#you can still tackle “dark” themes in fiction

[g0blinwitch]

Not to get controversial on main or whatever but while yes, I do generally believe that people should be able to ship whatever the hell they want and not get harassed, I will still never call my self a proshipper. Like sorry man I'm not associating myself with a bunch of people who chant "Kill the cop inside your head!" with zero irony, take over POCD spaces with their fucking discourse, refuse to listen to victims of sexual assault/incest, and turn their heads at every shred of evidence that no actually, fiction can in fact affect reality. Like yeah don't get me wrong I've heard my fair share of stories of antishippers doing kind of shitty things, but I'd rather align myself with supposed "puriteens" than a group of immature people who chant that "they get off from the haterz bc degration kink!!1!!!111!!" over actually responding to criticism.

[norraexploradora]

The Tragedy of the CX Troopers and the Missed Opportunity to Teach Us All an Important Lesson

A deeper look into how the CX-Troopers were handled in the Bad Batch and the narrative surrounding them that unfortunately got dropped in season 3

I want to start off by applauding the Bad Batch for the brave attempt to tackle dark topics throughout the series and presenting them in a way that is appropriate for families to watch and discuss with their children. Most of series is successful in being just dark enough to raise tension but to also keep things suitable for a child’s first glimpse into the harsh realities of life. However there still a few places that missed the mark.

The one I wish to cover today is the inconsistent narrative surrounding the CX-Troopers. I’m not here to say it was bad writing per se, but if a dark topic is discussed in a family oriented tv series, it is best to commit adequate time to truly flesh it out so the messaging is clear. Subjective is great in a mature series like Andor, but kids lack the life experience required to read between the lines.

And yes, exposition does make dialogue sound clunky at times, but there is a reason why most cartoons in the 80s had the kind of “The more you know” lesson after each episode. The Bad Batch was no different. Tech’s speech in the Crossing and his encouragement to Omega at the end of Retrieval are perfect examples of this.

In my opinion, there was an opportunity for an important lesson to be learned from the CX Troopers that was brought up but left unfinished. These shadow operatives could have been a way to show the viewer how anyone can be “brainwashed” either by force or by clever manipulation.

One operative in season 2 called himself a “Believer” which seems to evoke he was forcibly submerged into a cult-like indoctrination. It’s also why I prefer to use the phrase “coercive persuasion” or “forced persuasion” instead of brainwashing as they are a more accurate description of the process that has been historically implemented by governments, cults, and captors in order to make good people believe in or do horrible things.

Dr. Hemlock’s use of forced persuasion on select clones to turn them into CX-Troopers is a interesting look into the real world and well-documented cases of brainwashing within fascist regimes; especially in wartime settings. It is common and disturbing tactic implemented in moments of great despair and something that deserves more focus within the narrative if it is to be brought up as a major plot point.

Most of the brainwashing aspects in the Bad Batch were rapidly glossed over probably due to time and budget constraints, and not so much by the dark and disturbing imagery. One can easily get the “idea across” without showing it explicitly. (Like Crosshair having his hand chopped off. We didn’t see it but yeah, we get the gist).

I will say however, that despite the mystery surrounding brainwashing in the CX-Program, one of the more poignant moments was Captain Rex telling a caught CX Trooper that he was still their brother and that they would help him. It was a beautiful show of compassion and introduced new plot element; that the soldiers who undergo forced persuasion could possibly be reached or even saved.

It’s not a stretch to believe that the Bad Batch would take this route given the series had built up “we don’t leave our own behind” as one of the main themes. It would also be safe to say that saving fictional heroes from brainwashing gives us hope that real life survivors can recover from such trauma.

It was one of the many reasons fans were led to believe that the mysterious CX-2 operative could have been Tech or Cody. The focus on this particular shadow operative gave rise to speculation that he was different, that there was something coming to shed light or hope that a lost soldier could be found and rescued; something that would make sense of it were a character we already cared greatly about.

Alas, CX-2 was kept a mystery box that gave no insight to the tragic nature of his existence nor gave us a reason to mourn his death. That is why the battle between the Bad Batch and Hemlock’s Batch of secret operatives felt rushed and incomplete to some viewers. There wasn’t proper time for the story to breathe beyond “One Batch is good, the other Batch is bad.”

There were simply too many dropped narratives throughout the final season that reduced the whole CX Trooper plot to a video game-esque final boss battle. Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing fight, beautifully animated, terrifying, and intense; but nevertheless, it felt hollow because the build-up went nowhere.

At that’s exactly where the narrative around the tragic nature of brainwashing got lost.

It’s important for you to know that I’m not saying the Bad Batch killing these operatives in the final fight was wrong. I’m also not saying that they should have tried to reach out to save these Shadow Operatives in the middle of of a life and death situation. It’s just unfortunate that we were never given a reason to feel anything other than relief that the CX-Troopers were killed.

And yes, this is a show about the Bad Batch and not brainwashed mystery troopers, but I stress, the writing set up these characters and introduced a very dark and disturbing concept to young viewers. With more time and effort spent on the narrative, it could have been an important lesson that applies to real life.

Coercive Persuasion is not a fantasy concept. It is very very real. Sleep deprivation, isolation, abuse, constant interrogation, drugging, shame, and humiliation, are all various means to break down a person’s will and forcibly persuade them into believing anything.

One can simply look to how many people get forced into false confessions by unethical police practices, or those who end up committing atrocities due to cult leader manipulation. A more common and less obvious example is social media outlets designed to spin conspiracy theories; coercing people into believing anything they want, like like the Earth is flat and microchips were put in Covid vaccines. By preying upon people’s anger and fear, these sites cultivate distrust and can lead one to extremist thinking.

This is real world, dark and scary stuff that needs to be handled with serious care and consideration of bringing it into an animated Star Wars series.

So given more time and budget, how could this lesson be shown through the story of the Bad Batch? How could these brainwashed operatives been presented in a way to that is scary but still gives younger audiences a way to sympathize with them?

Shedding more light on a terrifying process would remind us the CX-Troopers are victims and despite their terrifying nature, they still deserve our compassion and empathy. So giving the operatives more of a backstory is a good start.

For Example:

Showing the transformation of at least one of these operatives before the final battle would provide more emotional impact after their demise. Having kids clearly, and not subjectively, understand that under those cool costumes there used to be good men is such an important lesson. It reinforces the narrative that the real villains aren’t these soldiers but the regime that warped their minds and forced them into mindless monsters.

To be clear, this a a family series and I am in no way implying that a clear visual of lengthy torture would be acceptable. There are already hints through Crosshair’s PTSD and that is enough to get the idea across.

My suggestion would have been to place the sniper clone who eventually became CX-2 in the cell next to Crosshair while on Tantis. The viewer gradually sees these two men go back and forth to their cells after these conditioning sessions and the witness bond that forms between them. Crosshair is forced to see CX-2’s identity slip more and more away after each session until he is no longer the person he once was. The sadness and loss of seeing this man lose his identity not only leaves a mark on Crosshair, but by the viewer as well.

The scene of the shadow operative watching Crosshair on Tantiss and the one shadow operative calling him “brother” would have made more sense in retrospect. In addition, having an emotional and clear connection between Crosshair and the man who became CX-2, would have given their epic fight on top of the waterfall more emotional weight. CX-2’s line “You could have been one of us. You made the wrong choice” would be more resonant to the viewer. CX-2 would literally be a sniper shadow operative that Crosshair could have become verses a subjective mystery box.

To further this narrative and Crosshair’s character arc, making the above change to the story could have also opened the door to Crosshair eventually saving this lost brother. Omega’s determination to never give up on Crosshair could have resulted in Crosshair reaching out to CX-2 and eventually getting through to him before the final battle. It would have been so emotional and fulfilling.

And yet…as lovely as that would have been, I realize the above scenario would require at least one additional episode; which the animation team probably didn’t have the luxury or the budget to do. So I’ll offer another solution:

Adding a few minutes here and there during season 2 and the beginning of season 3 dedicated to Hemlock’s treatment to the CX-Troopers and other Clone prisoners would give the viewer a clearer picture into the nature of the CX Program. The result would be that the feeling of triumph wouldn’t be seeing the shadow operatives lying dead on the floor but knowing that the experimentation on the clones at Tantiss by Dr. Hemlock was finally over.

So in conclusion:

It’s a shame that the shadow operatives were left a mystery and simply became foils and metaphors. The fight at the end was nothing more than the Batch having to kill or be killed and it failed to showcase a serious topic with less black and white thinking.

With more time, the writers could have explored the tragedy of forced coercion. Discussing a difficult subject in a manner fit for young audiences could leave them with awareness when they are faced with a similar real world scenario.

The CX-Trooper plot could have also been a good way for a parent to discuss what coercive persuasion does to people; especially in today’s world where social media is rife with bad people luring in youth and manipulating their anger and fear into extremist thinking.

Think about it.

How does someone get so isolated that they fall prey to extremism and they end up committing acts of terrorism? How does one get indoctrinated into a cult and become so brainwashed that they take their own lives or the lives of others at the behest of a cult leader? How would an innocent person sign a confession of a crime they didn’t commit?

These are all good questions that people often ask after horrendous real life events and can regularly be seen on the daily news and social media. Having a fictional metaphor for scary real world issues that children could easily understand would be exactly the kind of thing Star Wars was created for. It was also created to give children and all of us hope.

So in the end, the lesson should have been that people who fall victim to brainwashing aren’t weak or gullible. They have been put through extreme duress and put through unethical means of isolation and manipulation.

And if there is hope for even one of the CX-Troopers to be saved, we as a society should have empathy and try to reach out to those in our own lives who have been a victim of coercive persuasion before writing them off.

Disclaimer:

One thing I’ve learned in life is that platforms like Twitter are not places for deep discussions and good faith arguments. You have a set number of letters to get your ideas across and interpreting the meaning or tone always leads to misunderstandings.

That is why I’m coming to to Tumblr to discuss my deep dives into season 3 of the Bad Batch. I am the type of person who doesn’t like angry, confrontational sparring over ideas.

My goal is to shed light on a different perspective; not to make anyone agree with me, but just to understand that we can all watch the same show and interpret things differently due to our own life experiences. By explaining my viewpoints, I’m showing you into my thought process. You are certainly free to disagree but I’m not trying to change your feelings on the matter, nor do I wish for anyone to forcibly change mine.

We can all exist in the same space and I encourage anyone who has a different view to write an analysis of their own instead of arguing in anyone’s comment section. Be kind and respectful and most of all, remember this is fiction and subjective interpretation. There are so many things to be really angry about in the world and Star Wars is the least of our worries.

Cheers and as always, May the Force be with you!

