#which can be either good or bad flavours lol

[iced-souls]

Papyrus Week Day 6: FREE DAY

I hath chosen to do a head canon of mine that i like to think is true sometimes

And its that the man is frickin blind as hell. No skele-pupils = no clear vision. Only reason he’s surviving is off of another headcanon where i think he can see from above as well. Like “player pov”.

Lol papyrus you absolute buffoon of a creature just GET SOME DAMN GLASSES!!

[catguangcorner]

Sure, I'll bite.

What are your headcanons about the Link Click trio's favorite ice cream + hot beverage + cold beverage and why. :)

thank you for the ask!! also i have indeed started reading third time's the charm and !!!! already hitting me in the feels

ok SO I'll go character by character:

qiao ling: for favourite ice cream I'm generally thinking fruity/refreshing flavours, though more specifically (maybe because of one of her official arts i saw recently) strawberry! but she might also be picky with what makes Good strawberry ice cream and plays it safe if she's buying from a new place. probably vanilla, i feel like one can't really go wrong with vanilla.

as for drinks, i like the idea that QL and LG enjoy tea together. QL will shuffle over to the studio after hours and do a face mask and LG will prepare them tea (always non-caffinated, because QL says she's too sensitive to caffeine lately at night), and they'll drink it and enjoy each other's quiet company. LG probably reads while QL does some scrollingon her phone.

finally for cold drinks, we already know that boba runs are a common occurrence at the studio, but i bet QL also really loves trying out novel iced-drinks. I'm thinking caramel iced lattes, strawberry chai iced, green energy smoothie 3000, etc. drinks with really long, convoluted names, that are kind of a fad but that's ok!! let her have fun with her silly little drinks!!!

cheng xiaoshi: i think, contrastingly, CXS is a big fan of the ice cream flavours that can border on sickly sweet, depending on the place. he likes chocolate, and cookie dough, and those ice creams loaded with lots of other sweets inside them. mind you, i don't think he has ice cream like that regularly or he'd definitely get sick of it, but when the opportunity arises trust he'll be asking for all the extras and sprinkles.

for hot drinks—CXS likes coffee! i don't think he Always liked coffee, because it's such an acquired taste especially when you're younger. during uni he probably got into it in the quest to stay up and meet those damn deadlines lol. so he grew used to drinking it from there. he either: takes his coffee black but with quite a bit of sugar (which LG tuts at him for) or he has it milky.

his cold beverage of choice....he kind of gives me standard iced coffee + extra sugar + chews on the leftover ice cubes after lmaoo. he also does indulge QL when she drags him to a pop up shop to get a limited time Novel Iced Beverage.

lu guang: doesn't like ice cream 😞 if it's really hot he'll have ice lollies/popcicles and if you held him at gunpoint and told him he HAD to choose, he'd choose vanilla. however, he will sometimes have spoonfuls/a bite of CXS's ice cream. Occasionally. more often than he'd willingly admit. CXS always makes fun of him, saying, "you don't even like ice cream, so why are you suddenly so eager to have mine?" (he never stops him though)

hot beverage: i did go over this a little in QL's section hehe, but let me elaborate! i think LG prefers tea, but has a robust beverage routine, in which he'll have black coffee (no sugar. ok sometimes maybe a teaspoon. but only Sometime) with his breakfast. then in the evenings he'll have his tea (sometimes with QL). I like to think though he mostly has green tea, he really likes oulong. CXS pokes fun at how devoted LG is to this routine of his, and in turn LG will lecture him about how having caffeine after a certain hour is bad for him and really, he ought to be drinking more tea for its health benefits, etc, etc

cold beverage: because we know that LG doesn't like overly sweet things, but likes boba, i can't help but to think he enjoys most forms of iced tea. like he'll make himself homemade iced tea during the summer and have it all throughout the day!

ok ok im done now apologies this is so long-winded i am nothing if not overly detailed about my blorbos

[uchihakeimei]

Helloooo, hope it's ok if I reply here! Also I forgot to apologize in advance for my terrible English, hope it's understandable!

What a relief to find someone who actually understands Kaiser! He's one of my absolute favs together with Rin and Isagi, but I never really spoke much about him since I noticed the fandom has a bad habit of misinterpreting him. AND Kaisagi in general. No, Isagi is not his soft-uwu toyboy, he's a badass, a menace and if anything, it's him that would put Kaiser in his place. And yes, they totally hate each other. Like, super hate. And that borderlines on obsession from Kaiser's part. (Ngl, that's my favorite part in all Isagi's ships, how he's unbothered, moisturized, living his best life, and the counterpart is decaying in their obsession in beating him. God, he's such an icon.) Their mutual disdain is what makes the ship so balanced, and also the reason why I dislike Kainess, I don't really appreciate the power imbalance and how submissive Ness acts around him. He deserves better than that. Oh, how I would love to see him leave Kaiser in the dirt to fight alone: that would be such a great character development for both of them. Ofc I'm not judging anyone who ships Kainess, it's a perfectly valid ship! I just love both Kiis and Rnis cause they check all of the boxes of the chemicals in my brain. And when the Kaiser flashbacks drops? I'm gonna go absolutely crazy. I need to be the worm in his brain and understand him in a much deeper way than Kaneshiro ever could.

(Also, I love your headcanon about their alternative jobs. I tried to come up with something for Rin too, and I concluded that he definitely could only ever work in front of a computer, where he would never have to interact with people - and traumatize them with his weird bullshit, lmao). (Oh, and Kaiser would be an even worse boyfriend than Rin, let's be real. One small argument and he's dumping your ass to ""find himself"" like any mediocre fuckboy).

Yes, despite my BLLK obsession I'm keeping up with other mangas! I've been reading One Piece since I was a child, but lately I got invested in Chainsaw man, Choujin X, Kagurabachi, Bungou stray dogs and My hero academia, too. What about you??

Of course, it's totally okay!!

And hello fellow Kaiser fan, great to meetcha!!

And yes. A lot of people mischaracterise Kaiser- either as an Isagi simp (most common in fanfictions) or a complete asshole with no depth.

KaiSagi characterisation tends to be even worse (which, this is NOT me criticising authors at all, people are entitled to write what they enjoy!), but either Kaiser or Isagi gets reduced to a desperate simp trying to get into each other's pants (mostly I have seen this with Kaiser, actually) and that's not very likely.

The charm of KaiSagi is their mutual hate, and the ways they overcome that!

And yes. You hit the nail right on the head! Such unbalanced ships, like KaiNess (SasuSaku or NaruHina from Naruto) are the one kind of ships I can never get behind. Whether it's love or hate, it needs to be mutual for me to enjoy it. Power unbalance is not my thing but different strokes for different folks and all that

And yes, Kaiser currently obsessed with destroying Isagi while all Isagi wants to be is no 1 is a delicious flavour and Kaneshiro is cooking

I need an explanation. Of everything regarding Kaiser. That flashback needs to be longest flashback in the manga. I want a biography I can write a thesis on.

(True!! He definitely isn't a people person. He will most likely be doing a job that requires minimum human contact lol)

(And yeah, Kaiser is such red flag, we'd need rose colored glasses to date him 😝)

Hehe. Fellow CSM fan!! My fav is Denji, and I am eagerly awaiting Season 2!

And although I haven't seen the rest of them, I have they are very good anime as well!

My absolute favourite would be Naruto, as I have been in that fandom for years as well. Apart from that, I am currently keeping up with Solo Leveling and Windbreaker!

(Although listing all the animes I have watched will require a separate post, I watch a lot of them!)

Ps: Your English was lovely, no worries!!

