#which is what you basically are lbr

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Ngl, I would love to see a Lego video game adaptation of all the Disney Princess movies, although I have zero idea how the devs at Lego could make that work properly. If not that, then at least an adaptation of the Renaissance movies or even some of the Post-Renaissance/Experimental and Revival ones. A combo of the three eras, perhaps? The possibilities are endless!

[vogelmeister]

one of the worst things i have ever done in the name of art is decide that the final monologue would be in poorly written dutch and then have to translate that into English and then decide how you’re going to display this bc its way too much dutch for the little footnotes you have been including when a character does use a dutch word but also you also like,, need to translate this into english so now you have an appendix and that's way too fancy but it's still in Dutch and you still need to put it in English and it's not even hard Dutch like its basic yet your head hurts still looking at it even though you know what you did and what you wrote and words are hard and you simultaniously know and don't know and this long ramble is exactly how your brain was operating at the time so yay. me.

[creature-once-removed]

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[wetpapert0wel]

@ my ex ay yo get ur shit off my calendar lmao

[ranticore]

some more horse guy fashions, specifically historical

erased the mandolin for this one goodbye mandolin i couldn't be bothered drawing you

so my thought process for this is like what would a society of, lbr, british ppl who are horses value and how would that translate into what they wear if they specifically don't have a taboo against nudity. these fashions are pre-florian conversion (florian was the guy who gave them all government-mandated shame) and considered traditional (the full coverage dresses are also traditional but to a post-florian period so those would be called like. idk. classical). they were still in use in the enclaves north of ironwall for quite a while. anyway returning to the point, the answer to 'what they value' is movement. in actual horses, herd hierarchy and social function is based off movement - free movement for animals for whom the flight response is so strong is an incredibly important thing. dominance in horses is expressed and reinforced by controlling and curtailing the movement of subordinates. for these people, free movement was enhanced by kinetic fashion - free-flowing garments like capes, loosely-pinned headgear with feathers and floaty cloth, and noise-generating devices like bells and chimes were all used to elaborate and enhance the appearance of somebody's gait. the overall look was mostly based off of morris dancers (pheasant feathers, bells on the legs, handkerchiefs) because i like the tie-in to suppression of folk dance by puritans. i think these guys would have some great folk dances

in much the same way trainers are just normal everyday footwear now, game kerchiefs/flags were worn in non-sports contexts because it suffused into the mainstream and became Cool. the flags were used in a game similar to tag rugby if you've ever seen that played (where snatching people's flags is used instead of full contact tackling, forcing someone who's been 'tagged' to stand still until the flags are returned). as i said before somewhere, centaur team sports go incredibly hard.

the tail ornaments were status symbols and in appearance a bit like the traditional show turnout of shire horses. woven grass and straw could be used for a temporary ornament like these, but metal or carved wood were really impressive, and very common gifts of favour between romantic partners. more flags could be hung there if you wanted to be really cool

variations of this style of mane décor were also employed (they loved their ribbons)

in the same time period, Ironwall fashion was a little bit different. These expensive caparisons were usually purchased secondhand after a real horse was done wearing them, with distinct front and back halves of different length. The garments would usually have the original liveries removed and replaced by generic religious iconography as few centaurs would ever have their own heraldry. Later, in the Georgian and Victorian eras, full coverage to the pasterns with a single undergarment was the only acceptable option (that's the classical style now) The rest of the picture is self-evident, but centaurs at the time wore additional... equipment on the withers which were called a variety of very colourful names but mostly referred to as gelding bars (as in, they will geld you if you sit on them). they were metal and spiked. these were introduced by the florian government to discourage the grossly inappropriate contact of one person's legs around another. previously there was no great taboo against riding on a centaur's back, it wasn't super common but nobody was like "this is basically public sex" until our pal centaur cromwell i mean florian came along and decided this was the work of the devil. young people were also made to wear these to discourage the homosocial behaviour very common to the mid-20s age groups of both sexes, and they also had a place in preventing stallions from wrestling (ironically increasing the danger of their fights because well now all we can do is stand back and kick). the wearing of these devices was mandatory. headcoverings were not strictly necessary, and neither were fully-wrapped tails, but some especially devout citizens took to it quite well.

[theinfinitedivides]

wi papa look a thing there for me. awa.

prefacing this with a PSA that i'm going to try and keep short but basically regardless of anything i say here let me make it known that i do believe he should apologize. whether or not he's still actively saying that word in 2024 it is something he's used in the past even if he isn't performing said play anymore/saying things like that so flippantly. granted if he does apologize there's always going to be a section of fandom that's like 'he only apologized bc he got caught' yes?????????? that's what always happens????????? lbr you're not going to get on IG and announce you killed your ex two decades ago and you'll be turning yourself in when there's an entire true crime community in the depths of the internet who will dig up the cold case + the suspiciously convenient alibi anyway without you lifting a finger. politicians who get called out for blackface in college do not go around telling people they did blackface in college. celebrities who were homophobic on this hellsite in high school back in the early 10s before they realized they were gay are not going to let you know what their handle was. this is how the world works.

that being said i must confess i caught wind of the stirrings of this a bit early bc during the clusterfuck that was the Jam vs Zamasian RPF poll (i did not go in the notes. rancid ass shit) someone had taken a screenshot of a reblog made as a 'gotcha' to Zamasian voters by implying that they were anti-Black for voting for a ship featuring an actor that said the n-word in a play he hasn't performed for several decades since, with a short taped example that the general public was not going to know how to find unless they were on a mission. i poked around, saw a couple hints here and there that implied that the clip actually existed, marked that down for future ref and went about my business. disappointing? sure. run of the mill especially among people his age in the industry from that time period who are perceived to benefit from white privilege? absolutely. the former bird identified app dragging all of this back into the light (including the interview with Chris Rock. which i have not seen though there's no way it was within the last few years for AMC to still hire Eric if they had seen it. correct me if i'm wrong pls) is unexpected but tracks for the fandom on there.

generally i don't believe in cancelling someone for things they said or did more than ten years ago if they are no longer the same person they were back then. i don't believe Jacob or Assad or any one of the staff of color who may have been working behind the scenes would have agreed to continue interacting with Eric if he had the same attitude as he did when he first wrote and performed the play. i don't believe his Black comedian niece would continue to talk about him and share photos with him if he was calling her or the Black side of her family the n-word. i am willing to give the 'Eric Bogosian n-word' reply tweet he reportedly made before deleting it shortly after the brief benefit of the doubt bc it was 1. supposedly under someone else's tweet talking about the play incident and 2. i cannot count how many times i have accidently commented/almost posted something on here or YouTube or Reddit or ao3 bc i was on mobile and once the keyboard's open the app/browser flips the fuck out and puts the search bar and the comment box too close together. now if his ass shows up and shows out and stands ten toes down while he's currently on time-out or doesn't address any of this we're dealing with a different story. if more examples of him acting like this come out i'll drop him faster than you can call the election it will be that serious.

anyway for now i'm choosing to keep an eye on this while acknowledging that us Black folks do have the right to be upset and pissed as fuck. we deal with enough racism/microaggressions in fandom spaces as it is we definitely don't need new ones, and we don't need them from the past career choice of the main cast of a show a lot of us enjoy. amen

[lucabyte]

How do you get your siffrins to look adult? I keep accidentally giving them a baby face but I WANT THEM TO LOOK GROWN AND EXHAUSTED LIKE HE DESERVES

okay so i legit think i fail at making siffrin look adequately adult like half the time but here's a general breakdown of my like. thought process when im actually um. thinking .

So first of all heres my general tips for proportioning a face, and how i attempt to keep the roundness of sif's in-game proportions while also like... drawing them more realistically? i had to practically reinvent a Human Style for drawing isat fanart since im a furry artist so a lot of this is fresh in my mind, luckily(?) for you i suppose.

This newness also means you can like, watch me fight and struggle against how the hell to do this in my earlier fanart. so feel free to try and see what changed as i pieced it together.