[agentnico]

Dune: Part Two (2024) review

I’m fully aware that the Dune sequel has been hit by acclaim from both critics and audiences, and I shall share my own thoughts in due course, but also whilst presenting itself as a serious and sophisticated piece of artsy science fiction tackling challenging themes of religion and politics, from a marketing standpoint this film has been a major farcical meme. From the popcorn buckets shaped like suggestive sand worms (or more so accurately as deformed buttholes) to the viral TikTok video of an unnamed man riding a makeshift sand worm around a cinema lobby on his way to Arrakis, or more likely to one of the gazillion screenings of Dune: Part Two. But yes, absolutely mad bonkers advertising techniques, and not at all reflective of how seriously and straight faced the actual film plays. Anyway, let’s talk Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuneee…..

Plot: Paul Atreides unites with Chani and the Fremen while seeking revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the universe, he must prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Controversial opinion - I was not a fan of the first Dune. I thought it was all spectacle and no substance, and even then in regards to said spectacle, it was just sand. Lots of sand and bland dark visuals. I understand that the first movie acts as a massive exposition piece with lots of world building and introductions of all the characters and various political families and the spice trade and all that sweet jazz, but honestly it all felt so dragged out. Also a lot of narrative choices felt really immature and I did not buy it. In fact, the only memorable part for me was that female voice screaming on the music score every time something crazy happened, and my does that woman have some strong vocal pipe work! Like damn, her screams…. I really felt them!

Going into Dune: Part Two, I was very much of two mindsets. One was more so a feeling of obligation to watch it, as I wasted 3 hours of my life watching the first one that I felt I deserved some kind of closure for my efforts. The other being Denis Villeneuve. Aside from the first Dune, he’s a director that has constantly impressed me with his unique vision and style. Simply look at his past filmography! Prisoners. Enemy. Arrival. Sicario. All impressive pieces of genre filmmaking. Then there’s Blade Runner 2049, that took the classic Ridley Scott movie and managed to improve on it and become one of the most thrilling science fiction epics of the last decade. Also the trailers looked appropriately exciting, and it seemed like the second movie was actually gonna deal with some serious shit finally. Again, my problem with the first Dune wasn’t that it was slow. I mean, I can happily watch Paris, Texas any day of the week and be mesmerised by the empty yet beautiful takes of the American desert. It’s more-so that the first Dune felt aimless and messy. As for Dune: Part Two?

Well, if we’re going to use The Lord of the Rings terminology, and boy am I happy to refer to the dear-to-my-heart Middle Earth whenever I have the chance, then Dune: Part Two holds the scale of The Two Towers. I may not agree with all of it, and there are still some moments that drag, though The Two Towers is also guilty of that - I’m looking at you Treebeard! But overall this is one hell of a cinematic experience and achievement. Visually for one this is eye-candy. And yes, yet again there’s lots of sand, but this time around Villeneuve manages to find very creative ways to add/take away colour to make many sequences truly impressive. There’s an early scene where the Fremen are fighting Harkonnen goons in the desert and the entire thing is seeped in this blood orange palette, reminiscent of the Martian Chronicles, and then there’s the part where we are introduced to the Harkonnen home planet where the entire screen is drenched in hardcore intense black-and-white due to their sun only giving out white and black light, and instead of fireworks there are these watercolour stroked exploding in the sky, to of course the much talked about eye-dropping sand worm riding into battle scene that had the feel of the giant elephants appearing in The Return of the King, and yes that was another most delightful reference to Lord of the Rings! As I was saying though, the entire movie visually is certainly something to be in awe of.

Also Hans Zimmer’s score!! Of course the man’s a genius, having composed so many of cinema’s greatest musical compositions. I can recommend his Live in Prague performance! Hit after hit, and I find myself spinning it on my record player a good few times. Hans Zimmer’s Dune: Part Two soundtrack feels like a thunderously bombastic continuation and expansion of the first film’s more quiet and moody opener, and that shift in tone allows for some truly spectacular weaving of the composer’s thematic tapestry for Dune – with the finest new thread being the absolutely gorgeous love theme for Paul and Chani. A truly beautiful piece that echoes the heartbreaking tragic nature of the central romance of the film. Needless to say I’ve already pre-ordered the limited edition coloured vinyl of Dune 2’s soundtrack from Mutant (the new Mondo).

As for the narrative, as that is where I felt the first film faltered the most in my humble opinion (which I share so publicly online). I really do feel like the sequel is a major set up, for since the first one focused more on the endless word building and set-ups, this movie is all about the character developments. The scope is still big with the various political and religious elements that are tackled and explored throughout, however at the same time Dune: Part Two manages to feel more intimate compared to its predecessor, with the unravelling of the romance between Paul and Chani, but more so the inner struggles of Paul Atreides, as he tries to balance his emotions of revenge with the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere, as well as his denial of being called the so-called Messiah to the Fremen people. Look, the idea of the chosen one has been a concept that has been done over and over again, however I felt here they managed to really make it feel unique and different, with Paul choosing not to take this major responsibility due to visions of the future where he sees this choice result in darkness and dread, yet at the same time realising he has no choice but to follow his destiny and calling. It’s powerful stuff.

The cast list is stacked in this one. Timothee Chalamet is a rising star, having previously excelled his dramatic chops in Call Me by Your Name and his charismatic whimsy in last year’s Wonka, but this is by far his most impressive acting feat. You truly feel his character turning from boy to man, and it’s a real and raw performance. Zendaya shares great chemistry with him, but also in her own right gives a strong turn as a warrior Fremen conflicted with what she sees and thinks. Javier Bardem’s Stilgar adds a slice of surprising humour to the mix, being so obsessed with Paul being part of the prophecy that anything he’d do, Stilgar would find that to be part of what has been foretold. Paul Atreides could literally fart and Stilgar would observe in wonder proclaiming “as it was written”. There’s also a tiny No Country for Old Men reunion with Bardem being joined by Josh Brolin, who’s alright by the way, though it’s a typical Brolin brute role. Charlotte Rampling as the Reverend Mother continues being truly despicable and honestly that wench deserves to be put in her place - the movie’s ending is very satisfying in this regard. There’s also some newcomers to the Dune world too. Florence Pugh as the Princess reminded me a lot of Padme from Star Wars, and Christopher Walken I felt was tad miscast as the Emperor. Don’t get me wrong, Walken is a great actor, but his way of speech has been impersonated and overdone so many times that it is difficult to take him seriously in a role like this. Minus a couple of strong deliveries Walken felt really lazy here. You know who wasn’t lazy though? Austin Butler! This guy understood the assignment, playing the psychotic nutter Feyd-Rautha and he’s truly unrecognisable. Even his voice is different. Gone is Elvis and in cometh his Skarsgard impression! He’s brutal and maniacal and was honestly superb, and I wish there was more of him in this movie.

Again, it’s far from a perfect movie. There are parts still that drag, and certain times where things feel surprisingly rushed, but overall this is an experience through and through, and unlike my feelings after the first film, here I find myself really looking forward to the inevitable third part. In fact f*ck it, who am I kidding - this movie is bloody incredible!! Like I can’t even - it’s abso-fricking-lutely spectacular!! And by the way I read a bit about the Frank Herbert Dune books now and the future sequels are gonna be mad, just saying. Paul’s son becomes this half-man half-worm known as the God Emperor! Things are gonna get weird! Anyway, Dune: Part Two - go see it if you haven’t already. And in Austin Butler’s voice: “may thy knife chip and shatter”.

Overall score: 9/10

[a-dream-bookmark]

a dream bookmark presents: JAN 2023

feel-good (adj.)

causing a feeling of happiness and well-being

Welcome to A Good Bookmark, our January 2023 recommendations list with the theme around feel-good fics. From the start of the month, we have compiled a list of fics the community has given and prepared to give to you. We would like to provide our biggest appreciation to the people contributing to the making of this list. Thank you so much and we would announce the theme for February 2023 soon!

Do you want to know more about us? Check this out!

The list is below the cut!

MEMBER'S RECS

ENHYPEN

|| crossroads by @writingmochi | requested by @writingmochi

Pairing: jay x fem.reader

Genre: coming of age, bildungsroman, melodrama, slow burn, slice of life, realistic fiction, romance, high school au, fluff, angst

Synopsis: crossroads have always been a part of your life. every zebra crossing you pass, every train interchange you go through, every hallway you walk in on your way to class, every eye you encounter with or without greeting. no one seems to dare to cross your tangled crossroads unless you cross it to meet them on the other side. that is until jay—a candidate for the student council president—has crossed one path with one single chocolate

What they said about the fic: though it is weird recommending my own fic for a fic recs post, i still believe that this fic encapsulates the theme well. it's still a fic that i like to read to make me feel something good through the hardship the mc has and how she and jay's connection develops over time.

COMMUNITY'S RECS

ENHYPEN

|| camellia by @delcakoo | requested by Anonymous

Pairing: prince!jungwon x gardener!f!reader

Genre: fluff ft teasing princewon ^^

Synopsis: the last thing you expected was to find a boy sniffing your flowers at past midnight, but when you see him pluck a harmless rose from it’s stem, of course you must furiously chase after him! if only you knew that it was the prince of your kingdom whom you’d just tackled to the ground..

What they said about the fic: this fic definitely made my heart flutter hehe <3 i love prince jungwon/royalty fics!

|| my little girl. by @wonvelvet | requested by Anonymous

This fic has dark/mature themes

Pairing: park jongseong(jay) x f!reader

Genre: fluff, comfort angst, plain angst, age gap (7 years), neighbors to probable lovers, dentist!jay, neighbor!jay and scenes of babysitter!jay, somewhat strangers to lovers?, (happy) open ending :)

Synopsis: you had always had daddy issues, for as long as you could remember. so when jay came along with his caring nature, how could you possibly keep your feelings at bay? not to forget, your roses of love have wilted long before you even knew what love meant but jay, he’s here at your doorstep with a watering can. will you be able to refuse?

or, new neighbor dr jay park is asked to babysit you over the week. ironically the only man you have ever had a crush on. you are so determined to put aside the feelings but jay makes things so much harder. he is way too sweet and caring and you are way too pessimistic and insecure. how is it going to work with you gravitating towards him in inadvertence and jay welcoming your presence with candor radiance? especially with all of your buried issues coming to life more than ever.

What they said about the fic: it's such a good comfort fic!

