gotta get paid so i guess i better get to writing about funeral traditions.

[bluberimufim]

Hello! Just stopping by with a question about writing XD Do you have any characters who's role grew bigger than you expected? Any surprising changes your characters went through during the writing process?

Hi! This ask is a week old! Sorry for that!

Tbh the obvious answer would be Asha and Dora, who really began as tools to facilitate the plot and developed into major side characters with an unhealthy, self-destructive romance. I've talked about them a lot.

But this post is not about them. We all know of the war lesbians at this point.

I wanna talk about General Edward Fallin for a sec. You might know of him. I refer to him exclusively as "Theo's brother".

In the WIP that existed in 8th grade that would later become literally unrecognizable and turn into "Devourer of Souls", he was a major character and I liked him quite a lot. I felt like there was something interesting that I managed to hit with his character.

(I really wanna make a post about this proto-WIP but I keep procrastinating -_-)

From one WIP to the other, he was the one to maintain the most character traits (tbh competition is nonexistent bc they all changed so much - literally not even genders were maintained). He's always been Reiner's (part of Flick) father, Theo's brother, and a Master of the Order devoted to his work.

But he's a really minor character. He only appears in 2 scenes: one in the first half and one in the second.

Allow me to ramble about My Boy for a bit:

Ed is a bad person. He's an antagonistic force (not necessarily an antagonist) and is in direct opposition to Theo from a military standpoint. He is responsible for a fuckton of deaths and outright says he's willing to hurt people himself if it gets him what he wants faster. He denounced his own sister to the Order when they were teenagers, leading to her getting a death sentence and running away, he ordered his men to break Seth's cane in half so she literally can't run away when they capture her, and he stabbed Theo through the shoulder the first time he saw her again. He vaguely talks like a pissed-off mob boss. Good people don't do this shit.

But that's the surface-level stuff. Because once you listen to what he's saying, you start to see something else.

For an antagonist, Ed has a weirdly strong attachment to his family. And not in a weird way. When Seth straight-up asks him "why tf are you doing this" he just says "Whatever it takes, I want my children to grow up in a world without war".

He knows he's doing bad things, but he's willing to do them if it means the war will end faster and his family will be safe. His motivation is 100% to protect the people he cares about.

But I ain't no basic bitch. I'm not leaving it at that.

He feels like an antagonist because he's being seen from Seth's POV. Flick's POV is very different.

Reiner (who is part of the whole that is Flick) is Ed's youngest son, and he sees him fully as a hero, as do most people in his country tbh. He admires him, even when Allana's soul joins his because of divine fuckery (not getting into the divine soul fusion fuckery rn).

And I mean... can you blame him? Ed is a super-competent general who made his way up the ranks at a very young age, led an army against two demigoddesses at the same time and kept the upper hand, won a fight against a demigoddess and survived, was the first person to push for a (temporary) peace treaty and managed to maintain it for 20 years, and constantly does everything in his power to keep that peace in place, even going against the will of the gods themselves.

That sounds pretty heroic to me - not necessarily good, but heroic. Hell, that feels like a protagonist's storyline, almost.

I'm all about that perspective switcheroo. Theo probably seems like a horrible person from Flick's POV, before meeting Seth.

Adds that ✨flavour✨ to it, don't you think?

[thenightling]

The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country: Glass House issue 3 Review:

I just read The Nightmare Country: The Glass House issue 3. I still occasionally mess up the title because there is a Witcher comic called House of Glass. Anyway, it's just kind of... unpleasant. I try to force myself to read it but I'm not enjoying it. It's not as bad as the first Nightmare Country but it's not a nice story. It's decidedly unpleasant. It has that edgy 90s style that got boring by 1998. The Corinthian is the only semi-likable character and that's saying something. That was sort of my problem with The House of Whispers back in 2018. The House of Whispers wasn't terrible but that one was kind of boring where the only points of interest were Anansi (the Spider trickster God) and The Corinthian and how The Corinthian handled those abusive parents. The portrayal of Lucien is just awful. Not only is it flat but the character "Voices" don't feel right. Though The Corinthian is enjoyable his language, his use of words, it doesn't match any previous version of the character. It's very articulate but it doesn't feel like there's a personality in the dialogue. Everyone talks the same. That was a complaint I had back when Caitlin R. Kiernan was writing The Dreaming (1996-2002). Except with her everyone spoke like a cheap 80s action movie character, tossing around the the f word and trying to sound edgy. They don't do that here. In here The Corinthian is relatively well spoken but no one has a truly unique voice, a individual's way of talking. Every character should have their own "voice" a chosen vocabulary, or style of speaking and I'm not seeing that here. It's hard to get into the story when everyone talks exactly the same way except Lucien who... comes off like a self-righteous jerk. It's a bit like Simon Spurrier's version of Lucien in The Dreaming (2018) but not really Lucien of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Lucien pretty much shows up just to tell The Corinthian that he asked Daniel what he do if The Corinthian steps out of line and Daniel apparently said he'd unmake him. That's great, you conspire to unmake the only character actually doing anything in this story. Thank you for being completely useless, Lucien. The Corinthian and Lucien both bring up some very good points. The dead girl whose ghost is now residing in the form of a cat (I couldn't be bothered to remember her name) The Corinthian tells Lucien "Did you know she doesn't even like cats?" and Lucien says something to the effect of "The Dream Lord would not have turned her into a cat if she didn't like cats." This does make a valid point. I know Daniel is different than Morpheus but Daniel does share a lot of his traits and memories and Morpheus would never create a raven from someone unless he knew that person would prefer to be a raven than the mortal they had been.

It feels like DC shamelessly tried to make an expansive story out of something that didn't really need or deserve it, such as bringing Thessaly in after the events of Dead Boy Detectives as if to go "See, i is a shared universe!" Yeah, that only works if the stories being connected are... you know... good... This is better than The Corinthian: Nightmare Country in regard to the pacing but it still has that ugly, sadistic, and weirdly dull "gritty" 90s comic book style. I don't know if I can continue reading it just to review it. It's that unpleasant for me. It's not the worst thing I've ever read but I have little reason to want to continue reading it.

[bhawk-goose]

Still watching Doctor Who and I'm gonna make this a big post abt several episodes.

S 1 Ep 3:

If corpses that enter your building coming back to life and killing people is an issue, maybe stop bringing corpses into your building.

You're a time traveler, who travels across all of time and space presumably just for the fun of it, so it's likely rare for you to ever go to two places with the same beauty standards, so why the fuck do you keep your clothes a fucking mile away from the exit?

Mr. Dickens is definitely the great, great man.

Psychic jumper. Clearly. Makes people think his outfit fits in with typical 1800s earth fashion. He changed because its magical effect is specifically for the 1800s earth, while the old one was apples.

The zombie-zoom-in seems like a reaction image. Like when one specific person is being weirdly angry about something that everyone else is fine with you just rb with that.

"She's seen too much" he says as if there's anyone within a mile of that theater who hasn't seen too much.

I love the scene with the Doctor(or The Doctor?) realizing it's Charles Dickens because I don't think that was even him lying to get a free ride or anything, I'm pretty sure that was just him meeting one of his favorite authors in person.

It's not your fault if the dead stay dead, but if the dead never stay dead in your presence, it is your fault that you refuse to not actively get dead people in your presence.

"are you all right?"

Why did they just talk to him? Nobody else? Not even a single indication that they COULD talk, but then some schmuck in typical 1800s attire comes in and they start speaking in riddles?

You saw two dead people trying to kill someone.

I hate the way he looks up at Rose sometimes, his expression is like the tism creature. He's an asshole, not a Creature. He should not have that expression.

The sight?

I've heard of that!

It's not that you haven't been born yet, you can't die because it's the third episode.

I wonder how many more servant girls are gonna have saved the world by the end of the season.

Is the TARDIS gonna kill him early via heart attack?

oh, it just killed his mind early.

EP 4:

the music in this is already great.

Poor choice of words Doctor. Also why does everyone act like he's the sexiest man across time and space? Their first assumption any time they find out he's interacting with someone is sex. And their second. And their third. And their fourth.

That is a massive change in tone.

She's the first person on planet earth who knows they exist

wow they got there fast

It's been like five minutes what do you mean across the country?

What does north america have to do with this?

Three questions. First, is that a real government position, second, is that really the name of the guy who held said government position in 2006, and third, why does this dude have an encyclopedic knowledge of government officials?