Another note is body proportion. You note giving him a baby face specifically, but some of it MIGHT be that you're drawing the head too big for your style? Try and figure out how many "heads tall" your figures are and tweak the numbers until you find what looks "adult"

Here I cracked open one of the comics I used CSP Model refrences for (albeit feat Loop, who i envision to be the exact same height as siffrin. i am NOT a tall loop truther i think its funnier when that bitch is five foot NOTHING!!!!!)

drawing sif with adult proportions can be deceptively difficult though on account of their Being A Tiny Motherfucker. Mostly here though, I find that the best way to do this is to drop like 1/3rd of the length of an average drawing figure's legs. Short people tend to have short legs. I know this on account of a lot of my ocs being 5'3" and below (... for... reasons...... unrelated to my own... height.... 100%.... ) so once again I think a lot of this can come down to trying to fiddle with numbers and noting down what works.

OKAY NOW ONTO SOME MORE SIFFRIN-SPECIFIC DRAWING TIPS. like these are what i find myself doing to make them look older if i accidentally baby face them myself

The above kind of chibi-er doodle style im still not sure has Siffrin looking adult enough for my liking (someone who considers them minimum 28) but considering they're presumably genuinely a deceptively baby faced guy at least by game's start (even if they should probably look. unhealthy.) it's like... forgivable.

the bald spot is basically fucking cheating in terms of "making them look older" lbr but i am so fucking insistent on it and i punch the air in celebration every time i see anyone else do it. winner is ME!!!!

Anyway. the body hair thing is funny considering we basically have Word Of God that siffrin is not the kind of person who ever likes being naked/even having their feet out in a casual setting. but like. hi its me the weird fucked up miserable nudity guy. of course im drawing every pockmark and texture on their body.

Another note here is, on their naked form, I avoid overly smooth lines for outlines of the limbs and torso. This avoids making them look "sexy twink thin" (not my bag at all) and instead gives the impression of loose skin from fluctuating weight, uneven fat distribution, skin becoming baggier with age. I also let joints jut out and look sharp wherever I can. This is because im an asexual pervert who likes the human form the mostest when i can see 'imperfections' This adds to the haggard nature of it all, by being reasonably honest about what the kind of persistent decade-long neglect of self care and implied malnutrition would do to a guy

Last note: eyes. i find i end up drawing a vague glassy black smear with a hint of white for the sclera for siffrin like. a Lot. Eyebags to show weariness is not my preferred method as I find it, to be rude, a bit of an overused shorthand. Plus, while sif in game does get eyebags, they're usually more on pushed expressions where they're forcing their face. So I put more emphasis on drawing the folds of the upper lid (which the game does not do) to make them look weary.

I dont think i can elaborate on my opinions on How To Draw Eyes without it becoming a way the fuck too long essay because "drawing emotions good" is like. my number 1 goal in every drawing so even if everything else is scuffed to hell I HAVE TOOO get the eyes right because theyre the most emotive part of the face. if i cant capture an emotion correctly the drawing isnt getting fucking finished is the thing, so....

Luckily for me, drawing over eyes and continously tweaking them by painting over and over and over and redoing them can have the side effect of making them look over-detailed and thus worn/tired/agonised. yes this is why i draw loop's face so scrunched all the time. All I can say for this though is to do a lot of studies of both real life faces & the most emotive cartoon faces you personally have experienced. So like. steven universe is great for this because rebecca sugar is so scary at drawing eyes. theyre so fucking scary at it. or sometimes i just go stare at rebecca's old comics because jesus christ. anyway.

??? but yeah hope this helps. its something i feel like i have a genuine hard time with too, especially since im so intent on keeping their face round & my artstyle is genuinely very cutesy even when i am being weird soo ...?

tl;dr:

draw the eyes smaller, give them a chin, the canon nose helps a lot & dont forget the bald spot. everyone draw the bald spot. for me.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Imo saying Jon won't care that he's half Targ because he has "nothing to do with that house" is a not only very simplistic way of viewing his arc but also just a flat out wrong and bad take. Like my brothers and sisters in R'hllor, he has everything to do with that house even though he may not bear the name! Jon is constantly equated with Targs in the series. In fact, he's constantly equated with the best that house has to offer. He's got Jaehaerys and Alysanne in him, he's directly paralleled with Maester Aemon and Aegon V, he transforms into Daeron the Good at the Wall, and he's basically best boy Jacaerys resurrected some 200 years later. Let's also not forget that he's best girl Dany's 1:1 narrative mirror. Jon's personality is what you get when you combine Daemon the Rogue Prince, a little bit of Maekar I, Egg, a teaspoon of Rhaegar, a few sprinkles of Baelor Breakspear, and a whole cup of Jaehaerys. He has the heroism of Aemon the Dragonknight, the innate leadership of Aegon the Conqueror, the youthful foolhardy of Daeron the Young Dragon, and the aggressive pettiness of Prince Daemon. He's got Daemon Blackfyre's nobility and Brynden Rivers' terrifying pragmatism. His rebirth is literally equated to the waking of a dragon ("two kings to wake the dragon", "promised prince born amidst salt and smoke"). He has both the good and the bad that comes with House Targaryen. He also has the good and bad of House Stark, but no one ever thinks less of him for that... Y'all let Targ hate and Rhaegar hate (both of which are just extensions of Dany hate lbr) cloud your judgement and ignore what's right in front of you. Jon is a Targ. The same way he is a Stark. He's not either or, he's both. The lesson at the end of the day isn't for him to choose one or the other. The lesson is to recognize that he so much of BOTH in him, and he can take these and become whatever he wants - bastard as he is.

[tozettastone]

Okay, the results of my Bleach OC character poll specified: Hollow, needs a little treat, bad eyesight, causes catastrophic plot derailment.

Here's a very rambling draft (about twice as long as it needs to be lbr) of how that might begin. I've named her Espina Espinosa, but her name doesn't come up at all in this which I guess is part of how you know it's a first cut draft lol.

---

Sometimes, you just need a little treat to get you through the day. Or, in my case, the night: in hueco mundo, it was all night, all the time.

You know, I thought when I dropped out of my university classes in a wash of shame and humiliation that my life was basically suffering. It was as if, having forsaken my higher education, I was then destined to be trapped living in my one room in a sharehouse, and working stacking shelves forever.

Spoiler: it was not forever! It was barely six months! And then I got hit by a train, crossed over to the other side — which was apparently a fucking anime, by the way, more on THAT later — and lost years and years to scrabbling around in the desert like an animal. I didn't remember who I was until I emerged from the Forest of Menos as an adjuchas, trembling like a newborn foal and panicked about my weird undead body.

And then I knew what it really meant to say 'my life is suffering.'

Suffering was being a fully grown human personality stuck inside an undead lizard, living in a lightless hellscape and eating other undead animals just to survive. Supermarket shelves seemed less dire a fate, then.

The body grew more humanoid over time. Once I finally hit vasto lorde, the hunger was less demanding and the risk of regressing and losing my personality was eliminated. Vasto lordes did not regress. They just died.

...If something could kill one.

Today's reasons as to why I deserved a little treat were as follows:

My vasto lorde body was clearly designed by Kubo Tite. I was a nightmare of spiky armour and claws, with no real face, but god forbid I get around without built-in high heels and smooth, round, pendulous boobs. My adjuchas form had been a spined lizard. I was not even a mammal. Why did I need boobs? What were they for? Why were they the size of my head? Just the demands of the story in which I found myself, I was pretty sure.

I had minimal access to goods or services of any kind, because Hueco Mundo, right? And it was hard to stay long in the human world to get anything because just showing up tended to freak the shinigami out. Like, vasto lorde-class menos were nigh mythological, we were so rare, and even if I suppressed my presence so people on the ground couldn't sense me organically, shinigami researchers had instruments for this. Ugh.

