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rhineposting · 3 months

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( inspired by an idea from a genshin discord server )

The month was the 8th, slowly eclipsing in on the 9th. Like each year, travelers and merchants alike from all over traveled far and wide through different roads, all ultimately leading towards one destination beneath the surface - the underground Kingdom of Khaenri’ah, Starry House of Many Doors, and it’s annual Stjern-Falle Festival.

Many believed at least once that the celebration honored the departure of Summer and arrival of Autumn, as the name almost seemed to imply - alas, with the nation being removed from Gods’ gaze, they knew not of gentle winds of Spring, golden middays of Summer, raging storms of Autumn and certainly not of the cold fangs of Winter. Having conquered nature, Khaenri’ah had essentially risen above the need for seasons and therefore had no need to honor them. What else could the godless people celebrate them? That which is above the seasons as well, of course - the stars.

Ages ago, scholars had found a way of creating environments with sights and conditions taken from anywhere else in the world, calling them simply Domains - as such, in it’s earliest years, the first Sages of Khaenri’ah cast upon their kingdom an image of a starry sky far away, beyond divinity itself ; and each year from that foreign sky a rain of stars would come falling down, it’s dews harvested by the scientists and mages alike, providing prosperity to the kingdom for years to come.

However, as is with human nature, both the outsiders from above and the residents from below saw that time as a most opportune occasion for profit and trade ; and so, the Stjern-Falle Festival was open to all who could afford to make the journey.

Or to those who were removed from the circle of commerce entirely, thought a bard as he climbed out of a barrel, his feather-light footsteps quiet as he ran, a bag in one hand and a lyre in the other, burdened only with but a few Mora.

(One that he personally picked off of his dear old friend earlier when he lied unconscious and unaware in his…The bard would have liked to be so kind as to call it a bed, but really - it was just a hoarding pile of expensive quilts, pillows and trinkets.)

Among his few burdens, one would not be able to find a solid plan of his future endeavors. Should one peek into his mind and search for any plan, at best they would find a small list written in colored wax, reading as such:

1. Wine from Khemia-grown grapes

2. Traditional Khaenri’ahn Music

3. Make new friends

4. Watch the star rain

5. ?????

6. Go home and take a nap

The best plan is the lack of it thereof, such was the bard’s philosophy, and it yet had to fail him. Each corner of the world had a story to tell, and if he wanted to hear them all, what good would it do to arbitrarily set directions by himself? Besides, with fate being world’s best guide, putting in the time to make a schedule of any kind would have been too bothersome ; and above all, the bard was a man of leisures.

Once far away enough from the cargo of merchants and the grand, iron elevators the size of stages, he found himself sitting upon a small wall, marveling. At what? Simply put, everything before and below him.

By then the city, called lovingly by poets a Puddle of Many Rains, had been flooded with market stalls and stages alike ; it’s own lights bright seemingly mirroring the artificial stars above, reflecting them much like a true puddle would have. Though windless, the air was thick with scents so numerous and varied, so much that they could all be referred to only with a collective name : scent of a festival. Truly, the bard found it incredible how little the scent varied across the continent, be it Lantern Rite in Liyue or Day of Sabzeruz in Sumeru - at their core, they were all the same.

Overjoyed and energized, the bard chuckled under his breath and proceeded to close his eyes, letting his legs carry him to wherever they deemed fitting.

***

Not long into his blind trek, his ears made him come to a halt, something catching their attention. Thus did the bard stop right in the middle of the river of people passing by and listened :

A simple tune, coming from an instrument likely between a violin and an accordion, should his knowledge of instruments be up to date. Though it’s tones were deep, he could not help but pay mind to how swiftly the melody could go from somber to joyful in seconds. Intrigued, he squeezed past the rushing stream of the crowds. To his joy, soon after he had been faced with a young man, a strange violin-like instrument over his shoulder, one hand pressing keys and the other shifting a bow back and forth, producing music unlike anything he had heard in most recent years.

So he stood there, a one man audience to the youth, his green eyes bright with awe - contrasting greatly with the young man’s focused face as he continued playing for what felt like eternity and a fleeting moment both. All spheres of life had rules unspoken, therefore once the youth finished playing he bowed, while the bard clapped, a wide smile almost cutting through his face.

“Why, that was delightful!” the bard exclaimed, his palms by then aching from his applause, “Tell me o fellow poet, what is the name of this lovely instrument?”

“Nyckelharpa, sire!” the young man replied, “More commonly called the bowed violin, it’s our national instrument! And would I be right to assume you hail from the City of Winds?”

“Verily, my friend! Quite the perceptive eye you got there!” the bard praised, clapping once more, “Then again, my lyre does quite betray my origins, doesn’t it?’

“Nay, it’s actually your attire. Few people here need capes, and rarely in such vibrant colors as yours! If I had to name people I know of that wear capes, not only would their number fit on my single hand, they’re all from the Royal Court! Black Serpent Knights, the Mages, Court Alchemists and of course, the King and his family!”

That too the bard noticed - rarely did the clothes of the locals come in shades other than black, white, gray, blue or purple. Living beneath the surface did have it’s negatives, lack of access to a variety of dyes must have been among them. Still, from what he saw thus far, the people of Khaenri’ah made up for it with jewelry and adornments of brass and iron alike, ranging from simple buttons to elaborate earrings - worthy of landing in his dearest friend’s trash pile of a nest.

“If you’re so kind, could you tell me where may I learn more about your music?” asked the bard, “As it happens , I seek mastery over every instrument I can find - and it currently stands at the humble number of fifty seven!”

To that, the oblivious young man couldn’t help but burst out laughing, nearly folding both himself and his beloved instrument over. To that the bard took no offense, few ever believed him. Then again, few was the number of people who were capable of having enough years to master even three instruments, let alone fifty seven. By the time the young man managed to regain his breath, his cheeks had turned as red and round as an apple freshly picked off a tree, teeth bared in a wide smile.

“In that case, why don’t I take you to my school, master?” the man jokingly proposed, “I’d like to be there to see your list expand to fifty eight- or better yet, make it sixty! It’s a perfect time for such a milestone, is it not?”

“It is, friend,” the bard nodded. “It is.”

That year had marked Barbatos’ first ever Stjern-Falle Festival, as well as the year he mastered sixty five instruments total. From then on, the journey to Khaenri’ah’s many doors had become a voyage he would eagerly look forward to.

***

The wheel of time had turned a hundred times more, and so did the wheels of a cart as it came to a halt as soon as it got out from the since then upgraded cargo elevators. In spite of the countless inspections from merchants and guards both, once again it had an additional passenger - who had slipped from underneath the cart itself, filthy and dry with dust sticking into every crevice of his face. Resisting the urge to cough and spit, the passenger made a run for the shadows of various containers, where only then he’d wipe furiously at his twisted in discomfort face. Such a shame that no more were caravans as accommodating to stowaways as they used to be, sometimes even being as cruel as to employ usage of cats and dogs alike to avoid extra company.

“Phef phef phef,” the bard spat and wiped into his sleeves, a few tears running down his gray from dust face, “Oh dear, how am I ever going to wash this taste off?”

The question was purely rhetorical : as always, the answer to every issue under the sun would remain to be wine and music alike. That year, it was no different.

***

“May I ask for a slice of brie with that, good sir?”

Much time had passed, and by then the bard managed to clean both his robes and body from road dust - appearing as presentable and pleasant to the eye as ever, the image of a perfect customer that he was not. Not that the poor waiter would have known, as he kept bringing him more wine and snacks, blissfully unaware that upon being presented with the check, the bard would have been out through the chimney quicker than one could call for guards. Even then, no prison in Teyvat and below would have been able to hold him, as far as he knew.

“Will do!” the waiter bowed, and departed like a leaf in the wind, leaving the bard to his own devices.

Once more he had forgotten to bring a book to fill the time in between glasses and snacks and unfortunately enough, the establishment did not have performers of any kind, nor even books for a quick lend - effectively leaving him with plenty of time in his hands and nothing to invest it into. A shame, truly - had it not been for one ace up his sleeve for trying times such as these.

(And up more places, such as various orifices - at least according to his friend, whose constant stone face would eventually develop cracks upon losing a card game for the eight time in a row. A small breeze can carve a mountain, as they say.)

The ace being one of his favorite past times - to simply put, people watching. One would think that a man his age and wisdom would one day grow weary of the sight of humans of any kind - and they couldn’t be more wrong, fortunately. For the same reason why children insisted on hearing the same story for bedtime night after night, the bard would seek out the company of man, as mundane as their lives tended to be. Simple, infallible logic, he thought.

Surely enough, not long after the restaurant gained a new customer - a young girl, already tall for her age, donning robes of a scholar yet presenting herself with the confidence of a senior professor. Proud, with her chin lifted high, she approached the man behind the counter - the ringing sound of Mora making itself known across the establishment.

“I’d like your meal of the day. Sunshine Sprat. Take-out,” she requested. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Of course, we’ll serve it to you in just a minute!”

So they did - before the bard knew it, the girl had been presented with the meal, wrapped up and secured like a gift, fragrant steam escaping from the cracks and folds here and there. Like a true princess, the girl took the package in her hands - and proceeded to run out the door as if her life depended on it. Soon enough, the server made the reason why known across the restaurant.

“You swindling little brat!!” The bard heard the man roar to the door, “Someone go catch her!”

When the bard looked closer, he saw that the Mora were gone - replaced only by a pile of rocks.

That evening, the restaurant earned two new customers on their blacklist.

***

It didn’t take the bard very long to find the girl - a few twists and turns, one flight across a few rooftops, two dives into the trash - and there she was, not even five minutes later ; not because she was slow, but simply because the bard was not someone anyone or anything could escape from, no matter how far they would travel.

He observed from afar, a hand under his chin, deeply entertained. The girl, likely no older than fourteen, carved into the dish much like a princess would have, while simultaneously reading a book that sat over her crossed lap as she sat on the ground behind a building. Her expression remained one of complete lack of bother or guilt of any kind, and it was so convincing that one would almost believe her, should she claim she was not to blame. By then, the bard’s amusement had almost shifted to entrancement, and before either of them knew it, he sat by her side after seemingly appearing from nowhere.

“Interesting trick back there, young lady!” he exclaimed, wearing an award winning smile, bright enough to blind, “Never seen anyone do something like that before, and I’ve been around for a while! Say, are you willing to share your secrets with a traveler from afar?”

In return, the girl graced him with a side-eyeing glare, unbothered by his swift and soundless fall from the sky - as if she was indeed a princess, looking down upon a mere peasant that managed to sneak past her bodyguards. From what the bard knew about the citizens of Khaenri’ah, chances were, a princess she might’ve been.

Her turquoise eyes were as bright as the stars themselves, and fittingly enough, her pupils resembled them as well - sharp and four pointed, almost shrunken into four thin lines as she looked him up and down. As far as he heard, those were exclusive to nobility of Khaenri'ah, a sign of their pure blood.

“Khemia,” she replied, before turning back to her book, “Basics of transmutation. Now can you go away, I’m trying to eat and you stink.”

“Oh, are you implying I don’t take proper hygiene measures when abroad? I’m hurt, deeply so!”

The girl raised one dark blonde eyebrow, “Wounded, even?”

“Hurt, young lady!”

“If you call me young lady again, you will be picking out worms from your nostrils for the rest of your life.”

“Then what should I call you instead? If you’d like, I’ll introduce myself first!” Before the girl could make it known how much she wouldn’t have liked to know his name, he offered his hand for shaking, “Venti! Venti the Bard!”