STRAY KIDS

|| heartbeat by @sulfurcosmos | requested by Anonymous

Pairing: bang chan x gn!reader

Genre: fluff, established relationship

|| warm winter by @sulfurcosmos | requested by Anonymous

Pairing: husband!bang chan x fem!reader

Genre: fluff, established relationship

TXT

|| the only exception by @byeomtori | requested by Anonymous

Pairing: beomgyu x female reader

Genre: love at first sight au, summer love thingy, reader is a rich kid, beomgyu’s love languages are act of service and physical touch, hence there’s a lot of pda, lots of reference to paramore’s the only exception and txt’s our summer lyrics, angst

Synopsis: you were not the type to believe in the existence of love. until you had to spend the rest of your summer with a distant relative whom you’ve never met your entire life, in small town with an ocean view, where fate had brought you a boy whose eyes shine brighter than any stars in the night sky. and maybe, just maybe, love does exist.

What they said about the fic: Perfect to fall in love with summer! The vibe of it is nostalgic, soft and serene. Whenever I need comfort in my life, I always go back to this one.

Reading it with rosé's cover of the only exception is how I fell in love with summer. It has such warmth and wholesome way of describing things like eating watermelons with him, how he has a bicycle named chieko, cliffs, walking beside the sea barefoot, bonfires. It all feels like a perfect dream to never wake up to.

The characters are all written beautifully. Specially beomgyu, for me it highlights his personality the best. With accurate details like his parrot toto, him being a menace but a boy everyone loves, his coming back to y/n one night to seek comfort, him writing a song for y/n with his guitar. It's filled with beomgyuesque details! One of my favourite lines from the fic is 'He smells like summer' .

In a nutshell, a really good read. If I could only go back to read it for the first time again - I'd be the happiest.

Navigation | Collections

[coffeewithcutcaffeine]

I need to know more about Voievod! How long have you been working on it? How do you find the balance between storytelling and providing historical information? I'm about to start reading it, and I'm so interested in the process! Bonus question: do you have any playlist or type of music you associate with it?

Oh my God, thank you so much for dropping this into my in box, loveliest! This really makes my entire day. 🥹❤️ Please, excuse my ramblings if this gets too long sksksk.

First of all, thank you so much for giving my fictional monolith a chance! I appreciate it more than words can say and hope you will find it enjoyable! ❤️ I also do think that it is important to mention that it tackles a lot of dark and gory themes so, please, always check the trigger warnings first — some works are not that heavy, but others might be more explicit and graphic in nature, so never hesitate to skip some of them if you find them uncomfortable.

Now on to your questions!

How long have you been working on it?

Voievod in its current form is actually my third attempt, but I have been playing around with Vlad’s story for nine years now. I started working on my first story in 2015, but that was a blend of Vlad the Voivode and Dracula the Vampire — basically, it focused on how he became a vampire. I eventually abandoned that project because I did not really have patience with it and kept rewriting and re-editing many parts of it, and maybe it was a good thing I did because I gradually came to realisation that his character as a mortal man is so much more interesting than the vampire thing.

I tried to give it another shot in early 2020, this time focusing fully on Vlad as the historical figure. The first wave of COVID granted me a lot of free time, so I tried to use that opportunity to work on the story, as well as catch up on any new information from historical research. I wrote a few drafts but abandoned it again after a few months because I sincerely felt like I did not have enough writing experience to pull it off in a way I would be satisfied with.

I started working on the third and current version in February 2023 — I randomly revisited the old drafts from 2020 and started playing around with them a little, expanding the ideas until I managed to write two pieces I was quite proud of. I approached this with a great deal of respect and fear, then realised that I felt confident enough in my writing to perhaps try again. I think it was a good decision to wait and get enough writing experience before getting back to it because, looking back at my previous attempts, my world-building and characterisation have improved. Still, I am taking this as an opportunity to push myself and let myself grow — and every new piece is quite the lesson as I am often plunging into places I thought I would never dare before.

How do you find the balance between storytelling and providing historical information?

I think the hardest part of working on such a project is the research itself. To depict the historical events as accurately as possible, you have to read anything you can get your hands on and absorb as much as possible. I have loads and loads of files filled with notes on figures, events, culture, etc. not only for one but four separate countries as all of them are crucial for the work. Vlad’s story is even more specific because you really have to separate facts from all the debris and junk of propaganda against him that shaped what was known about him for a long time.

Once you become intimately familiar with the research topic and can swim easily through that sea of information, it is not that hard to find that perfect blend. In fact, having that historical information at your disposal really speeds up the process because you do not have to agonise over the plot — all those events are already there, you just follow them. When it comes to many characters from Voievod, we know what their life was like and what their personalities were, so I follow their lead in that regard. And it is fascinating because real life sometimes writes the most compelling stories.

What balances this out is the freedom other aspects give me. We usually come to know historical figures as legends and larger-than-life beings, and they were undoubtedly extraordinary, but they were people first. I get to breathe that humanity into them by depicting what they think, feel, desire, and fear. I make them make mistakes and laugh. There are also people in their lives that we know little or nothing about, so that gives me a lot of space to create characters from scratch — Cătălina is a perfect example of that, and I love having the opportunity to create such a rich and wonderful character. Ultimately, personal relationships give a lot of space to create dynamics as I please, because we know so very little about the private lives of these people.

Do you have any playlist or type of music you associate with it?

Ahhh, I love this question so much! Here is my opportunity to share my beloved baby lmao. 🤭

I have a “soundtrack” playlist on Spotify, which you can find here. I love visualising scenes and playing them in my head like little video tapes, and the right music helps me grasp the mood and emotion of those moments when writing them. Almost all the tracks are actually tied to specific scenes or works. (One is already published and bears the same name. *wink wink*)

Also, as a bonus (let me brag there for a second), here is a Pinterest board for some of the characters from Voievod. ❤️

[you-have-been-frizzled]

...So what fraction of YA books are dark?

thats that thing it’s darker yes, along with the other thing that i mentioned earlier most of that is just because they are not meant for middle schoolers, but they also will explore some themes in much more depth than they are explored in children’s and Middle Grade books.

the good ones, at least in the genre i liked to read, will go in more depth in the corruption of government systems, they will show people dying in a lot a of detail, it will show the cruelty up in the front instead of brushing over it. they will tackle those dark topics, and not hide behind quick summaries and move on to the next thing, that are much more in your face than they are in middle grade books,

it shows that some characters don’t have to have perfect morals to be a good character. it shows us that good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. that people are never born evil, that it’s their situation makes them what they are, that everyone can change but not everyone choses to change , in both fiction and in reality.

another thing is that they are much longer and have a higher page/word count and the writing style is more geared towards 14-18 year olds, idk how to explain that part it’s just different, the language that is used is just more…adult, and i’m not just talking about a lot of swearing

i’m not saying that middle grade books can tackle those topics, or that all YA is that good (i was actually mostly thinking about the hunger games when writing that) and a lot of them really aren’t that good.

but while Kotlc still has that middle grade writing style, the topics it covers and the length of the books make me and a lot of other people think it would be better as a YA series.

YA isn’t always darker, though that’s just the books i read because that’s the kinda thing i enjoy, murder mysteries and dystopians where my favorites, but there was this entire genre of “coming of age stories” that mostly covered what it’s like to be 16 years old, and it talks about thing that are a part of a sixteen year olds life, and if you are not sixteen it’s not something you will relate to or enjoy

[thefudge]

hi dr. fudge! i hope you're doing well.

firstly, i want to express how much i love your writing. your fics helped me discover, explore, and better understand my appeal for darker fiction. i started reading your work in my teens and having your fic as this counter to the puritan takes on tumblr about "immoral fiction" really helped me avoid experiencing a lot of shame and general misunderstanding about dark fiction that i'm sure would've plagued my younger years otherwise. so thank you immensely for that.

that brings me to my next point and question: how do you just write shamelessly and stop caring whether people "approve" of your ship and taste? i know it is SO silly to care and that you can't appease everyone, but i'm writing my first "dark" ship - which isn't even dark, it's just pretty disliked bc one half of the ship is the show's Asshole Sexist Guy and he's paired with a more lovable female character - but i'm still oddly nervous about it? it's just a different pairing than what i usually write for.

but my needless anticipation about a possibly negative reception bc it's out of my norm and, again, bc it's for a ship where the guy is "problematic" are affecting my ability to write and souring my excitement about this fic. i know there's literally nothing wrong with this, the stakes are so low, and people will likely not care that much but if they do, who cares, yet i can't shake these nagging thoughts! i was wondering if you had any insight you could lend about Letting It Go and just enjoying writing again without these concerns getting in the way.

my apologies for dumping this ridiculously long ask on your doorstep. i always look forward to hearing your thoughts about anything and you're so kind to your anons, which is why i sent this to you. thank you for all that you do! i hope you have a nice day. :-)

omgosh, getting emotional about that first paragraph and you reading my work in your teens! :'''') thank you <3 i'm really glad i could be a good influence.

as for your qualms about writing your own darker ship, i get your anxieties, but the right ppl will find and engage with your story, because there's a hunger for bolder content that tackles darker themes in a genuine fashion. think of it this way, some ppl are just as anxious about asking for this content, as you are about writing it. so you guys will find each other.

the negative comments/reactions usually fall into two categories: 1. Spanish inquisition trolls who did not even read the story but want to berate you for tackling anything they consider improper (and you just ignore/delete/block those), 2. genuine criticism about the way you tackled the ship/themes, which may sometimes come from a good place, but which can still be a dick move if it's too aggressive or not at all constructive. The second kind of criticism may sometimes happen if the author writes dark fic that's very OOC and lacking in substance, where it's impossible to imagine the characters doing the actions in the fic, and the author doesn't even try to make it believable. and for what it's worth, though i understand the criticism in those cases, there should be room for those kinds of fics too, where ppl just wanna have fun and not think too much about it, because the right ppl will find those fics too. from your message, i get the impression that you put a lot of thought into this and you want to write a dark fic where you want the pairing to be believable and make sense, which means you'll be careful about characters and storytelling, and i think that will come through in the writing, which is why i also think you'll get positive reactions. just the fact that you care so much will seep into your writing and make the readers appreciate it.

even if you're anxious about this process, your brain already knows the answer, because you seem like you really want to write this, so let that feeling guide you, let it be bigger than your worries, because it IS bigger than your worries. ultimately, you want to make smth you enjoy, and that feeling is infectious, so your readers will feel the same. and even if they don't, i'll be here, cheering you on! so drop a link when you've posted it!

