#with that I mean fund out which series I'm talking about

[bengiyo]

Hi, i'm a newish bl drama watcher from thailand that just started watching thai bls. i'm a bit ashamed to say that for a long time as a gay man living here i've been avoiding bl shows like the plague cuz of both the fandom reputation and of misconception from my yaoi era which i leave far behind. i'm just want to ask how did you got into watching thai bls and what were you preconception before you got into it.

Welcome to the Tumblr side of BL fandom. I'd actually like to also hear more of your experience with yaoi and BL as a gay person growing up in Thailand if you're willing to share.

For me, I'm a Black American from the Gulf Coast (the South). I grew up in a Catholic city and spent my entire adolescence in the closet. Despite having a sense of who I was as early as 8 years old, I kept most of that to myself. Because I didn't talk about it much with people, I found out most information about queer media and queerness from the internet.

I entered BL via queer cinema. I think the first explicitly gay character that I remember from TV was Marco from Degrassi: The Next Generation. There were probably others, and definitely more subtle expressions, but when I think about the oldest gay character I remember and connect to, it's Marco. I don't like counting things like shipping Shawn and Corey on Boy Meets World or Tai and Matt on Digimon for oldest gay characters. Sailor Moon can't even count because we got a censored version of it in America.

I got access to satellite television away from observing eyes around age 16 and started watching content on Logo back when they aired gay content regularly. I watched basically whatever I could late at night. It's how I saw movies like Get Real (1998), Beautiful Thing (1996), and Bent (1997). It's also how I saw Queer as Folk (2000-2005) Noah's Arc (2005-06).

After hitting adulthood I mostly got lost in video games and standard American TV for a while, but I did basically show up to any Gay Event in TV. I appreciate that Stef and Lena from The Fosters (2013-2018) were some of the only TV lesbians to survive the horror of 2016.

I watched a bunch of movies in this time, many of which appear on the Queer Cinema Syllabus I made for a hypothetical Westerner new to BL and queer cinema, which @wen-kexing-apologist has decided to try to complete.

I got into Thai BL in 2018 accidentally. I started seeing gifsets of Kongpob telling Arthit he'll make him his wife passing around Tumblr and was basically like, "Right, what's all this then?"

I had watched a few Thai gay films, mostly notably Love of Siam (2007), Bangkok Love Story (2007), How to Win at Checkers Every Time (2015), and The Blue Hour (2015), but this was the first time I was seeing a long series made available so easily from any Asian country.

From there I got into Make It Right (2016-17) and Love Sick the series (2014). Once I realized that yaoi had moved beyond manga and a few anime adaptations, I went looking for a lot more. I basically haven't left since I started in about 2016 with SOTUS.

There's my basic entry into the genre. I don't think I was as worried about fandom and worries at the time because so much of being a fan of queer cinema was a mostly-private experience for me for so long. I didn't realize that BL fans active in the space would predominantly be women or queers figuring themselves out. It took a while to adjust to that, and also to adjust my expectations of the kinds of queer stories BL distributors were willing to fund.

That being said, I tend to agree with @absolutebl that BL has a useful role in normalization for non-queer audiences who encounter it. I like cheering BL when it does things I think work really well, and also deriding it when I think it does things that are offensive to help nudge the genre and offer my perspective as a gay man.

I like the place we're at right now where there's way too much to watch for any person with other hobbies and responsibilities because it means that people can pick and choose what's to their tastes.

More often than not, I'm probably most-invested in something airing from Japan because of my melancholy nature, but there's so much variety these days that it's okay if you don't like everything. I certainly don't!

I'm glad you joined us on Tumblr and look forward to your thoughts!

[mayakern]

Hiiii

I'm a writer who makes queer supernatural horror/dark fantasy/sci fi stories I was wondering if you might be okay with talking about your process in getting an editor/getting published? I know the basics, but I'm interested in hearing how people who are also writing queer stories have managed to gather followings for themselves and put their work out there

Thank you!

previous to self publishing, i participated in dvpit/pitmad which were events for unrepresented authors to pitch their works to agents and i also queried a number of agents and pubs separate from that. i received only rejections, which wasn’t really surprising because most publishers only accept fantasy romance manuscripts of a maximum length of 150-170k words. at the time, spitfire was 307k. i didn’t really take this too hard because i knew it was a long shot, since being outside of submission requirements is almost always an automatic rejection for new authors. i just wanted to be able to say i tried, honestly.

because of this and because i did not feel equipped to split the book into two by myself, i decided to self publish the book. it sold… surprisingly well. well enough that i suddenly had the budget to fund an audiobook with just enough money left over to hire a line editor to get the book polished before someone cemented my words in audio form.

i put out a call for editors on social media and got over 100 applicants. i requested editing samples from the people who were in my budget and seemed like potentially good matches. i had a lot of very strong choices but the moment i read danielle’s editing sample, i knew she was the one because she just got it, plain and simple. i was primarily looking for a line editor but i also had a couple non-syntax issues that were small enough to not require a huge structural overhaul of anything, but were big enough that my exhausted brain just wasn’t untangling them. i needed fresh eyes.

and then, as danielle and i were just hammering out our plans for our edits, claire contacted me. they’d seen some of my tiktoks about the book and were intrigued, then realized that they already knew me/my work and had actually bought a skirt from me at a con a few years back. they requested my manuscript, read it over, we had a couple meetings and then i signed with them. they suggested splitting the book into two and now that i was equipped with both a fantastic editor and agent—and now that trad pub seemed on the table and it seemed i wouldn’t need to self fund my own audiobook—i suddenly had the funds and support needed to tackle a huge structural overhaul of the once duology, now series.

all in all things only really worked out because i already had an audience who was willing to give a new author a chance. i think it helped a lot that i initially posted the book on ao3, meaning people could read it for free and didn’t have to spend money to risk being disappointed in something. it make the buy in very cheap for people. and somehow enough of them decided that they liked the book enough to buy it, giving me the funds for an editor and the numbers to look attractive to prospective publishers.

anyway don’t use this as a guide for how to get published. i have not been picked up by a publisher and even if i had, the path i’ve taken is really fucking weird and not viable for most people.

regardless, i hope this helped somehow and i wish you luck!

[choosingwhatmatters]

Music in The Loyal Pin, Episode 1

My goodness, what a beautiful chocolate brownie of a first episode! There are already wonderful posts about the way in which the funds of the series have been put to good use. One aspect that has not been highlighted yet (please correct me if I'm wrong) is the music. And oh!, the music we get in this series.

My ears perked up from the very beginning of the show. We get an orchestral score! All the instruments of magic welcome us at the palace: strings, a harp, a glockenspiel, woodwinds, bar chimes, a piano - I was smiling within seconds.

Tv shows very rarely receive a score like this because arranging, recording and mixing music for twenty different instruments is time-consuming and complex, by which I mean expensive. One trick you can use to lower the costs is using synthesised instruments. The strings we can hear are not real. However, a brilliant thing the scoring team does here is mix in real instruments. For example, we can hear real flutes, if I am not mistaken. Some cello and violin pieces throughout the episode have also been recorded with real instruments. For me, the whole soundscape is simply beautiful!

What about the music itself? There are three things I would like to talk about: the pentatonic scale, Pachelbel and a melody that I hope will become one of Pin and Anin's.

1. The very first thing we hear when Anin has landed on Pin is a melody comprised of five different notes. For Western ears, these fives notes are inevitably associated with music from South-East Asia. The scale resulting from these notes is called a pentatonic scale, and if you ever feel like playing it: look for the black keys on any piano keyboard and go wild. The cool thing about the pentatonic scale is that it's fantastic for improvising. In Western music, it's used all the time because these notes simply sound good together.

We have a lot of ambient music in this episode. Music that blends with the peaceful atmosphere onscreen, and often the pentatonic scale is used to do just that.

2. Which brings me to another piece of music I want to talk about: Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D major. It's the first and the last piece played at the dance. While the king discusses Anin's future with the rest of the family, we can see Pin and Anin dancing to this piece. I find this significant because most music scholars believe that Pachelbel composed the Canon as wedding music (for Bach's brother, no less).

I haven't read the book the series is based on. I have avoided spoilers as best as I could. Logically, I KNOW that it is very unlikely that we get a happy ending here. But I get to see two women in a historical setting dancing to a wedding piece and this fact alone makes me very, very happy.

3. Off to my last point. Even though most of the episode features music, I have noticed very little repetition. There is, however, one piece of music that comes back.

We can hear it when Pin and Anin have their first meeting, and again when Anin discovers her windmill and her ribbon in Pin's bedroom. (What do you call those tiny windmills? And, more importantly, what is it with these two and tiny windmills? Thank you, creators, for the nod to your GAP fandom.)

The piece sounds somewhat like this:

The harmonies are more intricate, but this gives us an idea what we can listen out for in future episodes. The melody is simple and sweet. It could be connected to childhood and adolescence. I'm curious to see if we encounter it again.