[gu6chan]

always feel skeptical involving myself with this discourse but OUGHHHHHH I HATE WHEN PPL STILL PASS AROUND THE WHOLE "Drakengard was a MILLION times more DARK and EDGY in it's original release, but the EVIL ENGLISH TRANSLATORS CENSORED IT so we can NEVER know how bad it really was......" I HAVE MY FACE IN MY HANDS AND AM BEGGING YOU TO GET YOUR KNOWLEDGE FROM BETTER SOURCES THAN DISCORD-HEARSAY FOR CHRIST'S SAKEEEEEEE

Like first of all omg you literally just heard that from someone else, secondly sure, there were some (as in ONE blatantly undeniable case that i could find) lines that were NOT translated with good intent but literally what probably happened after all I've scanned over with the English loc.'s choices as compared to the Japanese script is that the idiots on board with the translation had literally NO IDEA what they were doing ESPECIALLY in the most commonly quoted case of "censorship" (Furiae's death, which was literally IMPOSSIBLE to translate to English unless you wanted to change the line COMPLETELY which did NOT seem to be the style of the translator for this game)

The Japanese script very indirectly wrote around the "Blows" of the darker content with insinuations and context-dependent trail-offs that were literally either untranslatable, DIFFICULT to translate without some massive loc.-lifting or just hard to catch in general (how the FUCK would someone know the actual joke behind the faerie jabbing with "Hide in the trees and you'll be fine, Leonard, lol" with Leonard's response being obvious discomfort???), Thanks side material!

Like I'm not saying my OWN translations are hot shit or anything especially not the earlier ones lmao but just,,, looking at the original text and seeing the choices made by the translator for the English it is SO obvious this is literally just a novice doing their first few translations lmao, and unrelated BUT I'D ALSO LIKE TO POINT TO DOD2'S GODAWFUL SALT-FLAVOURED SCRIPT AND SAY IT WAS DONE BY THE SAME GUY because not ONLY does it lack flavour, there are multiple pronoun misses because WHY IS EVERYONE TALKING LIKE A CARTOON VILLAIN ACCIDENTALLY SLIPPING UP AND SHOWING HOW SELFISH THEY ARE LIKE "when I kill general gismor, the people will finally be free" bitch when YOU kill him????? nowes staring slack-jawed rn and "don't worry manah, when I save the world-" HUH???? HUH????? WHAT HAPPENED TO TEAMWORK???????

okay anyways, also I decided to do a quick search and????? If sources are to be believed, Drakengard literally was the head translators (Phillip D. Gibbon's!) FIRST project ever too lmao

TL;Dr Drakengard wasn't "censored" (At least 90% of it wasn't), the translator literally just had no idea what they were doing lmao

[thatmooncake]

hi hi!! i saw your reblog of your therapist au art and noticed in the tags that you dont mind answering questions. i hope its alright if i ask you one or two!!

so, you mention in the background section of the au that moon was used to trap souls inside dreams (or something similar to that.) will that be addressed in the future?? i feel like thats prime material for angsty stuff and moon feeling bad about what happened in the past :< not to mention the whole fazbear entertainment thing lending you the therapy bots and them linked to dream experiments is shady (as per usual with fazent.)

(also not as important, but is the whole "trapping souls" thing a reference to somniphobia, the book in the tftp series?? i actually havent read the story personally, but from a brief summary, im getting those same vibes lol. could be entirely a coincidence, but if not, thats cool either way!!!)

and on a more lighter note, can they eat stuff in this au? if so, id love to know their favorite ice-cream flavors! its a weird question to suddenly ask but for some reason this au is giving me "its a summer night, im up way too late, and im eating ice-cream when i shouldnt" type of vibes

anyways!!! im sorry i think i rambled too much but i love your guys' au, and yall's artwork!! cant wait to see more of it, hopefully in the future!

(p.s. unrelated but i thought moon,,,had the bisexual colors in his irises,,,)

Ooh yay hihi I love AU asks!

So! The dreamscape is going to play a big part in the therapy bots AU, and the angst and drama is very much ongoing - it might seem like fun and games at first exploring the therapy themed concepts, but you’re absolutely right, there are massive Somniphobia style undertones there. Moon’s dreamscape is designed to pull you in and it can be addictive and …energy consuming. Or should we say life force consuming?

Moon meanwhile? He feels closer to you in the dreamscape than in the waking world …at first. All the souls he steals become a part of him, in a sense. Remnants of them continue to float around in the dreamscape if you look hard enough, like when you start peeling back the wallpaper of a new house that used to belong to someone else. For the longest time Moon has not really been able to interact in the real world, and honestly most people in the dreamscape very rarely interacted with him either up until the very end, being far too wrapped up in exploring the vast dreamscape which moulds itself around their wants and needs. He’s been kind of used to his role as a passive observer, or a creature without much identity at all. But this time around, because you think he’s a therapy bot, he’s a part of the action. He’s actually being played with. This is unusual for him, and his feelings get a little more muddied over time.

Sun and Moon can absolutely eat in this AU - it was one of their ill-advised “upgrades”. And as the three of you start sharing some soul energy - uhhh, bond with each other more closely, they start to gain the strangest senses too. Senses they’ve never had before, like smell and taste. And they do not know what to make of this. But they do know that Sun likes neapolitan flavour (don’t ask him to pick just one, they look so pretty together!) and Moon likes mint chocolate chip flavour (yep you heard me, mint is good). And that having ice cream late on a summer night is what it’s all about (well, ask Sun about that one - Moon thinks you ought to be sleeping, but he’ll allow it this one time).

Never apologise for rambling I love rambling :D (also everyone who’s mentioned all the pride flag colours you are absolutely correct Sun and Moon say gay rights)

[infriga]

Finished watching Bodies. Not bad! I liked the characters and was glad they eventually got a happy ending. The minority theme between the detectives ended up not really playing as big a part as I expected thematically or narratively, but I still thought it was neat. I think they could have tied it in more to the utopia Elias wanted to create, maybe Elias could identify with them and want to build a better world where people like them could be treated better, and then he could see how he's actually stepping over the corpses of people like them, those ostracized or mistreated by society just like he felt he was. And then that could play back into him realizing how everything he ever suffered through was actually ultimately orchestrated by himself in order to uphold the loop. But as is I'm not gonna complain about the main characters being minorities cause it did still add a lot of interesting depth and flavour to them and their individual stories.

I will say, there were a lot of plotholes by the end, even for a time travel story. How was Iris in 2023 if the stuff that led her to the Throat never happened, and if she had been sent to 1890 in the first place? She hadn't aged so it couldn't have been the version of her that originally went back even assuming she was unaffected by the timeline reset for whatever reason, and she wasn't 30 years younger either so it couldn't have just been a younger version of her, plus she knew Shahara's name. How did Elias exist in the first place to start the loop if he only existed because of the loop? The "it existed so it exists because it's a time loop" explanation doesn't really work in this case since we see first hand that time can be changed and is not set in stone, so something had to have caused the time loop to begin with, right? But if that was the case then the loop would just start back up again without preventing the original thing that caused the loop in the first place, and yet the loop DID end when he decided not to blow up the bomb, which is pretty blatantly framed as him committing timeline suicide. It's not even a case of multiple timelines because we see an immediate effect on people within the current timeline when small past stuff is changed, and the full reset only happened when the loop was ended. Before the reset we see both Elias and future Shahara vanish into thin air and other characters react to it, showing that the loop ending is actively changing and resetting that timeline specifically, not making a new one that split off from the past. So that means it's one timeline and changing the past changes everything in the future. People who were affected the most even seem to sense something about the world and each other, though they otherwise don't remember anything from previous versions of the timeline. Except Iris maybe?? Why did Dafoe split up and end up in multiple times but nobody else did? Why did the giant building billboard still have "KYAL" on it? And why was it there in 2023? I'm assuming it was still 2023 in that scene since Shahara hadn't aged. And so on. I would think maybe those discrepancies involving Iris and the billboard are there because they're baiting for a second season related to maybe something that did cause the original loop, but it's a limited series so supposedly no second season is intended. Maybe it's just meant to be mysterious and intriguing and not really meant to make sense because timeywimey shenanigans, idk.

