#which i'm sure i often Don't find out bcs i often notice real late and i dont Always check my writing or keep track of my speech

[eclaire-went-bam]

genuinely i'd say the best portrayal of my brain is the mind electric by miracle musical (reverse & glitches included). sometimes for the lyrics & meaning, but also because it's just what my brain sounds like. not necessarily in like ;; a mentally ill i'm in pain kind of way either

it'll go on very similar rants which may sound like the lyrics, both in word choices & intensity, even if it may not make sense at all if anyone were to hear it, but it does to me. i'll have a thought similar to the “all mine towers crumble down” verse to a situation that doesn't resemble it at all, when i'm in no distress, but it's not like i'm being hyperbolic either — it's like i'm having a different thought, but said in those words.

even in the way the song's warped is pretty similar — like the “so...so....so...—” fading in an out, as i know how i want to continue my thoughts & yet i can't make the voice in my head say it — they're stuttering, and i don't know why, and i can't make them continue. or the “elect— (silence) — trifying.” or slurring speech in a way similar to the “enasni/insane.” things that may be reasonable to expect from speech, but not from a thought.

the choirs in the background, the chaos, switching to different sounds and different voices with different roles in the song, other voices interacting with said thoughts (“—not you, huh?”; “condemn him to the infirmary”)

Like ;;; even if i didn't commit some crime and got electroshock for it, it still sounds very similar to my brain even when feeling neutral, which is like. YAY !! brain sounds. but also /neg genuinely because it can be soo hard to think for no reason cus of this sometimes i'm deadass fighting wars in my brain

i feel very similarly with moon waltz in e-major (cojum dip) & the soul eclectic (chonny jash)

i mean i don't necessarily know if it's normal to have thoughts that chaotic? like ;; it's a brain full of information, i can't see how it wouldn't be like that to someone regardless of emotional state, i can't see how it wouldn't be often incoherent and loud. but i mean ?? whatevs, i guess

[aeoneris]

for archival reasons, and because rise has officially ended, i'm coping by looking back at the past two years and thinking about the master utsushi rabbit hole. this is based on a long reply i sent to a mutual but i think it deserved to have its own post where others can read it and i can expand further on certain details. or something. i don't know. i have no idea who will read this but if you do, please enjoy...

the ballad of master utsushi.

he was there regardless.

always watching.

waiting.

i wound up getting attached to utsushi-kyokan (master/instructor utsushi), ウツハン/utsuhan (utsushi x hunter) ship, and finding his Japanese fan community late 2021, and i've been chatting with mutuals and friends i made there since. at that time, capcom had opened up pre-orders for his nui (plushie). this plush is lovingly referred to as "Unui-kun", and people love to take him around and bring him places. here's my Unui-kun in new york city lol

fans love to dress him up and make clothing and accessories for him. had i known just how attached i would become, i would not have set my Unui-kun to ship via surface mail delivery because it took about 2-3 months extra for him to arrive... ;;

but anyway, it seemed that his popularity was growing because they continued to make more merch of him. he seems to have more than any of the other characters.

many of these are limited print/pre-order only, or were from specific events like the capcom cafe features. trying to get his merchandise became crazy, because scalpers started to pick up on how badly people wanted goodies of him?!

just how popular is this guy?! what's with the character tax!!

and how did this even happen... we're playing monster hunter, not an idol game! but i think it really speaks a lot for itself how rise had such colorful characters that you could get attached to. it seems he really jives with many female and queer players, so good on capcom for that hehe. many of the japanese fans i've met are either older women, very often mothers, or gnc, which i found to be really cool. the english-speaking utsushi fans are usually the same, too. the solidarity is real...

I found out that a lot of ppl, including myself, shared a similar experience: they missed out on a majority of utsushi's flavor text in base rise bc they didn't talk to him or the other NPCs very much during village and high rank quests, and therefore didn't even think much of him until after the fact. people double-taking when going through the game again and actually catching on to his antics... I think what really got things going was when they released his DLC voice and learned about his, uh, extremely affectionate lines towards the hunter when it comes to mew mew and blowing a kiss LOL. (the "welcome back, master!" line?!?! there's so much art of him in a maid outfit... and the way he says ace/manadeshi in his sleep at the table?!?! scandalous?!?!) even for me, he got my attention only once i saw the official art of him (realizing "hey he's got a cute design actually") and eventually encountering utsushi x hunter fanart on pixiv. another thing that got me noticing him was brian david gilbert's now deleted tweet about how zac efron and utsushi are the same. thankfully, we have the internet archive to save the existence of this post and i have to make sure people experience this lost media.