Relieved stomach

Is this laughing gas, nervous laughter, or nefarious laughter?

I'm pretty sure I've seen in a clip he has like 12 of those. He's gonna vanish.

Knew it

I think they might've imprisoned a live alien

I think they just now realized they're taking orders from this guy

it's a pig. It's just a pig. It's a pig in a space suit. That's what we're so scared of.

IT'S A NORMAL SIZED PIG IN A SPACE SUIT

That didn't raise your hair in the slightest. I've been scammed

oh shit it IS a normal sized pig in a space suit

goddammit

Why is his assumption still aliens after seeing that it came from earth?

oh wow, that is some remarkably terrible CGI

Why are its blinks loud??

You have giant fuck off claws and a Zap Everybody Device and you choose to strangle someone?

EP 5:

3/5

hold on what happenned?? All I skipped was the next episode and recap bits? Why is the alien being electrocuted?

are those things ever gonna die?

I wonder if he's said that exact thing before.

I hate this one. I really fucking hate this one.

Good question Rose!

Rose you've been to three places with him and one of those is your home. If that was already enough to desensitize you to death you need therapy, not a fucking TARDIS key.

Hold on. They need the UN to launch nukes. Those are powerful. Valuable weapons. They don't want to launch the nukes, but they do want to find them, so they're trying to start the process, possibly so they can use some kind of technology to pluck them out of the air. They put the world on red alert so the UN would panic and authorize nuclear launches right into the family's waiting arms. But that's not evil enough, all they're doing with that is taking away a few mass murder devices and killing politicians, that's benevolent. So IDK actually.

I'm not a huge fan of the expressions that one makes when taking off his skin

I'd probably have the same reaction if that disgusting concoction was thrown at me.

oh now they're gonna take advantage of the UN's panic and intentionally cause a nuclear apocalypse

yep

Not even a target selection screen? Just fire?

That is a very low flying missile. A fucking pigeon could probably intercept it. Some kid could throw something at it from a high floor of a building and hit it.

Does this mean she's gonna be a reocurring character? I hope she's a reocurring character.

Yeah. It shouldn't be just tea to you. You're taking this girl across time and space in a magic blue box with "bad wolf" spraypainted on it. You should meet her fucking mother.

not even a goodbye. Seriously what the fuck? That's just mean.

To be fair last time you left for ten seconds she didn't see you for a fucking year.

[maleyanderecafe]

Please, Let Me Return Home (Webcomic)

Created by: Hwa-yeon-jae

Genre: Isekai

Vacation time is the perfect time for reading isekai stories, so I have another one I found. This one's premise is a bit different since unlike a lot of isekais, the main character actually does want to go home, and to make things harder, she has no idea what story she isekaied into. As of writing this, there are 37 chapters out, and the translations wane from either really good to weirdly awkwardly worded. I actually found this webtoon through this youtube short here.

The story is about Estelle, a knight who died by the hands of her trusted right hand man and reincarnated into the body of an aristocrat girl named Lucifia. Upon reincarnation, she realizes that the side she used to fight on has lost and that she is wed to a man named Zedekiah Heint, an adversary. Her body is now weaker and no longer in the shape that it used to be. She tries to find some of the knights she used to fight along side (by trading places with her maid and buying a knife), but ends up fighting a serial killer that was on the loose in the capital. She's able to defend herself and the killer gets caught. She goes to a ball later with Heint, where rumors of her jumping off of the building get spread around greatly. While she's able to defend off the rumors, she recalls the event of Lucifia jumping off of the building, supposedly to claim her love for the crown prince despite him seeming to not care about her, and as a result she ends up kicking the crown prince in the dick when he tries to go down on her. She realizes that the man who killed her, Khalid is still alive and swears to seek revenge. She eventually gains a memory from her past of how her mother died and how her father almost committed suicide because of it. To prevent rumors from spreading about her attempted suicide, she meets up with a trading deal to set things straight. However, things turn to the worst when the traders attempt to kidnap her, forcing her to run into the forest where a monster resides. Here, Khalid is able to save her, and nearly dies. Estelle nearly leaves him to die, but knows that if he dies here he will be regarded as a hero, so she saves him. Luckily, Heint is able to save both of them and nurse them both back to health (much to Estelle's dismay). Lady Loer (the one Estelle thinks is the one spreading rumors) invites Estelle to a tea party, however, things turn to the worst when Khalid interrupts and talks down about Estelle on the battlefield, specifically about how she was a female knight and couldn't even defend her country. Heint ends up defending her and the teaparty ends. The last couple of chapters talks about Lady Loer and how despite how it seems, she is trying to help Estelle, as she really admired Lucifia and wants to help her.