I was constantly hunted by other hollows, especially powerful adjuchas on the look out for advancement. Eating a vasto lorde basically guaranteed they'd get the power they needed to become one. Today, one of them had left a nasty bite on my spiky tail and I'd eaten him, as he deserved. But it hurt, and I cried about it, because... I was still a giant baby who cried when I got hurt.

Bored, bored, oh my god, bored. So bored.

I'd broken my glasses, AGAIN, because I had no goddamn ears to keep them on, and my mask was a... challenging surface.

Most hollows somehow didn't seem to get bored in hueco mundo. They roamed the sands, ate each other, fought a lot, made occasional uneasy alliances, and napped.

But I had a very good memory of my last life, back when I was not an unrealistically buxom masked lizard woman, and all this shit was just a daydream from a manga.

I got so bored. I wanted something to do other than running away, lying down, or smacking weaker hollows.

So every... period of time? ... well, once I presumed the shinigami had stopped worrying about it, anyway, I took a little jaunt to the human world and treated myself. And, like, what was a little shoplifting if you were already dead, am I right?

I had a sweet tooth, and I liked jewellery and books. Hueco mundo was boring and lightless, but if you could curl up in a cave with a heavy duty flashlight, a pile of candy and a novel, you could just about pretend you were somewhere else for a while.

But visiting the human world and getting stuff was a pretty full-on operation. I had to pick places where there was enough ambient reiatsu to hide what leaked through my suppression, and there were not many of them. Then, it was often better to visit in the middle of the night, because if I tried to shoplift while surrounded by people — look, a vasto lorde has a lot of reiatsu and human beings are, on average, fragile. It was better to browse a dark shop after hours. And the last thing was: there was no optometrist in hueco mundo, because it was just kind of full of cannibal demons who wanted to eat me. I just had to stop by a chemist that stocked glasses and guess my prescription based on vibes. It sucked. A lot. And then when I inevitably broke them again, I stopped being able to read my little stash of novels and got quite sad.

So on that night, with my busted glasses and six Vampire Hunter D novels waiting in my cave, I decided I deserved a little treat and I did something kiiiiiind of stupid.

Despite knowing that it was exactly where the plot of Bleach was hiding.... I went to Karakura in Tokyo.

It wasn't as stupid as it sounded, you know. Sure, I knew they monitored for every garganta, yes. But I also knew that there was so much reiatsu in Karakura. If I crushed mine down enough, I was absolutely certain I could hide beneath the suffocating blanket that was Kurosaki Ichigo.

I opened my garganta for maybe half a second and slipped through with my reiryoku squished into a tiny ball inside my belly, so scrunched up it left my claws tingling with cold. From the sky, I pinpointed two pretty obvious locations: the Urahara Shoten and the hospital. Then, because I wasn't goddamn suicidal, I picked the furthest point away from both of them that still fell within the range of Kurosaki's spiritual pressure and made that my landing point.

There was a big labyrinthine train station, a bunch of warehouses huddling miserably behind it, and a series of cramped stores all piled in on each other lining the nearby streets, poised to catch commuters as they went by. A few of the bigger ones were still lit up from the inside, bright lights glowing out. But it was very late indeed, and almost everything was closed. The local 7-eleven was apparently open from 7 AM to midnight, a rarity even on the outskirts of this twenty-four hour city.

I couldn't find a good chemist, but there was one of those travellers' shops next to the station that stocked an array of low-prescription glasses, which would do in a pinch. I looked both ways — as though there were any cars on the streets at three o'clock in the morning, and as though any could damage me if they were — and scuttled up to the darkened window.

After a quick inspection to confirm the existence of glasses inside, I tapped my claws on the reinforced glass. It cracked, one long jagged line through the glass. I tapped again, and it shattered into a multitude of glittery pieces.

I hopped inside, heedless of the glass. My skin was next-level tough, even among hollows of my class.

Very likely the cameras wouldn't catch me at all, but what they would see is floating glasses, which wasn't necessarily much better for the humans' peace of mind. Ideally, I'd get this done and nobody would be any the wiser about any mysterious activities relating to a break in. I paced the shop, squinting around for cameras.

There was an alarm system in place. It was armed, so it started wailing about thirty seconds after the glass broke, flooding the dark street with noise. A few lights went on above stores, but mostly it remained dark — this wasn't a residential district.

There were two, blinking green lights from either end of the store, so I jumped up and ripped them both out of the ceiling, sending a rain of plaster dust down upon me to get caught in my spikes. Who knew what the owners would make of that, but probably they wouldn't automatically think it was a hungry ghost.

Glasses were stored neatly on a circular stand, ordered by strength — which, of course, I couldn't read, because I needed glasses. I plucked pairs at random and crammed my mask's eye holes up against five of them in quick succession. The fifth let me read the prescription information, so I decided that was good enough to be going on with.

My mask did not come off, obviously — trying to get out off hurt like all hell, and I didn't know if I needed to be an arrancar badly enough to go through with that — and it was covered in angular, stylised spikes, and I had wide useless little horns but no fucking ears. So my new glasses were sitting kind of lopsided, but as usual when I got a pair, I was excited about how much I could see with them.

The humming of a drinks fridge attracted me, briefly, on my way out, the way a fire attracts a moth. Did I want a soft drink? I did like the ramune ones with the little marble... And I could read the labels, which was a huge novelty.

I'd spotted a 7-eleven on the way, though, and I wanted to see if they had a slurpee machine. They were pretty rare in Japan, generally, but if they didn't have one I'd still be able to get a different sugary drink there.

I hesitated for a second, thinking about the wisdom of this plan. I should get out of here, probably, but... If I'm honest with you, my spirit rebelled. Did I truly not deserve a slurpee? A single fucking slurpee?

So, anyway, I broke into the 7-eleven. No, I didn't need to. Fight me. (But, er... don't, actually. I am a delicate flower.)

I stepped outside the store and — okay, listen, in my defence, the shop's alarm was really loud and I was busy clutching my slurpee in my clawed hands and marvelling at my semi-okay vision through the only-slightly-lopsided glasses I'd swiped. I did not immediately hear him, and I wasn't actually looking for shinigami using persquisa because I'd carefully marked where the Urahara Shoten and the Hospital were, and I had avoided them so carefully.

So, from my perspective, there was no reason to worry about shinigami, until I came out of the 7-eleven squinting at the text on the side of my slurpee cup, and then almost walked straight into one.

And not, like, a little one, either. It was a lot like being surprised by the sudden introduction of a spider — like, you know, if it's a little house spider, you might twitch, but if you turn around and see a twelve inch birdeating spider on the wall, you might actually just shit yourself.

Anyway, I slunk out of the seven eleven store, ignoring the alarm, completely absorbed in my slurpee, and then almost walked face first into Hirako Shinji.

He was actually perfectly recognisable from canon. He was about an inch shorter than me, skinny, and wearing a long grey coat, presumably because it was the middle of the night and cold enough to freeze your nipples off. (Still warmer than hueco mundo.) His blond hair really did fall in a perfectly smooth pageboy down past his chin, like it was all one meticulously styled piece. It probably wasn't. It was like my lizard tits: demands of the setting. Loads of people had hair that looked styled and required no styling.

Just in case you're wondering, on the Unexpected Spider Encounter Scale, Hirako was probably, like, one of those Colombian giant tarantulas.

I froze.

He stared at me.

A vasto lorde was scary shit in her own environment, so I was probably worth a stare. However! (A huge, flashing neon 'however'!)

A veteran shinigami captain was scarier.

Especially since I was a pretty weak vasto lorde, all things considered, and Hirako was... well, if I remembered right, he was not necessarily one of the weaker shinigami captains.

I was used to fighting adjuchas who were aggressive, hungry and bestial, and I mostly got around them by being like... marginally smarter than they were. I distracted them or trapped them.

I did not highly rate my ability to trap or distract Hirako. For one, he was an actual military officer.