Not only did the girl not shake his hand, she looked at it as if it had been ridden with sepsis. Somehow, her already annoyed expression grew even more unimpressed.

“Rhinedottir. Not to be mistaken for my two sisters Rendottir and Rheindottir. Now can you put that away,” the girl ordered, as calmly as one could. “What do you want.”

“Well, truth be told, even though I’ve been here many times in the past for the Stjern-Falle Festival, I never quite managed to learn about Khemia from it’s source,” Venti explained upon putting his hand away, only to gesture away as he spoke, “And you seem like you know quite a lot about it, with how you’re able to use it so casually!”

For a while, the girl said nothing and merely observed the bard, expectantly - likely waiting for him to leave. Unfortunately for her, no such thing had occurred ; Venti did not undo his presence and continued sitting there, waiting for his answer as well. Had it been any other day, perhaps the girl would have entertained the idea of an out-waiting contest with her coming out as the victor. Alas, such couldn’t be, for if she continued waiting her meal would have gone cold.

“…Alright, fine,” the girl eventually relented, rolling her turquoise eyes to the sky and back, “…How do you explain white chalk in black soil, or the earth’s dense crust amidst the emptiness of space? While alchemy transmutates the inanimate, Khemia creates life, using other forms of life as a base. That’s how we can grow crops here underground. Otherwise we’d starve.”

Venti nodded, listening as attentively as one could, uttering not one word of his own.

“…But I think we can do even more with Khemia,” Rhinedottir suddenly added, idly shifting through the pages of her book. “I think that if I used the right formulas, I could create sentient life from scratch.”

“And why would you want to do that?” asked Barbatos. “Creating life is a pretty big deal. Not even gods are allowed to do that.”

The girl did not listen.

All she did was glare at him, if not at the whole world itself. Though her face was young, her gaze was not one of a small child. Sharp and heavy, it carried a weight for which the bard could not settle on a name at that time ; was it ambition or arrogance? Countless times he had seen both, and yet, neither had fit the mark.

“I want to be great,” she stated. “So I’m gonna be the greatest alchemist of all time.”

Venti just laughed under his nose and Barbatos nodded, her words engraved in his memory.

“Hope I will be there to see it for myself.”

He did, thirty Stjern-Falle Festivals later.

So did everyone else.

#rhine writing #genshin fanfic #genshin impact fanfic #genshin impact #genshin #genshin venti #rhinedottir #khaenri'ah

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raeynbowboi · 1 year

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How to Play as Stolas in DnD 5e

Today, we’re going to explore how to build Stolas from Helluva Boss in DnD 5th Edition. However, because Stolas is also a real demon from the Ars Goetia, we’ll look into that as well as needed to fill in any gaps.

For his race, Stolas is a Goetic Demon that manifests in the form of an Owlin. However, with DM approval, I’d just change Stolas’ creature type to be a Fiend type Owlin. I’d give him +2 INT, +1 CHA.

Stolas is a Prince of the Goetia family, and one of the many children of King Paimon. I’d say he’s a Noble for History and Intimidation.

As a demon, Stolas is evil, but according to the Ars Goetia, Stolas is relatively friendly and cordial, offering his knowledge to those who summon him, and can be trusted by demonologists to answer their questions truthfully. I’d call him Lawful Evil.

STOLAS’ GRIMOIRE

I had to debate whether Stolas’ Grimoire was a Warlock’s Book of Shadows, a Wizard’s Spellbook, or something else entirely. Stolas is able to do a few things without the book, but states that the book is a powerful artifact meant to be used by powerful and important demons, not itty bitty imps or humans, and scolds Blitz for letting the book fall into someone else’s hands. So clearly the book in question is a powerful magical item that allows others to access the same powers and knowledge it bestows upon Stolas. It must contain charges to cast spells or allow anyone using it to cast the spells within it, even without proper training. Paimon also gives Stolas the book while explaining his role in the Goetia family. Stolas is given his Grimoire to study the stars and foretell prophecies. The Grimoire’s two most often seen features is its ability to create an illusory projection of the cosmos (which Octavia simply calls “the stars” or “that starry place”) and the ability to open portals between Hell and Earth. So, the Grimoire must contain the ability to cast spells like Hallucinatory Terrain or Project Image as well as Plane Shift. And I think I found the closest equivalent.

DEMONOMICON OF IGGWILV ARTIFACT

This book contains the lore and knowledge of the Abyss and the Demons within it. The book also has charges which allows whoever is holding it to expend charges to cast the spells within it, including Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Magic Circle, Magic Jar, Planar Ally, Planar Binding, Plane Shift (Between the Abyss and the Material Plane only), and Summon Fiend. While it doesn’t allow Stolas to create the illusory star field and it has nothing to do with the stars and prophecies he was told to study, it is the only magic book with spells stored in it that can be used through charges, allowing even someone as unskilled as Octavia or Loona to use the book to open portals between Hell and Earth. Now, a player obviously shouldn’t start with this item. If one wishes to play as Stolas, one possibility is that he used his Grimoire to travel to Earth where his Grimoire was then stolen or lost, or another demon stole it and he chased them to the material plane, and now Stolas has to hunt down his Grimoire, giving him a reason to team up with a party, and giving him an objective to work towards. The Demonomicon of Iggwilv could also be reflavored, as Paimon states that the book serves to allow Stolas to study the human skies and human prophecies, likely meaning that instead of it being a book to help humans study demons, it might be a book that helps demons study human astronomy, astrology, and prophecies.

WIZARD SCHOOL OF DIVINATION

Stolas is tasked with studying the stars and the prophecies of the Earth skies, so Divination is the perfect parallel for his abilities. We also learn in Season 2 Episode 2 that Stolas’ powers are limited without his Grimoire, though he is still able to open the portal to Earth without it. He also implies that while he could disguise the imps with his Grimoire, he can’t do it without the book. However, it’s entirely possible to label Stolas as a Fiend Warlock with a Pact of the Tome, giving him a Book of Shadows, which is literally called a Grimoire. The main reason I picked Wizard over Warlock is because Warlocks can just destroy their Grimoires and make new ones if they’re stolen, and Stolas in real world mythology is summoned for his knowledge, not for his charisma. Stolas is regarded for his knowledge of prophecy, herbology, and gemstones. So, we’ll give him proficiency with Arcana and Nature checks.

THE BUILD

Name: Stolas Ancestry: Owlin Background: Noble Class: School of Divination Wizard (20) Alignment: Lawful Evil

STATS STR 8 DEX 12 CON 14 INT 20 WIS 16 CHA 16

SAVING THROWS STR -1 DEX +1 CON +2 INT +11 WIS +9 CHA +3

SKILLS Arcana (+11) History (+11) Intimidation (+9) Nature (+11)

STOLAS’ SPELLS

While we’ve seen some of what Stolas can do, we haven’t seen everything and the Wizard gets a lot of spells. So, I decided to pad out his spellbook with space-themed spells that fit his cosmic theme.

C Light, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, Message, Prestidigitation 1 Catapult, Cause Fear, Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Disguise Self, Identify, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Silent Image, Unseen Servant 2 Alter Self, Arcane Lock, Augury, Borrowed Knowledge, Crown of Madness, Enchance Ability, Hold Person, Levitate, Misty Step, Phantasmal Force 3 Animate Dead, Bestow Curse, Clairvoyance, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Glyph of Warding, Magic Circle, Major Image, Melf’s Minute Meteors, Summon Lesser Demons, Tiny Servant 4 Banishment, Confusion, Dimension Door, Divination, Gravity Sinkhole, Hallucinatory Terrain, Locate Creature, Phantasmal Killer, Summon Greater Demon 5 Contact Other Plane, Dominate Person, Far Step, Hold Monster, Infernal Calling, Legend Lore, Scrying, Seeming, Telekinesis, Teleportation Circle 6 Arcane Gate, Contingency, Flesh to Stone, Mental Prison, Summon Fiend, Sunbeam, Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise 7 Crown of Stars, Plane Shift, Reverse Gravity, Simulacrum, Symbol, Teleport 8 Dark Star, Dominate Monster, Feeblemind, Sunburst, Telepathy 9 Foresight, Meteor Swarm, Ravenous Void

Because we haven’t seen much of what Stolas can do, this is a lot of speculative building. But, if I end up being way off, I can always rebuild Stolas later in the show’s run. But for what we know of Stolas now when there’s only two seasons so far, this feels like a pretty good application of what he’s capable of so far. Hopefully, as the series continues, I’ll be able to do more Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel builds going forward.

#stolas #helluva boss #hazbin hotel #vivzie pop #vivziepop #vivzieverse #helluvaverse #hazbinverse #ars goetia #demon #demonology #stolitz #stolitzo

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seasonclans · 4 months

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[ID: Three creatures depicted together, above them are labels that say 'Midnight Sky', 'Stone Teller', and 'Soul Devourer'. Midnight Sky is a starry badger with markings resembling the northern lights, golden eyes, and a moon on her forehead. Stone Teller is a scrawny hairless cat with rock-like spines along his back, green eyes, and the planet earth on his forehead. Soul Devourer is a tall and spindly reddish-orange lion-like cat with a pitch black mane and tufted tail, golden eyes, and an eclipse on his forehead. End ID.]

Three beings are known throughout the Sky Islands. The beings that created this land, the beings that have molded it to their will, the beings that have influenced and guided cats since the beginning. The beings all so different, except for their shared name...

The Three Immortals

When the Star Plane materialized, these three were formed with it. Since before even the Dawn of the Clans, they have affected the lives of mortals, whether it be Midnight Sky's prophecies, Stone Teller's imparting of knowledge, or Soul Devourer's pure destruction. These three can be called upon using their true names, which remain unknown except to those who search. But just who are these immortals?

(more under the cut)

[ID: Three beings depicted together. The first one is a white orb that glows a bright blue; this orb is a star seen close up. The second is the vague form of a white cat, glowing a piercing golden with golden eyes. The final one is a black hole with swirling reds and oranges surrounding it. End ID.]

Midnight Sky

Aka: Midnight, The Stars, Sky, Moon

Midnight Sky, the kindest of the three, oversees the starry skies of her domain. She created the stars for all creatures of the Star Plane to enjoy, as well as all herbs found on the Sky Islands.

Midnight Sky is the one to invoke when you're looking for a prophecy. She will send a StarClan envoy to relay information, often a cat close to the invoker.

Her dream form is a starry badger, and her most common physical forms are a badger, raven, or a deer.

Her alignment is good, she represents the sky and future, and she parallels herbalists.

Stone Teller

Aka: Rock, The Tree, Earth, Seasons

Stone Teller, the mediator of the three, oversees the earth and life of his domain. He created all living creatures of the Star Plane, as well as all the plants the Clans have incorporated into their diet.

Stone Teller is the one to invoke when you're looking for knowledge. He often sends a vision of the past pertaining to what you want.

His dream form is an earthen cat, and his most common physical forms are a hairless cat, owl, or a squirrel.

His alignment is neutral, he represents the earth and past, and he parallels mediators.

Soul Devourer

Aka: Sol, The Abyss, Void, Sun

Soul Devourer, the most chaotic of the three, dwells in the darkness of the abyss. He created the Starless Forest, as well as the black holes that cats' stars can become.

Soul Devourer is the one to invoke when you're looking for war. He's always willing to lend a blessing if it means another soul in his domain to feed on.

His dream form is an abyssal lion, and his most common physical forms are a lion (as cats know them) or cougar, a hawk, or a coyote.