But even with all that, I still liked it. The good characterization and interpersonal drama carried it pretty hard tbh lol. I think Elias's character was the weakest, I would have liked to see more of his internal struggle, more moments shown of him changing and becoming a better person over time and feeling bad about the actions he needs to take to set up the loop. It would have made his sacrifice hit harder if I didn't still kinda hate his guts by that point. I actually felt worse for his mom when he just Marty Mcdied in her arms but I guess her loss was short lived since the timeline reset right after that lol. But aside from that the detectives were all very compelling and I was invested in their stories and happy to see their doomed narratives become undoomed by the end.

[batsplat]

how has the motogp fan community grown/changed since you became a follower? can i get your thoughts on more fans coming in especially from f1? or on liberty media taking over? what are we hoping/bracing ourselves for?

honestly, I'm not the best person to answer the first question, because I've really not engaged all that much with the motogp fan community over the years... motogp isn't a massive thing in either the country I'm from or the country in which I currently reside, and I've only very rarely come across people irl who have any sort of interest in it. it's really just been through reddit, other forums, comments under blog posts on popular motogp sites, that sort of thing. I don't think reddit is a bad way to follow the sport - you've got all the hot topics but also stuff that's a little... broader than you'd get say on tumblr, about the more technical side or folks talking about less-discussed riders from the past, anecdotes from older fans, that sort of thing. it's also free and easy to not click on any post about sepang 2015, though admittedly there have been times where all these sites were quasi-unusable (hey ho argentina 2018). but I don't really feel like that community has massively changed, apart from maybe becoming a bit bigger and just having... more posts in general? you definitely get shifting opinions over time, sometimes it's a bit of a hive mind in terms of which riders are flavour of the month... so for instance bez was a lot more well-liked twelve months ago. but that kind of thing is common across all sports-oriented subreddits in my experience

I have checked in with the twitter fandom a few times in recent years just to see if, you know, it exists, and sure there's a few journalists and commentators it's worth keeping up with, but beyond that? there is a kernel of motogp-flavoured stan twt but a) many of them are primarily f1 fans, and b) their way of engaging with the sport is so alien to me that I generally take one look and then very much look away. as for the tumblr fandom, I can't speak to that at all though I'm sure others on here could tell you a lot more. I realised this bit of tumblr existed by complete accident at the start of the year. never even crossed my mind that this is a sport that would have an actual fandom on tumblr, god knows sports I follow I would consider a lot more mainstream barely do

as for new fans from f1... you know, what can you do, really. it's a good thing if the sport's fanbase as a whole becomes younger and more diverse, even if personally I am not a dorna shareholder and don't really care all that much about 'growing the sport'. new fans will bring their own biases and preconceptions and mostly not care about the bits of the sport that I care about... but that's how it's supposed to be, no? get them invested in the new riders, find all these young acosta and aldeguer and alonso fans to liven up the sport in the future. at a certain point you just have to learn not to care about what the wider fandom thinks about a lot of things. I have seen countless wildly inaccurate takes on this sport for years - which, yes, often there are howlers from newer fans who are clearly missing a lot of context, but also older fans can be flat out wrong about plenty of stuff. new fans migrating from f1 or whatever will create what... well, it's essentially fanon lol, based on how other fans introduce them to the sport as well as to certain historical events. but, you know, that already exists on here, and there's plenty of popular interpretations of these riders and past events and the current landscape of the sport that I personally strongly disagree with or are just... not true. plus ça change. stop worrying about a foreign takeover and just be careful to curate your space, imo - you can avoid most of the truly annoying stuff if you exercise self-control

generally speaking, I imagine more fans in a space like tumblr will lead to more polarisation and fragmentation in a way you can't quite afford in the same way in a smaller community. more drama, more controversy with more people who can potentially set it off and more people inclined to drag it out. corners that are based increasingly around specific riders or specific sets of riders. there's always upsides and downsides to that kind of thing in any fan space... you get more stuff created by fans, more art and fic and fanvids and essays about two decade old rivalries (funnily enough I'm not massively expecting an uptick in that particular market). more fans for riders who don't currently get a lot of attention. you do also get more discourse and more controversy... hopefully the most conflict-happy new fans stick to twitter. but at the end of the day, everyone starts out as the fan others want to gatekeep against, and it's not like you can actually stop them from joining, so. whatever. also, who knows if the sport really will actually 'take off'. I follow a sport for which a netflix show was announced and a lot of people were expecting something along the lines of the drive to survive-effect. so much posting and think pieces a dozen about whether the new fans would have the wrong opinions on all manner of hot topic issue. in the end, the show flopped and we got fuck all new fans, so that was a massive waste of everyone's time lol. motogp has itself been through something similar with the ill-fated prime show where they bungled the release... you never really know

that being said, it is quite likely that if the liberty media purchase goes through, they will do a pretty good job of attracting new fans. they've broadly done a good job with f1 - and it's not like they can really be blamed for most of the problems with the actual racing. it wouldn't be a bad thing to get new races in the states, as long as they're good ones (my problem with the newer races certainly isn't location but is with some of the rather drab circuit layouts) - and if f1 is anything to go by, I doubt we're going to lose any of the series' gems. quite frankly, if we need to cut a few european circuits, not wanting to name any names but I do have a bit of a shortlist. further calendar bloating is a worry, but for various reasons it's not going to happen in the short- to medium-term. and unlike in f1 there's less enthusiasm at the prospect on the part of the actual teams (also, crucially, the tyre supplier). obviously street circuits aren't going to happen. hopefully, some aspects of the way the sport is presented to audiences will be improved - from the actual television product, to what footage is released to fans, to how much we see of riders further down the field, and so on. hopefully, the sport will become more accessible to more fans in terms of viewing options... but yeah, how riders lower down the field are treated is I think the main thing I'd like to see change. hey, maybe we'll finally have access to more on-board cameras. maybe they'll finally show us the controversial and presumably interesting incidents happening outside of the top ten in any given race. my main worry just from a selfish perspective is any change to the videopass product (unless they'd like to make it a wee bit cheaper). I'm just about willing to shell out the amount I currently do given I heavily make use of the archives and think it's a fantastic resource, but for instance in f1 there's geo-restrictions to the kind of f1.tv you have access to... there's always the slight concern what new tv deals might change. still, this is all pretty minor stuff, and really I don't expect liberty media to be either able or willing to come in and make radical changes to how the sport currently works. concerns about ticket prices and fan experiences are also reasonable, though as someone who hasn't had the money/opportunity to visit any races myself, I really can't bring a lot to the table to that discussion beyond 'I hope it doesn't become prohibitively expensive'

of course, there's some things I very much want to see retained, for instance I'd hate it if liberty pushes for riders to speak english more often. also, we need to petition them to bring back the press conference table. overall, though... some of the changes will probably be bad, a lot of them will hopefully be good. change is necessary and motogp needs to finally adapt to a post-rossi world. it's unhealthy for a sport to continue to rely on the second hand glow from a man who retired years ago, to pray that the fans he created are somehow going to continue to care if you don't give them a reason to. rossi revolutionalised the sport, but eventually you need a new revolution. anecdotally and according to various podcasts, there's finally been a shift this year away from just crowds of yellow at all these circuits... which is categorically a good thing. above all, you need fans to care about the current product, make them fans of the current racing, the current riders, while also providing them opportunity to get interested and emotionally invested in the history of the sport. a lot of them will ignore that history... but eventually, that's how the cycle goes with everything. you don't get much discussion of, say, doohan these days on tumblr, and time will creep up on all these riders. you see it on here with how many newer fans say they went back to watch races starting from 2013 - because they care about the marquez era and are less interested (if at all) in either rossi's golden years or the alien era. which is how it should be... you cannot expect new fans to care about over twenty years of racing when they're just getting started (if they ever will). all you can do as a sport is hook them with whatever they're willing to be hooked with, and gently nudge them wherever they're willing to be gently nudged to. and if the end product of all that change is something that's more palpable to the masses but less suited to your personal tastes... well, you can always watch the old stuff

