#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.

[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.

[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.

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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!!

[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.

[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

[batsplat]

CRAZY THINGS ARE HAPPENING https://www.tumblr.com/kwisatzworld/767503662882914304/sete-came-to-the-vr46-garage-what-year-even-is-it

(photo of sete in the vr46 garage) been thinkinggggg about this.... I'm actually quite ambivalent on the topic of like. sete + valentino reconciliation because I'm also a big believer in some wounds remaining open, like I actually think there's something cute and fun and compelling about valentino being So Fucking Weird about sete and doing his weird erasing him from the narrative gig... and I've been a very sete-sympathetic mood recently where he's really been triggering my sports underdog-love brain and what valentino did to him was SO MEAN and SO FUCKED UP - low key kinda the worst he's done to any rival lbr!! - and obviously valentino will NEVER apologise for that... so a part of me kinda wants sete to pull himself together and be a bit more bitter in his own right y'know. but I suppose the bit of sete that folds is kind of key characterisation too... idk. it's also not going to prompt anyone to take his career + rivalry with valentino more seriously because valentino's already basically done the damage there. and if you're going to be such a cunt you might as well go all the way, like if valentino were any less evil about it I would find the whole thing considerably harder to stomach. as a sports fan my heart is very much attuned to sete's plight!! sete, don't talk to him. don't go to his bloody ranch

anyway that's the normative analysis about what I'd LIKE to happen. as for the positive analysis... weird weird vibes. I recently remembered some uccio/vale/sete lore that didn't make it to the toxic yuri post and it does kinda make me very. curious. about what that three-way dynamic looks like, if you will. real likelihood that sete is the valentino rival who uccio had by far the most of an actual... direct rapport with... like it's not unreasonable to suggest them and valentino hung out socially on several occasions... they also knew each other when valentino went all *gestures* y'know. on sete. idk where I'm going with this!! I just think it's interesting... I don't really feel like this is a photo I could imagine happening with any of valentino's other rivals, which does Tell You Something idk. curious if this all leads somewhere or if uccio went back home to valentino to call sete a bitch

[kradogsrats]

Thinking about this scene, because lbr it just kind of loops in my brain constantly so there's probably a 70% chance I'm thinking about it at any given moment.

It's easy to make the assumption that everything in Viren's dream is connected to him healing Soren, because it's a convenient place to point to and say "obviously that is where everything went wrong." It's definitely a pivotal moment in his life, and deservedly has a lot of screen time in this sequence. In some ways, it is lurking beneath all the other scenes.

But it doesn't seem to be what Kpp'Ar is talking about at any point here, like:

I always knew you'd go far. But I didn't know how far you'd go to get there.

Everything going on in Kpp'Ar's dialog—"eager student," "elegant finery," "overcome the disadvantages of your upbringing," "I always knew you'd go far"—is about ambition. Not morality or necessity, just a pure skewer of you've never done anything for anyone but yourself, and you know it.

Viren, as is the theme(tm), protests, "I had no choice. I did what I had to do," to which Kpp'Ar, again, absolutely drags him:

You made the choice you've always made. The one that gives you power.

Which, like... you could twist this to be about Soren, and start asking questions about exactly what power Viren stood to gain from healing him—my money would be on the Staff of Ziard—but I actually don't think that's at all what this is about.

This scene in Viren's dream also cuts almost directly into the Twin Peaks scene, in which Viren is king, and which itself culminates in the battered and bloody crown, i.e. his death.

So I think there's a couple things going on, here: 1) the Kpp'Ar scene (and the Twin Peaks scene, but I'll talk about that some other time) is actually referring to everything Viren did that culminated in the events of s1-s3, and 2) we as viewers are being primed by that to look at his other choices in the same critical way.

Now, you'd have to be pretty oblivious to have watched all of s1-s3 hearing Viren's constant refrain that he's doing everything he does for the sake of humanity's future, etc. etc., and been like "oh yeah, that seems totally legit." So we're basically being explicitly told here something that we already knew: everything that Viren has done, he did on some level to secure or consolidate power for himself. Some of those choices are a lot more obvious than others, but pretty much all of them circle back to power, control, and/or the "narrative of strength."

Having framed all of Viren's choices that way—particularly after he has denied that they were choices—we are being implicitly asked to consider his choice to do anything to save his son within the same framework. Was it something he had to do? Was it worth it?