His alignment is evil, he represents the abyss and present, and he parallels warriors.

#midnight warrior cats #ari's seasons au #seasons au lore #the immortal three #rock warrior cats #sol warrior cats #warrior cats rewrite

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russetfoxfur · 7 months

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Okay, I’ve got a really good Season idea.

Season of Reunion.

The spirits have long dwelled within the starry reaches of the Mother Bird… but something in the darkest depths of the sinister Wasteland is calling them back, trapping them in the kingdom of Sky. Go forth, child of light. Help bring our ancestors back where they belong.

Idea under the cut because it’s a little long and rambly.

Basically, Season of Reunion would be a chance to bring back long-loved Spirits instead of using new ones.

Each week, a new Spirit is called back, in a seemingly random place in the Realm they were first found in. Don’t know times; not good at that. This Season would require you have gone through Eden. Any Spirit called back will have the same tree theyd have if they were a TS.

The seasonal area would be a quaint camp nestled between the Forest and the Valley, though you’d enter through the Forest. It’s a cozy place with space for Spirits to roam about. There’s a bunch of candles and a Winged Light. No rain here. Pretty beautiful place, all things considered, probably called something like Forest Foothills.

The quests are all about finding how to stop the spirits from coming back again. Most Spirits are worried about the precedent this sets for the future of Sky and believe they will never go back. The first quest would be the Reunion Guide meeting with a Seasonal Spirit like… let’s say Leaping Dancer for now. Dancer is surprised to find themselves in the Valley. I’m not really good at coming up with something for the Skykid to do, so lets continue with the story.

Three weeks pass; things haven’t gotten better. Then, the Guide finds a strange dark object tethered to their… thing you ignite when you want to relive memories whatever that is. You go back through the realms to see whether burning this thing would free the Spirits. It doesn’t.

Three more weeks, quest three of five. Guide notices the krill in the Wasteland have become way more vicious. You have to lead an unknown Spirit through the whale graveyard thingy and to the Temple because theyre stranded. Quest ends with the Spirit getting krilled by the three krill near the temple, which have inexplicably come out. Don’t worry; these don’t linger.

Three more weeks. Guide realizes that a new krill is malevolently tearing up the entirety of the wasteland and encouraging evil behavior. To stop it, you must collect the candles from the Valley’s Temple to use to defeat the krill. Problem is? A few crabs have gone and hid all the candles. You find them.

Three more weeks. Finally, you are ready to face the krill. You go to the Wasteland Temple and find the King Krill, who was raised from the dead and plans to feast on the Spirits. You defeat him in a tactical battle of hiding and lighting lanterns around the room, until finally you are able to send him back into the sands where he belongs. You go back to the camp and watch as all the Spirits return to the stars. All is well.

Much like Traveling Spirits, you’d have to relive memories to get a Reunion Spirit’s tree.

I imagine the Seasonal Candles would be swapped out for regular candles, to give moths an edge. Also, candle quota would be higher, more around forty to sixty instead of twenty. Wax would give more candles as well, so only minimal changes to candle running would be needed.

Finally, this season would be a little more like Shattering in that there’s no dedicated cosmetics. Yeah, the Guide has a few things, but most of the cosmetics are returning things. Also, potential for Lore!! we love lore. A little more on the challenging side, youd probably be required to have a friend for the King Krill quest or the Spirit through the whale graveyard quest. I just think this would be really cool.

Feel free to pitch your ideas in the reblogs or replies!

#sky cotl #sky game #skycotl #sky: children of light #that game sky #that sky game #skychildrenofthelight #sky season ideas #why do we have a billion tumblr tags. hell #skykid things

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enchantedchocolatebars · 6 months

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Kid Philip and Kid Caleb go inside a hot topic?

Rot Topic

"Stay close, Philip," Caleb would instruct his "brother" as "they" walked along the sidewalk in present day Gravesfield.

The small blonde still didn't know how he and his little brother ended up there or why everything appeared so strange, but during their walk, they encountered a piece of green currency that had a funny looking man on the front and a '100' labeled on each of its corners lying idly on the ground.

Picking the money up, Caleb decided to slip it into his back trouser pocket.

It may come in handy later.

"We have to find a way back home. Mother and Father are likely feeling a great deal of worry due to our absence."

Caleb glanced down after saying that, but Philip was not there.

Upon stopping, the blonde's eyes widened and he frantically turned his head side to side in the hope of spotting his brother nearby.

Fortunately, when he turned around, he found Philip standing in the middle of the pavement, staring at something with starry eyes, his mouth agape.

Caleb exhaled a sigh of relief and went up to him.

"What are you looking at, Pip?"

The elder asked him, to which Pip directs his pointer finger at said thing, stars still present in his eyes.

"Loook..." The younger responds with astonishment.

As Caleb looks ahead, he sees a large white building with people wearing costumes entering it.

"Gravesfield Shopping Mall?" Caleb read the sign on the building to himself as he looked at Philip. "What's a... shopping mall?"

"I don't know!" Philip beamed excitedly before running towards the large building. "But I want to find out!"

"Philip, wait!" Caleb called out, running behind his brother.

...

Upon entering, the boys were captivated by the new setting they were now in.

The mall's interior was huge.

No, MASSIVE.

There were numerous shops and stores in every direction.

Crowds of people wearing costumes were bustling above and below the floors while spooky music was blaring over the speakers.

It was the peak of the Halloween season.

The boys' 1600's outfits made them blend in perfectly.

"Wow, I've never seen a place like this before. Where should we go first, Pip?"

"Ooo, ooo, Caleb, Caleb! I want to go up there!" Pip pointed upwards to the second floor.

Caleb gazed up. "I would like that too, but how can we get up there?"

How did those people get up there?

"Oh, Caleb," Philip grinned, tugging at his brother's shirt while directing his finger at a set of stairs that appeared to be moving by themselves.

"Look!" Caleb did exactly that.

Two mall visitors stepped on the electrical staircase and were immediately transported to the second floor.

The small blonde smiled. "Good eye, Pip!"

He gave his little brother a small pat on the head as they proceeded to the stairs.

...

"We're here! Where should we go next?" Caleb asked Philip.

"Hmm..." Blue eyes began to examine the various stores in the vicinity.

The one close by caught Philip's attention the most.

"How about that one?" The store Philip was pointing to was colored black and had the words "ROT TOPIC" displayed in red neon letters.

Philip smiled innocently at his brother. "I want to go there!"

"But Caleb!" Philip protested with a whine, "I want to go there! It looks like a lot of fun!"

The store in question caught Caleb's eye and caused him to appear hesitant. "I don't know, Pip, that store looks..." He gulps.

"Spooky." Caleb shivers.

"But Philip--"

"Pleaaase?" He pleaded.

"Philip--"

The younger presents his largest set of puppy dog eyes.

Caleb sighs, giving in. "Okay, fine. But if things gets too spooky, we're leaving. "

"Yay, adventure!" Philip giddily skips in.

Caleb remains jittery about entering the store, staring at the frightening sign, but despite his fear, he takes a deep breath and follows Pip inside.

Being the oldest, he was required to remain courageous and guard Philip against any evil spirits that may attempt to attack them while they were in the store.

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residences-of-the-darkforest · 1 month

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Grand-Dark Kit: Blackice

Nicknames: Blackkit

Gender: she-cat

Sexuality: pansexual, demiromantic

Family: ?? ?? (TBA)

Other Relations: ?? (TBA)

Clan: N/A

Rank: none

Current Residence: Place of No stars

Health Complications: N/A

Dark Benefits: N/A

Characteristics: lures living kits and apprentices into the Dark Forest and treats them like family until they earn their warrior names, then kills them

Number of Victims: 8+

Number of Murders: 8+

Murder Method: drowning, suffocating, slashing

Known Victims: unnamed living cats

Victim Profile: kits and apprentices of the living Clans

Extra:

When most cats think of evil, they think of the original Dark Forest residences, the ones who had lived but who had committed such horrific atrocities that they were denied an afterlife in the Starry fields.

They simply don't think of the innocent Dark Kits born into a rotten forest by no fault of their own, the kits who had no chance to prove themselves worthy of a lush paradise.

No one batted an eye when Blackice became awestruck with stories of Dream-walking.

Why wouldn't she? It was an interesting topic. Dead cats walking in the dreams of the living, able to speak with them, touch them, hurt them? The idea had many Dark Kits lost for words.

Blackice didn't ask how it was done, at least, she didn't pry. So no one thought that she had planned to use it for herself.

She was smart. She pushed herself until she figured out how to do it on her own.

Then the horrors began.

She lured the young ones in.

But she didn't kill them. No, she played with them! She taught them hunting moves and fighting moves too advanced for their current training, and she would tell them stories and lick them clean.

She would treat them as close as kin with flesh and blood twins to her own.

And none of it mattered.

They earned their full names, and they became free game. She sometimes waited as soon as their silent vigil, sometimes waited moons after they became warriors. But all her little friends, who trusted her like another mentor, an older sister, or even a second parent, would perish by her claws.

Any cat who knew of her deeds speculated on why she waited to harm them. Did she not want to hurt the young? Or did she wish to avoid consequences for such a thing?

She played with the methods. Slice them, split them, drown them, suffocate them, whatever her heart desired.

It was easy to think that she never cared for these cats to begin with, that they were always going to die. But if and when cats saw the way she acted with them prior to her hunts, they would double-guess themselves. She would act so kind and loving, as if she truly and genuinely cared for her future victims.

It is hard to decide which is more horrific. That she genuinely loved her victims like good friends or even family and loved torturing them just as much, or that she could trick even seasoned Dark Forest warriors into thinking she cared about them at all, when all the while not a drop of affection ever embraced her.

Additional Information:

--I thought it would be fun to make an evil Dark Kit that isn't already attached to an evil family!

Yes, her name is kinda cheesy. I was thinking "something dark and something light, like her pelt." and then I saw the word 'black ice' and thought yeah that's good.

--I left her family open in case anyone wanted to have their Dark Kits as her parents. Reminder that "Grand Dark Kits" aren't just the kits of the first Dark Kits, but any generation that comes after (so a great-great-great-great Grand Dark Kit would still just be a Grand Dark Kit).

--We know that they aren't technically dead, but they don't, so they're gonna be called "dead cats."

--The top part is a mix of a resident profile and Dark Kit profile on refs.

--Base: Warrior Cat OC base by VanyCat on DeviantArt

#dark forest profile #dark kit profile #evil dark kit #blackice #profile #place of no stars oc #place of no stars profile #resident profile #long post #dark kit #grand dark kit

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natsu-tte-noodle · 11 months

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手紙 (Letters) - To Misumi

(Cross Posted on AO3)

Words: 781 Warnings: ACT 5 Spoilers

Misumi,

It’s getting rather chilly these days. Before we know it, it’ll drop below freezing in the mornings. Be sure to bundle up when you go out.

I’m not one for perfect settings or seasonal hobbies, but it really does feel like the perfect time of year to write a letter. I wonder if that was intentional on Izumi’s part, or if she got lucky with a coincidence.

Honestly, I had expected to get this done much quicker, but I ended up getting distracted trying to bully Chigasaki into starting his. Which I’ve had no luck with, by the way. At this point, it’s his problem if that gets out to someone who cares.

That said, feel free to tell someone who cares.

Anyway, I can’t say I’m particularly familiar with writing letters that aren’t for business. Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m not familiar with writing letters where I cared at all what the person getting it would think.