once i realized how weirdly close he was to the hunter, the gears started turning

i confirmed that ppl really did notice that it was unusual for an instructor character to refer to his pupil as "manadeshi (beloved/dearest disciple)" in the manner that he does, being so close to them in a way that felt so familiar and warm. he was already popular enough that by valentine's day 2022, fans literally sent real chocolates to capcom addressed to utsushi. i knew about this for a while, but i was shook that they wound up officially addressing that this really happened during the last update video.

after they received his chocolates, they immediately got one of the (female) illustrators on board to quickly draw that really cute valentine's day art of utsushi. the japanese tweet for that artwork had even a little bit more text than the english one…

that "i'll always be watching over you" line…

(and while i'm here, i have to mention the valentine's day art we got for 2023- i made a separate post about THAT.)

we started to suspect capcom caught on to this niche community's love for utsushi, and they started to kind of... troll us??? LOL.

throughout the previews of sunbreak last year, they would start obsessively sneaking utsushi into those chibi artworks. and when npc followers were announced, people were scrambling to find out if he was going to be one of them, but there also was some weird radio silence about him for a bit...

in one of the earlier trailers that showed the elgado hub for the first time, there was a very short part of the clip where ppl could see someone standing in the distance at the corner of the screen. all the utsushi fans went nuts because they were taking a magnifying glass and zooming up at there wondering if it was really him, because everyone wanted him to be there in sunbreak LOL.

of course we'd eventually find out that would be his perch for most of the game! it was only during the final preview trailer before the release of sunbreak did they finally announce utsushi as a follower, as if they were saving the best for last. and sunbreak dropped, we got to see him in elgado and enjoy hunting with him. and it didn't end there. he wound up being featured in two of the short stories released last summer, and we would not forget this incident.

when i think about how easy it is to just play through the story and miss out on following specific out-of-the-way flavor texts, let alone know about all this outside of the game, i wonder if utsushi joining the hunter in the battle against amatsu in the penultimate battle was strange, because he has such a spotlight on him, even being the one who allows you to ride an apex which was normally impossible. if people didn't acknowledge him before, certainly people would love him now.

his final line after you defeat amatsu: it's cute and silly in english... but in japanese, his line and delivery was extremely, almost unabashedly... romantic. many people were shocked because it sounded like a fervent confession.

"I'll say it once more... You are my pride, my beloved disciple."

finally, during the last update video…

we got this line straight from the director LOL. utsushi wound up being his personal favorite character in rise, and perhaps why we wound up seeing more and more of him in sunbreak.

all in all, if you kept up with the flavor text of rise, and if you followed utsushi's dialogue throughout the base game and expansion, the emotional pay off at the end was even better! and it is a shame when this stuff is mostly optional or you have to go out of the way for it, with so much being missable with every bit of progression. but making a monhun where story and character interactions are pushed more… i think they were on to something. it's probably something that could be divisive, but personally I think they should go all in on it more in the future. Rise proved that they could make charming and memorable (not to mention, named) characters... if they lean into it more in a future entry, then i hope they do it in a way where everyone can enjoy it and not feel like they missed out. but I also hope they would make it so that people don't feel overwhelmed with flavor text... it comes down to taste, but i think i have faith that monhun can try making more character-driven stories while still keeping the core of the series in tact.

here are some more miscellaneous utsushi things that i didn't know how to fit in earlier:

he's been featured multiple times in capcom cafe entrees. here's his matcha latte dango drink:

and for the sunbreak stories: a cake based on his fight with rathalos together with the royal guard, and then a drink that represents his... uh, struggle across the ocean to chase the hunter to elgado. because they will never let him live that down. i won't either.

here's a t-shirt of utsushi and kagami you can pick up on amazon right now. kagami was a very interesting arc when he was first shown- he was introduced as a long time friend of utsushi, training together in the past, but eventually parting ways.

his seiyuu in japanese is a sentai actor who loves monster hunter, so essentially, kagami is lowkey like a self-insert for him lol. he's goofy in english because he's voiced by a certain youtuber, but in japanese he takes a different direction of silly because he has a "chuunibyou" edgelord cringe way of talking. it's such a shame that kagami wasn't really in the game itself besides being mentioned in a few mission descriptions because i would've loved to see him interact with utsushi and the hunter, and i wish the royal knights and many of the NPCs had more cutscenes or something. it makes me think, if it weren't for the pandemic, could rise's story and scenario have been something more because of the DLC voice characters like hibasa/monju/kagami? anyway, a popular headcanon is that utsushi and kagami are ex-boyfriends lol (i personally like this one and adapted it for my utsuhan fanfics). but there are even those who ship kagautsu too (although it is rare because people overseas are a little wary of shipping characters who are based on real people).

and lastly, one of my personal favorites... the diseased kyokan shirt. this is from an online capcom shop, and you can use a proxy service like fromjapan.com to order it.

if you read this all, thank you! happy hunting! with the instructor! we love that guy! the guy of all time!