For the first time I realised exactly how unfair Aizen must have been to his little arrancar army. Hollows were killers, but we weren't soldiers. Our only training was in appetence and its satisfactions.

I stared, frozen, at Hirako and blinked rapidly.

In hindsight, I would eventually come to understand what this looked like from his perspective: he came to investigate the unsteady flickering of hollow reiatsu and the alarm, but discovered a surprise vasto lorde — already so vanishingly rare as to be basically mythological — wearing lopsided reading glasses and clutching a slurpee like her life depended on it, outside the broken window of a 7-eleven at three in the morning.

"...I saw that, Hollow-san," he said slowly, looking at the broken window. His eyes drifted from the window to me and back.

I squeaked. My claws dug straight through the cardboard slurpee cup. "Um," I said, slowly. "Do you... perhaps... also want a slurpee?"

With both slurpee-clutching hands, I gestured towards the store and the source of the screaming siren.

Hirako tapped his zanpakuto on his shoulder, squinting at me like I was something new and strange and he had not quite settled on his opinion of me yet. I did not like that.

"Think I'll pass," he drawled. His Kansai Japanese was actually pretty new to me; there was no need for me to ever go to the Kansai region. What was even there? Osaka? Was there a Soul Society version of Osaka? "You came to the living world for a slurpee?"

I inched sideways so maybe my back could not be to the building and I could get a clear path of retreat by which to mcfucking book it down the street.

"As you see," I hedged, holding the cup out like it would protect me from him. It would absolutely not protect me. His zanpakuto would go through it, and probably also me, like fucking pudding. "Slurpee."

His facial expression was doing something super complicated. "That... might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"Well, it feels dumb now," I muttered.

The alarm seemed so so loud. I would have wrinkled my nose but, unfortunately, my face was covered in bone. Hollow problems.

"Look, Shinigami-san, isn't it a global chain? They'll have insurance for break-ins." Probably. "I'm just here to get my glasses and my slurpee."

"Insurance," he repeated. The sword went tap-tap-tap. I could see the tendon flexing in his wrist where the cuff of his shirt did not quite cover it. "Uh-huh. Sure. They got insurance. They're teaching you about insurance in vasto lorde school now?"

Vasto lorde school was just regular school, was the rub there: hollows were all just human souls, after all. Fucked up human souls, but just human souls. I didn't say it.

"You're giving everyone in a twenty kilometre radius nightmares," he pointed out, mouth tugging down.

In my defence, I simply couldn't prevent that, just like I couldn't prevent the yowling cats. Besides, what was one bad night's sleep? Nothing, honestly. Come on. Don't be such a coward!

"Sorry?" I offered. Obviously, I was not sorry, but his expression made it seem lke I should at least lie about it.

He opened his mouth to speak and gestured — with his sword. Seeing the zanpakuto swish in the air made me jump. My new glasses, absolutely predictably, flew right off my mask and hit the pavement with a heart-rending crack.

"No!" I gasped, and nearly dropped my slurpee on top of them. I crouched down to grasp at them but the lenses were, of course, already fucked. I couldn't see it very clearly, but I could sure feel the jagged cracks with my fingertips.

"No, no, no," I chanted. "Nooo."

In a flash, the horrible future unfolded before me: long periods of endless night, alone, unable to even pass the time with a book, stuck in a cave. It would be ages before I could creep into another human city with another garganta. My reiatsu suppression just wasn't good enough to hide from the technological sensors the shinigami used, and a vasto lorde in the human world put them on highest possible alert.

Karakura was probably the only exception, because Ichigo, but now there would be other shinigami here expecting me. If I tried to come back here, surely I'd be getting a face full of another vaizard, or maybe Urahara.

It all seemed so overwhelming. I really just wanted to have a slurpee and read my book. Didn't I deserve that much?

I made one of the more pathetic noises it's possible for a hollow to make, a sad little multitonal keen.

Whatever Hirako had been saying (to which I had naturally stopped listening, due to the tragedy that had befallen me) stopped abruptly.

"Are you crying?" His voice was unflatteringly incredulous.

I probably was, though. I patted my mask. It was kinda damp, yeah.

"No," I lied, with a highly telling warble in my voice.

[the-unconquered-queen]

I had a realization about my Blades MC x LI dynamics which means absolutely nothing but has been living rent-free in my head all day regardless. Here goes:

TyrilMC/AerinMC - Lovers who happen to be best friends

MalMC - Best friends who happen to be lovers

Ramble I had to add under a read more because it was originally going in the tags before I realized I was approaching 30 tags with no end in sight (it's gonna show):

Look, I can't speak for y'all's MCs and pairings and playthroughs, but that's literally how it is in mine. And I'm not favoring one type of dynamic over the other, it's just a difference I've noted and this is how I finally put it into words. And I can't speak for all LI/MC dynamics either, which is why I'm limiting this to the LIs I personally romance.

I was just thinking that Mal's scenes often feel like they have a bit more of a friendship element to them even when they're romantic compared perhaps to the others, if that makes sense? I mean, MC is literally said to be Mal's best friend regardless of whether you're on his route or not, whereas for my other two LIs, there is definitely a strong friendship, but it feels like it is strengthened by their relationship with MC.

The more obvious example of the two is Aerin. Lbr, who is his best friend if not MC. And I feel like being on his route emboldens his being intimate with MC, and I'm not even referring to physical intimacy, just in an opening up kind of way, an expressing himself more freely kind of way. 'Cause if you're not on his route, there's no real reason for him and MC to be particularly close as a duo within the larger group, and they are not portrayed as one by the book either. MC is often not even particularly nice to him outside of his diamond scenes. So while my MC does genuinely enjoy Aerin's company, I know their bond is harder to justify on canon alone if they're not dating.

And then in Tyril's case I think his romantic relationship with MC really propels their specific Kilvali, even though I think there'd be a special kinship between them regardless if he and MC are the only elves in the party (which is the case in my pt) and they nevertheless would grow closer by virtue of him being a link to MC's lost culture and heritage that he enjoys teaching her about, but I think their love is what makes them such a close duo and therefore reinforces their friendship. I mean, consider how long it took for Tyril to recognize his relationship with MC as Dinvali vs how much longer it was for Kilvali, even though they had a blossoming friendship before it turned sexual.

Meanwhile, with Mal, it's like their relationship was the natural progression to their friendship, making it the other way around for MalMC—as in, their friendship strengthens their relationship. Because if I take away all romantic elements of my MC's relationships with them and leave only the platonic—and also strip personal headcanons about their dynamics and personalities to focus on what the books actually wrote (because, for example, you can hc an MC who has basically the same personality as Tyril/Aerin which is why they get along so swimmingly, so maybe a sarcastic, blunt MC for Aerin or a cool, sort of stoic MC for Tyril, who then is a perfect fit for their respective LI, but that doesn't mean that's how the writers wrote MC, who, like it or not, does still have a canon personality that is closer Mal's and not much like the other two), anyway yeah, so strip all of that and Mal would likely be the one of the three MC is closest to. I think that canon MC personality is a big reason why the MalMC dynamic is pretty effortless, while I feel like if I don't make the active effort to include TyrilMC/AerinMC in my playthrough (with romance being the more effective method imo, bc it leads to coded moments instead of just vanishing entirely as soon as a diamond scene is over), the game will not do it for me and they will not be as prominent.

And this is something that I think works for these LIs' personalities! Because Tyril and Aerin are more reserved characters who need to be close to someone (in this case, through a relationship) before they are comfortable letting loose and truly being themselves. As in, you have to get past their initial lack of charm to get to their actual charm. Whereas Mal is the opposite because he is very charming and charismatic right off the bat, so you don't need to tease that out of him, but it's within the relationship that he can be more real, such as him admitting to MC after a b1 hookup that (before her) he wasn't used to wanting certainty, a home, and someone to share it with, plus the rest of that vulnerable conversation. So then, instead of Mal starting out more serious and having the relationship show him how to let loose, he starts out casual and the relationship emboldens him to be serious, I think is a way it could be put.