[notebookmusical]

hello love!!!

i know i could just send this in a message, but i think asks are much more romantic <3

i have a friend from out of province visiting, and we’ve visited a few bookstores!! i was able to find my dark vanessa, atonement, and the haunting of hill house all second hand!!! my dark vanessa is one of my favourite reads of the year, so i’m glad i was able to find it, and the others are on my tbr!!! i was also able to get the roughest draft (by emily wibberly), the seven year slip, and a thousand ships (a feminist greek-classic spin, helen of troy i believe? something like that)

i know on goodreads the roughest draft has mid reviews, but it was second hand and i recognized the author as i know she’s adored (im planning on reading do i know you soon, before the end of the year for sure - i didn’t like what’s not to love but i’m gonna go in with a fresh mind)

i’m also excited to read the seven year slip, everyone seems to be loving it! i think i’ll add it onto my new septembers readathon challenge - idk if i’m truly in the mood for a rom com at the moment, i just finished business or pleasure and i found it quite … mid. not horrendous, but it didn’t have the same spark i found with rls other books.

how is your annotation for les mis going? i just finished my reread and goodness the brick can be a drudge but isn’t it SO good???? the themes the motifs the characters the symbolism - WHAT FUCKING BRAINROT AMIRIGHT??

i’ve read a few biographies this year (the only non fiction i’ll entertain lol), and i’ve thoroughly enjoyed them all!!! i most recently read crying in h mart by michelle zauner, and i didn’t know at first that she was japanese breakfast!! the book is so raw and intimate, and i listened to a couple of her albums and i really enjoyed her <3

as you know, i just started painted devils and vanja and emeric are everrryythinngg to me i truly need to buy the books - can’t wait to make an order from indigo i’m thinking of preordering emily henry’s new book 👀

anyways i think that’s all i wanted to share haha, hope your week is going well 🥰🥰 i’m hoping of changing my theme soon (have been wanting to for a while) but i never know what to change it to, the struggle of a girlblogger i swear

hi friend!!! i always love getting messages from you, whether they're an ask or a message! 🤍 i haven't done a nice bookstore visit in a while (i went in briefly to grab seven year slip for annotating/traveling book club a bit ago, but aside from that i haven't gone to a bookstore in a while just to meander and pick up books (not that i need to, i've got ... dozens of unread books just sitting here waiting for me to read them). i didn't loveeeee the roughest draft but i really, REALLY loved do i know you? — i went in thinking that the roughest draft would fill my emily henry void, though, so i had higher expectations for it. i also didn't love what's not to love, but i love never vacation with your ex, always never yours, if i'm still being honest, and with and without you! and i'm really excited for the breakup tour (i think it comes out in 2024?).

i really really loved the seven year slip; it's by no means perfect, but i really resonated with how it talks about grief and other things! it just spoke to me! i'm including the trigger warnings for it under the cut, just in case 🤍 i think it's not as "comedic" but it is a romance and i would wait till you're in the right mindset for it. i also found business or pleasure to be kind of mid; i think my ranking of RLS' adult books are ex talk → business or pleasure / weather girl, and then YA is we can't keep meeting like this → t3 → see you yesterday (haven't read her non rom coms)! it's just kind of been a dull year for me in terms of reading (but especially with romance).

i am ... behind on my les mis annotations! i've been doing a volume a month, so i should be done with marius this month but i haven't even picked it up yet! hopefully i'll feel better enough to tackle it this weekend / next week 🤍 but YES it's just sooooo !! we're coming up to my favorite bits of the book so i'm super excited!

i really liked crying in h mart! and was bummed to miss japanese breakfast on tour earlier this year but just had too much going on! and i am SO SO glad you're liking little thieves + painted devils! just such a good series; i need the third book immediately. i preordered emily henry's new book, and i think the only other preorder i have right now is the new beth o'leary which comes out next week (!!!!!!)

excited to see your new theme! hope you're doing well 🤍 i've been toying with changing my url to a seven year slip one, but also think i'll change it for 1989 so i think i'll hold off for a bit 🤍

[snailchimera]

If you like Murderbot, I'd also suggest you check out Ann Leckie's Radch trilogy, in which you can find a dead spaceship/horrifically mindwiped human body drone from a destroyed hivemind learning to think of herself as a person in a world where she has only been a disposable tool of empire. There are similar themes of personhood, autonomy, resistance against oppressive systems, and being an idiot incapable of understanding that other people care about you. Leckie also has some very good books with different characters in the same setting. All of them have casually queer characters.

Yoon Ha Lee's work is also very good, though *very* dark. Like every common trigger warning dark. The core thesis of his best known series, Machineries of Empire, is that corrupt and bloody systems will inevitably corrupt and bloody the people within them, and that trying to be a good person or even just hang on to your humanity within such a system will inevitably break you. It comes to the conclusion that the only way out is to break those systems, by any means necessary. It's not hard sci fi, as it does center around a functionally magical calendar, but I wouldn't call it fantasy.

The Tensorate series by Neon Yang is more steampunk fantasy (or silkpunk, to be more precise), but I don't think it's a bigger stretch than The Hollow Places. Wonderful characterization, interesting conflicts that mirror the real positive and negative effects of industrialization, lots of politics but not so much that the plot gets lost in it. Yang also wrote a space mecha Joan of Arc story that's more or less about religious manipulation and falling prey to cult thinking, which wasn't really my thing but might be yours.

Nnedi Okorafor is one of the biggest names in Africanfuturism, and iirc is the one who coined the term (as distinct from Afrofuturism, which deals less with Africa itself and more with the Black diaspora in the US). She's another one whose stories are often tragic or have prominent tragic elements; a common (though not the only) trajectory for her protagonists is "realize everything is shit, try to make things better, lose everyone and everything you love, Burn It All Down". There's also a fair amount of sexual assault or threat of assault in her work. But for all that, Okorafor is strikingly hopeful and posits that change is not only possible, it is inevitable; the question is what that change will look like. These books also have magical elements more often than not, though I hesitate to call them fantasy elements given their specific cultural and religious connotations.

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a whole bunch of stories set in the universe of the Ekumen, which are the space anthropologists from The Left Hand of Darkness. She also wrote a lot of other sci fi. It's definitely dated in some ways (there are actually some very interesting interviews out there on how LeGuin's own shifting understanding of gender and race as well as the expansion of what she could get away with in traditional publishing shows in these dramatic changes between her early and later works), but worth it for the way she gives her characters space to be people even as she tackles these big philosophical and sociopolitical questions. Of course books like The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven are held up as classics of the genre alongside The Left Hand of Darkness for good reason, but I'd actually recommend looking for some of her short story collections, which are usually a mix of sci fi, fantasy, and things that don't fit neatly in either category. Wind's Twelve Quarters is a good one if you can find it.

And speaking of short stories, did you know literary magazines are still a thing, and you can get them online as ebooks or PDFs? Uncanny Magazine and Apex are good ones. Luna Station Quarterly specializes in speculative fiction by women authors (explicitly including trans women). FIYAH, which primarily publishes Black authors, really leans more fantasy, but has had some sci fi special editions.

But honestly? Probably my favorite sci fi writer right now aside from Wells (and it's a close competition) is Derin Edala, who mostly self-publishes on their own dedicated site, derinstories.com. You can also find them here on tumblr at @derinthescarletpescatarian. You can jump straight into their ongoing stories about space pirates and a bug on a Chosen One mission respectively, or try some of their short stories (I'm a big fan of the one with the dragon mechs), but my strongest endorsement currently goes to Time To Orbit: Unknown, a full length novel (or duology, given it was too long to be self-published as one physical book and thus got released as two) about a Very Normal Spaceship. You should read it, and then if you have money you should buy it from their Ko-Fi shop or Smashwords.

EDIT: WAIT WAIT WAIT if we're doing movies you gotta watch Space Sweepers. You gotta. It's the law.

I'd also recommend Subnautica, Hypnospace Outlaw, and Extreme Meatpunks Forever. Honestly there are a *lot* of tiny cool indie scifi games out there and we will be here all day if I try to make a list, so instead I'll suggest spending an afternoon some time shaking itch.io upside down for a while until something interesting falls out.

do you have any good scifi recs? i recently read the murderbot diaries and realized i have shamefully little experience with scifi....

Y'know, my scifi's actually pretty limited! I mostly just like the cover art, sorry. oTL Looking at Steve Purcell's work has me thinking about influences in illustrative art of that era so that's why I was in the tag lol

Left Hand of Darkness is an interesting read (just go in knowing what era it's from and know it's mostly about anthropology on a planet where people change genders more or less at will and a lot of it is the protag going HUH????).

Ray Bradbury's The Veldt is an all time good creepy short (what is that noise in our children's hologram room? it sounds like us screaming. well i'm sure it's nothing.)

is the Southern Reach series considered sci-fi...? It's sci-fi horror at least, I'd say (what if there was a spot that was more or less a DNA scrambler and what if you were a biologist lady who loved staring at freak shit. and also your husband's a dolphin. or an owl. dont worry about it.) I still need to read the newest book, but there's a moment in book 2 where a surface is described as like a manta ray's skin that I still think about

if I'm REALLY stretching here, The Hollow Places counts as scifi for me. It's scifi horror/fantasy horror- (what if there was a portal to another world and it was sooooo safe and you should go in.) There's a part I still think about where a man had been standing in this like, waist deep pit of water for a while (years?) and the protag has some realizations about what she's looking at when she sees him that still freak me out.

Otherwise, watch MST3K. That counts, right?

[anotherwaytosay]

I am so excited to be presenting the readers for our next event at Molasses Books at 8 PM on Friday March 24th. 

Greg Nissan, a poet and translator and former poetry editor of SAND: Berlin's English Literary Journal, will be reading from their NEA Grant translation project: Ann Cotten's Banned! An Epic Poem, a plot-line with "[...] gryphon-like creatures and women who take over the island from men to run utopian small presses." Sara Khalili, whose body of translation/articles for Words Without Borders is something I highly recommend perusing, will be reading from selections from Iranian author and journalist Shahriar Mandanipour's Seasons of Purgatory. And you will certainly know Sam Bett, one of the best co-hosts of Us&Them, who has translated and co-translated several shimmery/dark modern/contemporary voices from Japanese: Yukio Mishima, Fuminori Nakamura, Osamu Dazai, Mieko Kawakami, more still, reading selections from Izumi Suzuki's Hit Parade of Tears forthcoming from Verso Press. 

(Also highly recommended: This lovely reflection on bathhouses as a yearnful third place by Tatsushi Fujihara for Circumference.) 

Read on for translator bios, and on and on for a list of local translation events happening elsewhere throughout March and early April. You can also find us on Instagram @anotherwaytosay

Greg Nissan is a poet and translator living in New York. They are the author of The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press) and the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books, forthcoming September 2023). They are the recipient of Fulbright and NEA fellowships for translation.   Sara Khalili is an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her translations include Seasons of Purgatory, Moon Brow, and Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, Kissing the Sword by Shahrnush Parsipur, and Rituals of Restlessness by Yaghoub Yadali. She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. Her short story translations have appeared in AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, EPOCH, GRANTA, Words Without Borders, The Literary Review, and PEN America, among others. 

Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he has worked on translations shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. His versions of Izumi Suzuki include the short story "Night Picnic" published in Terminal Boredom and the stories "My Guy" and "Trial Witch," both collected in Hit Parade of Tears. This coming May, Soho Crime will publish his translation of The Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura, a torqued detective novel that looks into the underworld of Japanese shibari bondage. ELSEWHERE:

Saturday March 25th at Poetry Society of America, Nightboat Books presents Stéphane Bouquet's Common Life with the translator Lindsey Turner and Peter Gizzi 

March 30th at Book Culture 112th, the Hellenic Studies Program in the Classics Department at Columbia University celebrates the bilingual publication of ��ΛΛΩΝΩΝ/LIFTED with Karen Van Dyck and Eleni Bourou. Also joining in conversation: Maureen Freely, Toby Lee, Mark Mazower, Jennifer Van Dyck, and Lawrence Venuti

As part of McNally Jackson's Translation Conversation Series, Brazillian author Stênio Gardel and the translator Bruna Dantas Lobato will discuss his debut novel The Words That Remain on Friday March 31st at McNally Jackson's Seaport location

Jennifer Croft and Argentinian author Sebastián Martínez Daniell will be presenting Croft's translation of his novel Two Sherpas, a book that tackles themes of "mountaineering, colonialism, obligation" at Community Bookstore on April 19th ***xxoo. poetry.

[monstermaster13]

What I Don't Consider Acceptable:

Anime characters unless it's one I have seen. Keep in mind I will be hesistant to tackle anything relating to Jojo or other anime unless I can do my own take on it or lampoon it. Just you have to give me info on the character you want and it has to be any anime I have seen or heard of. Despite what some may think I actually do appreciate some parts of Jojo's Bizzare Adventure and know there are good people in the fandom and you just have to look hard enough, but still…I might do Jojo characters down the line IF I can do something with them like for example having a stand user who has a stand themed around or based on a comedy song like Loadsamoney or a Weird Al song.

No Nudity..not even SFW. Not even being a toony animal with no visible privates will save you from being scolded at by me for breaking this rule. I'm okay with sexy fan-service or shirtless/topless scenes but not full on nude scenes.

'Nothing scary/depressing/dark in my universe'…yeah, we're going to have to talk about that, for one thing I DON'T care if you made it that there's nothing scary/depressing in your world/the world of whatever creature you and your friend established, you're not in your world anymore, you're in mine, and you're going to have to toughen up to survive here, if you're expecting me to be turned into some cuddly-wuddly floofy creature of the night or something in my world, then you can kiss your expectations goodbye because cutesy-wutesy is something I don't do anymore…at least not often, and a lot of what I like is scary. Besides, if you use this type of excuse while also having a character that is known for being scary/predatorial (e.g wolves, sharks, big cats, etc) you are a hypocrite.

Bodily functions.

If you have your adventure/episode's lead be a child. Look I don't hate kid characters in RPs, it's just there's not much with a child character I can do that is essentially just an orphan character or a character who supposedly has no parents and just runs away from home only to meet said monster or creature character and decides that without even thinking of the consequences that this character should be their new mother/new parent. I'm sorry but even if you think it's a good idea, don't. This is a random monster you just met 3 hours ago, don't you even want to get to know them first before making them your new parent? Also where are your actual parents? Look, even if your depict them as being abusive dickheads, I am sure that they'll still be worried about you. Also there's not much I can do using kid characters that aren't established kid characters to begin with, like okay…your character is a kid at around 8 or 12 years old, is there anything else to them? Also please don't pair child characters up with adult characters up, even if they are animals, look I don't want to be accused of pedophilia. Either age them up to be adults or teenagers or make it so they're actually not children at all.

Rubber latex anything. What does a rubber version of a character have that is different than the original form of that character? Apart from being made of rubber, nothing.

Mind control used for humilating other people into being your depraved sex-slaves or for the purpose of intelligence draining. To me it's just scary and horrifying to watch.

Feral.

I don't do revenge stories, these stories are mostly fictional so don't ask for your enemies to be made into a revenge story.

Anything Night Fury related. Look, I got burned out on Night Furies ages ago and I don't think i'll ever do one again, but please if you have to do them, make them anthro. I wouldn't know what to do with normal Night Furies since they don't make any noises apart from growls, hisses and animal-like noises.

Creepypasta characters. They don't count as horror characters, to me a horror character has to be a character from a horror movie or horror comedy movie, a horror show, or a video game that is horror related, anything like Slenderman or Jeff the Killer falls under 'internet age horror'.

Size changes. Especially if it's within the giant or kaiju variety.

Sissyification or bimbos since to me it's demeaning unless I can parody that.

Forced love. If you try to force a character to fall for another character specifically if that character hates the person/creature trying to make them love them.

Clowns. Clowns aren't a species unless it's a clown based monster. Clown-based characters like Joker are acceptable, just stereotypically mindlessly happy clowns obsessed with spreading the happiness.

Inanimate transformations. I know some people romanticize this a lot and enjoy being forcibly turned into something that cannot move or talk but I don't, I don't do those, I wouln't be at all attracted or fascinated by someone slowly swelling up as their organs are replaced with stuffing and they turn into an identical version of a stuffed animal/plushie that they saw in a store earlier. Please consider this when you do it.

Minors. Absolutely nothing with characters who aren't past 18 please and no sexualization of child characters. Due to uhhh…reasons.

Suiting. Being incased in a costume doesn't count as a transformation, that's basically just bondage.

No non-morphic bear transformations…bears in transformations are overdone as they are due to how there's nothing much to a bear tf apart from snugging, hugging, and putting on weight for the winter, and here's the thing, I kind of think they're boring. If you want to be a bear, you have to make it anthro to get my approval, and any bear-like characters should at least be humanoid or anthro. It's fine if you want to be a bear character, but please give me a choice other than a bear. Give me something more interesting. Bears aren't interesting, all they do is eat and sleep…if you want that, you could have just chosen a koala.

Being forced to be the same species as you.

[nikkefort-dev]

Ballad of the Judgment Night is a dark fantasy interactive fiction game. In it, you play as an angel who's using their skills for one goal: to destroy the world. Choose how to tackle this goal and how to deal with anyone who would stand against it, regardless of who it is. This game contains dark themes and is rated 18+. Content warnings: violence, death and murder, language, avoidable sexual content. More detailed content warnings can be found in the game.

Play the demo | RO’s descriptions | Playlist

The angels live on the moons that float around the planet Mundus, interfering in humanity's affairs only when the Creator thought that would be for the best. To bring peace and harmony.

After centuries of fighting for this cause, now you know that only fools would think there is a possibility of a peaceful world full of harmony. There is no such thing in the ranks of angels, too.

Now the fragile angelic society finally tipped the scales. Chaos for others, an opportunity for you. Soon you'll make sure to wipe out the thought of a "benevolent angel" from anyone's mind, and no dried blood on your hands won't stop you from setting the world on fire.

Have the main character's appearance visualized or disable the feature.

Customize the main character: name, pronouns (with an option for custom ones), gender (male, female or non-binary), appearance, and more.

Choose what kind of sin is seated in your soul and try to live with it.

Find a new weapon: scythe, longbow, or dagger — and try to learn it's secrets.

Interact with a different cast of characters and have a chance to befriend, antagonize or romance them.

Try to ignore your past and the consequences of your actions.

Pick how to destroy the world: create a mighty army, use the apocalyptic cult worshippers or seek out the forbidden knowledge.

Multiple endings.

Dahariel (F) - An angel you know. Every time you saw each other, Dahariel always attempted to befriend you. She's the type of angel who tries to do what's best for angelic society, but what is best in Dahariel's eyes?

Kawasa (M) - A mischievous forest spirit. Kawasa is a popular bard who likes to poke his nose into other people's business, and it's only a matter of time before he'll poke into things he shouldn't.

Lira Zaril (M, F, or NB) - A former hero who can't stop being a hero. Intimidating and hostile to nearly anyone, Lira still gets respect from people by fighting evil in this world. And it looks like they can see evil in you.

Opiel (M, F, or NB) - The only angel with whom you got close, until Opiel fell and left you when you needed them the most. Now even the sweetest memories of you two together are tainted with bitterness and resentment.

Vilent\Vilentia Roshe (M or F) - The ruler of the Caele Empire. On the better days, people call their monarch fair and just, and at the worst — tyrannical. Can you find some use in them, or will they find use in you?

Zephyrus (NB) - An undead seer. With a mysterious aura and polite smiles, they often appear in the right places at the right time, telling the right things to the right people.

Abandoned one (?) - Someone who waited long enough.

[kpop-dungeon-dark]

REQUEST # 13 (Nerd!Jinwoo/Jinjin x Bully!Reader)

•TRIGGER WARNING•

Disclaimer: This piece is purely a work of fiction and does not represent Park Jinwoo in any way nor do I condone or encourage these actions in real life. This is nothing but mere fiction and fantasy. Contains dark themes, browse at your own risk.

Request: "Can I request a noncon smut for either JinJin or Sanha?? Maybe a bullying concept?? Ik they’re both out of school, but I like the concept. You can either make it so they’re the bully or Y/N is the bully.

For kinks...obviously noncon, maybe gagging and bondage if possible. Ik it isn’t a lot, but I also wanna keep it kinda open for you to decide what to do"

Warning(s): Noncon, gagging, bondage, slapping, dumbification, power play, spanking, hair pulling, objectification, camera play, hate sex, blackmail, cockwarming, degradation, humiliation, blowjob/face fucking.

Jinwoo adjusted his spectacles and bit his lip to suppress the smug smirk that was trying to push it's way past his teeth and onto his mouth, eyes watching the figure that was trudging itself past the door and into his dorm room.

"Don't even think about it, Park" Y/n beat him to it as she tossed her books next to him on his dorm bed, a hand raised to silence the male who had barely just opened his mouth, pretty eyes rolling all the way to the back of her head as she sat down, paying no regard to the self locking door as the stopper brought it back to it's place before a faint clicking sound was released.

A few moments of silence passed before he readjusted himself on the side of the bed that he was seated on. "Okay…" Before he started explaining to her the outline he'd designed for their assignment, earning only moans and groans of despair in response.

"This blows!" It boggled his mind as to just how this girl managed to act like a highschooler in her bloody junior year of college and still got to get away with it all. "Can't you just do it and give me the due credit so we can both pass, Park?" Y/n was basically flunking this class and had been all semester if not the earlier one too and so the professor had paired her up with Jinwoo to help her out the way rich kids always get all the help that they can get so they can stand on the hard working class' backs to step onto the stage.