Surprisingly, this is one of the few isekai I've seen where the MC tries to get back to real life, since most of the time the MCs just accept their fate while being stuck in this world. I actually do like the MC's design before she gets isekaied into Beatrice and I wish that her quirk of making scary faces when she's happy was integrated more into the story (it only shows up once after she's been isekaied, which is a shame because I think it would be a really funny character quirk). She also blushes A LOT for an MC, which I don't particularly understand. I do think it's kind of interesting to have her not know the story she's been isekaied into since she's read so many different romance books only to find out that it's partially from her own story of tragedy. Her character as Beatrice is okay, I guess, she doesn't particularly stand out to me much as an MC.

Ellin is a pretty cute male lead, and he has a sad backstory to boot. I actually really do like his backstory though. It's pretty cute seeing a shaggy child Ellin learn how to trust with a guard who is sort of incompetent. I think that him and Beatrice's relationship is actually pretty cute, though it's too bad it seems that the empress seems to be very possessive and possibly even yandere for Ellin, considering he tells him to throw away earrings that Beatrice got for him. I wonder what the empress's relationship with Daniel is as well, since they both seem to have a similar motivation of keeping the one they love close to their heart.

The yandere in question is Cha Yejun's doppelganger, Daniel. It's a bit hard to tell if he's a yandere since the translations are kind of rough, but from what I can tell, he kills the assassin in an attempt to get rid of both Ellin and protect Beatrice, and even ends up drugging Beatrice out of jealousy and to prevent her from testifying in court. With the way he's aware that he's in a story, it makes me wonder if Daniel is actually Cha Yejun isekaied into the story, and that maybe he had this kind of personality this entire time. We don't know that much about Cha Yejun other than he was a popular student that was close to the MC, though it does seem strange that the two would suddenly be friends since there's not really any explanation to how or why they met. This could also not be the case since we see that when the MC was isekaied, the smoke that she sees in the mirror is identical to the one that Daniel is able to make. It also wouldn't necessarily make sense that Cha Yejun would be Daniel since if the story she's in is actually something she wrote in third grade, then there's no way for him to have read or known about it unless the two knew each other back then (or he had somehow read it). It does bring up questions on how Daniel knows that Ellin is actually an extra (as it were) or if he's just really arrogant and believes that he's the center of attention. I'm not sure why exactly he's interested in Beatrice in the first place- it might have something to do with his lineage and how important the marriage is, but he does seem jealous over her when she hangs out with Ellin.

Anyways, I wish this story had a better translation since it can be a bit annoying reading through it, but I did have a fun time reading the story since it does present some concepts I don't normally see.

[father-time-and-baby-new-year]

alphabet boy II

SYNOPSIS: college AU. Armin, your brilliant tutor, invites you over to his house for some studying. Naturally, you're nervous and he seems to be giving you a reason to be.

PAIRING: SCUMBAG!Tutor Armin x FEM!Reader

WARNINGS: half edited, noncon/dubcon, fingering, non-penetrative sexual content. gaslighting, manipulating,

A/N: really need the motivation to write again and I've been slacking on my multi-parters so here's a somewhat highly anticipated one. Armin fuckers, this is for you. non-Armin fuckers, I hope this converts you

WORD COUNT: 2.0k

II. I.

“You’re not paying attention.”

You feel his voice right by the shell of your ear, and the proximity nearly makes you reel back in surprise but you manage to catch yourself.

“S-sorry�� You apologize, wishing you didn’t stutter.

The thing is you’re just really out of your element. This is the first time you’ve been to Armin’s house for personal tutoring, and it was hard to focus on the material when his presence was so distracting.

It wasn’t like you were fantasizing about him or anything [well…]-you always tried to banish those thoughts as soon as it came. But still, being alone with an attractive boy with a disarming charm was causing some jitters. You felt like a shy middle schooler, on edge and jittery.