And I'm very excited to see whether the score team continues with motives and reprises. I love straining my ears for these because they give us even more clues about the happenings onscreen.

Thank you for riding along with me! I am so excited to see what the show has in store for us!

[madbrake]

Lackadaisy

Been wanting to share/talk a bit about the Lackadaisy Backerkit project currently going on, especially because they just hit $1M in funding and I just think it's a really cool project. When I was reading through some of the info surrounding why they're going this route, they mention that they were actually in talks with studios to get an animated Lackadaisy show made after the success of the pilot (similar to what's going on with Hazbin Hotel). This was one of the initial goals of the pilot as well: to have something they could shop around to studios.

However, in light of the current treatment of animation by major studios (they reference HBO locking away some of their animated series) they've elected to go independent—a path which also allows them to retain complete ownership and keep on their current team of actors and animators. They are still limited by independent funding, but with the ongoing success of the Backerkit and the pilot, it seems like they're doing well in that regard???

It's just really cool to see this rise of 2D animated series finding a way to do their thing through non-traditonal means, and in this era where we're essentially at war with companies for the rights of creatives, it's nice to see independent projects finding success and support. AI is running rampant, series are getting shelves, workers of all trades are getting overworked and underpaid, but people are still getting large projects made and their teams compensated. Lackadaisy is of course far from the first indie animated series, but it's definitely a product of the current state of animation which I'm excited to see. I hope this season finds success when it launches and I hope other projects like this find success in independence.

Long story short, the successful funding of Lackadaisy season 1 makes me feel hopeful about the future of animation especially in terms of new ways for indie creators to succeed. If you are interested in supporting the project, check out the Backerkit:

[pong03]

Kaito character analysis

Let's start light before I get more into the conspiracy theorist ramblings. in nsfw stuff I have read I feel like he is commonly misunderstood. I have read a lot where he is hasty, unemotional and self-serving... although I can see where hasty and lazy may come from but, think about: Kaito towards MC focuses on making her happy and although not always successful it is his main goal, BUT to write him as UNEMOTIONAL.

Y'all he is the most emotional of any man in the whole series. especially, in a first time headcanon post he should not be written as unemotional... we all know he would be crying and being like "MC you're such an angel boo hoo" and "I'm so glad I had my first time with you." he might be quick to finish but I think he would very guilty and put effort towards making it up to MC as soon as he was physically able. ALSO one thing I read he just was written as giving no aftercare,,, sorry am I the crazy one to say Kaito (most of frostheim) would be the most into aftercare?? His grandma always told him blah blah blah.. to him sex wouldn't even parallel to the aftercare experience, and tbh dude would be the one to need it the most. Tell me he wouldn't do everything the MC told him too and if was even slightly degrading to her he would be SOBBING afterwards all like "I'm sorry I said all that mean stuff, I know you asked but I don't believe any of it. You're SOOO NICE." You can't disagree with me yk I'm right. Okay.. I'm like trying to keep this part short but kind of failed. Obviously your head canons are what you're entitled to... just I feel like a lot of people admit to struggling to write him so maybe they'd preesh a post like this. HML if you want Kaito advice ig okay, admittedly this second part is a bit in-depth... like could be a reach but I have A LOT of evidence so hear me out. We all know Kaito hates being a ghoul and is considerably weaker willed than the other ghouls, he is also raised by his grandma. We can assume this because she is the ONLY family member he talks about (on the home screen and in the story) and the process of becoming a ghoul is intense right? Something that would be surprising if he regrets becoming one and is the big ol baby that he is. I think that Kaito's parents are the ones who made the deal, and they didn't survive. He was born to a poor family we know this because he talks about it all the time. SO my personal thought is he was born to a single mother who didn't have any funds to raise him even with the grandmother's help, so she wishes for greatness for her baby, and makes a deal with a devil to protect her child. Because we know he doesn't have the academics to get in Frostheim and he probably was not open about being a ghoul, it's a hoe-scaring quality. So I think he's basically got assigned-plot-armor-at-birth. and basically the demon could be kind of like how luca's monster is possibly his brother, and his mom's soul in entwined with a demon's (like a ghoul's would be) and basically they co-parent him which would explain why his stigma is so weak comparatively to other ghouls. this is more exploratory, but what I truly BELIEVE bare bones is: Kaito's parents are the one's who made the deal. That's it that's all I truly believe in and everything else is speculative. I just think it would be cool especially because I think the process of becoming a ghoul is left especially vague for this purpose. Hehe let me know what you think about this and other things that you personally think about kaito! I'm really curious about other fan's thoughts.

[dust-and-grave]

hng, i am so frustrated by this whole watcher tv situation. i've been chewing on it ever since i watched their announcement video yesterday + i've been looking around online at other fan reactions. i'm having a lot of thoughts so i guess i want to throw my two cents in + hope it'll make me feel better to talk about it a little.

i think we all agree that creators should be paid fairly for their work; however, not all work is created equal, right? if i commission an experienced (and thus high-demand) artist to do an oil painting of my cat, they might quote me $500+ to do that + it would be fair. if an artist with substantially less experience (and thus in lower demand) spends 30 seconds on a crayon rendition of my cat, should they also received $500+ for their work? i think most people would agree that would be ridiculous.

in some ways, this is what it feels like the watcher team is doing to us right now, imo. we know that shows like ghost files or puppet history are expensive to make because travel costs (in the case of ghost files) + production costs, but we can see the effort put into the work. we feel that what we give for the show, whether that's turning off ad blocker while watching or buying show merch or supporting via patreon, is going toward making the product that we are asking for. these shows are the oil painting in the metaphor.

i don't agree with how mean + rude some people are being about steven lim rn, but frankly, his shows are the 30 second crayon drawing of the watcher channel. anyone can look at the view count on their channel + see that his shows consistently have performed worse than shane + ryan's shows. additionally, we can see that he blows huge amounts of money on his shows ("$913 seafood tower", "$1027 fried chicken") that may leave a lot of viewers feeling as if they're aren't getting as much bang for their buck.

frankly, i think people are valid for being upset that they're expected to directly foot the bill for steven's "i fly all over the world + eat expensive food while you watch" project. while youtube has a shit ton of problems (like, say, not paying their creators enough), one of the cool things about it is that you can gauge directly the amount of the interest in a project (and how many resources you should dedicate to said project) by how many eyes are on it. unfortunately for him (i guess), steven's shows just don't garner enough attention to justify the expense of making them.

which is why i see this shift to watcher tv as such a problem. this feels very much like using shane + ryan's success on the channel to force fans to fuel steven's pursuit of his glory days on worth it. it feels even more strange when they say that they're making the switch because the company isn't currently sustainable, but steven has just hired his friends from buzzfeed + continues to push his series that just don't seem to be making back the cost of production.

to be totally fair, shane + ryan don't get out of this clean either. some of their shows don't deserve to be behind a paywall either. too many spirits is filmed in ryan's parent's backyard with content submitted by their viewers. are you scared is just ryan reading creepypastas/fan submitted content on a minimal set. survival mode is just them playing games like any other streamer or gaming youtuber does. i love all of these shows, but are they on par with puppet history or ghost files? absolutely not.

this is where i think the disconnect is coming from. they're taking everything including the lower production shows to a streaming service where you have to fund them directly (rather than indirectly through ad revenue). they're forcing funding into steven's projects despite them just not doing well enough to justify the cost. they're coming across as disingenuous with their reasoning because their stated reasons for doing this don't align with their actions rn.

i feel like it would've made so much more sense to crowdfund new seasons of shows (which gives them feedback from the fans about what they want too) or put higher cost shows like ghost files or puppet history on patreon or channel membership. i would gladly fund mystery files, weird wonderful world, ghost files, puppet history, etc. with my own money, but i'm one of the ones who isn't really interested in funding steven's quest to eat all of the gold-plated kobe beef when i'll never be able to afford to eat at a restaurant that even serves it.

[beetleviolet]

Let's talk about Bishop from TOTTMNT

(Tw sibling death)

@hahachiknfunny

Ok. I'm going to just get this out of the way at the beginning.

I HATE THIS CHARACTER

And not in a "aaa this villain makes me so mad bc they're evil" no I mean I hate the way her character is developed and justified.

IF YOU DISAGREE PLEASE DO EXPLAIN I WOULD QUITE GENUINLY LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT!!!

So I am still working my way through a lot of different tmnt series (currently alternating between 2012 and 2003), so I don't have a lot of experience with the usual Bishop character. Based on the little I know about him (mostly from fanfiction), my general impression was that he was this bigoted white guy who was like. A mutant nazi or something. He hates mutants because they are different, they are "flawed", and therefore they are a threat. I figured he was just a hateful asshole, and hadn't thought about it more then that.