How everything always had to be served to brats like her on a silver platter because their fathers were rich.

He had hated that about her ever since highschool when she would trample all over him for no reason at all. And she still did.

Yes. You heard it right.

Miss Y/n still bullied Jinwoo in college like she was not one day older than a sophomore or junior highschooler.

"The whole point of this assignment is so you learn the topic for the mids, Y/n-" his words were cut short when a condescending flick was placed on his forehead, causing Jinwoo's jaw to clench tight.

"Y/n, huh?" She spoke with an eyebrow raised, unscrewing her coffee cap before getting on her knees and leaning towards him. "Little someone has forgotten his manners, huh?" And before the male could respond, the beverage was dripping off his face, shirt already drenched as a splash mark appeared on the wall behind him. "That should teach you" Y/n tossed the empty plastic cup somewhere in the room carelessly, going to back away into her original spot.

The male chuckled under his breath, licking his lips to taste the drink as he calmly took his dirty spectacles off. "You just had to push me to this point, huh?" Placing them on the dresser besides his bed, the male turned in her direction again to find her smirking at him, a challenging eyebrow raised.

"Oh, really? And how-" Y/n's defiant words were cut short when Jinwoo pushed the books and papers between them aside so fast her brain barely processed it, diving in her direction before tackling her smaller body flat against the mattress, restraining her hands tightly above her head before gathering them both in one of his.

"Rich brats like you are so used to getting their pathetic little ways that they think they will always have everything served to them on silver platters, huh?" A smirk made it's way on his face at her shocked expression as she almost gawked up at him in astonishment, not blinking those pretty eyes that she liked to roll all the way back to her skull, pretty lips parted.

"Tsk… So it was all big talk?" Using his free hand to caress her soft body, Jinwoo took his sweet time feeling it all up, biting his lip as he felt himself getting hard to how good her tits and neck felt in his hand. "Because you quite frankly had me fooled with it only to find out that…" Snickering at the increasing struggle as Y/n found her voice again when the male toyed with the hem of her shirt before pushing it up and away from her stomach, not stopping until it was resting on her neck way above her nude breasts. "... It was all nothing but a little brat's yapping."

"Y- You- you better let me go" the girl spoke with difficulty, struggling against his iron still hold as she tried to speak past the thick bile in her throat. "I- I am serious, J- Jinwoo! Stop!" Her struggles only made him want to break her more, the curiosity of how she'd look all compliant and fucked dumb in her little place making his adrenaline pump harder.

"Don't you have a mouth on you?" The male almost growled before snatching her shirt away from her throat and all the way over her arms that were locked in his death grip, messily coiling it with one hand before pushing it in her protesting mouth. "Open up" Jinwoo grunted, biting his lip in frustration when she stubbornly shut her mouth, turning her face to the side and huffing as she tried kicking her legs that were forced apart by his knees.

"Fine." He could swear that he could hear his own heartbeat as he grinned, peering down at her perfect breasts, a shiver running down his spine at how they jiggled each time the girl tried to break free, perky nipples inviting him to do nasty things to them. "Let's see how far that gets you" Jinwoo chuckled, licking his lips before he kneaded one of her breasts, laughing harder when she whined but refused to open her mouth, only to do just that a few seconds later when he reached for her nipple and pinched it hard, making Y/n moan out in pain as her back arched off the mattress.

"Gotcha!" And the shirt was in her mouth before she could close it again, nipple hardening instantly from the male's touch. "Fuck. You really need to be put in your place." Droplets of sweat seeped out of the pores on his temples as he hurriedly took his belt off, using it to bind her hands next, surprising himself at how well he did it before moving down to her body, biting, sucking and groping wherever he could reach.

"Shit… who knew a brat like you would be so fuckable under all those expensive clothes of yours, huh?" Jinwoo's voice was much deeper than usual as he unbuttoned her cute little shorts now, feeling him get hard when she tried to scream, struggling under him helplessly as he pulled them off, not finding an underwear underneath.

"Aww…" The male chuckled as he held her legs open with one arm, using the other one to toy with her soft pussy lips. "Look at this little squishy mess…" Taking a sickeningly long whiff, Jinwoo licked them just enough to make her body jolt up in defense, causing him to chuckle as he dug a finger between them. "Sensitive, are we?"

Y/n's body recoiled and spasmed as the male spread her pussy lips apart, examining her sex throughly as he occasionally licked and bit her folds to make her squeal and try to close her legs in defense, crying out in frustration when none of her efforts helped.

"See how helpess you are?" Jinwoo sit up between her legs when he was done, undoing his own pants now as he fished his phone out from under the bundled up sheets before unlocking it. "This is how dumb little brats like you end up in the real world if they don't have a guiding hand to smack them in place." Hitting her sex with the back of his hand and making her cry out, he nonchalantly clicked pictures of her crying face, pinching her pussy lips before pulling at them.

"Now you have two choices." Jinwoo's words faded into a shaky sigh when his cock came in contact with the cool air of the dorm room when he released it, gently giving it a pump before letting go and letting it stand pointing at her face. "Either you obey and no one has to see that embarrassing little picture of you in my room or you can disobey me, still do as I say and everyone on campus gets to see you all dumb for me on my bed…"

To the male's surprise, Y/n gave in much easier than he expected, biting back her sobs as she glared up at him from where she was kneeling between his legs on the floor now, bloodshot eyes almost shaking with rage.

"Look at you~" Jinwoo cooed devilishly, pumping himself softly as he moaned, feeling his hand slightly tremble as he tapped his tip against that of her nose before moving down to her lips, gently feeling his cock against her face as he took his sweet time rubbing it all over her usually bitchy as well as defiant face. "Who know that you'd give in this easy? And that to me, of all" Y/n felt her heat creep up to her cheeks in embarrasment.

He was so fucking cruel with his degradation.

"Maybe…" Pulling the now drenched shirt out of her mouth, Jinwoo pushed his tip in its place, moaning out loud as he threw his head back at the feeling, fingers coiling her hair around them. "... Deep down you're into this, hm- fuck!" His features were scrunched in pleasure as pushed himself further in her warm cavern, panting shakily with his eyes closed.

"Tell me, Y/n…" The male's free hand slapped one of her cheeks as he thrusted down her throat when he couldn't handle being slow anymore, the feeling of her warm and tight slippery oral walls sending shivers down his spine and all the way down to his knees. "Do you- fuck. Do you- like this, huh?" Looking down at her, Jinwoo moaned even louder, his own face flushed as Y/n gagged harshly when her gag reflex got violated.

"Isn't that why pathetic little brats like you act out?" He could feel himself nearing the edge already. It wasn't that Jinwoo didn't have stamina, the girl in front of him just looked so submissive and good for once with her hollowed tear stained cheeks and drool covered mouth as she peered up at him with his cock stuffed in her mouth as it occasionally disturbed the very back, making her choke and gag out, resulting in her nostrils flaring to try and pull some air in.

"So someone can grab them and beat their little ass in their rightful place, huh?" Jinwoo bit back the whimper that was threatening to escape him, slapping her again as he increased the speed of his thrusts, pulling her head back by her hair to get a better look at her pretty red face, hips sliding down all the way until she was coughing and gagging, splatters of spit escaping her red lips. "Let me feel my cock through that cocksleeve" he roughly grunted, using his free hand to reach for her neck and squeeze it a little.

"Shit!" The moment he felt the imprint of his cock against her skin and his cock felt itself getting squeezed, Jinwoo knew it was time and almost reluctantly pulled his cock out in an instant, making Y/n bulging eyes close as she gagged for the last time before having a whole coughing fit, crying even harder when she felt him kiss her face and praise her for being so good for him.

She hated this.

"Look at my little bully being so good for me" Jinwoo was peering around the bed now, searching for something as he hurriedly pushed her back, nothing wanting his high to disappear completely. "But I haven't come yet." Standing up before moving away, he grabbed Y/n's nape and pulled her besides the bed and in front of the little coffee puddle.

"Dumb toys like you must clean every mess they make themselves so they know not to do it again" pushing her face closer to it, the male pushed her thighs apart by the use of his foot. "Come now, be a good little mop and clean this" a harsh spank was placed on Y/n's ass when she cried out in disgust and protest, Jinwoo kneeling behind her and positioning his cock against her entrance.

"Tsk… you're almost dripping" the male chuckled as he spread her ass cheeks to make room for himself, spanking her again. "You sure you don't like being my little cump dump? Because your body tells me otherwise" Jinwoo didn't waste too much time before pushing himself deep in between her walls, cursing as he reached for the girl's hair only to scowl when he found her still staring at the pudde in front of her.

"That mess better be gone from my floor within the next 3 minutes or get yourself ready to be known as my little whore by the entire campus by tonight" the male threatened, meaning every word as he spanked her again, cursing before pulling out almost all the way, waiting until Y/n had dejectedly lowered her face into the puddle before slamming his cock deep inside her again, making her whole body jerk forwards and into it.

The pathetic bully had no choice but to take the pounding, slapping and pulling as she sucked the ground clean of the beverage.

.

[kanohivolitakk]

Since its 3Hs anniversary some really cool things I like about the game that aren’t talked about enough because the fandom is too busy arguing who is right and who is wrong

The worldbuilding just. 3H has honestly one of my favorite fictional settings. Its just both expansive but also genuinely interesting. I have spent HOURS thinking about the world and made so many ocs its not even funny. I love thinking about the setting of the game so much.

I LOVE the puzzle like way the game explains its world and story. Like I know some people don’t like it because it makes the game a bit too convoluted but personally? I LOVE 3Hs way of not telling everything but rather giving hints and clues the player has to piece themselves. It makes the games world feel more interactive and feels so satisfying. Then again I enjoy that kind of approach to worldbuilding

In general I love 3hs fragmented story and the way how the story is placed in many different fragments. It is geniunely rewarding to replay the game from another storypath and notice the foreshadowing Would’ve the story been probably better had it been just one storypath? Honestly yes. But 3h is ambitious and one of the ways it is is with its fragmented story structure.

The structure of White Clouds is criminally underrated honestly and gets way more hate than it deserves. I love how the first few chapters set up the world of Fodlan and show injustices/conflicts of the world with chapters like the chapter where you face off Lonato for instance. Then the next few chapters are spend in deepening the mysteries such as the conspiracy against the church and the mystery regarding TWSITD. Then Jeralt dies and the last few chapters are spent as “beginning of the End” so to speak, as things clears to the intense climax.

On related note I LOVE how the game handles perspective and how the lords are the respective ways we view the story. I know so many people say “WHite Clouds is same on all paths” but I do feel that’s kinda the point. The story is the same but there are differences that come from the way each of the lords is strongly characterized and has different values, worldviews. The subtle changes on what are focused on in each route also foreshadow what will be focused on each route, which I think is super cool.