Aside from personalities, it's possible that the timelines play into this as well, when you think about it. Yeah, all three of these LIs have stated at different points throughout the series that they were attracted to MC upon meeting her, but Mal was the one who was a friend the longest before the dynamics took a turn for the romantic. Because while Mal's and Tyril's relationships with MC were both taken to another level that night they had their first kisses in the lodge, Mal had been traveling with MC longer (consider how long it takes the group to get from one location to another off-screen) and therefore had more time to grow platonically before something else was added to the mix.

And Aerin, of course, took the fastest track, given that MC could kiss him the very day they met, and, if romanced since book 1 (which is the case in my playthrough) at no point has their relationship ever been solely friendly as a result, and even when they grow back together in book 2, MC learning to be friends with him post-betrayal happens simultaneously as MC and Aerin rekindling their past romance. Considering his characterization, I'd like to point out that Aerin seems to have an easier time with romance than friendship, as (so far—shoutout non-VIPs) he doesn't really show hesitance when it comes to being with MC romantically (aside from worrying—completely reasonably, may I add—that she wouldn't want him after the stuff he's pulled) and does often take the lead in that regard, but it's the idea of budding friendship that sent him running for the hills. Even now, as of b3 ch 11, he's said he's "not there yet" about his closeness to the party, but didn't even hesitate before proudly introducing MC as the "love of his life" to his mother. In his case, it's definitely the relationship helping the friendship progress.

To finish this off, I'm not saying all of this stuff I've been pointing out is exclusive to the romance routes. Certainly someone who's not romancing these LIs can have moments in their playthroughs where they let down their guards to their MCs, but I feel that, within my playthough in which they are romanced, this is how their dynamics appear, and this recontextualizes scenes and dialogues that any player can get outside of their romances. So yeah, I'm not trying to minimize whatever friendships other people's MCs might have with these LIs and I'm definitely not implying that either friendship or romance is inherently better or more profound than the other. But just that ever since I came to the conclusion that the MalMC friendship feeds and elevates the MalMC romance while the TyrilMC/AerinMC romance feeds and elevates the TyrilMC/AerinMC friendship, I feel like I'm seeing their dynamics in a new light.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Endgame...

I have no real notes on the 'escape from the dungeon' sequence, other than that it IS going to be fun to have an epic 'galloping away from total urban collapse/tidal wave' sequence in the anime.

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This is technically accurate-ish but also totally not, nobody but Laios (and we the reader) knows what happened in that final confrontation, and I wonder if he'll tell them? He has no reason not to, other than it being...deeply Weird(TM) in the way that only Laios really is.

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Namari expresses many feelings, including love, through violence, and I respect and appreciate that.

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I tagged this before, but: future royal advisors lmaoooo. (I know Shuro has his own princedom to rule, but not yet, okay, and even once he inherits, lbr every time he visits Melini for diplomatic reasons, Laios is going to be like, "Shuro!! :D Come to dinner! Do you have any ideas about [infrastructure taxes/crop rotation/vigilante assassinations/etc issue of the day]?")

(Note 2: I also know his name is "Toshiro" but the characters haven't stopped using the mispronunciation, so I'm going with what's dominant in the story.)

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He Suffers for this friendship :)

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CHILCHUCK IS BEING MEAN TO HIS FRIENDS AGAIN! NATURE IS HEALING!!

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THEY'RE BESTIES YOUR HONOR!!

Fun fact: this specifically, screenshot at 4:46am, was the point at which the combination of visibly lightening sky, mortifying threat of my roommates waking up early and seeing me still up, and the fact an eager Shuro/Laios hug signalled that clearly everything was going to be basically happy from here on out, all combined to make me finally close my laptop and get ready for bed...whereupon I read the rest of the comic in bed, because I REALLY needed to see Falin safely rezzed, for my own peace of mind.

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Hell yeah time to eat! our! girl!!!

And btw, shoutout to Laios for, indeed, eating the Winged Lion. King shit. (/Yaad voice) (ah shit, is someone going to have to break it to Yaad and all the other villagers that their "prophecy" was a demon's manipulations? Or has Yaad picked that up by now while traveling with Izutsumi?)

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Kabru: You know what you were doing, right?

Laios: 8|

Kabru: Never mind, don't answer that, so I can sleep at night ever again. Actually, never answer that, especially in front of any sort of press and/or foreign nationals.

.

I really like how the orcs aren't offering Laios kingship so much as sanctuary. The underground here is theirs, because nobody else ever wanted it, just like nobody ever wanted them. If Laios is going to be arrested by elves if he stays above ground, and Pattadol and Flamela with their oh-so-polite and flattering invitations trying to do, then he's an orc in all but name and form, and he's welcome among them for the rest of his life.

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Laios: I need you to help me eat my sister!

The rest of the party, as one: We know this sounds insane and we're sorry about that.

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS PANEL:

Marcille resignedly headlocking Izutsumi so she doesn't maul anyone in response to being swarmed

Shuro, under duress, defaulting to strangling Laios (again)

Laios rolling his eyes because he's so accustomed to and tired of everyone reacting overdramatically to his perfectly reasonable requests

Kabru just rubbing his temple. He has a headache. He's so tired that he's not even trying to talk anyone down from anything.

Chilchuck closing one eye like maybe if he pretends to be asleep he doesn't need to be involved in this.

Holm nervously saying that he can't because he keeps gnomesher (gnome kosher)

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[happy sigh] politics!

I just love love love the 'all the random disparate allies you made along the way rally together at the end for an epic battle to defeat the big bad" - except the big bad is already defeated. USUALLY the way that works is:

Core hero party faces pre-plot climax interparty conflict, then resolves it

Rally disparate allies made throughout the journey to fight the Big Bad (note: allies may rally themselves; still counts)

Fight Big Bad first as a group, then winnow/isolate down to core party, then down to single Main Protagonist who faces and defeats the Big Bad in a character foil-heavy, extremely thematic final confrontation

Everyone lives happily ever after, the end!

In Dungeon Meshi, however, it was:

Disparate allies made throughout the journey rally together to...help the core hero party deal with their pre-climactic interparty conflict! (Marcille's monster army - which does still come down to the core party, of course)

Core party, then isolated to single Main Protagonist (Laios) faces and defeats the Big Bad in a character foil-heavy, extremely thematic final confrontation

Rally disparate allies to accomplish what Laios explicitly says was the TRUE goal all along: reviving Falin! (Via eating as a group because that's live! understanding! connection! life!!)

Everyone lives happily with continuous hunger, because that's what it means to live ever after, the end!

I JUST THINK IT'S NEAT

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It is sooo notable, though by this point unsurprising, that the elves' chief consideration of the consequences of all of this is that "things" (magic, international politics, etc) may end up "harder to keep under control."

My personal theory/headcanon-until-proven-otherwise is that mana levels above-ground will simply never fully subside to their dungeon-era levels again, and dungeon mana levels will be correspondingly lower - it'll all even out, basically, though underground will still have generally higher levels. This means:

there will be more monsters on the surface, especially large ones

magic will be easier for all races (though limits on how much they can hold at once will remain)

"dark" ancient magic, which (I headcanon) is particularly defined by an assumption that there is a Shit Ton of mana to draw on, will become easier and thus more common...which is okay because "need huge power source to draw on" is no longer the first step on a slippery slope to "let dungeon demon consume the world."

corollary: Marcille is going to live her best damn life studying and innovating with the above

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This micro-interaction is so sweet. Kabru isn't even talking to Laios, but he's still keeping him in mind, and he so casually says "my friend."

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TO LIVE IS TO WANT!!! CONTINUOUSLY! YOU JUST GO ON!