For some viewers, this is the first time they are encountering the revelation that Viren saved Soren from a fatal illness during his childhood. It's a choice that is very easy to sympathize with, and one that we the deep fandom have discussed to death—seeing it for the first time, a viewer is likely to be sympathetic, or automatically believe it was justifiable. In starting with the scene with Kpp'Ar and reminding viewers of all Viren's other choices, their motivations, and their consequences, the sequence is asking us to consider this critical choice, sympathetic as it is, in that context. It's similar to the way we are asked to consider Harrow's choice regarding the Magma Titan, though much less explicit.

So, then... what's up with this?

Viren's immediate response to Kpp'Ar's statement that his choices have always been about power is the first callback to his little mantra:

I've always done what protects my family. However dangerous. However vile.

Why does he say this, when literally nothing in this scene has been about family? Well, first of all, it's another priming device for linking Viren's s1-s3 actions with his healing Soren. It's also a fun little callback for those of us whose reaction to it first being dropped in s4 was "HOLY SHIT it's the thing he said to Kpp'Ar!" in that here he is, saying it to Kpp'Ar again. But we also get told exactly why, a couple scenes later:

We have Harrow—specifically Harrow in the context of his death, the inciting event of Viren's s1-s3 spiral—linked to Viren's concept of family, and his willingness to do anything in that context, in what is a kind of hilarious contrast with, y'know, literally everything Viren did after Harrow's death.

So, as with the rest of the sequence, it's all about Viren framing himself as having no choice while he makes the absolute worst choice possible at every turn.

[thefreshprinceofjunes]

i call riku gay but lbr, if soriku became endgame i highly doubt theyd actually acknowledge sexualities

the most we might get is something along the lines of sora being the only one for riku... which basically already happened in ddd, now that i think about it

also, its wild how a lot of straight and/or male kh fans seem to view soriku stans as 'yaoi fangirls who just want to see sora and riku bang' bc like

they might not even kiss if/when it happens, let alone any implied sex. like what are yall on if you think thats actually why we want it to happen lol

[oz00ms2]

Love the Fire Bug AU fic you wrote! I noticed you mentioned Buggy being like an uncle to the asl trio which got me wondering, does Buggy know about Uta? Do they have a similar relationship? Does this cause anything to change from Uta's story? Sorry for all the Uta questions, I just love her character so much, also have a love/hate relationship with her backstory

shanks rocks up with a tiny daughter and buggy just "thanks this is mine now".

that's his baby girl!! he likes her more than he likes shanks, easily. buggy was meant to be a stage mom lbr.

I could see uta's story going similar - except when shanks returns without his (their) daughter - buggy loses it. shanks basically does exactly what roger did to buggy in this au and it would cause a new and massive rift between them.

buggy would immediately get his ass to uta, trying to both reconcile what shanks says happened and what he knows about his long time (enemy/rival/love) but what matters is uta. who would continue to live and train with Gordon but has a marine second dad showing up, taking her on adventures, trying to make sure she knows she is loved and safe and wanted and can't help but struggle wondering wtf happened that shanks is hiding from everyone.

on a happier note, pls imagine with me smol luffy and smol uta performing for shanks and buggy as kids are prone to do 🥺💕

actual stage mom buggy:

[rozaceous]

tcba finale

i've got the outlines for two chapters, and a couple of snippets for the epilogue, each of which i'm going to give its own post, under a read-more. this is sort of a challenging thing to wrangle, so i'm going to have these posts under the tag #tcba finale and add a link to the tag to my pinned post.

ultimately, i view writing fic as both a hobby and an art form, and i stand very much by only doing it so long as i have fun. 'to continue being alive is also an art' has been my longest-running project ever, and, excepting the collab fic i've done w verm, is the longest in terms of word count, also.

basically, i don't hold with guiltily thinking about how i should be writing, i hate the posts that are "go write 3 sentences on your wip" and "should be writing" bc no i shouldn't! if it's not fun i'm not gonna do it! the only guilt i have is not giving readers a conclusion to the story when i do, in fact, have it. so i'm solving that problem.

i'm really proud of this fic! there's some formatting and typos and minor smoothing of sentences that i'd like to adjust, but lbr abt my ever doing that, sorry lol. it was a blast to think about and write, and the high of posting ch 17 in particular is one i'm not sure i'll be surpassing anytime soon. i hit the narrative through-lines and themes that i wanted to, i got the character development that i desired. i felt like i was writing something fun and fresh in a sub-genre of fic that i love.

i hope ppl reading it had just as much fun as i did, and i hope everyone who reads them likes the outlines/snippets i have. please always feel free to talk to me and ask questions abt it bc i'd love to hear what you think! replies on the posts, asks, comments on ao3 -- i will love you forever, seriously.