[whumpshaped]

lore: feeding

lore on demons and feeding. thank u to @whumpsday for asking all those leading questions

demons will survive without anything – they're immortal until killed. but to not go hungry/starve, they need to feed on others' emotions. aside from that they can and usually do feed on raw meat, which is a very good belly-filler, or they can even engage in some human food if they want for recreational purposes. but again, to actually avoid starving, they need emotions.

demons feed on (almost always) negative emotions, of which the most common ones are: fear (most demons are very good at feeding on this), disgust, anger, and shame. rarer ones include loneliness, anxiety, jealousy/envy, disappointment, boredom, things like that. the only one that can be considered positive and many demons can feed on it is sexual pleasure.

most demons are naturally good at feeding on one or two of those. being "good" at feeding on an emotion means it's instinctual, passive even. the demons can't even help it, and why would they want to? it's like a human going out in the sun and absorbing vitamin d. you can't just stop on command. being "bad" at feeding on an emotion means that it's mental work. it's like hunting for food: a predator must evaluate whether the prey is worth running after. for demons, trying to feed on something they're not naturally good at is like running half a marathon for a bowl of porridge. sure, it's food, but it took more energy to get it than what it'll actually replenish.

demons can work on getting better at feeding on certain emotions, but it's usually unnecessary. most of these feelings are equally easy to invoke in others, there's no need for a fear-inclined demon to try and get into feeding on shame. plus while they can get somewhat better, it's never a huge improvement, and it's a slow process.

between demons, humans, and angels, it's not easier or harder to feed on any one species. of course it's harder to catch humans and angels, but once they're securely within the demon's grasp, they're equally easy to feed on. the flavour however does vary! there's an ongoing demon debate on whether demons and humans even taste any different (both emotion and meat-wise), but like 99% agree that angels are tastiest inside and out. i'd say 65% says humans taste better, the remaining 35% says it's likely just the thrill of the hunt that makes the others say that.

"starving" isn't that big of a deal as in humans and works differently. starved demons get extremely restless instead of lethargic and tired. it's their bodies' mechanism for urging them to go hunt for something. their bodies don't change based on the amount they do or don't consume, they kind of stay the same all the time unless they possess the rare but very cool gift of shapeshifting.

demons can consume any amount of food, either emotional or physical. if they eat past the point of comfortable satiety, it doesn't really affect anything. most powerful demons spend their whole life well-fed, full and happy, rarely ever even experiencing any hunger. some swear by waiting a bunch between meals though, so the hunger sets in and sets off that adrenaline. they think hunting is better that way.

all creatures can feel when they're being fed on (emotionally). it's not readily apparent, but once they recognise that violating feeling once, they can confidently tell when it happens again. it's sort of like the tingle on the back of your neck when you feel like you're being stared at. it's not very pleasant (despite that, some demons love it lol there's a kink for everything)

as for some facts about my specific set of blorbos:

the devil can feed on absolutely anything. their special favourites are fear and disgust, but they're an omnivore.

astaroth is naturally inclined towards pleasure and shame, with fear as a close second (third i guess but those first two are pretty tied).

shax is naturally inclined towards fear and anxiety, and he HATES it. he wishes it was absolutely anything else. anxiety is one of the harder emotions to inspire in someone, and scaring another demon as a low-ranking silly goose is just so fucking hard. he also gets basically zero satiety from pleasure which sucks because maybe he could've been goodnat that. he usually depends on astaroth for food.

~

taglist: @the-scrapegoat @heavenly-whumper @whumpsday @dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night

[beinfriends]

DETAILED DISLIKES!

( answer the questions for your muse. )

TAGGED BY it's an old meme

MUSE’S NAME.  Leder Bertram Herze

LEAST FAVOURITE NICKNAME.  I don't think he cares one way or another. But he'd rather be called Leder than Beanpole/Beanstalk, which was a lot of people's nickname for him prior to the cataclysm.

LEAST FAVOURITE COLOURS.  I don't think he likes bright or neon colors. Probably yellow in particular, idk. He likes dark, monochrome colors lol.

LEAST FAVOURITE SEASON.  Summer for sure, especially since he used to stand outside all fucking day during the insane heat. He'd rather be cold than hot, though his preference for cold has lessened as he's gotten older and developed joint paint.

LEAST FAVOURITE WEATHER.  Hot weather, as I said, though he hates super cold weather too. Please just give him a nice temperate climate. He is tall and very old he does not need this. He also doesn't like it when it gets super windy.

LEAST FAVOURITE, HOT OR COLD.  WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME ESSENTIALLY THE SAME QUESTIONS-- fucking hot.

LEAST FAVOURITE HOLIDAY.  I don't think he really dislikes any, though he doesn't care for his birthday at all. Leder just doesn't see a reason to celebrate that for himself, really? Not that he hates it, he's just whatever about it.

LEAST FAVOURITE FOOD.  I don't think he enjoys marzipan.

LEAST FAVOURITE FLAVOUR.  I think Leder probably dislikes strong flavors rather than any particular one. Too sour, too spicy, too sweet, too bitter, etc.

LEAST FAVOURITE DRINK.  Not much of a soda guy, I imagine. Too sugary. Also same for iced tea in Tazmily, they probably got the diabetes type sweet tea there KRHF

LEAST FAVOURITE SCENT.  After being held prisoner in a sewer, I'd assume whatever the fuck those awful, musty apartments smelled like lol.

LEAST FAVOURITE SOUND.  Probably doesn't like the sound of people eating. That or just 'whatever distracting sound there is when he's trying to work'.

LEAST FAVOURITE BOOKS.  Leder doesn't like conspiracy books or dishonest, hokey nonsense like that. Especially as a former book publisher, lol.

LEAST FAVOURITE MOVIES.  Probably not into particularly violent ones. Not a big action guy, prefers quiet dramas.

LEAST FAVOURITE TV SHOWS.  Same sort of thing, but I don't think he enjoyed TV in general. A lot of it was likely propaganda back in those days.

LEAST FAVOURITE AREA OF STUDY.  I don't think he cares any which way-- he appreciates everything.

LEAST FAVOURITE ASPECT OF JOB.  I think dealing with the others towns' bullshit. There's a lot of whining and griping at Tazmily since they're the most established town and the most successful in some ways, and dealing with the people running these towns can be obnoxious, particularly Molewarp Council.

LEAST FAVOURITE PERSON.  Porky Minch babey!!!  It couldn’t be anyone else but him, and most people would agree with that.

LEAST FAVOURITE TRAIT IN OTHERS.  Selfishness, good God. He loves the Tazmilians to death, they're all like family to him, but man it was painful watching them do all that stupid shit during the Pigmask occupation.

LEAST FAVOURITE PLACE TO BE.  New Pork City. I think that's self-explanatory.

LEAST FAVOURITE THING TO TALK ABOUT.  While Leder is basically Tazmily's one therapist, he doesn't like to talk about his own trauma. Because of this, he rarely talks about his past, his wife, his family, so on.

LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THEMSELF.  He's a pushover sometimes and he didn't do nearly enough to protect Tazmily when he felt he could've. He's not sure what he'd tell them would've changed anything, though.

LEAST FAVOURITE DAILY CHORE.  I don't think he cares either way. Chores are chores, but he's never been the best at anything that takes him bending over a lot. Bad back and all, y'know.

LEAST FAVOURITE STYLE OF CLOTHING.  Leder isn't much into casual clothes himself. He likes to dress formally and nicely all the time. He doesn't care what others do, though.

LEAST FAVOURITE ACTIVITY.  I don't think he enjoys cooking much. It's not bad, just not his thing.

LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT HUMANITY.  How easy it is for them all to forget where they came from and what they've gone through. Leder was always vehemently against erasing their memories, and he knew it wouldn't end well and was right. He never blamed the Tazmilians for that, but it could've saved some heartbreak, perhaps, if they'd known how to deal with conflict better. Even prior to Nowhere, though, humanity has been like this. Egos get in the way of everything.

LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT FALLING IN LOVE.  Knowing you could lose 'em. And he did. It's hard not being able to be with someone you love forever.

LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT DEATH.  The fact that it just isn't fair sometimes. Leder doesn't fear death and he accepts it, but he can't deal with it too much when someone dies "before their time," essentially. He was crushed when Hinawa died because she had so much life to live.

[grimsneverendingfuneral]

HELLO GRIM!!! RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS ANON HERE 🔥🔥🔥 LETS GO ANOTHER ROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!! GO!!!!!!!!!!! WHATS YOUR FAVORITE ICECREAM FLAVOR? DO YOU LIKE TO PARTY? IF YOU WERE TO BE ANY ANIMAL ON THE PLANET WHAT WOULD YOU BE? WHAT IS A HIDDEN TALENT THAT YOU HAVE? ARE YOUR A DAY PERSON OR A NIGHT PERSON? WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRAVEL? DO YOU WANT TO HAVE KIDS SOMEDAY?

sorry this took me so LONG TO GET TO. i very much enjoy answering these rapid fire questions rapid fire questions anon!!!

my favourite ice cream flavour is Superkid ice cream from Laura Secord. which is like..... i think you can only get that here in montreal but its this blue red and yellow ice cream and its just this fuckin mystery flavour im telling you. there's for sure some banana in there but the rest??? dont fuckin know. but i sometimes crave it so ravenously i have to haul my ass downtown just to get a scoop lmfaooo

i loooove to party when i want to party. i go pretty hard honestly. but i never ever black out. im like the "goes off on their own" drunk person but also the dad that ends up hauling everyone home??? its a full time job

hmmm good one.....any animal? i think i'd like to be a wolf. sounds basic but they just have an incredible genetic makeup+interesting interpersonal dynamics+they howl. imagine just. howling. like whenever you want. in a forest or on a mountain. and you dont get cold cause you have this beautiful fur. yeah a wolf

my hidden talent is kinda all my talents. i dont show people shit lol. im really bad at it. but i guess if you want a specific one maybe the fact that i have memorized thousands of celebrity birth charts and i will memorize yours if i ever meet you. will forget your name but i'll remember youre a cancer with a virgo moon type thing

im definitely a night person and always have been BUT recently ive started to appreciate the day a lot more. probably cause my body is in shock from the lack of vitamin d

i would loooooove to travel to either transylvania, dublin, or anywhere thats as far from human interaction as possible. just some mountains or some plains out in another country. i miss the ocean too

kids.....yeah i fuckin love kids. ive always wanted kids but its not gonna happen honestly. i dont think i'll ever be financially stable enough to provide for them

WOW this was soooooo lovely!!! thank you so much for your questions they were very entertaining to answer

[blackknightgargiefoodtopia]

Prezzo

Another long day ended without lunch and really long walking, and because it's either we eat at Tower Hills or back home at Stanmore (and my hubby wasn't really confident eating outside his comfort zone), we decided to eat somewhere closer to home, which is at Prezzo

Location: Within Stanmore, across the street from...the local nursery, I guess? :/

Setting: A really nice feel to it, almost Italian in a sense, but still with the London flair in between, though they really need to crank up the air-conditioning a little bit

Random shots of trinkets around us

The waitresses there were really perky and helpful, especially this one named Anne, who has a bit of a thick Italian accent and her voice was prolly a few octaves higher than most, which makes her sound kinda cute, LOL!

We has Appletiser in London!! Since this drink is being banned in Brunei for no apparent reason, we savor the chance to drink this super rare drink

My hubby's starters, which is garlic bread with cheese

My starters of calamari

My hubby's garlic bread was pretty chewy, in a good way. It's almost like eating pizza actually, not the usual garlic bread we would always eat. My calamari was not so bad either, nice and Q, pretty chewy, though I was expecting a bit of a crunchy batter, but it's good. Still good

My hubby's spaghetti and meatballs

My spaghetti with King prawns

Thank goodness we ordered the classic portion because it was really huge for a normal-sized meal, as usual. My hubby's spaghetti and meatballs was amazing. The meatballs were really juicy inside, unlike the meatballs done in Brunei where it's either too dry or too soggy.

My King prawns spaghetti came out interestingly without the shells. I was actually expecting it to be spaghetti then served with King prawns in its shell. Still it was really delicious. The spaghetti was cooked to perfection and the sauce is very flavorful, and the prawns, oh my god, the prawns were so fresh and juicy, you can literally feel the crunch when you bite into it. It was THAT fresh! And best of all, it had a very good helping of chopped spring onions in it, and it was amazing!

The perky waitress asked if we want dessert, and it wouldn't be nice to say no, or end it with just that, so we ordered just one dessert to share amongst ourselves, just in case they came with a crazy-ass portion again.

Our hot fudge chocolate cake with vanilla ice-cream

Omilord, the cake was just amazing! So fudgy, so chocolatey! It was amazing! Packed full of flavour and they both go really well, the thick fudge chocolate with the vanilla ice-cream. It tastes even better than chocolate lava pudding with ice-cream. It was THAT amazing. Loved every bite of it, even though I ended up super-stuffed.

All in all, the best Italian food I've eaten so far, the best pasta ever!

Overall rating:

[purplesurveys]

1735

1 - When was the last time you met someone for the first time? Two Mondays ago. I went to a networking thing and chatted up a bit with the CEO of a local talent agency and a few of her employees.

2 - What’s the longest amount of time you’ve gone without bathing? 3 days was probably my longest range that made me go, "dude, you're gross." lol.

3 - Have you ever cooked with crab or lobster? Could you ever bring yourself to kill a live lobster/crab? I've never cooked with either and don't think I can kill any kind of animal for the purpose of cooking.

4 - What’s your favourite font? What size and colour do you prefer to use when you’re doing surveys? My favorite font to use in work decks these days is the one called Red Hat Text. As a standard, I like to stick with black and font size 11 but I switch them up if necessary.

5 - Have your clothing choices changed since COVID hit and you started to stay at home more? Yes. I used to be big on short dresses and shorts pre-COVID...not sure why that changed but in any case I hate showing leg skin now as it makes me feel exposed. K-pop's also made me lean towards more oversized/baggy apparel.

6 - When was the last time you went through a drive-through? I wanna say around a month ago? I just wanted a McDonald's cheeseburger after a long F2F day at work.

7 - Which fast food restaurant do you go to the most? What do you tend to order when you go there? McDonald's is my favorite partly because it's always a safe option to go with, and partly because I work with them so there's a bias hah. McNuggets used to be my go-to order, but now I find myself always getting a double cheeseburger with a request to remove the ketchup, mustard, and pickles.

8 - Do you own any plaid/flannel shirts? I don't think so.

9 - If you eat it, how do you like your steak cooked? What sauces and sides do you like to get with it? If you’re vegetarian, what would you have instead of a steak dinner? I like it rare; even medium-rare would make my eye twitch hahaha. I've never been picky when it comes to the sauces and sides.

10 - Are there any foods and drinks you only have around Christmas? My grandma's specialty dishes, especially her steak. She also makes this like creamy chicken thing but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

11 - Does it bother you when dogs jump up at you? Does it bother you less if it’s a smaller dog? No, it has never bothered me and I don't think it will. That changes of course if the dog is jumping because it's planning to bite my face off, but as far as friendly dogs, I'm open to all ways they'd like to show interest/affection.

12 - What kind of animal did you touch last? Was this animal one of your pets? That would be Cooper, and yes he is one of my dogs.

13 - Which colour do you prefer, red or blue? Blue.