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It's so great and interesting how much the Canaries care about Mithrun! It'd be so easy for him to just be their royally-imposed boss, or their weird mascot that they have to take care of, and both of these things are part of the dynamic. But they also all care about him as a person! Fleki was smothering him like a doll a minute ago, but the instant there's real hope for his life, she's jumping on it breathlessly! They're all suggesting hobbies he could take up, and standing around rapt and breathless waiting to see if Kabru's speech works to get him back on his feet!

There's definitely parallels to be made with Laios here, in terms of adventurin party rolling their eyes affectionately at their leader and saying, "yeah, we WOULD follow this total freak into hell. That's our day job, actually. #onlysomeregrets".

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Mithrun... /single tear

I just wanna see this panel in color SO BAD, though. The green grass, the pale brown earth and the paler birch trees, and the semi-translucent ice fracturing the dark red dragon meat, with Mithrun's pooling green cloak and these 2 guys standing amids all of it... It's going to be so striking.

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I've decided that the one (1) headcanon I'm holding in total defiance of explicit canon is that TO ME, Yaad was the original concept art where's she's a fairy princess in aesthetic, the perfect princess-in-the-tower for a brave knight to rescue and so earn the right to kingship of the land.

She still ends up possessing her grandfather's body, to be clear, and having this and every other conversation. It just intensifies the "I survived 1,000 years of being a ghost by focussing all my hope on THIS TROPE and you are going to play it out!!" Sure, marriage isn't an option anymore but that's fine, that wasn't the most important part! If Laios doesn't know how to govern, then she (in her grandfather's body) will teach him! Or else!!!

TLDR Yaad's gender is Princess and I will not be taking counterargument unless it's very compelling.

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Lol @ how 1 of these guys is the actual, legally appointed ruler of the island and 1 is the top local crime boss, and everyone, even Laios, know they're on equal footing (at best - the Island lord is not a competent man.)

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Kabru of Utaya, PR Professional :)

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This really is a fun little chapter, with Izutsumi's struggle to figure out what to do next mirroring Laios's. She's wandering freely, insisting on her own freedom - and nobody is arguing with her! Everyone takes it for granted, so much that she feels a little unwanted! While every conversation she walks into involves responsibilities to others.

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Holy shit, forbidden civvies!Chilchuck. He has his sleeves rolled up and collar open and everything, sluttily baring his collarbone and a hint of chest hair... He's even implicitly about to get his forearms blood-splattered, while doing a domestic chore and explaining the importance of responsibility to his teen(?) adopted catdaughter. If he still looked like the 50yo tallman with 5 o'clock shadow that he equivalently is, he'd be the hottest sexyman on tumblr right here.

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Even though it has vegetables! Because it's made with love and life!!

[96z]

could you do your mutuals as seventeen songs with a reason for each one?

sorry this took me a gazillion years to answer 😭😭😭🙂‍↕️ SHAME…. i have a solid 100 mutuals so i can’t do everyone but here are a few for you!

theo / @hongtonie: kidult

theo gives me such kidult energy in the way they just care so deeply. the whole nostalgia meets comfort vibe of this song just screams theo to me idk 😭😭😭 it’s the way the lyrics acknowledges how hard things can feel but still offers so much solace?? fantastic give me 14 of them… it’s literally theo in song form. holding both of them gently in my hands fr

zay / @jeonwonwoo: healing

to me zaynab feels like such a grounding presence. that said healing is so her vibe bc its soft, impactful, and warm in this way where you don’t even realize how important it is. she’s always been that steady friend who says the perfect thing without even trying. title track on a playlist called zay tbh 🤭

max / @scouped: snap shoot

this one is so easy its insane LMFAO. max has this very funloving, carefree energy that radiates snap shoot. the song is chaotic and sweet at the same time and max to me is like one of those ppl who makes everything feel like a moment if that makes sense?? life’s a movie kind of people, vibrant and fun and therefore this is basically their theme song thanks

teo / @ashmp3: rock with you

rwy personified no i am not accepting criticism. there’s this perfect mix of devotion and passion in the song that is very ms teo. plus lbr teo is definitely a lover at heart which is WHYYY the rwy id do anything for you theme fits beautifully thx. PLUS it’s stylish and fun which come ONNNNN do i even have to say it

mary / @chwedout: together

mary is the kind of person who makes everyone feel like they belong (carat awards 2024 most supportive carat HELLOOOOO????) so together is just so perfectly mary coded. the lyrics being ab being there for eo through everything…. marycore ✨✨✨✨

maddie / @jeonwon-wonwoo: smile flower

MADDIEEEEE she’s the kind of person who makes you remember that there’s good in the world 😌😌😌 no matter what’s going on she’s so warm and kind and that leaves an impact on everyone who knows her. ERGO smile flower is her soundtrack, soft, comforting, and beautiful <33

al / @ikjun: imperfect love

al radiates this like?? deep, introspective energy that is so unique and special and i think imperfect life suits that perfectly. its all about appreciating beauty in everything, even flawed things and finding meaning in the little things which reminds me so much of them idk. al is so creative and kindhearted which is very suited to the vibe of this song

belle / @ishikawayukis: come to me

idk how to explain this but IMOOO belle has this almost mysterious energy then beneath that she’s just very comforting and kind. come to me is soft and pulls you in?? like the kind of thing that just makes you feel loved without really trying. belle is the person i love seeing on my dash because she just gives off this very calm n steady presence so i think this song fits her rly well

em / @facethesuns: our dawn is hotter than day

em is odihtd to a t idc! she radiates this warm nd lovely energy that surround u like a hug 🥹 this song is all abt celebrating precious moments and that’s how i think of em hehehehe

tris / @bandzboy: black eye

well OBVIOUSLY tris needs a vernon solo but it works out bc black eye fits her perfectly✨✨ its a song thats unapologetic, fierce, and creative which is triscore at its finest. she has that passionate energy that makes you want to get ur ass up make something happen if that makes sense LMAO

j / @vcrnons: doremi

my beloved j <3 she has this soft, warm energy, but there’s also this undertone of depth and like?passion?? that really makes her stand out. doremi is rly playful and sweet but still has enough weight to feel meaningful which feels like j’s presence ! shes the type who will make you laugh and feel seen at the same time 💖💖💖

v / @wonboos: change up

v is change up if it gave birth to a person and for the record that’s the first time that sentence has ever been uttered in the history of mankind 🤭🙂‍↕️ u guys are the first to read it, onefor the history books fr. ANYWAYS they are super vibrant and entertaining and they remind me of the kind of person everyone gravitates to because they always bringing the best vibes ✨ change up has a super upbeat n iconic energy that fits them v well

yena / @fairyhaos: hug

from the moment me n yena became mutuals her kindness and empathy were so pure and evident nd i think everyone who meets her picks up on that right away. WHICH IS WHY hug was an immediate pick for her bc it’s all about warmth and comfort which is actually the very definition of yenacore mhm yes🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ shes that person who makes you feel loved just by existing THEREFORE she is hug

ali / @kimsmingyu: clap

aliiiiiii 💖💖💖 ali is so dynamic and fun, and she feels to me like the kind of person who can bring the energy no matter what. u guys are just sitting there bored as hell then BOOM ali. SO clap is a perfect match for her bc its entertaining and uplifting much like herrrrr, and its got that whole life of the party vibe goin on teehee

kashi / @jeonsupershy: thanks

they wrote this song about kashi did u guys even know. plus it’s my fav u get my fav seventeen song ever kashi… the song that made me a carat as if i haven’t said that 10000 times. ANYWAYS this song is quite literally an anthem of appreciation. imo it suits kashi bc she is the type of person who loves things very deeply and expresses that love in the most thoughtful ways. have u guys seen her bday gifsets for the members… no further comment 💅 ANYWAYS its so heartfelt and dedicated and i think that matches her energy beautifully

[forgotteneilionora]