I’d also be lying if I said I was completely sure what to write here. My own letter ended up yelling at me quite a bit, but it was from Sakyo, so I guess that’s to be expected. Still, it’s not the best reference to go off of. Leave it to our director to throw me completely for a loop with this, right? For now, I’ll write whatever comes to mind and we’ll see where that takes us.

The other day, when I was coming home after an extended overtime, I happened to see you up on the roof. I’m still not sure how you manage to get up there silently enough to not wake even a single person. It’s certainly something.

I was tempted to call out to you, but you seemed so unusually serious. I suppose the night naturally breeds that sort of atmosphere, but in the moment, it still felt like I shouldn’t impose.

Is it the starry sky itself that you’re interested in? Or is it the mystique behind it that draws your attention? I think both are impressive in their own right. Beyond our Earth, already bigger than we can really comprehend, there’s a whole universe out there. Only visible at night, and so far away that it all appears to us as tiny. Did you know? Some starlight is billions of years old, and is only just reaching us now.

Writing about the stars reminds me of the Tanabata festivities we held back in July. If I remember correctly, I woke up to a room covered in layered triangles, courtesy of a certain triangle lover. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I spent a lot of my life outside of Japan for studies and work, so I actually had never really celebrated Tanabata before. Needless to say, it was quite the surprise to find all those decorations, since I wasn’t even familiar with them before that day.

When I first heard the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi, I instantly understood how the sight of the Milky Way in the night sky would evoke the image of a wide river. A river made of billions of stars, only crossable because two people wished hard enough for it. It feels hopeful to a fault. Though I suppose that in itself can be admirable.

That’s neither here nor there, though. I don’t have particularly strong feelings on all this; I guess you could say it’s just the impression I get of still nights with only the moon as company.

In that stillness, it really does feel like a wish on a tanzaku could be granted, doesn’t it? My wish is a secret though, of course.

That’s all I’ve got, really. Be sure to not catch a cold up there.

Chikage

What do you see up in the stars?

Are you looking for something in particular? When you speak to the empty air, ‎are you talking to someone?

Do you think they hear you?

This must be coming out of nowhere. Honestly, I’m not even sure myself where I’m coming from or trying to go with this.

I just thought that it would be nice, if that person up in the stars is really listening. If they were watching over you and hearing your stories. If they could see you living the life they hoped you would, when they weren’t there anymore.

Or maybe I’m being presumptuous. I don’t mean to assume things about you or what you do up there, so I apologize.

If it’s alright with you, though, I think it might be nice to join you up there one day. There’s someone I’ve been meaning to catch up with, too.

[Top] [Back - To Masumi] [Next]

#a3!#a3! fanfiction #a3! fanfic #chikage utsuki #misumi ikaruga #a3! chikage #a3! misumi

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boysplanetrecaps · 1 year

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Recap of Boys Planet Episode 1 (Part 1)

It’s time for another giant MNET show! Are you excited, fellow Star Creator? Woo!

This is Boys Planet, also called Boys Planet 999 by random incorrect people, including me. And this thing you’re reading is a “watch along” guide/recap to the show. You can read it as you watch the show to get the behind the scenes dirt, or to keep track of who is who and what is going on, or after you watch, or whenever. I don’t spoil anything with respect to who gets kicked off, but I will help you connect the dots with respect to who is who. I’ll use helpful pictures and stuff, too.

All time stamps will correspond to the version on Viki. When I list ages, I’ll use international ages (Korean ages have historically always been 1 more than the way the rest of the world accounts ages).

Who am I?

An internet rando. I live somewhere in the United States and am over 21 years of age. I used to sing acapella and have a strong sense of pitch, but for dancing I just know what I like. I can read/understand a bit of Korean and a bit of Japanese as well, and can tell the difference between spoken Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, so at times I might be able to shed a little light as to what’s going on. When it comes to evaluating performances, I’m not likely to be mean, and I try to understand what might be going on with people but I will be snarky and honest, especially about the editing. Cool? Cool! 🙂To the recap!

Feel free to skip past the drama-teaser to 1:25 for an earnest promise that the show’s producers have paid other people to watch them so that they can’t possibly cheat, before the show can begin and of course, immediately begin to cheat. Yay!

The show’s host, I’m sorry, “Star Master”, Hwang Minhyun, talks earnestly and dully about how there are stars in the sky and foreign members of kpop groups. Hilariously, he appears to be in a futuristic room looking out into a starry sky, perhaps aboard an orbiting space station with a really good gravity system in place. His desk, a cheap Ikea looking affair, is bedecked with a model of the main seating area for the show -- The Space Council Chambers -- a name plate that says “Star Creator”, an unusually huge yellow desk lamp, and an old fashioned globe. This is the shit I live for.

Minhyun is known for his appearance on Produce 101 Season 2 (aka, Broduce 101) as well as for being a popular member of both Wanna One and NU’EST. I’m more of a Baekho girl, but I like Minhyun just fine. There’s something about his face that I never, ever, ever recognize him when I see him, which I find is often the case for Korean “visuals.” He is nice looking, if a bit… personality free? But that could be the directing.

Anyway, Minhyun gets up and pushes a button that says start…

And then we see a (computer generated) room which has been set aside to house a large…. gumball… machine... thing (that is computer generated). Large plastic balls fall from the two parts of the machine to meet in the center. None of this is necessary, or real, and I find that delightful.

Minhyun tells us that now, we are all Star Creators and we’re going to make the next Kpop boy group that the world wants. You know, in case you’re not happy with A.C.E, Astro, Ateez, The Boys, BTS, Ciipher, CIX, Day6, DKZ, Drippin, Enhypen, E’last, Exo, FTIsland, GOT7, Golden Child, Highlight, IKON, JustB, Kingdom, Lucy, Monsta X, NCT, Oneus, ONF, OnlyoneOf, Pentagon, The Rose, Seventeen, SF9, SHINee, Stray Kids, TO1, Treasure, Trendz, TXT, TVXQ, Up10tion, Vav, Verivery, Victon, Vixx, WEi, Winner, Xdinary Heroes, Younite, or Z-Stars. But yes, we need more groups. Bring ‘em on.

Minhyun goes on to talk about how there are two groups of trainees -- K group (Korean) and G group (Global), represented by blue and pink respectively, as well as two heavily mic’d flags.

“Please vote for the boy shining brightest!” the shiny boys chant in unison.

You can vote for whoever you want, whether K or G, though the editors do strongly suggest you vote K, and the votes will again be weighted the way they were in GP999 -- ie, Korean votes will be weighted as 50% of the votes, and Global votes will be weighted as the other 50%. If you want to skip past the voting instructions, skip to 5:20.

So, we look down at what looks kind of like one of those rolling-marble puzzles,

but it turns out to be the hallway through which all the trainees have to walk on their way to the Space Council Chambers.

Lee Da Eul (18) and Lim Jun Seo (17) from 143 Entertainment, the first to enter, are offered sparkly star stickers, and they decide to give themselves 1 star each, adding that they aren’t totally sure if they even deserve those one stars. Ok, politeness is sweet, but why go on this show if you don’t believe in your abilities? Anyway, these chosen two get to say “woah” and “eego buyo?” as the lights turn on loudly. They explore the Council seating, feel the soft seats for the top 9, then decide to sit in seats 4 and 5. (Later on, they’ll perform “Replay” by SHINee as their audition.)

Next to enter are the trainees from Wakeone, who, we see in a flashback, had a pre-show meeting with their sunbae, Kim Chae Hyun from Kep1er, who did really well on GP999. Chaehyun encouraged them to be confident on the show, saying, “If someone is very good but has no confidence then there’s no charm to them.” The five Korean trainees from Wakeone gave themselves 7 stars each -- these are Kim Taerae, Park Hanbin, Lee Jung Hyun, Mun Junghyun, and Park Minseok. Their confidence spurs Lim Jun Seo to go move to seat 9. Wakeone’s maknae, Mun Jung Hyun (17), sits in the chair for #1. (Later on, these 5 will perform “The Real” by ATEEZ.)

From here there’s going to be a lot of fighting as to who gets to sit in that chair, and I’ll be honest, I don’t care that much.

Next to enter is: Canada! One of the Wakeone trainees says “I would’ve never imagined someone from Canada” as the on-screen words say, “What will this Canadian trainee look like?” The combined impression from those two sentences is that people from Canada are unimaginably weird looking. Mun Jung Hyun wonders, “Will people with blonde hair and blue eyes show up?” Which, again, hilarious. Do they not know that Somi (IOI/soloist/future Star Master this season), Wendy from Red Velvet, Mark Lee from NCT, and a bunch of other k-idols are from Canada? Why do I know that, come to think of it? Why do I know that, and not where my keys are?

Also, whenever Koreans talk about Canada, all I can think about is the k-drama, Goblin, in which they talk about “Canada” as if it is a single city with maybe two restaurants, and where it is always the beginning of autumn, encased in a gentle fluttering of orange maple leaves.

We meet Seok Matthew (20), who is independant, and has given himself three stars. He looks a tiny winy bit like Xiumin from Exo to me. In an interview, we can see that he speaks Korean reasonably well. His sister got him into dancing and now he really likes it, and he came to Korean to reach his dream.

Then we meet Japanese trainee Takuto, born November of 2007, dressed for… boxing? He has boxing gloves hanging from a string around his neck and has a sweat band around his head. In his intro package, he speaks in sort of halting Korean -- hey, it’s a lot better than my own Korean -- and poses in power poses to show he’s a “manly man” (they translate it as “tough guy” but google translate says “manly man” and I think that’s funnier).

An up close shot reveals he has actually stenciled “Takuto” in English letters on his cheek with blush.

As the MNET editors mercilessly play the clip of him saying he’s a manly man ( “상 남… 상 남 자” /“Sang nam… sang namja…”) over and over and over again as if to teach us the proper pronunciation, Takuto looks around at the older bigger guys and makes a big heart over his head with his hands. All the other guys react by laughing and clapping, charmed.

MNET obviously isn’t showing everyone who comes in, as eagle eyed viewer will spot additional trainees in the Space Council who were not shown entering, but hey, I mean, whatever, it’s MNET. This has been edited so much it’s basically fiction.

In comes Wumuti (23), who has such a unique look to him that I was curious as to his background. My internet roving tells me that he was also on the MNET show Under 19, and that he’s an ethnic Uyghur from China. I was like, ok, what is a Uyghur? Turns out they’re a sort of Turkish ethnic group but mostly they live in Northwest china, and oh…. It’s really sad and awful, guys. The Chinese government is doing things like work camps and forced sterilization and stuff to try to wipe them out. I can’t help but root for anyone who comes from a background like that. Also, his name written in Korean characters looks cute: 우무티. Later on he’ll perform UN Village by Baekhyun.

So, Wumuti comes in and we see he’s given himself 6 stars. He makes a beeline for Chair 1, where he loses Rock Paper Scissors. Come on, can’t the guy catch a break?

Then we see a montage of trainees fighting for Chair 1, and again, I don’t care. They plank for it, thumb war, etc. Kum Jun Hyeon, 19, who has absolutely covered his nametag in stars to the point you can barely see even his name, is cheered on by his Redstart ENM labelmates as he nabs the chair. They have also gone completely HAM on those stars. (Later on, he’ll do Nunu Nana by Jessi.) I feel worse and worse for our initial two guys, giving themselves just one star.

Apparently, MNET isn’t interested in spending time watching each trainee come in this time, and that’s possibly for the best, but it does make it a bit sketchy that we see certain trainees.