14 - How would you describe your sense of humour? Have you ever offended someone when you were only joking? It's all over the place because I'm easily amused – I can laugh at anything from bad dad jokes to borderline offensive humor. To the second question, I'm almost certain that I have. It can happen.

15 - When was the last time you cried - what caused it? Yesterday. I was telling my parents that I got promoted again but that I don't want the higher position anymore, and that I plan on leaving the company in 2024. My dad sent me a private message and said his congrats but that he will also support me through whatever decision I make, and that made me cry.

The last few days have been mentally taxing precisely because of thoughts I've had about finally cementing my decision to leave for good, and those were the words I really needed to hear. Everyone else I've shared this with otherwise tells me to consider the higher raise and the nicer shinier label I can soon call my own, and that's just...not where I am right now, so it's frustrating when it's reinforced over and over.

16 - What’s your favourite flavour of potato chip? Salted egg or honey butter. Or just plain, that works well too.

17 - Do you have a lot of artwork around your house? What kind of art? We have a few generic, mass-produced paintings and miniature sculptures but that's it.

18 - When you paint your nails, what kind of colours do you tend to go for? I never get my nails painted. Just seems like a minor pamper-y luxury I can easily live without.

19 - Do you prefer fruit or vegetable juice? What kind of flavours do you like? I do not like the idea of either.

20 - What’s the weather doing where you are? Is that typical for this time for this time of year? There are like two typhoons doing a dance in the country rn so it has been awful, but on a more privileged note I do enjoy the colder temperature and nap weather it's been giving. And yeah, this is usually the time we have a slew of typhoons coming in every week.

21 - Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? How did you meet this person? It was just the receptionist at the restaurant I had reserved a table at for my mom's birthday lunch today. I never 'met' her and I just called the number because it was indicated on that restaurant's Instagram.

22 - Are you eating or drinking anything right now? I have my usual cup of coffee which is never absent when I take surveys.

23 - Who was your first celebrity crush? Which celebrity do you like now? My first celebrity crush was Ashley Tisdale and these days I like BTS.

24 - When was the last time you went to Starbucks? What did you get? Two Sundays ago – I got their new iced brown sugar shaken espresso (why must such a good drink be such a mouthful to say?) and their Belgian chocolate cupcake.

25 - Do you have a credit card? How much money do you owe on there? Continued from last night. I don't own a credit card.

26 - What colours have you dyed your hair in the past? What kind of colours would you like to dye it in the future? I've done brown and purple so far. I want to go purple a third time soon, but I'm also kind of wanting to finally try green. I'll probably only decide once I'm already asked at the salon.

27 - What’s your favourite Christmas movie? When was the last time you watched it? Love Actually. I've stopped my habit of watching it every Christmas, so the last time I saw it was around 3 or 4 years ago. It's A Wonderful Life is really good too, but I've seen it much less often.

28 - What’s your favourite brand and flavour of ice-cream or frozen yoghurt? I'm not a fan of froyo, but I do like cookies and cream ice cream!

29 - When was the last time you visited the dentist? Early August.

30 - What time do you consider to be too early to go to bed and to get up in the morning? When was the last time you went to bed/got up at those times? 11 PM would be too early for me; as for waking up in the morning, 6 AM will feel weirdly early – like it would make me go "why the hell am I up at this hour?" lol. I wake up at 6 AM pretty often, but I can't remember the last time I fell asleep before midnight.

[needanaccount2readarcaneposts]

I've never understood the, "He didn't use Shimmer, so it got better!", or, "He got better treatments before S1E1!" arguments. Like... from whomst? Where...mst? Whenmst? From Piltover, after the Day of Ash? From... idk, a time-travelling healer Viktor in Zaun? If there was always a better alternative to Shimmer, on either side of the river, why wouldn't S1 Silco 'Do Anything to Survive' Arcane avail of it?

'If no Shimmer, then Good Timeline,' is as much of a cop-out as (as people have rightfully pointed out), 'if no Hextech, then Good Timeline'. That is to say: Shimmer and Hextech are as much placeholders as they are 'real' things that exist within the universe. They are tools, and reflective of the people and societies who use them. Even if Shimmer and Hextech themselves did not exist, in an otherwise unchanged timeline there would always be A Drug, that could both heal and corrupt, and there would always be A Technology, that could both uplift and pollute. And while the story might play out with a different flavour and different details, it would not on a fundamental or thematic level change the characters, their motivations and circumstances, and the nature of the choices they make.

It's not really whether or not Hextech doesn't exist in the Good Timeline. It's that the social and political circumstances that enabled and encouraged Piltover to seek exponential progress at the cost of leaving Zaun behind have changed. And it's not really whether or not Shimmer exists in the Good Timeline. It's that the circumstances that lead to it being turned into a street drug out of a need to bootstrap Zaun's economy have changed. Vi's death changes the characters around her. It changes the motivations of those characters (e.g. Vander), which changes the choices they make (e.g. take up the cause once more), which changes how they affect the world and characters around them (e.g. join Silco, begin direct action), which begins a whole new domino effect.

Conversely, it makes a ton of thematic sense for the 'reconciliation and healing' Good Timeline to have had Piltover and Zaun work together after Vi's death (and whatever transformative political/labour/etc. movements it brought about) to specifically develop medical treatments for issues caused by toxic pollutants - something they didn't have in S1, and for which Viktor suffered. To begin to right some of their wrongs. Especially once bodyswap Heimerdinger enters the picture, who by now has begun to realise that he has much to atone for.

And yes, I very much like to think that Zaun could keep some of its patchwork, DIY, subversive ingenuity, chem-tech and prosthetics and medical Shimmer and all. I wish that had been shown, and I wish it still felt more like Zaun, instead of like... the Last Drop, halfway down a sunken ravine, somehow having full, perfect sunshine on the courtyard outside just because that's how you visually convey the idea of someplace idyllic, lmao.

(Also, like... remember when the animators drew Silco & Vander about 15 years too young in the betrayal flashback? Fortiche hard carried this season, but idk that 'the animators drew it like this, so the timeline must be this', is a particularly rock-solid foundation. I mean, they straight up forgot that Powder had grey eyes, not blue.)

(Also also, the eye has always been a metaphor for how Silco's world view - get it? - is warped, and I don't really think we can draw concrete medical inferences about the progression of disease or infection from the fact that good timeline = good eye and bad timeline = bad eye, lol.)

Detailed episode 7 thoughts

Episode 7 season 2 of Arcane is a great mini piece of storytelling because of the way it unfolds. You have Ekko obviously in an alternate universe, and because you are genre savvy you obviously start to look for the point of divergence. (I stopped the show to bounce up and down and ask "IS THIS THE UNIVERSE WHERE THE DROWNING DIDN'T HAPPEN???? IS IT?" Apologies to my longsuffering husband).

And then it keeps it ambiguous. No Zaun flags, no visible Shimmer. (Me: "Is the universe where.... the Drowning succeeded?") And offers the explanation that things went differently on the heist, which suggests that the key difference isn't Silco-related. (Me, hopefully: "but there's no way Vander started dressing properly without some influence that isn't there in the main timeline").

(Also cutting to Jayce having the worst time of his life lmao).

And then we find out it really is the Peace and Love timeline, and while I can't see Silco ever issuing platitudes about the value of forgiveness, I'll roll with it because it's lovely to see him happy. Nitpicks:

I do dislike that he doesn't have his iconic orange eye though. He had that eye in the cannery, before Vi's death. I know there's a whole "oh he didn't use Shimmer for it so it got better" argument, but that's... ugh. There's a great pair of lines from Sarah Rees Brennan's Long Live Evil, slightly repurposed here: "Shimmer is a crutch." "Funny things, crutches. You ever see anyone use a crutch they didn't need?" It doesn't feel like Zaun, and to me Zaun was a compelling character in its own right. This just feels like Piltover at low elevation. Yes, Zaun was poor and violent, but it was also vibrant and brilliant and solved problems like "limb loss" in its own inimitable way. And it was beautiful, and its people really were beautiful and proud in their imperfections. We see a child in a wheelchair on the street, which at least means they've figured out accessibility better than main timeline Piltover, but... does Smeech make incredibly useful artificial limbs in the universe, because those were cool...