But for this, they decided to go in a different direction. The ✨tragic backstory✨ direction. Which is a pretty good direction! IF you do it right. Which, in my humble opinion, THEY ABSOLUTELY DID NOT!!!!

Ok let's get some actual points here!

When we get Josefina Bishop's backstory, she starts as this passionate, nice character who is eager to achieve her robot building dreams. Nothing about her is mean or hating or anything of the sort. She is exasperated by Rod, but doesn't say anything incredibly bitter to him, she's just frustrated being forced to work with this rich guys man child. Which yeah! Thats fair! She has a sister who died and who is the inspiration of her work. Awesome!

And then her workshop is destroyed.

Let me just add. She is being funded by a millionaire. She probably has insurance! Her sister is in no way harmed by these events. And yet her response to property damage is DOMESTIC FUCKING TERRORISM.

She immediately gets bitter and revenge-filled, deciding that she should exterminate ALL THE MUTANTS!!!

You know, the mutants that were helping fight Superfly? The enemies of the one who destroyed her work? THEYRE LITERALLY ON HER SIDE???

And not only does this hatred of Superfly extend to the turtles.

SHE ALMOST KILLS A SUBWAY TRAIN FULL OF PEOPLE!!!

Because, of course "iTs A sMaLL pRicE tO PaYyYyyy"

Bestie. Honey. Girlfriend.

Its just. Weird to me? It doesn't seem very thought out. I would have loved a kind of change up from the usual Bishop themes, but just because its different and new isn't an excuse for it to suck!

IT TOTALLY COULD HAVE WORKED AND HERE IS HOW.

Nickelodeon needs to stop being a bitch and kill off her sister during the Superfly conflict.

Its very clearly what they WANTED to do. Its like the original concept was that her sister died, but that was considered too violent, so they took that out, but then didn't replace it with something else. And they tried so hard to be like "ohhh its about my sisterrrr" GIRL WHAT THIS IS ABOUT SUPERFLY DESTROYING YOUR SHIT AND YOU BEING BUTT HURT ABOUT IT.

And another thing! For a character to turn evil, they have to SNAP! And a character can't snap unless they are already under enough pressure to make that a threat.

Make her be cruel to Rod. Have her be control freak who has to have all the variables perfectly in place. Bitter about the sponsors that doubted and rejected her. Make her already angry at the world, have the only thing that matters to her be her robots and her sister, the two things that were always at her side. And then one day Superfly kills her sister and destroys her lifes work. Yes, she can rebuild the robots. Not the sister though, and making them without her is such an empty and performative motion.

Mutants have gotten people killed. They're too dangerous, its too much of a risk.

This mindset would make so much more sense if they just HAD SUPERFLY KILL HER SISTER LIKE OMG.

Also she had several direct conversations with the turtles, so she was well aware they were intelligent beings.

ALSO! She didn't target the mutants who used to work with Superfly. That would TOTALLY make sense even without the sister thing!

But no. She had to kill the TURTLES. The ones who are widely acknowledged and widely known to be the ones to stop Superfly and save NYC and the world.

But you know what? Maybe i could let that go. Its a kids show, right? And I did like her recovery arc at the end.

Until they. You know. COMPLETELY UN DID ALL OF THAT!!!!

I thought that maybe Bishop will be like. Idk a spy for the mutants or something, like a double agent, but tbh based on the previous writing of her character, I wouldn't put it past the writers to just. Have her do a complete 180. I'm just mad she's going to be a reoccurring character.

Anyway. I kinda hate to dump on this show so much bc I love (most) everything else about it. Bishop was the lowest point to me by far.

[bargainbinwizard]

What the fuck is wrong with you Israel

I've been pretty silent on the Israel and Gaza war for a long time but it's come to a point that I needed to get magically involved. It's an ugly situation all around. Israel mass murdering Palestinians,Hamas being a thing, Antisemites coming out of the woodwork,Israel booting people from their land and people saying that Israel as a country should cease to exist...even though Jews were native to Israel (aka Canaan) but got conquered by the Babylonians and Romans in ancient times and so as a consequence, they were spread out across the globe getting shat on by everybody in history. But I can't even say that Israel is defending themselves from Hamas because they're too busy fucking around in the Gaza strip shooting down people getting flour.

I'm just going to make it very clear that just because I say that Israel as a country should exist ✨DOES NOT MEAN THAT I SUPPORT ISRAEL KILLING PEOPLE OR THEIR CRUELITY TOWARDS THE PALASTINIANS ✨. I don't want anybody popping onto my page to villainize me and putting words in my mouth. I may not have the funds to save the entirety of Gaza but that doesn't mean I haven't been donating. Also I do my Gaza/Israel reblogging on my main blog,this is just a side blog. That's why you haven't seen anything here. I don't want to hear from any of you that I'm secretly rubbing my hands evilly and cackling watching Israel bomb Rafah.

In short, fuck nazis and people who think that being an antisemite makes you a hero. Go do something useful with your time like donate to Gaza charities like a normal person, would you?

Anyway, in terms of my magical work. I've been focusing on trying to get the news channels on tv to talk about what kind of nasty shit Israel soldiers have been doing in Gaza. There's pictures and videos on the internet from the Palestinians being killed,Israel soldiers talking pictures of themselves on children's' bicycles that they've stolen,olive trees being destroyed and so on and so forth. Yet, the only thing the news wants to focus on is Hamas and making Israel looking like the good guy. If I can get get the news to talk about Israel's war crimes and the corruption in the Israel military /government with pictures then I've done my job. Well,I may need to create a peace spell to somehow make Israel and Gaza stop fighting. Not sure what spell components I need to use.

Its also pretty shitty that there are so many fundraisers to get people out from Gaza and to give people aid that I don't have the funds to save everybody,just give people a measly 20 dollars while their fundraiser goals are several thousand dollars. And if I donate to one charity, I'm not donating to the others and that means they'll have to suffer. I don't have the wallet of Mr. Beast or Bill Gates. I can't save everybody and they might die before they reach their fundraiser goals. And more fundraisers are going to pop up.

EDIT: Added some links. I made it fair by talking about both Hamas and Israel.

[thelampisaflashlight]

A Lack of Engagement Pt. 7: Favor

[Previous Entry: Here. A shorter installment, mostly because the next one will be the final entry in the ALOE series, and I wanted to drag things out a little more lol] Below the cut.

Despite the haste of their departure, once Rain's bedroom door is shut tightly behind them, they both take a moment to breathe and take in the room.

Rain's room is much the same as it was in the other universe, safe for the distinct lack of Dew's things, a subtler reassurance that they had safely returned to their reality, but a relief nonetheless.

Plopping down on the bed, neither of them can think of what to say, until...

"I want to do this slowly." Dew says, placing his hand over Rain's, a gesture that has the water ghoul looking over and shyly meeting his eyes, "...Is that okay with you?"

"I'll survive." Rain laughs, but after a pause, he says, "I have no problem with that... but I do have to ask, why?"

Dew links their hands together and worries his thumb over Rain's, "'Cause I like you, Rain. I really, really like you... and it's not... It's different with you somehow... and I want to know for certain that that's how I really feel, ya know?"

"You're worried that you might not actually like me?" Rain questions, and Dew quickly shakes his head.

"No, I just... You're my friend, and that means you're special to me, and I'm worried that if feelings get involved, or..." Dew takes a deep breath, "I want to enjoy... building something with you. I don't want this to be a fling or some heat of the moment hookup that ends in heartbreak... I've never really gotten to do any of the stupid, silly couple shit that other people have, but I want... I want to do those things with you. Before it becomes anything more than that."

Rain squeezes Dew's hand, "Tell me what you want. Talk to me about it."

Dew smiles and pulls Rain down onto the bed with him so they can lay together, fingers still intertwined.

"I... I want to go on dates together. Like when we went to the aquarium for my birthday." he says, "I want to hold hands and go for walks together, no pressure, just... Rainy, I want to do a lot of wholesome shit with you."

"Aww-"

"And then I want you to take me home, take me back to this room, and do the most disrespectful things to my body."

"Ohh~?"

Dew snorts and turns his head towards Rain.

"What do you want from this? From us?" Dew asks, "Do you want this?"

Rain closes his eyes.

"I want to get to know you in ways that no one else is allowed to." he says, "I want to look at you and know you're mine, and not just physically... I think. Emotions are hard and I know what you mean about... not wanting to fuck up what we have by rushing into something we're both a little shaky on."

"But I think going on dates, spending time together... I'd like that."

"Even if we don't have sex any time soon?" Dew inquires.

"If you're not ready for that, you're not ready for it. End of story." Rain assures him, "...I do have to admit that you showing me your dick in the bathroom did send a bit of a mixed message at the time-"

"Ugh, I can't believe I did that..." Dew groans, covering his face with his free hand.

"And the size..."