For example, we meet the trainees from Taipei, who come in like this:

Left to right, this is Chen Kuan Jui, Qiu Sheng Yang, Chen Ren You, and Dong Dong. Kuan Jui, holding that bejeweled stick, has given himself 5 stars, while the others have given themselves 2 or 3 each. Mun Jung Hyun and Kim Tae Rae wonder to each other, is that a magic staff? Like the kind that Sun Wukong carries? (Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King, is a famous character from Chinese mythology.) (Later on they’ll do Tiger Inside by SuperM.)

Kuan Jui marches up to Chair 1 and does a full standing split that would actually put Le Sserafim’s Kazuha to shame

And thus, he earns the seat.

I don’t know if the ability to put one’s ankle behind one’s neck is a something I need from a kpop idol. But I mean, good for him? I guess?

In come the trainees from Jellyfish, and Lee Ye Dam reacts as if someone has splashed him in the face with cold water, which, given that this is MNET, is not impossible. Someone says, “no way!” which is very odd, because Jellyfish always sends trainees to shows like this. I mean, Mina and Sejong came out of PD 101. And it’s not as if Jellyfish is doing all that well. They squandered Sejong, they murdered Gugudan, and their most successful group is Verivery, who are very sweet, talented, and hardworking but not exactly smashing sales records. So yeah, not sure what Yedam is so excited about.

We get a bit of a slow-mo to take in what we might reasonably be excited about: sexy Park Gun Wook (18).

To be clear: I don’t personally find him sexy; he’s way too young to seem sexy to me personally. I’m saying that that is obviously what he’s going for. He gives off big time Kang Daniel vibes to me, not really in looks but in terms of what he’s aspiring to. He and his fellow Jellyfish trainees are tall and manly, and Gun Wook already may have a fan following since he did pretty well on another survival show called Wild Idol. Gun Wook goes straight for Chair 1, and the other trainees comment on how muscular he is. He challenges the current seat sitter, a Japanese trainee named Riku, to a thigh wrestling game (??). Poor Riku -- we didn’t see him take the seat, but we sure see him lose the seat.

Time for an American trainee! I love that the Korean word for USA is “MiGuk” (or Bi-Goo, as it’s usually pronounced). Apparently it translates to Beautiful Country, which is so kind of them to say. I hope that the USA will do more things to earn that name going forward.

Out come Jay and Na Kamden. Jay, lovey, there are already enough Jays in Kpop --you have to think of a different name. It seems like Jay strongly prefers speaking English, but understands some Korean, while Kamden understands Jay’s English but prefers to speak Korean. Kamden appeared on Wild Idol as well.

Then we get a montage of tall global trainees, mostly Chinese. For people like me who don’t readily understand heights in cm, it’s good to know that 183 cm is 6 feet. So someone 188 cm is like, 6’2.

We also meet Cong and Dang Hong Hai from Vietnam, who later on will perform View by SHINee. Hong Hai speaks Korean, even if it’s with a really thick accent. It has to be so hard for the global contestants.

Then we meet the group from Osaka, Japan, and it turns out one of them is Keita, who the whole Space Council recognizes. He was on YG’s TreasureBox, the show that made the group Treasure, and then later on debuted with Ciipher. It’s not too weird he’d come on this show, as Ciipher is still, alas, in semi-nugu territory.

Ah, here is Yuehua, who are sending in 4 Korean trainees and 4 Global trainees, each entering via their respective doorway, which is so charmingly unnecessary. The Korean trainees come out in all black, while the “global” team is a bit more colorful in faded denim. If you’re not familiar, Yuehua is a Chinese company with branches in Korea. They co-manage WJSN with Starship, and manage Everglow outright. They also manage new boy band Tempest.

Anyway, then there’s a montage of the trainees finding each other handsome and saying they look like other famous people, capped off by the entrance of Sung Han Bin to the strains of tender piano music that presumably plays in his wake naturally due to his extreme handsomeness.

Even I can tell that he is in fact, quite good looking in that classic kpop way. He looks like he should be with SM entertainment, but he’s from STUDIO GL1DE, which doesn’t bode well for his skills. A guy who looks like that who could do a nice step-touch and could at least carry a tune in a bucket would get picked up by a more prestigious agency. But maybe I’ll be proven wrong on that…. Hmmm….

Cube’s trainees are announced, and we’re treated to a brief montage of Cube’s top artists, including BtoB, Pentagon and G-Idle. The camera pauses for a moment on Hui from Pentagon as the group performs Shine. The trainees talk about how talented the Cube sunbaes are -- how talented would their hoobaes be? Out comes Bak Do Ha, looking like a figure skater. (Later on he’ll be performing My House by 2PM.)

There’s still one more empty chair, and the Space Council wonders: what agency could sending the last trainee? It turns out it’s also… Cube?!? Bak Do Ha smiles and laughs to himself as the other trainees are wondering why this last trainee is being announced last and separately. They all immediately recognize him as Hui-sunbaenim from Pentagon, a group that debuted in 2016, has had some serious ups and some serious downs, and won a bunch of music shows as recently as a few months ago. This 29-year-old man who has already done his military service bows to the 15 year olds and introduces himself as Lee Hoe Taek from Cube, politely saying “I look forward to working with you.”

Guys. GUYS. I have a lot of feelings about Hui from Pentagon being on this show. I could talk endlessly about it, but the upshot is: negative. I have negative feelings about this. When Pentagon went on Kingdom, they actually kind of… fell in my esteem. Hui seemed so sad, like the group was just so sad, and Hui was pushing so hard to make his song remixes cool that he forgot to make them… pleasant to listen to, or fun to see performed. I think Hui is a genuine, top-tier talent when it comes to songwriting, producing, and singing. I love a lot of Pentagon songs, including ones people don’t talk about but should, like Can You Feel It and Sha La La. I am still angry that E-Dawn got kicked out over being a human being with a love life, and angry that it hurt Pentagon a lot, and heartbroken that a lot of that probably landed on Hui’s head.I get it that he’s doing this to get people to notice Pentagon. After all, their contracts are up in 2023, and no doubt they’ll want to leave that awful agency. Maybe they’ll pull a GOT7 and all leave together and stay together. So I get it that he wants to promote. But the thing is, I don’t believe that “all publicity is good publicity.” I think having people feel sorry for you will make them not feel impressed by you, or attracted to you, and I think that will hurt you. I think this was a big mistake and it makes me feel second-hand-humiliation. I hope I’m wrong. Sincerely, I do.

Anyway, this award winning songwriter and top-tier vocalist has rated himself 3 stars. Thinking about it, that was kind of the only move he could make -- he has to pretend to have a reason to be on the show, and that reason can only be to “work on myself and continue to improve to be the best Lee Hoe Taek I can be”, or something along those lines. To be Hui and give himself 4 (or more) stars would feel like an NBA star who came to dunk on a bunch of high school kids.

We cut to his first interview with the staff, in which he said that he had only gotten discharged from the military a week ago and feels shy in front of the camera. We get a brief montage of trainees saying they’re not sure why he’s here, some of them seeming a little irritated. Others say that it’s a honor to be on the same show with Hui.

Hui decides to challenge the current number-1 chair sitter (16 year old Park Ji Hoo, who says “I just got here!”) to a contest to win the chair, and bowing deeply and speaking politely, says he’d like to have a singing contest. Of course. He lets out a delightful musical phrase, and Ji Hoo stands there listening, then scurries away without singing a note.

There’s something so poignant about Ji Hoo saying, “I just got here” to Hui. He just got here in the show, he just got here in this industry -- he just got here on this PLANET compared to Hui. And here comes Hui to take the chair. I like Hui, I do, I just…. Ugh.

Ollie, who is representing China but seems quite comfortable speaking English, notices that the two sides of the room are really different, with K-group mostly wearing suits or leather, and G-group more varied and colorful. Yes, that is obvious. Can we have another season of Youth With You that doesn’t end with a milk scandal, please? Anyway…

Interestingly, Ollie can also speak a decently pronounced, if slightly halting, Korean in his interview. Zhang Hao can also speak a bit of Korean -- it sounds to me like he has a Chinese accent on his Korean, but it’s not like I would really know. But they’re both Yuehua trainees and it wouldn’t surprise me if their agency gave them intensive Korean language training. Love that. It’s really smart of Yuehua, and so truly helpful to their trainees.

0:23:00 The Judges Come Out

The room darkens and the trainees watch a short video about how they’re on Boys Planet now and are trying to become shining stars or whatever the shit. Turns out this year, there will be multiple hosts, and the viewers will be called Star Creators. The boys are nervous in general and in specific.

Time to meet the vocal master: Lee Seok Hoon. The trainees recognize him, and while they clearly respect him, they’re scared of him after his time on Produce101. He’s known for turning his head to the side and looking disgusted when someone hits a sour note, or for nodding appreciatively with his eyebrows raised when someone hits a good note.

Solji is the female vocal master and their enthusiasm seems bigger -- it’s Solji from Exid! Who doesn’t love her? Wrong people, that’s who. A trainee says that she’s been teaching at a University, and like, I hope so. I just want Solji’s life to be full of respect and comfort. She just seems like such a class act. I bet she’s an excellent teacher. And then Onestar comes out, who we might recognize from GP999. The trainees cheer for him and he makes them cheer more.

Then the rap master: pH-1 from H1ghr music, who introduces himself in rapid English. Several of the trainees claim to be big fans. I’ll be honest and say I’ve never heard of him. And I actually do listen to some k-rap. Per Wikipedia, he was born in Korea but moved to New York when he was 12. I guess he chose English as the lingua franca, but in that case, talk more slowly, dude. Anyway. Wikipedia adds, “As the three keywords he pursues in his music are truth, positivity, and experience, his work contains positive or honest messages, generally excluding references to drugs, money bragging and excessive "flexing", and explicit sexual content.” So, look forward to that. Or not. I don’t know what you’re into.

Dance Masters: From 1Million, Back Koo Young and Choi Young Joon. Look I don’t know much about much but I *do* know that 1Million is top tier when it comes to dance. So these guys are good. The trainees are psyched to see them. Also, Lip J, who is “the living legend of waacking.” The trainees say their judges/trainers are like the Avengers.

The judges immediately move into intimidation mode. It’s time to find out how the trainees rated themselves, star wise. The Korean group was more confident, overall.

What’s sort of interesting about this is that during GP999, the Chinese girls were far more confident than the Korean girls. That’s because Chinese culture isn’t as self-effacing as Korean culture is, in general. Kind of interesting, too, that they had the boys do this, but not the girls. With the girls it would have been such a mine field because it’s “unfeminine” to have faith in yourself. Anyway.

Japanese trainee Haruto interviews, in Korean, “Only a maximum of four stars were allowed, but almost everyone did whatever they wanted.” Yep.

The judges explain that their first performance will be the “Style Level Test”, during which their self-assessed star levels will be replaced by judge-assessed stars. Also, we learn that K-group and G-group are being pitted against each other; the team that wins more stars overall will get access to the next song that they have to practice a day earlier. Kind of cruel -- my assumption, without having seen the whole episode, is that the K-group will win, and the G-group will be at a further disadvantage, having one day fewer to practice and needing even more time due to language barriers. Why do I watch these shows? Am I mentally well?