Even beyond the lords and routes the game does explore the idea of perspective well. I do think 3h has this very “everyone is the hero of their own story” type of approach to perspective and it shows it well. Each character believes they’re in the right and you can get this view that they view themselves as right. Even Agarthans who are the designated villains have this sense they think they’re in right and that the Nabateans were evil.

The way how games routes being divided into having a different focus is very cool. I love how AM is a smaller scale personal tragedy, how CF is a battle of ideals and how VW explores the world and reveals deeper mysteries. I also love how all of these are related to the lords ideals and worldviews: Dimitri is the most conflicted of the lords so he gets the most characterfocused story focused on . Edelgard is the most ideologically driven so her path focuses on her ideals and battle of wills against Rhea. Claude is the one who is the most freespirited and wants to know the truth so his route focuses on revealing the mysteries.

Also the way the houses characters reflect their respective routes storyline and central themes: Black Eagles are nobles that have conflicting relationships with nobility reflecting Edelgards goal, Blue Lions are all united with the trauma of Tragedy of Duscur, and Golden Deer are a house of misfits who give this “ragtag group who will save the universe with POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and this cool gun I found” vibes which fit the route PERFECTLY

I LOVE how the game plays with and subverts a lot of Fire Emblem tropes. While it does play some tropes straight (dad death and evil cult manipulating behind the scenes) it does do a lot to break from series conventions and playing with ideas to make a more ambitious story. The way it either subverts expectations (The evil emperor being female well intended extremist, Rhea being the Gharnef/Medeus instead of the Nyna archetype she’s presented as), twists familiar tropes to their natural extreme (Dimitris arc is basically the natural extreme end of stereotypical FE lord) and other similar things make the game feeling so planned out, like the writers understood FE stories and wanted to make something that challenges FE while still feeling like it.

The way how every major player acts as foil/pararell to another player is so GOOD. Every faction leader can be compared to the other somehow and that just makes the game SOOOO fun to analyze, trying to find all the similarities and differences and pararells is so rewarding.

A more specific example on this is how i love how the game plays with the idea of holy/sacred weapons. While normally these weapons are artifacts from goddess that defeat dragons, here the holy weapons are bones made from dragons and just???? HOW METAL IS THAT????????? It’s just such a neat way to subvert the idea of sacred weapons. Rather than being blessed creations of the goddess, they are weapons of destruction made by the villains.

I ADORE THE GAMES science fiction elements. I know people say they feel out of place but personally, they make the game memorable for me. I still remember the first time I saw that scene with nukes. I especially love the heavy implication that Sothis isn’t a goddess but rather a powerful alien. It makes her character much more interesting

I know a lot of people don’t like Agarthans but can I just say their backstory being “forced to hide after their land got conquered and desiring it back” making them a dark mirror not just 3h lords/Rhea but FE lords as whole is SO FUCKING METAL. This is what I mean with 3H writers knowing their tropes like back of their hand.

I love how in Part 1 sometimes you’d talk to two characters in Monastery at once instead of just one. It’s something I miss in part 2 honestly.

I love the small sidequests such as the fishing tourney and White Heron cup and wish Part 1 had more of them, it would’ve made the school part feel more alive.

I LOVE how some missions (esp paralogues) have subgoals that you can clear to get better rewards. I wish the game had been more clear with them or even made them main goals of maps sometimes.

I LOVE THE WAY Paralogues act as small gaiden stories that show more of the games world and characters. Its a neat way to let the sidecharacters shine and reveal some neat secrets of the games world and story.

The gameplay loop is honetly fun and satisfying. It is rewarding and while it gets tiring towards the end overall its a good gameplay loop.

I ADORE the aesthetic of Shambhala. Its just so sleek and sinister. The cyrillic letters spelling different words is so cool. Shambhala is my favorite map in the game and the aesthetic is a big reason why.

The games soundtrack is so good!!!!!!!!!!  But not only that I LOVE the way its electro elements subtly hint of Agarthans being in control behind the scenes. This is especially cool in Road to Dominion where the electro parts are barely noticeable yet present. but other tracks have subtle electro vibes as well.  The other way the games music tells the story (such as use of leitmotifs or how the monastery music changes once Jeralt dies) is great as well.

I love how 3h can be read as an allegory for reformation era and reneissance. Its such an interesting way to read the games events and compare it to a real historical periods there’s quite a bit of f

In general I ADORE the cultural references of the game. There’s surprisingly lot of way the games world is based on real life and the details are just *chefs kiss*

THE GAME IS DENSE WITH THEMATIC IDEAS. Besides the perspective the game tackles ideas of how trauma can affect a persons psyche and worldview  (as well how a persons trauma affects the way they interact with the world which in turn can affect the world as well), grief, societal values, historical revisiniosm and so much more. The game tackles SO MANY topics in an interesting manner, it is thematically just as dense as it is storywise as well.

I also love how the games thematic parts work in harmony with the story rather than one overshadowing with the other. Its super refreshing honestly where a games themes and story are both rich and I don’t have to pick one over the other.

Lastly I ADORE the games central message (or at least what I see as the central message anyway): The world’s fucked up and most people want to fix it, but what they deem fixing differs and because of that they go into conflict or outright war rather than trying to find a common ground. Everyone wants a better world but no one can agree what a better world truly means  so they fight over it. It was a theme that not only resonates with my personal values but also hit me REALLY hard when I first played it as it’s a theme that I found incredibly relevant and reflective of our own world during the time I played the game for the first time.

So yeah. I made this post since there’s SO MUCH neat things about the game, its gameplay and story that sadly get swept under the rug in favor of either arguing  which lord was right/wrong or complaining how the game is an unfinished, rushed and overambitious mess. Is 3h perfect? Hell no. But it’s a game that I hold near and dear to my heart and does genuinely SO MANY THINGS RIGHT, I’m sad no one talks about the genuine strengths the game has anymore, instead just complaining.

I’m not even joking when I say that 3h should be up there as heralded as one of the best, most ambitious and complex JRPGs alongside Xenogears, the first Xenoblade game, Suikoden and Trails series as whole along other such games. Its a shame the games reputation is less like those games and more like Persona 5s where everyone focuses more on its flaws and the fans being annoying than the fact the game does geniunely A LOT right. It’s just that good, ambitious game I love so much.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Japanese Myths And How They're Depicted In Horror Anime

  No matter the time or place, the folklore and myths of the past always persist. The same can also be said for anime, especially when it comes to horror. Certain franchises, such as Shigeru Mizuki’s classic GeGeGe no Kitaro, have solidified the omnipresent status of traditional Japanese folk monsters in popular culture. Other series, such as Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo interpret traditional folklore in relation to historical periods and changing attitudes toward religion. More recently, series from the 2010s and 2000s, such as Bakemonogatari and Ghost Stories, interpret the classics with modern sensibilities. When it comes to stories with a penchant for horror, it would be far more surprising if they didn’t allude to a shared supernatural mythology — the ubiquity is the point. 

  Neko-Musume on her smartphone

The best horror always tries to do something new. While creatures like yōkai (a wide umbrella of supernatural entities) are well-known among English-speaking fans today thanks to series like Yokai Watch, these re-imaginings always tend to play fast and loose with fidelity. Wouldn’t it be boring if every vampire movie started and ended with Dracula? In a 2016 interview with The Comics Journal, veteran manga translator Zack Davisson emphasizes this important tendency to re-contextualize old folklore:

  “It’s a tricky question, as it is impossible to say what is ‘actual folklore.’ Vampires bursting into flame is considered ‘authentic,’ but that actually comes from the films, not folkloric sources. Folklore evolves and [Shigeru] Mizuki is an important part of that evolution. If you trace them back, most yokai we know come from Toriyama Sekien, who also just made things up. In fact, I would say that making up yokai is part of the grand tradition of yokai! If you are a writer/artist working with yokai and not making up at least a few of your own, you are missing the point!”

  The original spirit gun

  So that’s all to say — there really is no such thing as a definitive, one-to-one story based on centuries of tradition. Yōkai, as endearing as they are, are also just one part of the equation. Long-running anime such as Folktales from Japan and fantasy series Inuyasha-continuation Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon either re-tell or draw inspiration from that folklore. But that’s beyond the scope of this piece. Whether it be adaptations of urban legends about school bathrooms or vengeful spirits, I hope this round-up helps any casual or long-time anime fan appreciate how these series reimagine supernatural traditions.

  Fantastic Folklore: GeGeGe no Kitaro & Mononoke

  The late Shigeru Mizuki’s most influential character, Kitaro, hardly needs any introduction. In his book Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, translator Matt Alt describes yōkai as “the attempts of the fertile human imagination to impose meaning and rationality on a chaotic, unpredictable, often difficult-to-explain world.” Many yōkai are quite strange and sometimes even comedic. Scholar-artists, such as the previously mentioned Toriyama Sekien, are largely credited with inspiring their uncanny visual representations, making them the perfect subject matter for an accessible series.

  The tanuki plot world domination

The titular Kitaro himself is a half-human, half-yōkai one-eyed boy who travels between the human and spirit world to resolve monster-of-the-day conflicts with his friends. Although Mizuki’s Kitaro as we know it began serialization in 1960, Mizuki originally received permission to re-imagine the character from Masami Itō, who first created Kitaro in the 1930s in pre-war Japan. The most recent 2018 anime series re-establishes Kitaro in a modern setting, yet still adapts many of the most iconic stories. Characters such as Neko-Musume, based on volatile cat spirits called bakeneko, are updated with new designs while Kitaro mostly remains the same. Mizuki’s older creations, such as the jubokko (vampire tree) yōkai, are still featured alongside a new re-imagining of the “wall monster” nurikabe — inspired by the discovery of an Edo manuscript in 2007. The appeal of Kitaro isn’t so much the meticulous adherence to yōkai mythos, but rather Mizuki’s continual improvisation of the folklore-informed monster-making tradition.

  The Medicine Seller

Beyond Kitaro, other series, such as 2006’s Mononoke, dedicate entire storylines to a wider category of ayakashi (sea-bound yōkai) and funayūrei (boat spirits) written by none other than Chiaki J. Konaka. Later episodes feature bakeneko and nue (chimera monsters), but with a twist. The term mononoke itself refers to a variety of yōkai specifically referring to vengeful spirits possessing people or things. When it comes to series taking a more “fantastical” approach to folklore, both Mononoke and Kitaro thankfully never dissolve into simple rogue galleries of monsters — their (mostly) human protagonists largely remain the heart of their chilling saga.