The last tutoring session in the library when he [basically] called you stupid plagued your mind. The memory of him feeling up your thighs lived in your head rent-free.

“Let’s take a break.” He sighs. Your heart drops at the noise of disappointment but you suppose it’s what you deserve.

You push your laptop lightly aside on the table, the bleak light straining your eyes, and ask for the bathroom. You just wanted to freshen up and be alone for a few seconds. The bathroom is meticulously clean, something even you knew was unexpected for a boy. You looked at yourself through the spotless mirror, scrutinizing every flaw.

You sigh, fiddling with your dress collar. Why you had tried dressing pretty for a boy so out of your league, he may as well be in Mars--you didn’t know.

When you return, there is a tall glass of lemonade waiting for you.

“Thought you might be thirsty.”

It’s a simple gesture that makes you blush so you thank him earnestly. Like the gentleman he is, he assures you it’s no problem. Not wanting to prolong the awkward silence, you compliment his apartment, “This is a really nice place. So much light and space.”

You’re babbling but he engages you regardless, and you two are mindlessly discussing the benefits of living at off-campus housing over dorming. His words are pleasant but there’s a sinking feeling within you as you notice he’s bored. Or maybe distracted was a better word.

“So, do you have a boyfriend? Or anyone you’re seeing?”

You nearly choke at the question uttered through a buttery voice.

“Oh um, not really.”

“Not really?”

You made a mental note to answer in definitives. Armin seemed the type to snuff out anything he reasoned as half-truths.

“No. I uh, don’t have a boyfriend.” And then you clarified a pin-drop later, “And I’m not seeing anyone either.”

The blond hums a playful tune that’s vaguely nostalgic.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

You don’t understand the point of this line of incessant questioning, and can’t calm your heart rate.

“I-um, I don’t-“

Taking one look at your serious face, eyes rimmed with worry and cheeks pink, he laughs. It’s a startling sound like bell chimes.

“Relax. I just wanted to know if you had any experience.”

The sentence flies out of your mouth before you can even ponder it: “What do you mean by experience?”

It’s not his fault if he can’t hide the feral grin that crosses his mouth right at that moment. You can’t discern his expression as you’re staring at anywhere but him, so you don’t notice the uncontained excitement that glimmers in cerulean eyes.

“Let’s move to the couch. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

You think about saying that you’re fine wherever you are and didn’t really feel like changing positions, but he’s already striding towards the couch. So you start packing up the materials, before a clear voice calls out to you, “It’s okay. You don’t have to bring all that. Just bring your flashcards.”

You hoped that wouldn’t mean he’d quiz you, but that’s exactly what he meant to do.

“Law of diminishing returns.”

“Wait! I know that one!” You brightly exclaimed, “ Uhh..it gives way to the catch-up effect which means poor countries tend to grow more rapidly and they’ll one day essentially catch up with wealthier economies.”

The blond ran his hand through his hair before sighing. You could feel your heart drop. You were sure you were right. Was your answer wrong enough to cause exasperation?

“Stick with the formal definition next time. I didn’t ask for the theory based on the law.”

You pouted, and Armin couldn’t help but relish in how eagerly you sought his approval, like a puppy performing tricks to appease their master.

“You should sit closer. Can you even see the word?”

You moved closer to him, knees knocking into each other. He looks down at the completed set.

“Well, you didn’t do as bad as I expected.” Ouch. But maybe he meant it as a compliment?

“But,” the corners of his mouth curled, “I’d say you’re still struggling.” Never mind.

“T-this is a new chapter though. I don’t think we’ve even gone over it in class.”

Blue eyes narrow, and you wonder if he’s going to give the well-meaning spiel about how staying ahead was the only way to keep up. That mantra may work for someone with high ambitions and an extremely good work ethic but you were no well-oiled machine. You had other classes too!

“Why are you so defensive?”

Your eyes widen in surprise at the question, spoken so softly and casually, you almost miss the disdained lilt.

“Oh uh-“

“Listen to me. I quizzed you so I’m able to assert your skill level. And your response to my assertion is that it’s something you haven’t gone over in class yet. Do those things relate to each other at all?”

Meekly, you shift your attention to the rug.

“Answer me.”

“N-no”, you squeaked.