Auditions Begin: 0:32:58

Finally, we get our first audition -- Team Jellyfish, who gave themselves all 4 stars. The trainees are suitably cowed; after all, Kim Dayeon from Kep1er is from Jellyfish. Kim Gyu Vin (who is a serious talent in his own right, and will later on perform Kick It) calls Park Gun Wook “Park Gun-Wook -nim” even though, as he notes, Gyu Vin is actually a bit older than Gun Wook. It’s just that Gun Wook looks so big and mature. Little boxer Takuto met team Jellyfish backstage and backed away from them as if scared, his hands in a fig leaf position, and they encouraged him to come closer and were nice to him and called him cute. Gun Wook is the leader, the all rounder, and is also apparently pretty nice. See? Kang Daniel vibes?

They’re going to be performing GBTB (Go Beyond the Barrier) by their sunbaes, Verivery. One of the dance masters actually choreographed this, but the boys seem confident to perform it in front of the choreographer. Fighting!

Left to right: Jang Yeo Jun, Park Hyun Been, Han Yu Seop, Park Gun Woo

My thoughts:

I’ll be honest, this is my first time hearing this song, and I’m ok not hearing it again after this. Just sort of… like what if you took all the NCT songs and threw them in a blender with an electric guitar? Sorry, VERRER. I still think Verivery are very cute and charming and my bias is Dongheon.

As for the performance: I have not a ton to say, because it was fine. All four of them did fine dance wise. Gun Wook stood out with his charisma and his big nice face. (I know the Korean ideal is small faces, but I like big faces.) I think Jang Yeo Jun danced a little bit better than the others, doing those weird leg kicks a little bit better, and Park Hyun Been rapped really fast and pretty well. Their singing was on key, too. I think Han Yu Seop was the main vocalist, but I actually think his singing was among the weakest -- there were times that I couldn’t even hear him sing. But they were dancing really hard. So for an audition for one of these shows, he was ok.

They ask GunWook to dance by himself, and he chooses a song by Seventeen. The dance masters warn him that it’s hard, but he’s unbothered. He has good charisma, great facial expressions, and sharp movements. As far as I can tell, he’s good.

The judges give them all the same score -- 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐ . They took away a star because the boys didn’t sing loud enough. The boys do their best to accept their fate.

WakeOne doing Glitch Mode.

The team comes out in a choo choo train formation -- sorry for that extremely technical term -- then introduce themselves (and I’ll tell you a little more):

Super Charming Anthonny! (He’s almost 19, from Japan, and got all A’s on Produce 101 Japan)

Refreshing energy Min! (He’s 22, from Thailand, and also went on Under Nineteen)

Powerful Dance Haruto! (He’s 18, from Japan, specializes in dance, and went semi-viral for complaining that his profile picture didn’t look like him, even tho it kinda does….)

After they introduce themselves, Haruto asks if they can have a moment to check their formation -- basically, they want to rehearse on stage during the audition? The judges let them, sighing about kids today, but everyone is mildly impressed that these foreigners are talking to each other in Korean. Min’s profile says he speaks Thai, Korean, Chinese, and English, but not Japanese, so maybe that’s why they’ve settled on Korean to talk to each other -- plus it looks better to the judges that they know enough Korean to communicate.

My thoughts:

I have to note that Glitch Mode is the kind of song I’m a bit over. I really like Cherry Bomb and Firetruck and even got on board with Kick It but this sort of shouting-in-unison, wandering base line, jazzy-melodic-SM-bridge when the singers can sing… I just am a bit past it. Sorry, folks. (Update: But I do love Ayo, so who knows anymore?) So I don’t know this song super well. I listened to it twice before watching the performance trying to figure out what the melody is and kind of failed. So. There’s that.

This was a really cute performance, though. I watched the full version on youtube before I watched the show version. All three of them danced well, with a lot of energy and great facial expressions.

Haruto obviously stood out for dancing, doing aerials and backflips and splits. He rolled with the fact that his mic pack fell out of his pocket right at the beginning, and didn’t let it show on his face. But his singing was egregious. He’s not a singer, and this song is incredibly difficult to sing even when you’re standing still. Also, his rapping wasn’t too bad.

Min did some high kicking and acrobatics as well, and his rapping was actually good. I won’t say his singing was good but it was on key as far as I could tell, which is an achievement.

Anthonny was the vocalist of the team and as such didn’t do any flipping around, but he sang the best. Like I said, overall, pretty charming. I have a soft spot for Anthonny for no darn reason. He’s just a cutie.

Interestingly, the version that aired on the show had most of the bad singing edited out. I think the show wanted Haruto to look better. The judges ask him about his dancing ability and he says he used to do ballet and proceeds to do a sort of crazy 30 consecutive ballet turns. Haruto is obviously a really good dancer, but so was Min, who also rapped well. And Haruto’s singing was very, very bad -- did I mention that? But they still gave him an All Star rating ⭐ ⭐⭐⭐ , which strikes me as objectively incorrect. I like him, you guys. I do. He’s charming and cute and a great dancer. He didn't sing well in his audition. That isn’t an opinion; it’s a fact. I think maybe 2 or 3 stars would have been fairer. Or maybe Haruto sang a separate song and did a lot better in it, but we didn't see...?

Min and Anthonny both get 3 stars 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐ , though the show doesn’t care enough to bother to show it.

Next up, at 49:00, is Team Taipei. I’ll put their photo back up so you don’t have to scroll back and forth.

Again, left to right, that’s Chen Kuan Jui, Qui Sheng Yang, Chen Ren You, and Dong Dong.

The judges immediately ask about the big stick and he explains he needs it for performance.

My thoughts: They perform Tiger Inside by SuperM. As always, I checked out the Youtube version first, before I watched the MNET edited version. I like this song just fine, if you’re wondering.

The flexible Chen Kuan Jui is 22. His online profile mentions he does ballet and that one of his hobbies is “stretching.” Yeah, that checks out. His dancing is very good -- little details like how he bends his fingers, stuff like that. You just know his toes are pointed inside those boots. That said, his vocal color is unpleasant, and his choice to retrieve and spin that dumb stick was…. You know…. A choice. A wrong choice, but a choice. Sorry if you liked it, but I found it really unimpressive. I’d rather just watch this talented dancer dance.

The blonde Qiu Sheng Yang is 21. He also was on Atom Boyz with Ren You, on the same team but eliminated much sooner than Ren You was. His performance here is not fabulous but not awful. He seemed uncomfortable to me, like he was overdancing a bit.

The distinctive looking Chen Ren You is 19. His online profile states that he’s a singer; he was on a Taiwanese reality show called Atom Boyz that sounds like a frickin’ hoot, but doesn’t seem available in full with English subtitles, anywhere. Ren You has one of those faces -- like GunWook on this show, or Sehun from EXO, or that one guy from Drippin, Junho. Like a face that’s just like HI, I AM A FACE. I dig it, don’t get me wrong. Anyway, his performance was good. I thought his dancing was purposeful, but sort of calm, and his singing was really good. On key, on rhythm, pleasant, all that good stuff. I’m rooting for him.

The delightfully monikered Dong Dong is 22 and represents Stardust Entertainment. I’m old as shit but I am still apparently 12 years old on the inside because I can’t. He apparently was on a Chinese reality show called The Coming One 2. Anyway, he does fine, I guess. On key, dancing is decent, it’s not awful. Bring it on, bringenon, brigggedon!

So yeah, I say Chen Kuan Jui was the best dancer in the group, and Renyou is the best singer in the group, but they were all basically ok. Of course, the MNET editing focuses almost entirely on the stupid stick, and Renyou’s excellent singing is edited out. They give Renyou 2 stars ⭐⭐ . Are we watching the same thing? Maybe his dancing was bad and I just can’t tell because I know nothing about dancing.

The judges focus on flexy Chen Kuan Jui and give him time to dance, and of course, he’s genuinely a very very good ballet dancer. He can get up with his toes and flip around and do all sorts of crazy stuff. But I really dislike his singing voice and I don’t know, I find him off-putting for no good reason. That’s not fair of me, but yeah, it’s where I’m at. Regardless, the judges give him 4 stars. ⭐⭐ ⭐⭐ We don’t see it, but Dong Dong gets 1 star ⭐ and Sheng Yang gets 2 stars ⭐⭐ .

Now we have a montage of G group groups: team Vietnam doing View, team Thailand doing Kokobop, and a Chinese group doing God’s Menu. The editing here is brought to you by MNET’s editing team, shown here at their most recent staff meeting.

We barely see any of these teams, so I watched their full performances on Youtube and will let tell you about it!

Team Kokobop:

A Thai duo who greet everyone with a sawadee ka. Zhang Hao from Yuehua (good looking guy with auburn hair -- we’ll meet him soon) tells Ricky from Yuehua (distinctive blonde guy, giving us Keifer Sutherland in Lost Boys vibes) that he wants to be friends with the Thai guys because he likes Thai food.

Winnie, from FirstOne Entertainment, claims his specialty is freestyle dance. He’s 24. I’ve seen his name spelled Winne, but more official sources spell it Winnie. He’s a member of nugu group NINE.i -- two other members of that group are on the show, but they’re Korean, so we’ll meet them later.

Nice is an individual trainee. He’s 22. He seems scared to look up or into camera lenses.

My Thoughts:

They perform Kokobop, and I watched the whole performance on Youtube. I’m a huge EXO-L (my bias is ALL OF THEM) and I really love this song, so I know it well. Winnie was actually pretty decent, singing a really difficult song. He was a little sharp here and there but really not that bad. He also looked pretty comfortable and hit the dance moves reasonably well. I never know what the Korean public thinks looks good, but I think his styling isn’t working for him. He’s wearing way too much foundation, that shade of hair color doesn’t suit his skin, and his contact lenses just give him an unearthly, fake look. He looks better in some photos I’ve seen of him online, like this one:

Winnie, I hope for good things for you going forward.

Nice was terrible vocally; the dancing was ok but the vocals were unacceptable. He also looked really, really shy -- like he can’t even make eye contact with the camera. I think he is way out of his league, bless him. You’re very cute, Nice. I assume you’re rich or you wouldn’t be here, so I hope your personal wealth cushions the blow when you are rightfully kicked off. (Smash cut to Nice making the final line up because he’s cute….???)

MNET editing was pretty kind, honestly. Nice can only benefit by being edited down. He’s like the shark in Jaws -- looks great as long as you don’t see him for long. The judges give Nice 0 stars, and give Winnie 1 star ⭐ .

Next up is a G-group team: Team God’s Menu

Oh, these poor guys. They look good in their outfits, to be fair, but poor guys. Non-native speakers of Korean, trying to do this song? As someone said online, “Their souls probably left their bodies when they found out they had to do this song.” I’m trying to think of a group who could cover this song and do it justice. Monsta X probably could. And I mean, of course BTS could. Probably Hui or Jeon Soyeon could do a cool remix that would suit their own teams. Regardless, this is not an ideal song for a rookie group of non-native Korean speakers.

I watched the whole performance on Youtube. I’m not obsessed with Stray Kids but I do like them (my bias is Changbin!), and I love love LOVE this song. Here’s my take:

Xuan Hao also appeared on Youth With You 3, which I didn’t watch. He ended in 62nd place and apparently also uses the name “Swen.” He says on his initial profile worksheet that God’s Menu is his favorite song, and maybe that’s one of the reasons that he did a great job here. His dancing was sharp when it had to be sharp and fluid when it had to be fluid, and his singing was on key and on the beat. He’s a better singer than I.N. anyway. Yes I said it: I.N. is not a good singer. Come find me and kill me for it, I guess? That’s the kind of thing you should end a human life for, right? Anyway, I like Xuan Hao.