OOC | Swords of Stafford

ok so our beloved kate just postedd the following

and it made me picture eilia, [ princess leia style, being like 'idk what ur talking abt' ] right to roderick's face when he demands the location of the stafford swords -- even tho they blatantly just had (two of) them during the war ladksjflkjsdfjkdsf -- while she still thinks that both her sisters and one of the swords have slipped away from between roderick's fingers alskjdflkjsdfjk

no, but it ~also reminded me that we never quite finished up talking abt the swords in question (my fault entirely!) but the rest of that's [ here ] and before that [ here ] and we've def talked abt it elsehwere in drips and drabs, such as establishing that they were meteor sowrds etc

anyway, since we also got talking general family stuff there <3 i thought id make a new stafford sword post so we can get down to business w the swords themselves <3

ok so here's what you/kate said last re: the sword of kings:

SWORDS I love the idea that the missing sword isn't really a stafford sword but a founder sword... any house could lay claim to it! (ooo what if each house has their own name for the sword so no one really knows what it was originally called!?) could we retcon the story slightly and perhaps add something in about the sword being claimed by someone who is there to save Astaira in its time of need? or reunite the kingdom? i dunno something along those lines i feel like would help play into the idea of rian/his dad that THEY should find this sword to rule astaira! and if/when roderick hears about it hes like... well i obviously need that to prove to all these HEATHENS that I am the one who is here to save their backwards country! And then there can still be the two stafford swords w/ siobhan running around w/ one which would still be a THING since its a symbol that could unify people and obvi that's bad for our favorite power hungry emperor! ;)

ok so obsessed w this line of thought!!!!

side note: this really ~does actually lend some credence to roderick's hope to gain legitimacy in astairan eyes by claiming the sword, doesn't it? bc...that's what the sword is for basically lakjsdfkljsdf still feel like the sword would betray him in some way or become a corrupt mirror to its usual self or smth in the hands of the wrong person but yeah!! this is just kinda happenstance for him ofc bc he always has this philosophy more bc he sees these ars trophies/symbols of power (plus he's a lil supersticious lbr) etc but this time he lowkey lucked out bc it really ~does lowkey confer some power alsdkjflkjdsf ofc it might kill him or drive him mad or smth who knows but anyway here we are a;ksdfjlksjdf (meanwhile the astairans still laughing at him bc he's going around w morningstar strapped to his side, still thinking its evenstar alksjdflkjsdf heehee)

i do still think the og wielder was def a stafford and it was forged from a falling star via ayla etc like we said but!! we've talked before abt how perhaps malconaire, lorcan, and stafford (and perhaps one or two others) were originally ancient kings in their own right and ultimately united to take down the gods as one etc so i can def see where the first king of a united astairan realm could easily have been a stafford and yeah!!

but yes!!!!!1 anyone being able to claim it feels soooooooo on point re: astairan values etc!!! and i def like to think that's still a thing!!! and yesssss! i love the idea that its for whoever is like willing to put astaira ahead of themselves or whatever, and not just abt bloodline!! and, like, what if its og wielder died thrusting the sword into the lock against the gods basically yknow that ultimate act of putting others before self etc kinda thing?

ok ok so this is WILD!!!!!!! what im abt to suggest laksjdflkjsdfj so no worries if you're like nahh lets not alksdjflkjsdf but like...ok so if a prev king stafford ~did die w the sword like...what if the sword isn't ~just a symbolic sword, what if its legit magical in some way (id guess a conjecting to air/night/sky or some kind and/or maybe souls? which're sometimes compared to aether anyway sdlakjfklsdjf) like...its got powers but its lowkey fueled by the spirit of its wielder/past wielders so like...its light and bright in the hands of a good soul, but turns dark and cold in those of one of ill intent, or whatever, and kinda drinks part of the soul, so you can randomly get some vibes from its prev wielders or whatever???? idk!! lakjsdfkjlsdf ANYWAY!! also @thelongforgottenrealm is this kinda concept even a thing in this world? hahaha

(not that anyone of ill intent truly could dislodge it from its current spot, but if someone of good intent did dislodge it, and it ~later fell into bad hands or whatever idk)

ok so we also left in our og thing some questions re: the name! our two biggest contenders were constellation and celestial. what do we think?

def feel like i came into this w some other thoughts on this topic but uhhhh idr them now so we'll just go w this! a nyway id love to hear all ur thoughts and ideas!!!!!!! <33333

[aihoshiino]

So I've been itching to write hikaai smut but I keep getting stuck on Ai specifically. I have some ideas, her internalize desires conflicting with her shame (both bc of her being an idol and the general social slut shaming misogyny), her being afraid that she is hurting someone she cares about and ruining one of few good relationships in her life.

But I'm not sure how Ai would act in this scenario, everytime I tried to write, it feels a little off.

If you don't mind, I want to hear your take on this.

trusting this anon implicitly and with my life bc they said 'prommy'

Since this is about Ai specifically, I'll focus on her! And lbr me talking about Ai to the exclusion of everything else is what people come to this blog for in the first place lmaooooooo

To start with, I have a previous ask about the role sex plays in Ai's arc, the way it interplays with the series commentary about misogynistic expectations of women in the entertainment industry and also just more generally how I interpret and characterize Ai in relation to sex. The TL;DR of that original post is that sex and Ai's desire for it - and the series subsequent tearing down of the idea that this is something she should've been ashamed of or punished for - is one of the most important underlying thematic ideas not just in Ai's arc but OnK as a whole; again, the series premise is more or less founded on the tension between Ai of B-Komachi's assumed obligate virginal purity as an idol and the reality of Ai Hoshino as a person who has had and desires sex as a human.

Mild sidebar, but this is why I don't really vibe with interpretations of Ai as either asexual or just otherwise queer in a way that frames her as being definitively not attracted to men. Not to accidentally come out with some 'let women date men' shit, but I do think that Ai being attracted to and wanting sex with men, specifically is extremely important for what her arc is about. This is maybe an aspect of the series commentary that can fly over the heads of folks who aren't as keyed into the intricacies of idol culture in Japan, but especially back in the Heisei era in which Ai was an idol, more or less any interactions with men outside of a professional environment - especially in a group founded on gachikoi appeal like B-Komachi. As such, Ai being an idol who just straightforwardly, uncomplicatedly is attracted to and desires sex with men is genuinely a massive social transgression that matches her getting pregnant at sixteen.

(If you're wondering why relationships with other women don't stir the same kind of controversy, I would recommend looking into Class S relationships in Japan and the general attitude of WLW relationships being inherently 'pure' but also implicitly lesser and a stepping stone to 'real' relationships with men that was also quite culturally pervasive but obviously I am getting WAY beyond the scope of this ask lol)

ANYWAY. LORD. TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE POINT OF THE QUESTION YOU ASKED:

I defo agree that Ai has a lot of internalized shame about her desires and the two are often in conflict with each other, even when she follows through on pursuing sex as and when she wants it. But I also think that, to a degree, sex is really important for her in terms of being a type of intimacy that she can't share with everybody else - within the context of Ai's relationships specifically, sex represents a massive amount of trust and vulnerability, not only because of her self-image issues but also because... well, I don't have to explain to any OnK fan what a massive risk Ai having a sexual relationship represents to not just her career but also just her basic safety and ability to navigate the world.

So while I do think KamiAi probably progressed to sex way too fast both for their respective ages and their emotional states/stage of the relationship just as a result of their shared issues surrounding intimacy and hypersexuality, I also think it did represent a very real and very important expression of trust between the two of them, that they could each essentially put a knife into the other's hand and trust them not to use it.

(I just realized I'm assuming this is referring to their relationship as teens... if this is adult KamiAi, I think a lot of these issues aren't really as prominent for them just because they've both been together long enough and gotten a good enough read of each other to resolve those specific anxieties)

So, I think Ai would kind of "take charge" in a well-meaning sense - I really like and agree with @yuseirra's interp of HikaAi where Ai has a bit of a sort of quasi-big sisterly/senpai-ish protectiveness towards him since she's the older of the two and I think that would extend to their intimacy as well since Ai has more/broader experience in that regard too. I don't necessarily think she would feel bad about it (in the sense of worrying about its effects on Hikaru) because my read of both Hikaru and Ai is that sex is just kind of the natural progression of a relationship and that Ai in particular is used to relationships escalating to sex relatively quick. So I can see both of them just kind of going along with it because it's 'how relationships work' as far as they're concerned.