“And what have I always told you? The only way to keep up is to-“

“Stay ahead.” You finished, “I’m sorry, I just-“

“Did I say you could interrupt me?”

You could feel the blood rushing to your ears, unsure when the atmosphere had shifted. Your heartbeat was beating rapidly and you could feel your body go warm.

He sighed, and placed a hand over over your folded ones, squeezing your palms.

“You know I’m just looking out for you right? It almost feels like you don’t care-“

“No!” You exclaim, “I-I do.” Heat pools into your cheeks once you realize your grave mistake, “I-I’m sorry for interrupting you.”

The blond smiles radiantly and it nearly melts away all of your worries…until he opens his mouth to deliver another damning remark.

“You know, with your looks…you don’t really even have to graduate. Maybe choose an easy major and then get some rich husband to take care of you.” There’s a distinct lack of humor in his tone as if he wholeheartedly believed every word he was saying.

Your eyebrows furrow in blatant confusion, and in the back of your mind, danger signs are flashing at the back of your head. Your thighs are growing warmer. Oh no, this could not be happening right now.

“That’s what most girls’ dreams are anyways.” He inspects his spotless nails, “You chose this class because Ackerman’s attractive right? That’s why his class has such a high drop rate…silly girls join, not understanding how harsh of a grader he is.”

You open your mouth to defend yourself but the next inflammatory remark he spews almost sends you to shock, “Though I bet, if you got on your knees for him, you’d be getting an A on those finals.” He laughs as if he was saying something particularly amusing, an undercurrent of spite coloring his words, “You wouldn’t even need me as your tutor.”

There are a million things on the tip of your tongue but no voice to speak them out. You want to ask him why he’s been so weirdly invasive, what his weird hang-up with professor Ackerman was, and of course, the casual sexism was really throwing you in a loop. Still, you have no doubt Armin could beat you to a bloody pulp several times over in a verbal lashing, and your mind was too fragile to deal with this.

You’ll sign up for a new tutor or better yet no tutor. You’ll get over your social anxiety and join a study group. You’ll go to all of Professor Ackerman’s office hours. Anything had to be better than this. You’re giving yourself this pep talk in your head but there’s no denying that your legs feel warm, and the self-improvement speech is withering away in your mind as it seeks to instead process how Armin fucking Arltert is touching you right now.

He pins you against the cushions, one hand locking both of your wrists. You’re shaking but your pupils are blown out wide.

He smirks, “There’s an excellent stress reliever for studying you know.”

You limp in his hold but the cocky attitude behind his words brings you back. You thrash under him, earning an annoyed growl from the blond.

“I’ve been so fucking patient with you, you know? Planning out your study guides, sharing my notes with you, proofreading homework, going over the mock exams—don’t you think I deserve a little compensation?”

“I-I’m sorry.”

He's right. He's right. Armin actually has done so much for you. Maybe it was too easy to take for granted because of how efficient he was, and how he acted like it was nothing. But right now, nothing really was everything.

He smiles. Yeah, this is who you were. Add just a little bit of pressure and you crumble. That flash of bravery from before was nothing but a petulant outburst from a child who didn’t know any better.

Armin coos, “Isn’t it a little embarrassing to be a virgin at your age?”

With unbridled precision, while he’s still holding your lower body down with the weight of his legs, he unbuckles his belt and ties it around your strained wrists. Red fills your face, and like always, you’re struggling to find the right words to respond. To say anything at all. Most of all, you can feel a wetness building at your core.

“I know the way you look at me, you know.” He kisses the dip of your neck, slender fingers splayed from under your shirt, “I know you’re into this.”

And because he is a scientist who must have evidence to back up his hypothesis, his hands find themselves under the waistband of your floral skirt that you foolishly wore, pushing the cure pastel underwear aside. You’re writhing in his grasp but maybe not as much as you should be, but it’s not your fault your movements are sluggish right?

“You have such a funny habit of not deleting your windows and keeping your bookmarks open.”

You freeze.

“This entire time I thought you were some prudish virgin even though you dress like a whore. Someone with who I had to be gentle. But all that fucking porn you read? Nasty. Is that why you need help in this class?” He punctuates slowly, "Because you're wasting your brain for something else?"

Immediately, you remember how you left your laptop on the table. You remember how many times he used your computer to double-check the notes, and you trustingly let him, forgetting that despite deleting your tabs, the hidden windows of steamy erotica were not yet erased out of their existence. Embarrassment violently paints your body.