"Hey! I'm a grower, not a shower." the ghoul hisses, "...Speaking of dicks though... How're we going to find that thing without driving ourselves nuts looking all over the place for it?"

Rain thinks for a moment before opening his eyes.

"We could ask the groundskeeper for help."

"The groundskeeper...? What for?"

Rain sits up again, slowly.

"We know that the dick disappeared from the other world by falling into the lake at some point or another, but it somehow wound up inside the abbey, hence the rumor."

Dew nods.

"Maybe after we touched it, it tried to blip back, or maybe it did -in which case we're screwed and we're gonna have to pool our funds to buy the toll man a custom dildo- so maybe it ended up in the lake again...?"

"I mean, it's possible." Dew agrees, still laying down, "You think they'd be willing to help us? The groundskeeper that is?"

Rain hums, leaning back on his palms.

"I don't see why not. She lives by the lake anyway, she'd probably want to know if something weird or interesting was in it."

"She does?" Dew asks, "Is that who lives in the cabin over on the other side of the lake then?"

"Yeah, her name is Beatrix." Rain says, "I've talked to her a couple times, she's... very American."

Dew stares at him.

"Psycho or yee-haw eagle screech?"

Rain scrunches his nose and thinks.

"...I was gonna go with the yee-haw one, but I think Beatrix has the capacity to kill a man, and, honestly, that'd explain how she wound up here." Rain comments, "Sometimes I see her eyeing Copia while she's out driving the utility truck around, and you can almost hear her thinking about it."

"...How have I not met this woman yet?"

The water ghoul gives a concerned chirp, "...I think I'm going to regret introducing you two, aren't I?"

.

.

.

"...So let me get this straight." The groundskeeper says, hands pressed together in a prayer like gesture, "You want me to dredge the lake for a giant metal dick? One that was previously in the abbey's erotic art collection -which I was completely unaware of, the fuck kind of place is this- but, in another universe, fell into and/or was deliberately pushed into the lake during some kind of party?"

Rain and Dew nod, watching the woman's face shift from utter disbelief into a tired stare followed by a shrug and a, "Meh, why not? There are worse ways to spend an afternoon..."

"You're a lifesaver, Beatrix!" Rain sighs in relief, looking to Dew who smiles, "How can we ever repay-"

"It's just Bea." She says flatly, "Blueberry bushes."

Rain blinks.

"What?"

The groundskeeper gestures towards a cluster of blueberry starters sitting in a trailer attached to the abbey's utility vehicle.

"Mountain was supposed to help me plant those, but we got into an argument about something unrelated, so neither one of us has touched them all day, and they need to go into the ground asap, so..." Bea hands Dew a shovel, "There's only fifteen of them, so it shouldn't take you that long. That being said, heed the instructions on the booklet, don't fuck it up, and we'll be right as your namesake when all is said and done."

Dew watches the groundskeeper walk away and then turns to Rain.

"Why do I feel like this is going to be more work than looking for the dick ourselves?"

"It'll kill time at least..." Rain concedes, looking at the blueberry starters in the trailer, "...What do you think those two fought about?"

"Beats me." Dew replies, swapping the shovel back and forth between his hands, "You're the one who'd know her better, between the two of us."

"And Mountain knows her best." Rain says, "...Her and I, we talk, but her and Mount are buddies."

"Fuckbuddies or...?"

"Sure, we bang on the regs." Bea deadpans, appearing beside them once more, moving eerily silent for a human being, "Small hiccup in the plan, boys; Lake's fucking huge and I need to know some more specifics before this turns into a day long affair."

"But the blueberry bushes-" Rain starts.

"-Can wait five seconds while you point out the spot along the shoreline I should be searching." she says, "I realized about ten steps into my walk that I have literally no fucking idea which part of the lake to look at, and I'd rather work smarter not harder, especially if I gotta be in before the sun goes down."

"Before the sun goes down... What??" Rain splutters in confusion, "What are you, a reverse vampire??"

Bea glances over at the opposite shoreline.

"No, but if I don't get inside my cabin by sundown, Mountain said he's going to hunt me for sport, and then I'd be an undead, dead something or other, I guess." she says, "Think he might be serious this time."

"He's going to hunt you for sport??" Rain cries, "W-What did you do??"

"I called him 'submissive and breedable' as a joke, ya know, like the meme, and he may have taken that as a challenge."

"...And you're just gonna..." Rain tries to find the right words, "...I'm realizing now you don't sound in the slightest bit afraid. This is a sex thing, isn't it?"

"Don't kink shame me, or I'm not going to help."

"Okay, okay-"

"So you are fuckbuddies..." Dew says, nodding his head, "That's nice. Good for you."

"Thank you." Bea gestures towards the lake, "Now then, before I get furious, feral forest monster dick, let's go find yours."

Rain snorts.

"What?"

"No, I just... I guess it just hit me that we're looking for a giant dick." Rain laughs, "...It's been a long week."

Dew pats his shoulder, "Yeahh..."

Bea checks her phone.

"It's Monday, but same, bud, same..."

[thelavendernarwhal]

I received an ask that a person wanted answered anonymously, so:

But I really, truly cannot stop thinking about this one scene in Legacy. It’s around page 351.

“You mean having Dizznee pull some money from your birth fund and then hitting up a shop for a couple of minutes?” Keefe asked. “Yeah, Dex told me all about how not exhausting that was last night, when he checked in to tell me how things went for you two in London, while someone was off doing something with Mr. Forkle…”

So what I’m hearing is sleepy Dex on call with Keefe? Dex telling Keefe that he’s tired? A cute little nightly convo?

Side note, why was Dex tired? Does his ability make him tired? I need more elaboration, Shannon.

This scene is hella interesting to me since you look at it and it immediately seems like a Sokeefe scene, but in the middle, it has this seemingly random shift into talking about a completely different character dynamic. The context this snippet falls into is Keefe trying to cheer up Sophie after she had an argument with Mr Forkle. It all makes sense within of their relationship and dynamic, but this bit of dialogue is communicating something pretty different. It’s pointing out that Keefe and Dex have a close friendship that Sophie isn’t super aware of and that Sophie doesn’t spend a lot of time with/pay attention to Dex. 

Both of these things can be chalked up to the fact the story is from Sophie’s perceptive. The big plot details have to happen or be explained to her or else they won’t make it to the reader. That doesn’t leave a lot of page time for banter, especially for a character like Dex who’s narrative role can mostly be done off stage. Of course, Dex’s character can be used for a lot more than ‘cool gadget guy’ (ie class divides, matchmaking/queer allegories, parallels to many other characters, etc), but that’s a whole different can of worms. Having moments like this that show things happening outside of Sophie helps establish a larger, more lively world. It shows that Sophie isn’t the center of the universe. 

But these little moments can be established with many different characters. There are so many background dynamics and friendships that can be leveraged for this purpose which makes it interesting that specifically Keefe and Dex are highlighted. In fact, these two are highlighted in this way fairly often. Back in book 3, the two of them hit it off quickly and spend more time together outside of a group setting which then translates into many Keefex moments (including getting their team/ship name). Late night calls are probably pretty common. 

But what really gets me about all of this is the casualness and I think it's because few other relationships in this series have that. Even characters that are established to be best friends have a good amount of tension between them (ie Fitz and Keefe, Sophie and Dex, Stina and Marella), but Keefe and Dex don’t have that. There’s a sense of stability and trust. They hang out and talk to each other without a practical reason to do so. Dex feels okay complaining to Keefe about projects and, presumably, feelings of isolation. Especially seen in Unlocked, Keefe trusts Dex to help him and hear some of the ugly things he doesn’t want to say to Sophie. There's definitely a lot of room for cute late night conversation on call, but also for a chill relationship in a sea of high-tension dynamics. 

The length of this thing kind of got away from me but that's my take :) 

(Also, I'm exploring a lot more of the mechanics of technopathy in my own writing, so I think that it's possible that Dex’s experience is something very similar to Keefe’s as the Forbidden Cities has more integrated technology that seemingly ‘speaks’ to Dex. That could be very overwhelming for him, hence why he's tired.)

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Not so long ago, another Christian on here shared an article about the "problems" with the Chosen. Now, I fully believe and support thinking critically about the media we consume, especially for something depicting the life of Christ. That being said, I'd like to offer some thoughts of my own about some of the most commonly cited "problems" with the series. (I ended up referencing the above article in most points, but almost all of them I have see elsewhere as well. That article was just an easy frame of reference.) I'm not here to convince anyone to watch it; I'd just like to offer an alternate perspective for anyone who is willing to listen and think critically.

As a disclaimer: no, this show is not flawless. It's a flawed show made by flawed people doing their best. There are times I take issue with it myself. There are valid criticisms. The ones below are, quite simply, ones that I believe are not.

Buckle up; this is going to be a long one.