I do ultimately think they probably did not have particularly good sex though LMAO, whenever it has reason to come up in the context of like, adult Ai reflecting on her own degree of sexual experience I always characterized it as like, very by-the-books, two teens who don't really know what they're doing, 5 seconds of awkward prep before penetration and that was kind of it. I think that both makes the most sense in terms of their characters and also is just kind of thematically in line with their relationship more broadly as something the two of them were kind of stumbling through, making missteps and not entirely navigating it in healthy or straightforward ways.

I hope this is helpful, anon...! I try not to just directly say 'this is how I would write XYZ' when I get asks like this just bc I am more interested in seeing how other people organically come to their own interpretations of the text and write that into their stories than I am of directly Dictating to them how something should go.

also. make sure you send me a link when you're done writing this btw. the fact that i have you at gunpoint is unrelated.

[please-read-the-manga]

RIP Madara, you would have loved Cher.

Anyways, this is completely unfounded and purely vibes (I am but a simple cringe gay who likes both Naruto and Cher) but I truly believe Madara would be a Cher fan so I hope someone will enjoy this Cherdara (+Kurama) as the 'Dark Lady' album cover.

Yes, I'm aware this is stupid niche, it came to me as a friend looked through the obscene amount of Cher records I own (early 70's Cher will always be my favorite era) lol.

But tell me these aren't Madara's vibe??

He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother (G*psys, Tramps, & Thieves)

Let This Be A Lesson To You (Take Me Home)

Outrageous (Prisoner) Picture: Madara prepping for battle/getting his weapons + armor ready.

Heart of Stone (Heart of Stone)

Save Up All Your Tears (Love Hurts) I know this one was on repeat in the cave.

The Power (Believe) This should have been the final Juubidara look/reveal.

Song For the Lonely (Living Proof) Like come ON lol.

Dressed to Kill (Closer to the Truth) Hashirama v. Madara fr...

You Haven't Seen The Last of Me (Closer to the Truth) Madara leaving that homophobic village.

The Winner Takes It All (Dancing Queen) I could do a whole list of Madara and ABBA too lol, maybe this one is cheating.

Also, I am by no means trying to venture into the Naruto 'pairings' discourse/community or anything, but if you subscribe to Madara being gay (and imo I think you can make a case for it and read him that way), I'm just saying there are many fantastic unrequited love/desperate-for-love songs that would work for him lol...

The Way of Love (G*psys, Tramps, & Thieves)

Don't Hide Your Love (Foxy Lady)

I Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wife (Dark Lady)

If I Could Turn Back Time (Heart of Stone)

Strong Enough (Believe) Honestly the whole Believe album lbr.

Not sure if I should admit this so I'm 'hiding' it... but my Madara-Cher agenda is also a minor detail in a dumb 'Alternate Universe' I've been brewing in my head - I haven't been here long, but I've definitely been inspired by all the other ideas people on here come up with for their alternative stories lol.

Brief Synopsis:

I'm thinking it takes place in the late 70s/early 80s. Basically, Izuna drops out of high school because he accidentally knocked up his girlfriend and is now trying to figure out how to raise his daughter (Mikoto) at 17. The birth mom's family doesn't want anything to do with this so he's on his own and lost. He goes to his eldest brother's apartment for help because he's not quite ready to admit to their father/other brothers that he fucked up this bad and I kind of picture the two of them having a special bond as oldest/youngest.

From then on, Izuna raises little Mikoto with the help of his gay (on the dl) older brother which gives a lot of room to explore some interesting dynamics/historical perspectives. Personality-wise for this, I kind of picture that Izuna fancies himself a progressive activist for his time (but cannot hold down a job to save his life/the struggle is real) while Madara is barely afloat himself, trying to make do in a shitty apartment and figure out his own life while also (now) taking care of his brother and niece. The major overarching theme would be that the Uchiha are a family that have their issues, but at the end of the day they are always there for one another no matter what (which is how I've always read them in canon).

Idk, it combines many of my interests/favorite themes with some of my favorite characters lol... and, most importantly, I can make Madara a Cher fan LOL. Never worked on something like that before, but it's a nice distraction to consider, especially during these trying times.

This is the album btw:

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

So I was reading your Athena & Apollo headcanons and it made me think of a hc to help fill a (very mild but infinitely frustrating) plot hole in the books! (Well, plot hole is stretching it, it’s not even a plot dent, more like a detail inconsistency that affects Literally Nothing but it has driven me crazy since I read mcga)

The detail in question: Why are all of Athena’s kids blonde and (possibly) curly-haired, when Annabeth is said to get her hair from her dad and Athena has never actually appeared as a blonde? (Aside from that time in Sea of Monsters but tbf that was a hallucination so possibly not accurate). It’s bothered me for a while, because Athena doesn’t Do romance and therefore it wouldn’t really make sense for her to have a Type, right? Why would someone attracted to mortal’s intellect care about their hair color? I guess I just figured she’d been blonde for a while and decided to go brunette later, but the “dumb blonde” stereotype has been around for a long time, having been especially prevalent since the ‘50s, and I can’t imagine Athena to want to be seen as anything less than the smartest person in the room.

But then your hcs got me thinking… we know that Athena is very proud, but she’s also deeply insecure. Like, “she got made fun of for playing the flute One Time by two goddesses known to be bitchy that she already did not get along with and threw it into the woods with a curse and refused to pick it up again (until Apollo coaxed her to)” insecure. And she doesn’t have very many friends, does she? Apollo’s kind of all she has, other than mortals, but her relationship with mortals is that of a devotee and a god. Reverence is not the same thing as connection. But Apollo, who is in a similar boat to her, makes connections so easily! Even at his worst, he makes people like him against both his and their will. Even his relationships with his devotees were… well they were messy lbr but they were also very genuine, most of the time. There was something more, there.

So, all this rambling to say: what if the reason Athena’s kids all look so similar is because Athena chose to look like Apollo? I don’t think she chose to act like him, but. I dunno. Maybe she thought mortals would like her better if she looked more like her pretty, popular brother. She’s always had to listen to people, mortals and immortals alike, praise her brother for just about everything while she had to fight for even a scrap of respect. Maybe she thought she could absorb at least a little of that something that makes people genuinely like him. That something that draws her to him again and again. Maybe it’s like armor, pulling on her brother’s face. If they don’t like her, it’s not because it’s her, right? Apollo’s been driving everybody crazy lately, anyway… (and yet, he’s still more beloved than her…)

And that ALSO feeds into my preexisting headcanons about Apollo looking like a Chase, which is fun!! (I think his modern godly form looks more similar to Magnus but Lester has a face/hair texture that is really, really similar to annabeth’s! So when he bashes the two forms together he makes the two of them look even more like siblings because he’s basically a bridge between the two of them, lol. But his old godly form looked strikingly similar to Annabeth in a lot of ways… hmmmm.)

Anyway it’s kind of a convoluted hc and once again falls into the “Apollo is the specialist little guy in the WORLD” mindset but I!!! Just like it!!!! When siblings are weird and messy!!! And admiration gets mixed up with jealousy and genuine affection is twisted by circumstance and time!!! And identity issues!!! And loneliness!!! It’s latching on to someone and having them be your whole world when you know that you’re just a small part of theirs!!! AUGHHH. Weird fucked up Olympus dynamics my belovedddd

HELLO LONG ASK

I never noticed this before, but this explanation seems Interesting👀

And don't worry, this fandom basically goes "AND THIS IS WHY APOLLO IS [insert description here" ALL the time XD

BUT YES THE COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP EAT THEM UP WE ARE EATING THEM TOGETHER!!! :D