Lin Shiyuan was apparently once a Cube trainee, but is now independent. He has the job of rapping Changbin’s intro rap. He doesn’t do very well. He very noticeably rushes the beat pretty much every time it’s his turn to vocalize in any way, maybe because he’s nervous, and his pronunciation is not great. He had definitely learned these complicated dance steps, but he wasn’t dancing them, just doing them. I could see the fear in his face, and when he wasn’t singing or rapping, you could almost see him counting the steps. When they were flipping the pancake, he didn’t look up to wait for it to come back down, which is 90% of the fun of that move. I can’t blame him and I’m not blaming him. Poor guy.

Feng Junlan actually did pretty well. His rapping was on the beat and sounded good, and his dancing was precise. He looked up when they flipped the pancake -- it makes such a difference. If the judges have any sense that have to have noticed how well he did.

When I tried to watch it to focus on Chen Liang, Feng Junlan kept stealing my attention. Liang did fine dance wise, as far as I could tell (but didn’t look up when they flipped the pancake!), but his vocals were very off key (if at least more or less on the beat).

The judges are kind in their manner, but not generous with their stars.

Xuan Hao gets 1 star ⭐ , which seems too low to me.

Lin Shiyuan gets 1 star ⭐ , which must be for the dancing.

Feng Junlan gets 2 stars ⭐⭐ , which seems low to me, but I’m glad it’s not 1 or 0.

Chen Liang gets 2 stars ⭐⭐ , which seems high to me.

Team View - Vietnam

My thoughts:

Obviously, like any sane person, I love this song.

Basically, none of their performance gets shown, but you guys, they were pretty good! Honestly, they sang on key and tried to keep their energy up and yeah, I don’t speak Korean but I know this song well and it didn’t sound awful. Check it out on Youtube and see for yourself -- compare their singing to that of Haruto’s and you’ll see what I mean.

The judges give 22-year-old Cong just 1 star ⭐ , which is cruelly low, and give 19 year old Dang Hong Hai 2 stars ⭐⭐ , which is ok, I’m on the fence between 2 and 3 for him. But it’s like the judges are watching these auditions from Minhyun’s space station. And maybe… I don’t know… is there a little racism? Just a little bit? Against these two Vietnamese trainees?

From what we can tell from the editing, the judges really dinged them for their pronunciation, as if that matters the most? As if the ability to sing on key isn’t, perhaps, more important?

In an interview, Cong says, in Korean, that he practices Korean every day. His pronunciation is pretty bad, though. You probably wouldn’t guess from hearing it that that was Korean, but if you listen closely you hear the Korean verb endings. It must be so hard for someone coming from a tonal language, like Vietnamese or Chinese, to learn a non-tonal language like Korean. I think it’s much easier for Japanese speakers to speak Korean -- they’re totally different languages but have similar sounds in them. (To be technical: Japanese and Korean are not related at all, but they have similar phonemes, which are the basic sounds you make when you speak. Korean has additional vowel sounds that Japanese doesn’t have, and there are other small differences, but if you can pronounce one language it wouldn’t be too hard to learn to pronounce the other.)

Then we get a mini montage about how much global trainees want to be kpop idols. Thai trainee Winnie says (in what sounds like very good Korean) that he wanted to be an idol since he was a kid. He turned down an opportunity with a very prestigious university, Chulalongkorn University (it’s the highest rated university in Thailand) in order to come to Korea and pursue this dream. -- in the audience, Kim Ji Woong, a 24-year-old individual trainee we haven’t met yet but who I assume is handsome,* mutters, “Can I go to that school in your place?” which strikes me as… super sad. Like, there’s stuff going on here we don’t know but can kind of guess.

*I have to say things like “I assume this person is handsome” because my standards of handsome/not aren’t always the same as everyone else’s. For example, I think that Chen is the best looking member of Exo. I think all of these boys are nice looking, and some of them are cute or charming, etc, but I can’t always tell who is going to be the “visual King” or whatever for a given season.

At 55:36, we see Qiu Sheng Yang (who we met earlier, in Tiger Inside), then his teammate, the flexible Chen Kuan Jui, then Osuke, a Japanese trainee we haven’t met (he’s going to do Crown), then Min, the Thai trainee who did Glitch Mode, all talking about how much they admire Korean pop music, all to the tender strains of gentle piano, and Koreans everywhere smile in satisfaction, I guess.

And that’s enough for one post! Part II will be linked here.

#Boys Planet #boys planet 999 #boysplanet #boysplanet999

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me1-atonin · 2 years

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in honor of both the owl house and the dragon prince trailers being released i bring you: the main characters and main villains of each show in each others’ universe

so basically for the owl house characters it’s just going to be which type of magic they have maybe of who i think they resemble in the series and vice versa!

the owl house as the dragon prince:

Luz

is obviously Callum in the sense that they are both the main character, kind of childlike, and want to learn magic when it is said for it to be impossible for humans

ends up learning sky magic like Callum does

Amity

i’m obsessed with the idea of her being Rayla, main character’s enemy turned love interest, badass, parent issues, great hair

obviously moon magic since i just feel like it fits and she has that moon necklace

Willow

i don’t really know who she would be in the dragon prince universe tbh

earth magic bc plants are kind of part of earth. idk if she would be an earthblood elf tho. i know there are other types of earth elves but it hasn’t been said what they are yet

Gus

he’s Ezran all the way bc he’s younger than everyone else and gets underestimated all the time, but is actually more than capable and was forced to grow up sooner than everyone else

obviously he would do moon magic and would specifically be an illusionist

Hunter

Soren!!! both of them are my favorite blond white boys, and very skilled in hand to hand combat, have an abusive father figure (Viren and Belos) that they later got away from

no magic, sword fighter on the king’s guard

Eda

Ethari bc they were the best of their kind (in magic and fighting) and saw a child and immediately adopted it, she could also kinda be Lujanne

i could see Eda doing sky magic with the whole wing transformation thing (like harpy eda form)

King

Zym. hatched without his parents and is going to grow up to essentially be a god but looks so cute rn, and never knew their dads

because of all of that above he would be a sky dragon

Belos

as said above he’s viren. learned magic he wasn’t supposed to and was an abusive father figure that hates the magic people and betrayed his brother (i’m talking about harrow since viren called him a brother)

dark magic

The Collector

aaravos. ok so yeah ik that they are almost completely opposites personality wise but they’re both starry people that used the main villain of the first couple seasons as pawns in their game and were/are trapped in a prison by the cute little guy’s dad

star magic

the dragon prince as the owl house:

Callum

as said above, he’s Luz

he would definitely be so excited to learn magic that he would forget to choose a type and he would be in every track

his palisman would be an owl bc they’re nocturnal birds and it just makes sense

Ezran

gus, as said above

he would be in the beastkeeping track instead of illusions tho since he can actually speak to animals

Bait is his palisman

Rayla

amity

i don’t think any of the tracks really fit rayla for some reason but maybe oracle?

her palisman would be a tiny little dragon

Zym

a titan like King

i don’t think any further explanation is needed

Claudia

hear me out. Kikimora with a bit of Willow. too loyal to the human that shouldn’t know magic, but is also cute and goofy.

she would also start consuming palisman like belos did but idk for what reason yet. maybe she just plays the role kikimora did but is still a human.

Soren

Hunter, as said before

no magic without his palisman, which is a german shepherd

Viren

obviously Belos, down to his appearance being changed from the magic he’s not supposed to be doing and nearly dying from it

consumes palismen to keep himself alive, but turns into a monster

Aaravos

The Collector

too op and is having fun with it

not demon, which or human and is born from the stars

#tdp #the dragon prince #the owl house #toh #long post #also ik making claudia willow is kinda weird with soren being hunter but it’s more of the personality traits than the actual roles with that

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atty-goldstein · 1 year

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Zoey for the ask game

Why I like them: She's gorgeous and canonically really talented, plus she really worked on honing her skills for it. Also I really love musicals so yeah. Oh and I love how she's the only other person in Hatchetfield who can successfully call Linda out. Mad respect there.

Why I don’t: She's a married man's mistress and doesn't care about it.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): "Hey Mister Business, how do you do" in the helicopter cuz holy shit. Her cutting Linda in line is a close second because that's karma for Linda in bf.

Favorite season/movie: She's nicer in tgwdlm, but like, I love that she takes no shit in Honey Queen.

Favorite line: "Aww, gonna cry, boomer?"

Favorite outfit: The Starry Cobalt Dress she wore for the pageant! I got it myself and it really does make you feel like a star princess. It's so dreamy and it could mean so many things in canon.

OTP: Zoey x Kim Volunteer. I swear that woman had a gay awakening when she watched Zoey rehearse for the pageant. And I don't blame her at all.

Brotp: Her and Nora, but I think it would've been funny to see if she and Becky could get along in hating Linda

Head Canon: She picked up on Mima's hobbies when she visited so now she knows how to cross-stitch, sew, crochet, and knit, which eventually becomes helpful when she needs to make or repair her own costumes.

Unpopular opinion: She's not homophobic, Josh actually did fuck up with her and that's why she hated Zach. She had nothing to gain by telling Zach that he stole Josh from her, so why wouldn't she be honest about that? Also she was just being heteronormative so that Mima wouldn't hate her too, but after getting out of town and she planned on dating girls too.

A wish: I wish we got to hear her sing "One Foot in the Grave" and that we see her in something where she's not with Sam.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I don't want her to never come back in other stories. Like, I wanna see her again cuz I feel like there's still more to her character than what we saw in Honey Queen, considering that was mostly still Linda's perspective.

5 words to best describe them: talented, gorgeous, strong-willed, determined, bitchy

My nickname for them: I don't really have one for her

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ausetkmt · 2 years

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Oct. 5, 2022

Suzan-Lori Parks is drawn to archways. Early on in her New York life, long before she became one of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights, she lived above a McDonald’s on Sixth Avenue — the Golden Arches. Then she moved out by Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, with its triumphal Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch. Now she lives in an apartment overlooking the marble monument honoring the nation’s first president at the entrance to Washington Square Park.

“It’s very symbolic,” Parks told me. “I’m always orienting myself to arches.”

Arches, of course, are gateways, portals between one world and another, and Parks is endlessly thinking about other worlds.

This season, audiences will have ample opportunity to join her.

A starry 20th-anniversary revival of “Topdog/Underdog,” her Pulitzer Prize-winning fable about two brothers, three-card monte and one troubling inheritance, is in previews on Broadway. “Sally & Tom,” a new play about Parks’s two favorite subjects, history and theater, but also about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, has just begun performances at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. “Plays for the Plague Year,” Parks’s diaristic musings on the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic and a coincident string of deaths, including those of Black Americans killed by police officers, is to be presented next month at Joe’s Pub, with Parks onstage singing and starring. And “The Harder They Come,” her musical adaptation of the 1972 outlaw film with a reggae score, will be staged at the Public Theater early next year.

“I’m like a bard,” she said. “I want to sing the songs for the people, and have them remember who they are.”

At this point in her career, Parks, who in 2002 became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama, is a revered figure, regularly described as one of the greatest contemporary playwrights.

“She occupies pretty hallowed air: She’s the one who walks among us,” said the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who teaches playwriting and performance studies at Yale.

“She’s the reigning empress of the Black and weird in theater,” he said. “And she really is the most successful dramatist of the avant-garde working today.”

PARKS HAS BEEN TELLING STORIES since she was a child. She wrote songs. She tried writing a novel. There was a period when she made her own newspaper, called The Daily Daily, reporting on what she saw through a Vermont attic window. (She was born in Kentucky, and moved frequently because her father was in the military.)