1.Mormon Influence I can't believe I still have to explain this one, but I still see it listed as a reason not to watch, so here we go: VidAngel/ Angel Studios Mormon ties had no more bearing on the series content for being the streaming distributor than CBS currently does for being allowed to broadcast it. When a company solely has distribution rights, that does NOT mean they are making content decisions. The only time a distributor would have say on content is if they are partnered, which usually means they are paying for production in some way. Angel Studios never gave a penny towards production (this is the largest crowd-funded series to date, remember? They have no studio backing). They never had any influence. And, oh yeah, as of May 2024, they were deemed to be in breach of contract and now the Chosen no longer has any ties to the company. No influence. Got it? Good. Then we can move on.

2."What does your heart tell you?" (This one could be included in point 4, but I've seen it so often it gets its own, haha.) Okay, this one? This one I agree was not a good writing choice. However. I think this one needs a little more thought rather than taking it at knee-jerk. Yes, the heart is deceitfully wicked and cannot be trusted. But there's some nuance here that I think gets left behind when well-meaning people call out the series for this line. The heart, as referred to in Proverbs, is the will of man. The heart, in pop culture, is often synonymous with emotions. Within the context of the scene, its very clear that the second meaning is the one intended. Now, I will say "feelings are fickle" until the day I die (because they are) because they can't always be trusted to reflect the truth. Again, however. Feelings do exist to tell us things. That is literally their purpose. Not always accurately reflecting the truth of something doesn't change their purpose. And that is what the writers were going for in this scene: the emotional weight of the truth Nicodemus has found. Could they have probably found a less controversial way to convey this? Yeah, maybe. But I can say that this wasn't intended to be the Disney "follow your heart" mumbo-jumbo it constantly gets written off as.

3.A Hearsay Gospel This point was taken directly from the referenced article. I'm choosing to address it not because it's a popular "problem" but because it's actually one I'd never seen before and I think it shows a gross misunderstanding of the inspiration of the Gospels and Scripture as a whole. This point posited that it's unbiblical to show Matthew and John taking notes because it undermines the Spirit-led inspiration of their writings. Except that it doesn't. The Greek word used when talking about this is more literally translated "God-breathed." Which is not the same as "God-dictated." If it were the latter (and what the writer of said article implied), then there would only be one Gospel account. That would be all we need because everything would be in it. Or, if there were still four Gospels (given that they were written with different intended audiences), they would all sound the same and have the exact same details about shared recorded events. But they don't. Because God didn't tell them, verbatim, what to write down. This is why there is variety yet harmony. This is why each writer has a distinct voice in the way they wrote. Because God didn't dictate; He led. There is a difference.

There is also the matter of the Gospel of Mark. Many scholars believe that Mark may have used Matthew's Gospel as a reference when he wrote his own because it shares so much in terms of content (93% of Mark can be found in the others). Does that make it less inspired? The obvious answer is "no" (or it wouldn't still be in our modern Bibles).

The episode most criticized for this point was s2 ep3, where a woman runs past Matthew and he desperately calls after her, "Healed you of what?" Therefore making it something he didn't personally witness that he wrote down. But here's the problem with this: that entire episode is based on one single verse from the book of Matthew: 4:24. Which, if you look it up, says only that Jesus healed many people. As any writer can tell you, not every note makes it into the final draft. Provided something like that did historically happen and provided Matthew did write it down, that doesn't mean everything he took notes on would have been in the completed manuscript later. Therefore: no hearsay.

Bottom line: what made it into their Gospels is still being presented as things they personally witnessed, and taking notes doesn't detract from being led to write or from being led what to include.

4.Unscriptural Script There are several points under this one, so we'll take them one at a time. --"House" vs "Business". This one is, once again, directly from the aforementioned article, but I wanted to address it briefly anyway. This is in reference to Jesus, at age 12, staying and teaching in the temple when his family had already started home. The author claims that "the Bible says, 'Be about my Father's business'" and claims that saying "in the house of my father" (as the show does) is Catholic-inspired and unbiblical. I don't know about the Catholic-inspired part, but I can say that it depends what translation of the Bible you're looking at. KJV uses the business wording. ESV and HCSB both use the house wording. (And if you want to mince accuracy, ESV and HCSB are both more literal than KJV/NKJV.) Unless you take only one translation as being the True Translation, then you can't say the line they went with is unbiblical.

-- Apparently certain things demean Christ, such as him practicing his Sermon on the Mount as opposed to it "being inspired" (see point 3 for the rebuttal of the second part). Except it doesn't. Because Jesus was also very human. Which people tend to forget when talking about this point specifically. It's wrong to have him practice what to say specifically. It's wrong to show him with a sense of humor. It's wrong to [fill in the blank; there are many of these]. Most of them amount to "it's a sin to be human." There are a lot of things that are a direct result of the Original Sin that are not, of themselves, sinful. It's not sinful to say something in a way people don't understand (so he practices to make sure people will understand what he means). It's not sinful to be nostalgic (its an acknowledgement of things that were good in the past). It's not sinful to show Mother Mary supporting Him (we all need earthly support in the form of other people; this is literally one of the purposes of the church!). Every single thing I've ever heard anyone say is "demeaning" is actually just portraying Him as every bit the human He became.

-- The first "arrest". Quintus wanted to talk to Him. He wasn't charged with anything. He wasn't imprisoned. Quintus gave Him a warning and let Him go. This does not contradict Jesus declaring it was not yet His time because it wasn't. He wasn't arrested. I don't know how many more ways I can say this.

-- "Nathanael couldn't have been a drunk because Jesus said there was no guile in him." Except the definition of "without guile" is not "sinless". The definition of guile is "deceit, cunning, hypocrisy or dishonesty in thought or deed" and many modern translations use the word "deceit" in that verse instead. Jesus is saying that he is honest and not a hypocrite. There's nothing about drinking in there at all. I'm not trying to call out this author specifically, but when I say that it's important to understand what words mean, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

-- John the Baptist. One of the points I've seen repeatedly is that it's sacrilegious for Peter to call him "Creepy John". I have to ask if these people understand that Peter called him that in anger and before he met Jesus. After that, it's a running joke along the lines of "remember when you didn't believe me" from Andrew. This is peak sibling behavior. That's all I can say about that.

-- "Matthew couldn't have been autistic because it's not in the Bible/ it didn't exist back them/ etc." I haven't seen this one in a long while, and I made a whole post about this way-back-when, but it bares repeating. The word "autistic" doesn't appear in the Bible in part because the word wasn't even coined until the 1900s. I don't know what else to tell you on that front. Since I've already made a post about this, all I'm going to say here is that it's important representation that is made all the clearly by the overwhelmingly positive response it received from autistic fans. Jesus called all sorts, the outcasts of society, the lowest of the low. And, yes, He calls autistics, too. If there's a problem here, that's all on you, buddy.

5. The Music This particular writer pointed out this lyric specifically: "Got no trouble with the mess you've been" and quite frankly I'm having hard time understand the problem with it because he doesn't come out and say it. It is, in fact, a completely true statement. God is not put off by our messes. We don't have to fix ourselves before coming to Him. Its also worth pointing out the past tense here: been. As in, He calls you out of your mess. You don't stay there. So I have no idea what the supposed problem here is; I only know that it's not one.

In general, I don't have a problem with people not liking certain styles of music. I do take issue, however, when anyone tries to assign morality to a style. Music is amoral. It can be used in immoral ways, just like anything else can be, but music itself does not have a morality. It doesn't have "mystic undertones"; it is in a style that you yourself associate with mysticism. If you don't care for the style, that's fine, but don't assign it a morality it doesn't have.

.

.

Know of something I missed? I certainly didn't cover every controversy so let me know and I'll let you know what I think of it!

[maleyanderecafe]

The Yandere Angel is obsessed with a good-natured succubus (Oneshot)

Created by: aironiro

Genre: Smut

This one was really difficult to word properly and I'm not really sure why. It's not because of the angel and demon words that I don't know it's just kind of weirdly translated. That might be on my end because I finished this one while I was still sick. Hopefully it makes enough sense that it's still enjoyable though, I did like the backstory that the yandere had in this one. It's pretty interesting. If you are interested in a sequel, please donate to kofi.com/lovesicktranslation to fund it.