He doesn’t wait or care for your response as he starts a vigorous assault on your clit with his slender finger, rubbing up and down in a vicious manner. The second finger prods at your entrance, feeling a tight cavern despite the amount of slick collected. Your eyes roll back in pleasure-is this what being with someone is like?

Stop. Get a hold of yourself. Why are you so fucking horny right now? It doesn’t matter what Armin said about you or how he called you out for the fiction you’ve read, because this is real life. But Christ, it’s Armin, the boy you’ve had a crush on since the moment he explained to you what a marginal abasement curve was. Stupidly handsome Armin with a gentle voice and too-blue oceanic eyes. Stupidly handsome Armin who coerced you into being under him.

You’re so fucking warm and tight, and Armin can’t wait to sink himself inside of you, can’t wait to humiliate you further. With nimble fingers he untied the ribbons of your dress like you were a Christmas present, groping your soft mounds and marking up your collarbone with teeth and tongue. Crystalline tears roll down the side of your face. You really shouldn’t be crying when you’re this wet.

“So fucking funny how you can’t look at me in the eye when we have a conversation but you read the filthiest fucking smut I’ve ever seen.”

taglist: @candy-hime

[super-predictable98]

The Therapists From Music Room 3 (Host Club x Reader)

Fandom: Ouran High School Host Club Word Count: 1,5k Warning: mention of depression (Masterlist)

You had a comfortable life, of so you thought until your dad was transferred to Japan and his company started paying for your education. You started your second year at Ouran High School, a place filled with young billionaires with no common sense. You came to realize what real wealth looked like and it wasn't as pretty as you thought.

Some of the people there were very cruel, they were quick to dismiss anything and anyone that wasn't up to their standards. There were a lot of hidden fights with passive-aggressive remarks, and even when they didn't mean to offend, they could be so clueless when it came to people who had a normal life.

As a result, you didn't have many friends, mostly because you were scared to approach people, but also because you were previously traumatized by the bullying from your last school. You didn't even wanna imagine what sort of humiliation waited for you from these rich snobs.

With almost no one to talk to and living in a country completely different, so far away from home, it didn't take long for you to start feeling depressed.

You didn't have the nerve to tell your parents you weren't happy. Who wouldn't be? Going to one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, eating some of the best food in the country, surrounded by beauty... You just couldn't help but feel a bit ungrateful, whiny.

"Jesus, in a castle so big, there isn't a single place without anyone to bother me?" you fixed the sleeves of your silly yellow uniform. For the past ten minutes, you had been going from one room to the other, looking for an empty space to be alone.

So far you had no luck, every little corner of the building seemed to be inhabited by rich people promenading like they were in a period drama. Weirdly enough, no one seemed to study a lot there.

"Welcome, princess," a choir of male voices greeted as soon as you opened the door to music room 3 (yeah, the number of music rooms in the school did surprise you).

Before you could close the door and keep wandering around, your attention was captured by a group of seven young men: a tall quiet one, a tiny cheerful one, a blonde one with the most beautiful smile, one with glasses who was taking notes, a delicate one with the kindest eyes you had ever seen, and a set of twins.

"We weren't expecting any guests yet, what brings such a beautiful angel here so early, my darling?" the blonde one stood up, flashing you a charming grin and offering his hand. "Come in, don't be shy."

"Sorry, did you say guests? Is there a party or something? Cause I wasn't invited so I-"

"There will be a tea party soon!" the tiny one, who didn't look much older than your 8-year-old brother, said. "Don't worry, you're invited, every girl is invited!"

"Who's more your type? Quiet and cool? Shota? Little devils? Smart?" the one in glasses asked. "You can have your pick since you were the first one to arrive."

"Excuse me, I'm not sure I know what's happening," you laughed awkwardly. Those guys were all really cute, but you couldn't stop thinking that it all seemed like a cruel prank. "Who are you?"

"We are the Host Club, of course!" the blonde kissed the back of your hand gracefully bowing. "We are here to bring smiles to the faces of every girl in Ouran High. If I can make you smile at least once, my existence in this world will have been worth it."

"What?"