  Horror-Historical: Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo

  Lord Kagemitsu Daigo makes a pact with the demons  (Source: Amazon)

  In Anime and Its Roots in Early Japanese Monster Art scholar Zília Papp comments Mizuki’s “Kitaro characters became synonymous with yōkai in the postwar period, continuing to the present time” compared to his peers like Tezuka. But if Kitaro made yōkai big in comedic manga, then Tezuka’s short-lived Dororo manga drove this interest toward the historical context of the Sengoku Period, or the “warring states” era of feudal Japan. 

  Rather than depicting spirits as purely whimsical mischief-makers, Dororo’s inciting event is a feudal lord of the fictional Daigo clan forging a pact with 48 demons, who persist to hunt his son long after the pact is forged. In his feature The History Behind Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo, Marco Oliveros comments that by depicting yōkai during this period, Dororo draws inspiration from actual shifts in changing Buddhist attitudes toward these entities:

  “One of the foremost examples of this change to yokai is the tengu. Wrathful and demonic, the avian creature tricked and assaulted Buddhist clerics and civilians alike, becoming characterized as the sworn enemy of Buddhism. The apparent hostility of these yokai to Buddhism makes their dark deals with Dororo's Daigo an unsurprising turn of events for the Sengoku Jidai era.”

  The Amanojaku is captured and sealed inside a Buddhist temple (Source: Amazon)

  Matt Alt’s 2016 translation of Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien describes the tengu (mask-wearing entities usually depicted as half-man half-bird) as “deeply associated with the religion of Shugendō,” which originated during the Heian period; however they were depicted very differently in major Buddhist sects of the same era. Unlike solely “fantastical” stories of the supernatural without much acknowledgment to historical context, Dororo is interested in this context regarding capricious attitudes of spirits of people alike. Impressive malevolent entities such as kyūbi (nine-tailed foxes) also fight against Dororo’s protagonist, Hyakkimaru, typical of supernatural jidaigeki (period drama) horror stories set in feudal Japan.

  However, Dororo also features lesser entities such as amanojaku (tiny, goblin-like demons). According to the influential illustrated encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue compiled by Sekien-predecessor Terajima Ryōan, amanojaku and tengu were described as paired descendants of the evil goddess Amanozako (literally "tengu god"). According to scholar Haruko Wakabayashi in The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, tengu were symbolically invoked in inter-personal and religious feuds amongst Buddhist sects during the Heian period. The amanojaku depicted in Dororo is minor. But with a (simplified) understanding of its affiliation with tengu’s pre-Heian origins and its subsequent disavowal by influential Buddhist sects, Dororo's amanojaku cameo is an undeniable nod toward its theme of “old ways” impacted by a "new" institutionalized status quo.

  Hyakkimaru battles the nine-tailed fox spirit in its spectral form (Source: Amazon)

  While the nine-tailed fox spirit is flashy, Dororo’s amanojaku ends up pathetically sealed inside a Buddhist temple. Ironically, the amanojaku trapping scene pans from the top of a Buddhist statue, ending with the cartoonish amanojaku crushed underneath to visually imply its irrelevancy. Dororo is a story about the cultural and religious tensions brewing during this violent episode in history — making Hyakkimaru’s journey one that doesn’t simply depict supernatural folkloric tradition in stasis, but as something always under complicated socio-political stakes.

  Modern Ghoul School: Ghost Stories & Bakemonogatari

  What do you do if you can’t solve your evil spirit problems with a sword? For the most part, classics like Kitaro and Dororo take place in the past, or at least worlds very unlike our own. A traveling demon slayer never has to deal with student council or smartphones. 

  In a previous article, From Bakeneko to Bakemonogatari, I discussed all the possible lineages of the catgirl character archetype. In that piece, I claimed one of the more accurate representations of the bakeneko today was Bakemonogatari’s Tsubasa Hanekawa’s cat spirit-possessed alter-ego. It’s not simply because she is a supernatural catgirl, but rather her portrayal was obviously informed by the wider context of pre-existing bakeneko mythos. Is it possible for a “modern-day” series to tackle yesterday’s folktales while still preserving the uncanniness of the past?

The spirits possessing Bakemonogatari’s cast, referred to as “oddities,” all nearly function like vengeful mononoke spirits. For example, Bakemonogatari’s first arc, Hitagi Crab, features a crab “oddity” haunting classmate Hitagi Senjougahara. The existence of heikekani (face-shaped crabs allegedly the spirits of drowned Heike warriors from the Sengoku Period), might be a parallel, considering the arc’s theme of unresolved conflict. Another arc, Suruga Monkey, features an “oddity” taking the form of a beastly paw growing on classmate Kanbaru Suruga’s arm. Senjougahara and Suruga's crab/monkey relationship can be read as alluding to the well-known Buddhist tale “The Monkey and the Crab.” According to The National Gallery of Art on its 2019 The Life of Animals in Japanese Art exhibit, the monkey and crab are usually depicted as friends, then compete until they either make amends or resolve their conflict. Often the subject of artistic interpretation, it’s no surprise this tale found its way into anime as a metaphor for teen drama.

  The kids scan a talisman and e-mail it to exorcise internet demons. Yes, this really happens.

  In comparison, the 2000 series Ghost Stories is best known to English-speaking audiences for being an edgy comedy. However, its original source material, a book series titled Gakkō no Kaidan (School Ghost Stories), is more akin to a heavily researched Goose Bumps. Written by folklore scholar Toru Tsunametsu, the series showcases various urban myths and monsters, most famously “Hanako” a ghost girl who haunts school bathrooms. A 2014 NPR piece describes the most popular version of Hanako being a schoolgirl in WWII “using the bathroom when a bomb fell on top of the building.” Although Hanako gained enough popularity from the books to warrant her own spin-off anime series in 1994, she only makes a handful of cameos in the 2000 series. Entities like the previously mentioned amanojaku also appear, alongside shinigami (death gods) depicted in many other anime.

  How to channel your ghost powers for success (Source: Funimation)

  Hanako, because of her relatively modern backstory, is just as ubiquitous. Versions of Hanako appear in an episode of the 2018 Kitaro and most recently in the 2020 series Toilet Bound Hanako-kun. Tsunametsu currently edits the Folklore Society of Japan’s official academic journal, no doubt a testament to his priceless contributions to folklore representation in anime.

  Who You Gonna Call?

  There’s no way to tell the same ghost story twice. With such a layered history, contemporary anime have a nearly endless well of folkloric material to pull from. Recent series like the hit Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Toilet Bound Hanako-kun prove that fans will never get enough of the supernatural, just as long as things stay fresh. 

  Hanako politely warns the ghost-hunting kids

  Long live artistic liberty and specters trying to watch you pee.

      Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more. He'd like a tiny yōkai cat.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Blake Planty

[taurianskies7]

Superimposing the Navamsa (D9) chart

I was practising with my own chart, wanting to see how the energies work and all, since my Libra rising is same in both I don’t particularly need to worry about that, some placements that have stood out while doing this is: Sun in Taurus (D1) becomes Sun in Capricorn (D9), the obvious themes of 8th house gets funnelled down into a focus towards the 4th house (which makes sense because goddamn I want a decent home-life after I’m older) and it can be seen like that too but just seeing the placements also helps. Capricorn is 9th from Taurus, not counting the zodiac placement for a moment, Sun is doing decently well here (it likes the 9th house) but the Saturnian influence can be oppressive, delayed, almost suffocating. It does make sense, Sun in D1 isn’t doing that great in my chart and often times, in order to escape from my father’s oppression & distressing control over me I often look at my Higher Studies & Foreign Lands, both of which I KNOW I must pursue to shake off the shadows of my father’s control over my life, it’s kinda the only way I can get away. My approach towards Higher Studies is also very traditional, in a sense that I’m planning to go the whole way and get a few Masters, even a PHD if I’m able to. Don’t get me wrong, studying drains me and it feels like I have to be fully disciplined in order to succeed but I always feel the subtle responsibility to pursue this path. I MUST, if I don’t succeed in my studies, then what’s the worth of me? (The themes of self-worth = continuous need for material success/recognition that comes with Capricorn Sun) Jupiter in Taurus (D1) becomes Jupiter in Cancer (D9), the obvious themes of Jupiter in the 8th house of learning and developing more insight of deeper, dark themes, even occult gets translated later in the 10th house, as maybe, some sort of teacher/guru figure in the public eye concerning these issues. This is probably one of the placements that give me some hope in life, lol. More specifically though, Cancer is 3rd from Taurus. It all ties up. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, majorly interested in writing, and still I’ve always felt like I wanted to dig into my emotions, the stuff that I encountered while living with my family and in my homeland, I’ve always felt like I’ve wanted to be a new pioneer writer from Nepal, let’s say. The thing is, in my current life just figuring out my D1, I’ve always felt like my writing career was going to be reserved for later in life, after I’ve accumulated enough skill and knowledge (might explain why I’m not fully ready or skilled enough to tackle subjects I want to), I want to help people with my words, my communication, I don’t know how I’m going to but that is definitely on my bucket-list/life goals to achieve if I survive long enough. Saturn in Taurus (D1) becomes Saturn in Pisces (D9), asides from the obvious Saturn being in the 8th house & 6th house making it beneficial in a way that it suppresses a lot of the malefic parts of each house, both effects I’ve seen through observation of my life (You might argue that Saturn’s effect isn’t fully there, especially not of the D9, don’t @me I’ve been going through both a Saturn Mahadasha and Sade Sati for a w h i l e). Pisces is 11th from Taurus. The lack that comes from Taurus Saturn especially with stability, basic needs and the sense of home is very prominent witth Saturn’s touch, the only way I’ve ever been able to restore any sense of that is through the larger networks of the 11th house, friends, strangers, the internet and in general too, those have played a role in shaping my larger identity with groups. One of the key reasons why I relate and feel a sense of belonging from foreign lands and people (especially overseas as Pisces is the original 12th house, it talks about universally feeling almost) largely gets explained by these placements. The darker side of this was also present, because of the lack of beauty, money and self of inner worth (Taurus themes) my larger friend group had completely dissolved, abandoned and I was largely isolated from connecting with friends in school & society (Pisces themes), the only way I managed to get out to that was through fictional escapism, creative pursuits & greater understanding of empathy and emotions (Pisces themes again) that eventually led (is leading at least) to a sense of stability in personal worth. I was also going through a whole “ugly duckling” phase that largely and negatively restricted my feelings of self-worth.  So yeah, this has been the post with my three placements. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a Taurus stellium. Keep in mind, though, I haven’t really included the conjunctions and aspects that would come with bringing planets from the Navamsa and comparing it with the Natal chart. You can learn more from here.