The story starts out with Lilith being recognized by her fellow succubus, Meribel, who hasn't seen her since the French Revolution. Meribel talks about how there's a corrupted angel attacking people, including the reaper, Yvette. While talking, Meribel is threatened by Cyril, the corrupted angel she was talking about, and Lilith is able to shoo her away. We see that Cyril has been chasing after Lilith for a while, to the point of attacking other Reaper. Cyril asks to have sex with Lilith, which she accepts because she it's kind of her nature, but is basically overwhelmed by it, something that she is confused and horrified by as Cyril ravishes her body. She passes out and recalls her first encounter with him, having gone to an orphanage to corrupt a priest, only to meet Cyril as a child. Cyril seems to be bullied at the orphanage, and Lilith defends him from spirits that want to take his pure soul away. She talks to him a bit, about how she's actually quite fond of humans. She remarks that because his soul is so pure, he will likely become an angel, and that the two will never meet again, and that even if they did, she would eat him. Lilith ends up waking up at her human friend Akari's place after having passed out. She's worried that Cyril might attack Akari and gets a note from Cyril on where to meet. Cyril upon meeting Lilith again, apologizes for what he's done, and states that he wants to be corrupted so that he can be with Lilith again. The two have sex again, and apparently the reason why Lilith feels so good while having sex with Cyril is because it's a taste of true love (?) something that succubus don't taste as they usually charm the people they're targeting. After all that, Lilith takes a liking to Cyril, even planning to allow him to meet and sort of make sure that he doesn't cause any problems.

I'm not super used to oneshot yandere smut splitting up the actual sex part into two sections, but this one does do that and it kept on throwing me for a loop while I was translating. Personally, I think the idea of a succubus feeling intense pleasure when they are actually loved seems kind of stupid, since I feel like there are people who do fall in love at first sight, so a succubus should be used to that type of feeling, or at least have experienced it once before. The lore of the angels and devils aren't made that clear in this story, which might be because this is part of a second series, with the first one introducing Togo and Akari. I guess it doesn't really need to be because it's a smut, but it does leave a lot to be desired. The most interesting part for me is the backstory, since we do get to see how and why Cyril became so obsessed with tracking her down, even if there is seemingly a weird age gap between them since I believe Lilith would have been around 200 years old when meeting Cyril who died at age 14 according to the end profiles (which is never mentioned at all in the story but alright).

Cyril as a yandere is pretty obsessive, having basically ignored the orders of god so much that his halo and wings ended up getting corrupted just so that he could track down Lilith, and even ended up attacking and wounding Yvette (who supposedly is difficult to kill) and nearly hurting Meribel had Lilith not stepped into saving him. He also seemed to have kept his virginity up to this point. I mean I am sort of glad they have a reason to why Cyril a virgin is able to make Lilith a succubus feel good, but it's still pretty stupid in my opinion. I still don't really get why Lilith ends up keeping Cyril at the end, but I guess it's better than letting a yandere angel run around for a bit. Always cool to see a yandere angel though since that's not something you'd normally see in this scenario. Yandere demons seem to be more common and for good reason.

Anyways, hopefully you enjoy this oneshot. The artwork in it is pretty loose so I could get away with the cleaning easier. The fonts kind of irked me because the original Chinese I was basing it off of uses way too many different fonts.

[masonic-critical]

x - Double Toasted Interview Pre-Helluva Boss Prouction

Seeing vivzie flub her numbers and mouth over her """team""" within this video is very telling.

"40 or 50 people or so I think i would have to check and make sure on discord--we have sorta 10-ish people in my core team with my animators. I'm a main compositor with my friend while my background artist and cleanup team of 15 or so is just so-big it's so Huge its so large! We have so many people working on this project and just handling with so many key components over backgrounds and key framing the lip syncs, my background artists doing so much work. I feel like and hope people will really stay on"

Interviewee Joke: 'Oh how many animators do I have [again], no-oh god no!!!'

It's insane to think Helluva Boss has over 80+ animation credits which is definitely not a good thing. It's one thing in industry to have a large studio but it's another thing of collaborating artists coming and going to work on an ongoing series is not a good thing to flaunt. Even if your show has won two independent animation awards you should take pride over producing to actually make something good instead of flaunting the fact that you acknowledge the bare minimum of abuse, rape, misogyny, supremacy, classism, sexism, or gender critical writing fails face first in every episode.

Her favorite movies being Cat's Don't Dance/Who Framed Roger Rabbit and referencing BoJack Horseman even referencing that they anthropomorphize their themes being prejudice and STORYTELLING DEVICES, so what story is Helluva Boss even telling right now???? She claimed to even want to write about dark themes and mature adult topics about prejudice and yet has nothing to show for it after 6 years of nothing burger that is Helluva Boss and Hazbin Production :/

She fully admits that patreon and merch hauls fund hazbin/helluva production and that she fully handles the patreon money herself she budgets to push towards 'Hazbin' to 'Pay her small team'. She wanted to try to promote a Kickstarter over the pilot pre-A24 pickup before she made it big-time which is weird to hear when she didn't even have hazbin finished while boarding out 4 episodes of helluva bosses' first season. Even if it was supposed to allegedly be a 1 season show only. It's weird to try to discern which show she's trying to elaborate/talk about which one.

X - Evidence of the promotional videos for Helluva Boss/Hazbin. Strangely enough it has always been together instead of separated meaning she was attempting to garner hype for her series through Helluva Boss Merchandising and attempting to cyphen even more money over small Hazbin merchandising.

X - Here is Vivs' patreon promo earlier before the Hazbin pilot. Discussing how much she wanted to have a bigger budget at the time to fund her animation. Talks about Zoophobia Reboot and there has never been discussion since. Originally charged 10$ for private qna's. 50$ for discord access calls, unsure if this is still a Patreon feature. Also unsure over the 100$/500$ speeddraw commissions she promo'd... There is another production patreon she teases that holds nothing beside the Vivziepop name.

The show being placed upon rehabilitation and redemption despite the focus only being towards 'A Disney/Tim Burton Princess in Hell' goes to show that she had no direction of where she wanted to take Angel or Charlie. Charlie always being based on a porcelain doll? Greek/Religious Context/Egyptian mythology where???

"The best animation in it, is not done by me"

Within full admission of her nervous attitude without naming anyone within her team and just referred to everyone as 'My team/Crew' is very telling of how humbling she really even is.

Thr 'Yotta' she refers to is in reference to Studio Yotta, Helluva Boss is funded and produced alongside Horseless Cowboy with Horvitz towards the Casting Direction, meaning she's been funded with a major video game industry since day 1 of Helluva Bosses' production ergo, Vivziepop/Spindlehorse/Vivienne Medranno has never been independent in her entire production malpractice. She stated to be aware and know of wanting to work under SAG is very intriguing given that since Moxxie has been absent for half of season 2 its probably due to Richard striking as my best guess to the messy writing of broken railroad tracks that was supposed to be Helluva Boss production.

While it is one thing to have connections in industry to connect and come together and credit within your artists and studios, Vivzie does not have a studio. The merch sales/Patreon/YouTube QnA's directly go towards paying her animators, voice actors, and production management but not at all a 'Studio' she promotes herself as. All animation work and shots are handled through Discord and emails online this has been proven time and time again.

The fact that the pilot has been pushed aside so much over Helluva Boss and not a genuine interest to have redemption or care and love within the disguised nightmare that is Helluva Bosses' writing. She loves to flaunt demonology and love towards hell of aesthetics with demons/monsters she fails to actually represent the actual Demons of folklore/hell world building in HB leaves me to be worried... That she discredits actual Demon culture by stating

'I don't know have you seen one? They don't exist its just been human mysticism, Demons can be anything. Have you been to Hell?' Without realizinf she will fail to depict the Lord of the Flies as Gluttony....

"--It might not ever happen to work together with [Ke$ha] professionally would be a dream honestly. --The next Ke$ha song I want to animate is either is going to be official or is something that she wrote for one of MY projects or something"

She did and she made her state 'There's like, a rainbow inside my vagina.' Wooow so professional, "Cotton Candy" so originally produced to be so professionally Disney-Grade. The fact that she halted and couldn't release season 1's full finale due to having Ke$ha break her contract with legal battles and corporate music industry bindings during the Dr. Luke 2016 trial, waiting until 2020 to finally release it within this year and have Lukewarm perception because Rose cannot even sing within the episode its a replacement actor to sing for her! She just wrote the bare minimum draft of a song to submit for you to animate! Time and time again viv just flaunts herself to throw herself out there over 'Look at my projects aren't they neat!" And then be a monster during production of hoarding artists to herself and trash talking/harboring a group of bullies within her 'Core Crew'.

"Zoophobia is my Childhood project, it had everything and it was a mess. It was the magic of a childhood story told by an adult because I was in college while working on it at the time. It's the incubation chamber for all of my projects now. When I go back to it, it will be a complete reboot but for now it's on the shelf.... I lost all passion for it but I love my characters in it."

... And yet she hasn't talked about the comic since Bad-Luck Jacks' animation release nearly 4 years ago? All merchandising she promotes is about Helluva Boss and barely anything towards Hazbin or Zoophobia which is supposedly 'In-Production' while these merchandising of stickers, pins, skateboards, switch cases, posters, sketchbooks covers of Demonic stickers, sexualized hornybait, racist and transphobic enamel pins that can't keep character skin colors correct, and puzzles because of course! All of which, is merchandising of HELLUVA BOSS!