I wouldn't have wanted to live in main timeline Zaun, but I think it's sad that it apparently loses its individuality in the alternate timeline. (Though I'm sure it is still vibrant when you get away from the gentrified bit, and I'm telling myself that it merely has better medical-grade Shimmer having focused on those applications rather than making it as an addictive street drug).

[dukeofriven]

Saw a really bad take today that basically boils down to "why bother separating art from the artist when there's so much other art out there: just go enjoy the other art. Nobody cares if you have fond memories of the old art just go make new ones lol."

It’s bad for a few reasons. Let’s get down to cases. (Warning: I talk about Barthes.) 1) That's not how brains work. I can’t tell someone to stop being in love with someone. I can’t tell someone that their favourite city is a hellhole. I can’t even tell someone to stop enjoying kale. I mean... I can, but not with any expectation of a serious result. Neither you nor I can usually meaningfully affect the desires, wants, and tastes of others: we can provide counterfactuals to taste, such as ‘the person you’re in love with is cruel to me and other people you care about maybe you shouldn’t love them,’ or ‘LA is a vapid town full of vapid people and it smells bad you shouldn’t like going there,’ or especially ‘kale was forged in the darkest pits of Utumno by the dark lord Melkor in mockery of spinach and your mouth cringes at the flavour stop eating that shit,’ but that usually has no effect. And that’s fine. That’s how brains work. Especially in the neuro-divergent community, in which hyper-fixations are something people can have really no control over, swanning-in and telling someone to just... like something else, telling someone to just abandon the thing their brain has subsumed into its quintessence as a form of day-to-day stability, their wellspring of pleasure in a brutal word—that’s not going to work (and a smug little ‘lol’ at the end of your post does not change the fundamental rudeness of the imperative.)

2) Especially in regards to bigger media franchises (and speaking as someone who finds critique really important), there's something unhinged in acting like we can all just divorce ourselves from things that have had inescapable impact on culture because we don’t like them, either from a taste standpoint or a moral standpoint (although the two are far too often conflated these days.)

To pick an example at random: The Mists of Avalon is one of the most important books in all of feminist fantasy. It is extraordinarily influential and traces of it can be found in the writers who followed in its wake, writing homages, writing counters, all encouraged or driven by these later writers relationships to Mists. Mists of Avalon’s author is, alas, someone whom we would now, socially, very much like to shove down the memory hole, but we cannot reverse the effects of Mists. It will never go away, and to pretend that it has—to act as though it never existed, or that by not acknowledging it and its influence (or, perhaps more crucially, by not studying it or engaging with it to understand why everything that came after it owes it a debt) is the morally correct choice is an approach to art that I reject. It is based on a wrong-headed belief that art should only ever be a form of comfort, both textually and meta-textually. The viewpoint seems to be that if the art has a ‘problem,’ if it cannot be fully comforting, then it should be abandoned. Absurd. Idiotic. Juvenile. We hobble ourselves as critical thinkers (which we should always strive to be)  when we ignore these nested layers of understanding—the strata of pop culture—that everything is built on. I find that dangerous. If you don’t know what came before then you can’t understand what got you here or where you’re going, and you don’t really comprehend all that a text might be trying to say. All sorts of important things fall through the cracks when you start ignoring any art you find personally distasteful.

3) If you cannot separate art from artist then you're going to lose a lot of good, interesting, or challenging art, particularly in places where the divergence between your opinion and the artist is relatively small. For every criminal whose work you might reasonable find no longer palatable, there's other nuanced authors for whom you are simply not similar. I disagree with Tolkien in several major ways, but I think excising his art out of culture or simply my life results in a much poorer experience of living. Which leads to:

4) The farther back you go the more art and artist are intrinsically divorced because we simply don't know all that much about the artist. Most great paintings are functionally anonymous, and there are entire centuries where biographies (at least to the degree modern fandom content consumption seems to demand) essentially do not exist. We cannot study Shakespeare and know if the man was more distasteful than we might like in his personal life. I cannot promise you that Shakespeare was never gross to someone in a bar. I cannot promise you he never pressured people unduly, or scammed people out of money, or defended a really gross friend. I cannot prove that away from his writing he wasn’t gross to women, or queer people, or foreigners, that there was not the Tudor equivalent of Twitter receipts for scandalous, problematic behaviour lurking in his life.  We just don’t know enough about Shakespeare to speak with much certainty on his moral virtue as an artist—and that needs to be okay. We actually need to separate art from artist more, because the assumption that social media has brought is that we should have intimate, daily access to an artist’s life, opinions, political beliefs, and even location. That’s wrong. That’s grotesque, and intrusive, and it is just messed up! No! You don’t need to know anything about an artist to enjoy their work! Shit, you shouldn’t have to know anything about an artist to consume their work if the work gives you pleasure, or interest, or does anything to you that art is meant to do. Despite the extremely bad fandom interpretation, Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author (which, hey, opens with an sentence that some might well consider transphobic, so are we going to declare Barthes problematic and stop using Death of the Author to justify our awful fan fic choices? I mean that would require any of you to have ever read it, but, y’know...) does not argue that the author had no influence on the content of a work, that an author’s beliefs, politics, and choices can be separated from (or, more specifically, ignored-in)the text—especially if we don’t like it. Barthes’ argument is, in fact, that that act of transmission, the alchemy of art-creation, forever sunders a work from its author by the very nature of language itself. Even should I tell you the extremely autobiographical short story of “yesterday I went to see Bob’s Burgers: The Movie. It was a delight and I think you should go,” that sentence is not truly about me, but the crafted “I” of the story: I, the real person, am not the I of the thrilling tale of the trip to the cinema. The author is dead: they cannot live in their work because the moment it is transmitted is no longer a living moment. (Italo Calvino covers the same strange nature of I-as-Character in his seminal work of metafiction If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller...)

In other words, though the author can never be absent from their work, meaning in art can only ever come from what you, the observer, bring to it. As Barthes puts it: “Every text is eternally written in the here and now.” No understanding of an author as a person is needed, necessary, or arguably even desirable when approaching art: your connection to it, how you understand it, what it means and how you are shaped by that meeting, exists only in the present, in the act of engaging with the art. (For the record I think Barthes is somewhat too encompassing in his beliefs, I don’t agree with him in full, but the underlying point is: art can not only be separated artist, art is always separate from artist. The artist cannot be the art.)

5) Purity culture is boring. According to these bad takes, we must demand ideological compliance with all our consumed art, and we are somehow bad or stupid people when we form connections with art made by problematic, challenging, or perhaps even reprehensible people> This is such a childish complaint. This standard to which all artists and art-consumers must be held is an irrational one. Modern fandom culture seems utterly unable to accept artists as humans: people who err, who have biases, blind spots, and beliefs. I have been around ling enough to see the term ‘problematic’ lose all meaning, to mutate into a yimakh shemo, a denunciation from which there can be no remorse. Modern fandom culture frequently seems to expect a certain level of investment nomadism: you stick with a work until its author errs, at which points you are to immediately move on, abandoning the old thing completely. Again, it is the quote up at the top that inspired this whole tirade: we are to know all aspects of an artist, we are to judge those actions unceasingly, and at the first ‘error’ we are to just abandon the art and find something new. We should simply like something else at will. It’s tiring. It’s boring. And I am sick of the animosity, the smug judgement, the crucifixions and the damnatio memoriæ. I’m just tired of this puritan impulse in which I must justify my pleasures to the masses in order to prove that my free time is spent virtuously. I must be quick to denounce all that is ungodly, and allow no wickedness to sully my heart. I read no evil, I listen to no evil, I ship no evil. Piss off. [Edit: in response to some comments, I should note that yes, there is a distinction between engaging with the art of a problematic artist, and handing them money. While we cannot often just ‘stop liking something’ we discover comes from a morally complicated place, we can quite easily not support an amoral person financially.]