While an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke, she had the good fortune to take a creative-writing class at nearby Hampshire College with James Baldwin, who suggested she try playwriting, and, even though she feared he was just trying to politely steer her away from prose, she did. “That’s what I’m doing still,” she said. “Trying theater.”

Her apartment is filled with evidence of a furiously busy creative life: shelves heaving with plastic crates containing thoughts on pending and possible projects; elements of a second novel marinating on a wallboard cloaked by a blanket; index cards in Ziploc bags; a laptop perched on a crate atop the dining table; lyric revisions in notebooks on a music stand by an ever-at-the-ready guitar. (She is a songwriter who occasionally performs with a band; this season’s four productions all feature music she wrote.)

“Writing, I think, is related to being kind of like a witch,” she said as she showed me around. “Writing is magical. I loved mythology, and folk tales, and I could hear them — old stories — not in a recording of something that somebody living in my presence had told me, but if you listen, you can hear organizational principles of nature, which includes the history of people, which is narrative.”

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So writing is listening? “Not in a passive way,” she said. “I’m on the hunt.” By this point, she was on her feet, pantomiming the stalking stance of a wild cat, preparing to pounce. “You’re being drawn toward it, and you’re reeling it in at the same time, like a fisher.”

As she talked, she kept cutting herself off, reaching for ways to differentiate her craft. “There’s a lot of writers who have ideas, and they have an agenda, and that’s cool,” she said. “I think I’m something else.”

Digging in to the question of why she writes, she became more and more expansive, reflecting on the songlines of Indigenous Australians, which connect geography and mythology.

“We have our songlines too — we just forgot them a long time ago,” she said. “They’re encoded in all the religious texts. They’re in African folk tales. They’re in the stories that your mom or your grandmother taught you. They’re there, and I can’t get them out of my head.”

“If you can hear the world singing,” she added, “it’s your job to write it down, because that’s the calling.”

PARKS IS NOW 59, and her work has been in production for 35 years. In 1989, the first time The New York Times reviewed her work, the critic Mel Gussow declared her “the year’s most promising new playwright.” In 2018, my critic colleagues at The Times declared “Topdog/Underdog” the best American play of the previous quarter century; explaining the choice, Ben Brantley, who was then the paper’s co-chief theater critic, described Parks as “a specialist in the warping weight of American history,” and declared, “Suzan-Lori Parks has emerged as the most consistently inventive, and venturesome, American dramatist working today.”

“She is a genre in and of herself,” said the playwright James Ijames, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in drama for “Fat Ham.” And what is that genre? “It is formally really dazzling, in terms of how she structures the play; there is humor underpinned with horror and political satire; there’s this real thread of the blues and folkways and things that are just root Black American signifiers; it’s musical, it’s whimsical, it’s playful, and it’s dangerous — all of the stuff that’s so exciting to see onstage.”

Her early plays were experimental (“opaque,” Brantley once wrote). The recent plays have been more accessible, for which Parks makes no apologies.

“People — not you, but people — when they ask that question, they’re like, ‘Oh, so now you’re selling out! You’re getting more mainstream and you’re not being true to your roots!’” she said. “Oh, no. I’m becoming more and more and more true. Trust me on this one: I’m following the spirit, no doubt. So, yeah, ‘Plays for the Plague Year’ looks like real life, cause it is. So maybe we ought to think about what am I writing about, and if I’m true to what I’m writing about.”

Reflecting her singular stature, Parks has an unusual perch from which to work: She is a writer in residence at the Public Theater, where she receives a full-time salary and benefits. At the Public, she also conducts one of her great ongoing experiments, “Watch Me Work,” a series of events, in-person before the pandemic and online now, at which anyone can work on their own writing while she works on hers, and then they talk about creativity. Early in the pandemic, Parks held such sessions online every day.

“Her great subject,” said the Public’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, “is freedom. It’s both what she writes about, and how she writes.”

As part of her arrangement with the Public, Parks is also an arts professor at N.Y.U., which is how she wound up across from Washington Square Park, where she lives in faculty housing with her husband, Christian Konopka, and their 11-year-old son. For years, they shared one bedroom; this summer, they finally scored an upgrade, just 70 steps down the hall (their son counted), but now with a bit more space and that archward view.

She has surrounded herself with a striking number of good-luck charms: not only the pink unicorn balance board on which she stands while typing, but also a tray of unicorn plushies; James Baldwin and Frida Kahlo votive candles; a hamsa wall hanging she picked up at a flea market; milagro hearts from Mexico; Buddha, Ganesh, rabbit and turtle figurines; and a deck of tarot cards (yes, she did a basic reading for me; I drew the high priestess card). Also: she has tattooed into one arm, three times, a yoga sutra in Sanskrit that she translated as “submit your will to the will of God.” (She calls herself a “faith-based, spiritual-based person,” and is also a longtime practitioner of Ashtanga yoga, which she does every morning, after meditation and before writing.)

“All the help I can get, baby,” she said.

THE MANY ARTIFACTS on display in her apartment include a shelf set up as a shrine to Baldwin, a dollar bill Parks collected when, feeling the need to perform, she tried busking in a subway station, and a “Black Lives Matter” placard she held at protests during the summer of 2020, when she also signed the “We See You White American Theater” petition, written by an anonymous collective, calling for changes in the industry.

“Hey, I’m angry as the next Black woman,” she said. “And yet, to get through this, we need to also listen — listen to the voice of anger, listen to the voice of love, listen to the voice of wisdom, listen to the voice of history.”

She added, “Let’s not just stand around telling people that they suck. At least where I come from, that’s not a conversation, and, at least where I come from, that’s not good dialogue.”

The tone of some of the conversation around diversity in theater is clearly a concern of hers — that’s obvious in “Plays for the Plague Year,” which, in the most recent draft, contains a playlet called “The Black Police,” in which three “Black Cops” approach a “writer,” played by Parks, and say, “We’re here to talk with you about your blackness/Why you work with who you work with.”

In our interview, Parks said she was troubled by “the policing of Black people by Black people, and not just in the arts,” adding, “we have to wake up to the ways we are policing each other to our detriment.”

“No more trauma-based writing!” she said. “These are rules. And Suzan-Lori Parks does not like to be policed. Any policing cuts me off from hearing the spirit. Sometimes the spirit sings a song of trauma. I’m not supposed to extend my hand to that spirit that is hurting because it’s no longer marketable, or because I should be only extending my hand to the spirits who are singing a song of joy? That’s not how I want to conduct my artistic life.”

She also said she is troubled by how much anger, at the Public Theater and elsewhere, has been directed at white women. “Not to say that Karen doesn’t exist. Yes, yes, yes. But it’s interesting that on our mission to dismantle the patriarchy, we sure did go after a lot of white women. If you talk about it, it’s ‘You’re supporting white supremacy.’ No, I’m not. I’m supporting nuanced conversation. And I think a lot of that got lost, and lot of times we just stayed silent when the loudest voice in the room was talking, and the loudest voice in the room is not always the voice of wisdom.”

THIS SEASON, SHE’S PIVOTING back toward the stage after a stretch of film work in which she wrote the screenplay for “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” and was a writer, showrunner and executive producer of “Genius: Aretha,” both of which were released last year.

At the start of the pandemic, she assigned herself the project that became “Plays for the Plague Year,” writing one short play each day for 13 months. The discipline was a familiar one: In 2002, after winning the Pulitzer, she began “365 Days/365 Plays,” then she did another daily playwriting exercise during the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. The pandemic play is part personal history — how the coronavirus affected Parks and her family — and part requiem for those who died during that period, from George Floyd to Parks’s first husband. The play, like much of Parks’s work, features songs she wrote. “I was moved into other states, where I wasn’t just documenting what happened that day, but I wanted to sing,” she said.

She’s got plenty still to come — she’s still polishing “The Harder They Come,” which will feature songs by Jimmy Cliff and others, including Parks, who said the story, set in Jamaica, “really captures a beautiful people in their struggle.” She’s then hoping to turn to that second novel (a first, “Getting Mother’s Body,” was published in 2003).

She is planning a screen adaptation of “Topdog,” as well as a new segment of her Civil War drama “Father Comes Home From the Wars” (so far, three parts have been staged; she said she expects to write nine or 12). Also: she’s writing the book, music and lyrics for an Afrofuturist musical, “Jubilee,” that she’s developing with Bard College; “Jubilee,” inspired by “Treemonisha,” a Scott Joplin opera that was staged on Broadway in 1975, is about a woman who establishes a new society on the site of a former plantation.

On a recent afternoon in Minneapolis, Parks settled in behind a folding table to watch a stumble-through of “Sally & Tom,” which is being developed in association with the Public, where it is expected to be staged next fall. The work, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, is structured as a play-within-a-play — it depicts a contemporary New York theater company in the final days of rehearsing a new play about Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings, an enslaved woman. Parks has had a longtime interest in Jefferson and Hemings, and at one point had worked on a television project about the relationship that never got made; the play, she said, is not a straight historical drama, but “about how the world is made, and how we live in this country.”

The protagonist is a playwright who, like Parks, is warm but exacting, and is rewriting and restructuring the show as opening night nears. When I asked Joseph Haj, the Guthrie’s artistic director, how much he thought the play was about Parks, he at first shrugged it off, saying artists are always present in their work. After the run-through, he grabbed me to amend his remarks. “I take back everything I said,” he said. “I see her all over this.”

Kristen Ariza, who is playing the playwright as well as Hemings (the fictional playwright stars in her own play) said “the play is full of humor, until it’s not.”

“It feels so meta, because we’re doing the play, within the play, and we’re doing all these things like within the play,” she said. “She’s constantly questioning, ‘Does this fit? Is it working? Is it flowing correctly? She’s hearing our voices and adding things and making things work better as we go.”

A few days later, Parks was in Times Square, watching an invited dress rehearsal for “Topdog/Underdog.” The set is draped in a floor-to-ceiling gold-dipped American flag, meant, the director, Kenny Leon, told me, to reflect the way commerce infuses the culture.

Two actors who have enjoyed success onscreen, Corey Hawkins (“In the Heights”) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (“Watchmen,” “Aquaman”), play the story’s brothers, mischievously named Lincoln and Booth. They share a shabby apartment; Lincoln, fatefully, works as a Lincoln impersonator at an amusement park where patrons pretend to assassinate him, while Booth makes ends meet by shoplifting. Their relationship to each other, to truth-telling, and to their shared history is at the heart of the story.

Both actors encountered the play as undergraduates; Hawkins was a stagehand on a production at Juilliard, and Abdul-Mateen read a few scenes as Booth while at Berkeley. “It’s the first piece of material that I ever performed on a stage that I felt like was written for someone like me,” Abdul-Mateen said.

Like many people I spoke with, Abdul-Mateen was particularly struck by Parks’s ear for dialogue. “It’s as if she eavesdropped on these two characters,” he said, “and just wrote everything down as she heard it.”

Hawkins called the play “an ode to young Black men who don’t always get to live out loud.” And he is embracing that opportunity — one night, he called Parks at 2 a.m. to discuss a section of the play; she has also helped him learn the guitar, which he had not played before getting this role. “There’s something very grounding about that peace that she carries,” he said. “When she walks in the room, she carries the ancestors, the people we’re trying to honor, with her.”

Shortly after we hung up, my phone rang: Hawkins again, this time with a reverential plea. “Make us proud, man,” he said. “She’s a national treasure for us.”

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