Vivziepop only views her characters as dollar signs. She still features her old Zoophobia designs within her Redbubble account goes to show how much profit she loves to make with other peoples' character designs.

X X Evidence of the Above Statement with the character KiKi/Christine [Cherry Bomb] originally being from Zoophobia before redesigned into Hazbin

X

Zoophobia concepts of what we lost rambling from Viv herself....

X

An interview of 7 years I didn't get to discuss over

X - A Season 1 Helluva Boss poor promotional trailer trying to garner hype for the series acting as if it was telling a cohesive story with actual plot happening with little Stolas screen time. It makes me wonder if season 1 was an entirely different drive of writing thoughts and artist drafts compared to season 2's production.

X - Helluva Boss Season 2 promotional storyboard conception, Two years ahead of time and finally all the boards make sense for season 2 and there still is no eventual plot besides setting up Fizz and Ozzy over Belzebub and Tex or any returning season 1 villain akin to D.H.O.R.K. or Cherub/Verrosika and especially no sight of Moxxie and Millie development besides fight scenes.

It makes me think of however much season 3 will suffer to spiral into production.

[visionofhope04]

Hey, stumbled on to your neglected batsis story (I love it)! How would the rest of the Justice league react to the news. Like will they slowly distance themselves from the batfam or would they kick Bruce out of the league?

What about the Titans, will they treat Dick any different?

Hi! I'm so glad you enjoyed my series!!! Thank you so much for reading it! Also, I kinda got carried away with this ask... (713 words)

TW: ED MENTIONED (ANOREXIA)

The Justice League would definitely be shocked, especially Diana and Clark since they're closest to Bruce. Due to the loss of his company, he'd no longer have as much money as he used to. The guy was literally constantly making money and then it all came crashing down. He probably wouldn't be as willing to fund certain things that the Justice League required, which would cause a rift in the league's relationship with him.

The Justice League (besides Clark, who didn't want to assume Bruce actually did those things if he didn't and hadn't had time to ask Bruce yet) would probably find out about everything when they had to work with the batfam for one reason or another (probably an alien invasion or smth) weeks or even months after it all went down. Jason as Red Hood would be acting colder towards everyone, including the League since he'd assume they knew about it because it was all over the headlines.

Someone makes a comment on his behavior (most likely Green Lantern) and then he'll say something like "Well someone has to be mad.". The batfam's like "uh oh". They're all confused and then it hits Jason. They didn't know. So then he's like "Of course, he wouldn't want to risk his reputation with the only group of people that can stand being in a room with him that aren't his "family". Ask Bruce about his daughter.".

By this point, Clark knows what he heard was true and he's enraged. Everyone else turned to Bruce questioningly. Clark spoke up before they could ask though, "So the news was true? You all treated her that way?". "What do you mean. Bruce?" Diana called, wanting answers. However, Bruce didn't know what to say. The whole batfamily remained quiet, unable to come up with a lie. "Oh, well let's see, he neglected his daughter, she developed anorexia, and then fainted because of it before a gala. When she woke up, she was yelled at, insulted, and ridiculed for developing an eating disorder and damaging his damn reputation, because he didn't even care about her health!" Jason was fuming, even though it had happened a while ago, it still made him furious.

The batfamily was glaring daggers at him, and he glared back, all while the Justice League was still processing this information. After all, he was Batman, he LOVED kids, how could he do this to one of his own? "Bruce?" Diana questioned, still wanting to give himself an opportunity to explain himself. They all hoped this was a misunderstanding. However, he could say nothing to defend himself. For once in his life, he wasn't prepared. He did do those things, but he didn't think he was in the wrong. After all, his daughter had been trained alongside Damian to be perfect, it was her fault she wasn't. His silence was an answer nobody wanted.

After much heavy discussion, it was decided Batman could stay in the league, but could no longer lead and would be considered a distant ally. He would only be called upon for emergencies.

The Titans would never be able to look at Dick the same again. He was always so welcoming, so nice. He treated everyone kindly, or so they thought. Apparently, this kindness didn't extend to his sister. How could he be so nice to Damian, but so mean to her? And she wasn't even like Damian, she was so nice! They'd briefly met her when they went over to the Manor for Christmas. She'd quickly left after introductions. This concerned the team, but Dick reassured them this was a normal occurrence, she hated crowds.

How didn't they notice? Dick's hesitance to talk about her, to let them meet her, hell, he probably didn't even remember her existence until she was brought up in a conversation! How could the whole family do that to a child? One of their own? The worst part, they didn't feel a speck of remorse for it. How could the Titans interact with Dick normally, knowing what he'd done, taken part in, and did nothing about? Every time they interacted with him, they could tell they weren't quite able to hide the disgust in their gazes, and they always knew they'd never be able to.

[tame-a-messenger]

you know what stings me the most about sword af if they are doing this audio only thing because they don't get that much revenue back? (which I and lot of other people are assuming, and that's another thing that bothers me about smosh and how they handle things: they don't tell us the reason why, they just do things and don't explain the reasoning behind and then never talk about it again but that's for another day) they may not get an equal amount of views as others games videos (and I think a lot of that came from instead of taking the excitement fans had when it started and releasing the episodes faster they went in the opposite route: making it be biweekly. that time without new content made some of the excitement died down) but they had a very passionate loyal fanbase. like how many fan works have we see about these characters? fanarts and edits and fics and cosplays. and yeah it may be a smaller amount than they are used to but the fans that enjoyed the series were so loud in their love. it's a shame that if this is the reasoning behind they are telling these fans that the love and passion doesn't matter. that at the end of the day loving what you are doing (like the cast does with these characters) or what you are watching don't make a difference If it's not going to get you enough money.

and I also totally agree with you about having the fans help and such. any time they do a charity live stream they raised so much money, which for me says that the people that watch their content would love to help them make the stuff that they love. like i'm sure some would love to have merch of their favorite characters in sword af. some would love to help get them the tools needed to make the best out of their beloved series.

with audio only we lose so much of the reaction and emotions that these talent actors can bring to the table. without even mentioning people that are hard of hearing or have auditory processing disorders. like me for once, english is not my first language and I learn all by myself meaning that sometimes I need help of the body language and expressions as well as captions to help me truly get what they are saying. you can't do that with a podcast. at least not one without visuals.

I totally agree with them making it bi-weekly killing a lot of the hype around it.

So many missteps with it and it still has such a great fan-base. (I'm seeing red again)

The money excuse is something that I don't even want to entertain. They KNOW that the fan-base is willing and able to fund most anything they want to do (if they ever decide to crowd fund that is..) so that's why I'm so confused about why they went this route?

It just feels like they don't care enough to put in that much effort, which hurts me. I can only give them so much leeway for fumbling Sword AF...

(the biggest problem is how they are going about it, if they had explained why they couldn't do it for whatever reason I could at least respect the fact they explained it, like they actually cared. But they obviously don't)

There's so many reasons why having visuals helped tell the story, it's so maddening even thinking about how disparaging it is they got rid of it.

[northwest-cryptid]

I don't think I can really explain this without sounding like some elitist prick to someone out there, and that's not the intention or the thought process at all; but the thing is I really do want to like Limbus Company. However I've not been able to bring myself to do so for a lot of reasons.

Look this is gonna be a long one because I'm gonna keep it 100% with you, I have been having a LOT of thoughts about how we're never getting another game like Lob Corp; or even characters who can commit to their most surface level key design features.

I know I've sorta touched on this in the past, and every time I do I get anons by the dozens; (anon is turned off before anyone tries) telling me to kill myself or that I'm stupid and wrong. Which like, look I get it, but you need to understand that a jab at Project Moon and Limbus is not a jab at YOU.

Project Moon used to be one of my favorite game companies, I am the self proclaimed "#1 Project Moon Fan" so you gotta understand that I'm coming at this from a perspective of love for the series as a whole.

I think Limbus fundamentally fumbles the whole bag when it comes to what it could have been vs what it is. That's not to say it's entirely garbage or something. I'm not just going to say everything everyone likes about Limbus is absolute dogwater bullshit.

However as I've said before I can't shake the feeling that what I see when I look at Limbus is like a parody of what it wants to be. It's a husk wearing the corpse of Lob Corp like a cheap costume. Does it have some cool characters? Absolutely; yea I love seeing all the cool EGO designs and such, shame that so many of them cost real money and are still a gamble since many of them reveal things about the characters.

Which like, hey that's a good thing; they SHOULD reveal things about the characters, they should have cool little extra details; they should be important and plot relevant. If they weren't it would just be some cool costume for the characters (and let's be honest, some/most of them absolutely are...) However the fact of the matter is, what we were promised was that this would be a means of continuing to tell us about The City while funding other big projects.