[menlove]

This is an odd question but it relates to the porn thing. Some people I trust a lot to have good opinions have pointed out that kinks are oftentimes being essentialized by pro porn activists, when the kinks people have often mirror the popular porn categories we know. They also said that they mourn the fact that people often act like vanilla sex is being handled as something „lesser“ than kinky sex. I noticed this, too. I got confronted with porn when I was 12, drew gay porn on Twitter for a long time and noticed that there’s a lot of minors seeking out hardcore stuff that I only discovered when I was in my 20s. I kinda feel like a lot of us fandom artists unknowingly shaped these young kids and their understanding of sexuality, sometimes probably negatively. Do you think nsfw artists kinda added fuel to the fire? I can’t help but feel incredibly guilty.

throwing this under a read more just bc it got pretty long fasdfasdf

hmmm i feel like this is a pretty complex topic? but first of all i do wanna say you shouldn't feel incredibly guilty i don't think. as long as you weren't trying to expose minors to your content, i don't think you have anything to feel guilty about. minors are Going to find nsfw content one way or another and the best we can do is just make sure we are putting up 18+ warnings/screening who interacts with and follows our nsfw content, and promoting safe sex/bdsm practices for all ages. minors absolutely should Not be involved in bdsm imo, but it's better that accurate and safe info is available than not for those that choose to participate despite warnings (& this is assuming minors doing this w other minors btw it's a whooole other conversation w them "participating" w adults)

as for nsfw/fandom artists and how that relates to like. actual porn. i feel like the Biggest problem w porn (bdsm and otherwise) is the exploitation of the actors. when it comes to fanart/fanfic, there Is impact, but not nearly as large as real porn by real human actors. so while it's the responsibility of fandom nsfw creators to make sure they're doing their best to a) bar minors from their content and b) promote safe practices, i don't think you should feel Guilty and Bad for producing bdsm fan content

this is maybe getting a lil personal and is like... just my story/take and i'm sure there's other people who feel differently but. idk how old you are and we might be the same age/you might be younger bc everyone has different experiences and exposure to the internet, but i was definitely one of the kids in this case. i started seeking out nsfw fan content around middle school (stumbled on it accidentally earlier) and encountered some very very hardcore stuff young. but it's like... hm. w fanart/fanfic there's only so much realism that goes into it ykwim? and obviously acted out porn isn't "realistic" either, but they are still bound by the limits of the human body in a way fan content isn't. and that might seem like it would make fan content "more" harmful than not, but tbh i feel like it's the opposite? bc like in my case, i didn't start seeking out acted out porn until i was in my late teens and THAT'S when issues cropped up. too personal to really talk about tbh. but there's a huge huge difference, i think, psychologically, between seeing fanart of characters engaging in hardcore kink that may not even physically be possible (see: monsterfucking, size difference to an unrealistic level, omegaverse, etc) and seeing actual living breathing human beings engaging in it. there's nothing inherently wrong w either, but it's the latter that our brain constantly does the "okay more" thing with

like this is. ENTIRELY anecdotal and i really don't know if anyone's done any specific studies on it (the only studies i can think of are more about simulated c/p which is. a whooooole different story). but as far as i've seen in fandom nsfw/bdsm spaces, people kind of. find their kinks and limits and stick to them. they don't really feel the urge to press those boundaries and while sometimes they might stumble on smth more hardcore that they wind up being interested in, there doesn't seem to be that psychological push for More and Harder. on the flipside, there's been studies done about acted out porn that when viewing these things there's a point where the thing you were viewing gets old and boring and you want something New and Interesting and Harder. which is where problems come in bc oftentimes these "harder" things are like. not feasible for the human body and incredibly harmful to the actors who are usually not following safe bdsm rules and etiquette. bc safe bdsm does not Allow for these things that are like actually and permanently hurting people. like there are Horror stories abt what some porn performers go through physically bc of unsafe scenes. or in even worse cases, "more" and "harder" translates to illegal/incredibly immoral (c/p, zoo, etc). which for obvious reasons is incredibly physically and mentally harmful to the victims involved.

this got so long i'm sorry fasdfasdf but

tl;dr: i think while certainly there's an Impact on ppl from fan content, it's nowhere near as profound as the one from acted out porn. there are no people getting hurt or putting themselves in danger they do not want to be in, it's just drawn images/words on a screen. and while it sucks that people are viewing "vanilla" sex as lame/not enough, i feel like this is mostly down to acted out porn just based on anecdotal evidence. the Most we can do is just make sure we are offering as safe a space as we can that does not encourage minors to interact w it, but being mindful of the fact that they probably will anyway and provide safe resources for everyone knowing that