[yanderedreaming]

Can i request gon and killua with reader cant do basic maths lol

Gah, I love those two!! I love the idea, and am so open to Gon/Killua fluff but oh my God I literally couldn’t write anything half decent for the life of me! So apologies in advance!

We all know Killua is such a genius and maths at any level is actually quite easy for him, he can calculate just about anything in a short amount of time, Gon on the other hand, is the complete opposite of him so naturally their reactions would be fairly different as well.

Killua won’t be mean outright, but would find your poor math skills to be funny. He’d correct you and call you an idiot but thats just about it. He might also find it to be funny a sorta Gon pt2. Also I lowkey think it might make him feel kinda good, because he’d be the brains of the trio.

Gon wouldn’t even notice how bad your skills are, rather he’d just agree/quote your incorrect answers and sit there with a smile on his face, even if he did realise that the answer is incorrect he’d be really nice about it.

You stopped right in front of a very attractive looking ice cream parlour, the pink store front with the attractive looking ice cream mascots piqued your interest. Numerous children ran out of the store with bright smiles on their faces, holding the hands of their mothers, humming as they licked their ice cream cones.

Your stomach started grumbling as you saw just how delicious the ice cream looked, thinking of how it was the perfect way to beat the scorching heat. You turned to your right, hoping to call out the two new friends you made while travelling through this new town, only to see their faces pressed against the glass display of the ice cream freezer, their eyes scanning the numerous flavours on offer.

"Y/N, lets get some ice cream!" Gon chimed, his eyes gleaming out of excitement when they stopped over the hazelnut swirl ice cream, his finger pressed on the glass to remember the one he had chosen.

"I want the chocolate one!" Killua was just as excited as Gon, much to your relief, convincing him was quite a pain. He reached his hands in his pockets and pulled out a few coins, eyeing them to estimate just how much he had, taking this as a signal Gon and you did the same, before your eyes darted to the menu to see just how much each scoop would cost.

"Does your phone have a calculator?" You asked the boys, you didn't have one of those fancy touch screen phones that just came out, so you really didn't have a calculator in your phone.

"Huh why?" Killua asked with a confused expression on his face, while Gon was busy trying to figure out how if the three of you could buy the ice cream.

"To calculate just how much we have and how many scoops we can get silly!" you laughed.

"Y/n, don't you know how to add and subtract?" The white haired boy mocked you, a smirk on his face.

"Of course, I do!" You retorted, trying to mentally calculate the amount before he'd ask you.

Gon stood still, scratching the back of his head, adding up the numbers was as difficult a task for him as it was for you. It wasn't your fault you had way too much change in all different types of coins.

Killua turned to face you, placing both hands on either side of his hips with a raised brow as he asked you how much the three of you had. You went over the numbers in your head ‘$2.32 + $4.17 +$3.95′

Not hearing an answer from you he let out a small laugh while shaking his head “Its 10.44, silly” he said walking over to the counter with the money in his head. 

Gon, who had been counting on his fingers the entire time, turned to look as Killua asking him if that meant they could all get ice cream which earned him a forehead flick from Killua who was going to handle the money and purchases from now on.

[mostly-marvel-musings]

okay take 2! (maybe i’ll get it right this time LOL) hi!!! congrats on 1.2k! :) Can I request a headcanon or drabble (whichever you prefer) for fluff prompt 11. 3 am ice cream runs with steve rogers? thank you so much and congrats again!

Sleepless

A/N: Thank you @capwogers for requesting this and for being patient! ❤️ there’s a lot of head hopping in this.

Not my gif! Credits to the owner

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: fluff.

Requests & Challenges

Steve Rogers Taglist: @mycosmicparadise @feetoffthetablee

Everything Taglist: @godofplumsandthunder @ladyacrasia @agustdowney @swaggysposts @littlegasps @suchababie @another-stark-sub @supraveng @kahlanmars @disappointmentofthefam @pandaxnienke @tom-hlover @just-the-hiddles @asmigurub @avantgardium-leviosa @imerdwarf @gladiosamicitias @fanofalltheficsx @ladyburberry

Taglists are open! Send me an ask or DM if you wish to be included ;))

.

Steve Rogers was an early riser and that wasn’t a secret. On most days he’d be the only awake soul either down at the gym destroying punching bags or running along the compound periphery.

You were the polar opposite, a night owl. Someone who enjoyed the peace and quiet that night time brought along with it after the whole world went off to sleep. It was a great time to ponder upon things that were otherwise brushed under the carpet during the day.

One such night, it was a little past three in the morning when you bumped into Steve quite literally on the deserted road right outside the Avengers compound. Both of you had the same question for the other, which resulted in quiet chuckles before explaining the reason. You were having a rough night which required treating yourself, while he had trouble sleeping which required burning off some energy by going on a run.

“Would you like to—”

“Hey if you don’t mind—”

Once again you’d spoken at the exact same moment. Staring down at your feet, you laughed before inviting him along to a 24/7 grocery store that sold your favourite ice-cream.

You didn’t know one another at all. Occasional glances and warm smiles that were exchanged during your visits to the compound or when Steve would show up at the SHIELD headquarters.

There was no denying the fact that you’d find yourself wondering what the Steve Rogers was like outside the uniform, as interesting as his public persona was, you couldn’t help but wonder how he was probably like in real life, at home, with close friends.

“Did you have trouble sleeping today?” He asked, his voice soft like the breeze that blew gently in the night, the air pleasantly cool.

“Oh no I just uh, I had a bad day.” You responded, stuffing your hands in your coat pockets as you walked next to the super soldier.

“What about you?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I figured running would eventually tire me out. Plus it’s better than having Nat make me look like an old man at sparring you know.”

He added lightly, making you giggle as you turned the corner around the block and reached your destination.

Grabbing a couple of different flavours, you looked for some reusable plastic spoons to share.

If someone had said you a week ago that would be walking on empty streets next to Captain America in the dead of the night, whilst sharing a tub of vanilla chocolate chip, you wouldn’t believe it, and yet here you were now.

It was all new for him and yet it made him wonder why he hadn’t been doing this with you all along.

Every now and then you would glance at his defined torso, the tight grey T-shirt he wore helped, his presence felt calming somehow. Steve never missed a chance to adore the way your eyes closed with every spoonful of ice-cream, how with every light brush of your arm against his, his ninety year old heart hammered against his ribcage.

“I’m sorry did you say something?” You blinked, cheeks warming for having missed Steve’s words as you were too busy admiring just how pink his lips were.

“I just said this is good ice-cream.”

“Oh.” You managed to croak and nod before staring at your feet, mentally shaking yourself to pull it together.

“You’ve been staring at my face long enough for me to feel confident to do this.”

Steve said before clasping your hand in his, taking you by surprise before his words registered and you blushed a shade deeper than before.

“In my defence, I was just checking to see if Fury was right. Specimen.” You gestured up and down his body, laughing as he too chuckled and turned those piercing blue eyes on you, pulling you closer as you walked.

Neither of you wanted this ‘date’ to end but sadly it had to. Steve had insisted on walking you home and your building came into view much quicker than you would’ve liked.

“Well this is me. I had a great time.”

“So did I. Get some sleep (Y/N). Perhaps I could call you some time for a cup of coffee?” He asked with hopeful eyes.

“Sure. I’d really like that. You can keep the ice-cream by the way.”

You pointed to the forgotten bag in his hand before turning away, still grinning. You grabbed his little diary and pencil he kept in his pocket and wrote down your number. Glancing over your shoulder one last time as he stood on the curb, not ready to let you out of sight just yet.

“Good night Steve.”

“Good night (Y/N).”

Prompt List