I remember when they said we were going to get a proper open world game set in The City, where we were going to be able to make our own character and explore everything. Do you have any idea how hype I was for that? Limbus changed very quickly from the planning phase to the execution phase. It's success rapidly shifted the focus, no longer was it just a side project to sort of run in the background and "give us something back for donations and funding support." Suddenly it was THE focus of Project Moon.

I understand that since the launch (and even before the launch) of Limbus, Project Moon has had a lot going on. As in, things have come out that the company kinda sucks, that their practices are less than ethical; there was a very short lived boycott over the rights of women in Korea, and the sexism seen in the workplace at Project Moon.

It was genuinely saddening to me to see that fail so quickly because you know, the entire community/fandom built on the shoulder of "we need to oppose shitty business practices even when it's hard." Couldn't manage to oppose shitty business practices and sexism, because they needed their blorbos or whatever.

HOWEVER, that's all been talked about into the dirt, what I don't often see discussed; though it does happen on occasion, is just how much the tone of the game has shifted. Lobotomy Corp, back in it's original heyday; was actually really interesting. Because it was one of the few horror games where sure the graphics were pretty mid and the overall visual aesthetics may not be consistent. However that didn't matter because the characters and story were actually well written and compelling. We were seeing a game explore horror in a very human way, beyond simple shock factor and jumpscares. It still had monsters, and they were the least frightening part of the whole thing.

It felt like the Abnormalities were there as a sort of reminder; here are the monsters, but what's actually scary is what's going on at the company. What's going on with the people, and how you're involved, and the fact that these characters are suffering from very relatable, understandable; and human traumas. The scariest part of Lobotomy Corp for me wasn't Nothing There or The Woman Facing The Wall; it was the relatability of these characters, the fact I couldn't help but see a piece of myself in characters like Malkuth or Chesed.

It was also really interesting that at no point (other than MAYBE Netzach) does the game outright throw something in your face. Not once does it tell you "Malkuth has ADHD" or whatever. It doesn't need to, you see it; you understand it. You feel the futility of it all, understanding you're in a loop, you can't change how things will play out; you can't fix the past, you can do everything in your power to lessen the suffering but it won't fix it.

It's insane that we go from a storylines like Tiph's to the height of horror being "scary" monsters and in-your-face trauma. We even saw a bit of this formula in Library of Ruina, though I believe it was handled a lot better. A lot of people tell me I'm just bias, I was one of the "originals" by which I mean I remember being in THE (at the time) Project Moon discord server when there were maybe like 20 of us who were really mentally unwell about this series. Making mods, making content whether it be art or writing or whatever, I remember staying up all night going through the code and the data and the unused assets. So sure I have a lot of love for the original Lob Corp and such.

However what people hate to recognize is that yes, I'm aware of my bias, and where my bias lies; and no that's not influencing my opinion in the way you think it is. Believe it or not I DO like the characters in Limbus; I actually don't mind at all that we see some fresh faces. I wouldn't be happy with them dragging the corpse of Chesed into Limbus just so I can see my dumb blue haired coffee man (don't think I'm generalizing my favorite boy I swear to god.) I'd be mad that they really dredged up the corpse of a more or less complete character story just to pull some fan service.

My issue with Limbus is just how unfitting it feels. This doesn't feel like the same writing at all, it feels to me as though there's so much more shock value and fan service and "hey isn't THIS cool!?" Rather than striking at the heart of horror. I'm not saying these characters aren't still relatable to people, I absolutely know they are. I'm saying that we've seen Project Moon drift closer and closer to safe marketability over interesting storytelling.

Marketability really is the core problem for me, from the need for monetary gain to the lack of risk being taken with the narrative. It feels like a cheap cash grab, and it's taken over the entire company. We won't ever get another game like Lob Corp, it's just not going to happen. Even if we do get those other promised things; like a "Project Moon Land" or an open world City exploration game, it's going to be a shell of what it could have and should have been. Because it's sharp edges and gripping narrative is going to be smoothed down and made to be marketable to the highest paying audience.

I feel like Limbus more than any other game in the series is so black and white. These are the good guys (who have done bad things uwu) and these are the bad evil guys. This is the characters explicit trauma, we're going to bring this up again at the end very directly. All our characters are SO quirky and fun, this one talks in acronyms! This one exclusively talks in the third person! This one is autistic! But What if they had REASONS for being like that?!?!?!??!?!?? It all feels so, I don't know; it's like those youtubers who make horror content for kids saying "DON'T CALL DON QUIXOTE AT 3 AM!"

I'm not even saying you can't have quirky characters, or characters who talk in a specific way, or characters who are autistic. I'm saying that the whole thing with Limbus feels so half-hearted and phoned in. I've tried to get into the game several times, and if it's not that I'm literally missing out on stuff because I'm actually poor and can't afford to spend hundreds on gacha every time they release a new one; it's the fact that it just feels so predictable.

This could very well be a ME problem, and I fully accept that and I'm not here to tell you that you can't like Limbus Company. I'm just blogging on my personal blog lamenting (heh) the fact we're never going to get another Lob Corp; or even a Library of Ruina. Because at the end of the day I have a deep love for those games; but Project Moon isn't the company it once was, and now that it has had a taste of this success it's never going to go back to being the company it once was. Especially not after you know, firing some of their key figures, burning bridges with creators and artists; and ultimately shooting themselves in the foot 8 times over because hey it doesn't matter, check out this new EGO we made Don's a spooky vampire now!

If you actually want a really good example of what I mean when I say it feels half hearted; look no further than the very first major plot arc with Gregor. That's my boy right there, I love that guy; but they really do just pull an immediate one two punch only to miss both swings with the whole "here's Yuri, he likes Yuri like a sister; uh oh someone has to protect her who are you going to send? It has to be Gregor; it has to be, you can't actually pick anyone else, like sure you can but we've set this up so you HAVE to pick Gre- OH NO HE FAILED and she's DEAD and he's SAD and you should be too!" But more than that, let me put it this way; what's Gregor's key design thing? If I was to line up the sinners and have you point out something unique about each of their designs; what would it be for Gregor? Is it his arm? You know, the lack of a human arm? You know, the thing he has trauma about? The physical and visual representation of his trauma? The fact it's a weapon? A sharp, jagged, inhuman wea- oh wait hang on...

Yea sure I guess he can just have that back for this ID. Why not. Fuck it, we can't even commit to this one thing entirely. "That's LITERALLY only 1 EGO dude."

Okay.

Another one. "That's a fucked up thorn claw that doesn't count." Fine dude, fuck; here,

That's CLEARLY a fucking hand with some butterflies on the arm. (Sick design mind you but come on man.)

My point with this whole bit here is that they really feel like they can't even commit to what feels like a key visual design element for a character's trauma because hey the rule of cool will sell more if we make him look badass!

And like the other big thing is that we actually know that in The City robotic prosthetics and the like are COMMON, so something like this?

That would be seen as just a mostly functional arm or something he could get replaced with a fully functioning arm later. Not a weapon, not an instrument of trauma for the poor guy.

That's ALSO just an arm. Here's another Prosthetic:

And another arm:

And ANOTHER ARM:

Look what I'm saying here is that of his 8 IDs on the wiki, only 3 actually have a hook, claw, or non-hand/arm appendage that is actually a weapon. Of the 6 EGO on the wiki 4 of them are either just hands/arms or at least vaguely hand/arm adjacent with only 2 being the centipede and orb thing.

So the take away for me on this is that they couldn't even handle committing to the most surface level visual key element of this character for the MAJORITY of his IDs and EGOs. What's the point? His character arc is predictable and just tries to hit you in the gut with "he's a victim of war, he was experimented on; he loses everyone he cares about!" Then goes "oh and don't worry about him being a cockroach man because that doesn't matter actually..."

I hate it man.

I miss when this company made single player focused games, that told an interesting story; and actually understood horror and trauma beyond buzzwords and flash in the pan "ANGST" moments. I'm sorry but half of the Cantos have these very predictable storylines that really demand I get invested to side characters who we know aren't going to make it out alive because "Death = Sad and Emotion Response = Good!"

Do you remember when FNAF came out and everyone and their brother made youtube videos about how, "Jumpscares are cheap horror because it's an involuntary response!" Because this is that but for writing; they just want you to feel sad or angst or whatever because they know triggering any kind of emotional response in you means they got some kind of reaction from you. Gone are the days when you actually had time to get to know and care about a character; gone are the days when the characters were going through shit that actually did impact you in some way. Now we get 2-bit here and gone flash in the pan side characters to kill off, they exist solely to be expendable. I really miss when the games forced me to assume the role of a fucked up little guy and let me fight against the very nature of being a fucked up little guy in a fucked up little world. Only to come to the understanding that no matter how much I try, no matter how much I struggle against the horror; I can't undo the past, I can't save his wife; I can't end their suffering; I can't undo her decades of pain. I can only go forward as a better version of a fucked up little guy.