"I've seen you before, you're the other scholarship student, right? I'm Haruhi," the kind-looking one introduced himself. "These are Tamaki senpai, Mori senpai, Honey senpai, Kyoya senpai, and the twins are Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin."

"H-hello, I'm y/n."

"A commoner? I love commoners, this is gonna be so much fun!" Tamaki cheered. "Would you like some instant coffee, my dear? Maybe you'd rather taste it on my lips?"

"I don't think she likes being called a-" Haruhi tried to intervene, but Tamaki shook his head.

"It's all right, daddy's taking care of it," his exceedingly charming facade dropped for a split second.

A host club? So they gave girls attention to make them feel special? As nice as it sounded, you couldn't shake the feeling that it would be painful to have a guy talk to you out of obligation, not because he really cared or wanted to know you better.

"Actually, I was looking for a place to be alone..." you let go of his hand.

"Why? You have seven perfectly handsome guys right here, who would choose to be alone instead?" the twins said in unison.

You didn't really have an answer. You wanted to be alone to cry, to think about all the things you used to do that were fun and now weren't anymore, about the friends you lost, about how everything seemed to have turned upside-down with no signs of going back when all you wanted was to keep living your life the way it was. You were happy, why did all of that have to be stolen from you?

"Are you okay?" Haruhi asked, a worried frown twisting his delicate features.

"I'm sorry, I don't wanna ruin your tea party, I just wanna be alone," your voice cracked through your plea, your eyes involuntarily filling with tears.

"The moments you want to be alone are the moments you need other people the most," Honey timidly made his way to you and held out the pink bunny he was carrying. "Do you wanna hold Usa-chan? It always makes me feel better."

"Hey, don't cry, come here, sit down," Tamaki gestured to the couch. "A beautiful face like yours shouldn't be stained with tears unless they are tears of joy."

You wanted to walk away, but you didn't have the strength to. Having someone be so nice to you, even if it was technically their job, felt so overwhelming and good. You couldn't help but want more of it.

Tamaki sat right next to you, the twins did the same. The others sat on the opposite side, except for Kyoya, too busy typing on his laptop and calculating finances for the club. He trusted the others would be able to help without a problem.

"Why are you so sad?" Kaoru asked. "Is it because you don't have money?"

"Kaoru!" Haruhi scolded.

"I just miss my home, I feel lonely, I wasn't able to make any friends here, I feel so excluded," you finally said, it was like getting a weight off your chest. "I don't feel like I belong here."

"Oh, I get it... It takes a while to get used to it," Haruhi murmured, remembering how he didn't even have a school uniform when he first started. "But I promise it won't last forever, even if most people here are completely out of touch-"

"HEY!" Tamaki yelped before charmingly resting his chin on your shoulder. "I don't know about everyone else, but no one in the host club is out of touch, especially not me. I'm always in touch, and right now I'm craving your touch, princess."

"You're being weird!" Haruhi sneered, which seemed to hurt him way too much. "What I mean if even if it seems like you don't belong, you deserve to be here and you already have a friend in me."

"Right!" the twins agreed. "Us too! Please don't cry, do you wanna play Which One is Hikaru? If you win, you get a kiss... Or maybe you'd like to watch us kissing instead?"

"Wait, what? Is that a thing? Also, I just met you, it's still a little hard for me to tell who's who," your lips formed a smile as Tamaki gently wiped your tears away.

"Do you want some cake?" Honey suggested. "Strawberry shortcake is my favorite, but I can get whatever flavor you like, y/n-chan!"

"I know how hard it is to change your entire life like this," Tamaki admitted, something he usually didn't talk about, but he felt like it would be worth it if it brought you some peace. "I moved to Japan not too long ago, I had to leave everything behind, but now I feel like I have a family here, not only at home but in this club. It's always harder in the beginning, but I promise it gets better, and you can always count on me to distract you if you ever feel sad," he crooned, ending that moment of vulnerability.

"Thank you, guys... I- I don't know what to say," you looked down, your cheeks burning. Even though all of them were hosts, you simply knew they weren't talking to you out of obligation or throwing some cheap pick-up lines at you, they actually cared and it showed.

"Say you'll stay for the party!" Honey clapped.

"Yeah, I guess a cup of tea and some cake wouldn't hurt."

Tag List: @myherokatsuki @elliethesuperfruitlover