#it's funny because the initials rhyme

[farawayfromdryland]

wanna make one of those died in born in welcome back memes for fdr and lana del rey but i'm in a whole raputin stout so it's not gonna happen. but we can all picture it together. oh ho ho

#it's funny because the initials rhyme #also it was only 3 years apart #which is strange i thought he died in the 40s #oh whoops yes he did he was born in '82 #of 18 not 19 duh #wow he's old #so 103 years apart which is really very similar #now when did norman die #oh hey his initials are npr (as opposed to nfr) that's crazy

[cherienymphe]

Basic Training VIII (Peter Parker x Reader)

Warnings: NON-CON, DUB-CON, MURDER, violence, kidnapping, captivity, public sex, degradation, forced pregnancy, forced marriage, stockholm syndrome, ptsd, housewife kink, cop!Peter

➥ banner by @vase-of-lilies​ | divider by @whimsicalrogers​

➥ series masterlist

summary: A pit stop during a road trip ends tragically when a small town cop sets his sights on you. You’re the newest addition in a long standing fucked up family tradition.

~

You stared at Peter with a slight frown, knees pulled to your chest with your hands clasped together against your skin. He was sound asleep, breathing deep and even while you were so far from slumber. You hadn’t slept good in weeks, not since that really bad nightmare that night, but it had nothing to do with the awful images that had plagued your mind that night…

…and everything to do with the kiss.

You stared at the dark-haired man, watching him sleep and fighting with yourself over feelings you didn’t quite understand. You hated Peter. You absolutely hated him, and why wouldn’t you? He was the sole reason you were even here, trapped and meant to live out this nightmare. He wanted you, and so he took you, and not once had he hinted at a smidgen of remorse for that.

In the same breath though, he was your only source of comfort, and shame tore through you at the memory of allowing him to kiss you. So focused on the foreign feel of his lips on yours, you’d forgotten all about your nightmare, trying to get him off and then…letting him. Again. And again. Peter had kept kissing you until your sobs had mellowed into something much quieter, until your harsh breathing became light.

You hadn’t even remembered turning your head into him until you woke up the next morning with your face in the crook of his neck.

It wasn’t something you wanted to repeat, and you had jumped, hurrying to get started on breakfast no matter how early it was.

How funny it was to be complimented by Steve on your initiative when the whole ordeal had been driven by your fear of Peter and what had happened. You hadn’t wanted to see the man, let alone be near him, and so you’d thrown yourself into successfully cooking the few meals you’d mastered in your time here. If Peter noticed your sudden reservations around him, he didn’t voice it.

You avoided his eyes at dinner, and you kept your back to him when you slept. You woke up before him and made to leave him alone, and you at the very least feigned sleep whenever he joined you in bed. There were many nights like tonight where you struggled to sleep and settled for staring into space or watching Peter instead.

Absentmindedly, you reached up to touch your lips, tears kissing your eyes as you did.

Jane had told you that Peter was one of the good ones, and that he’d be good to you…but he wasn’t a good guy. If he was, he wouldn’t even be participating in any of this, or at the least…he’d feel some kind of guilt. He’d try to help you escape, maybe turn everyone here over to some good police. Peter wouldn’t be doing any of this if he was good…

Before you realized what you were doing, the sound of the slap echoed in the room.

You hit Peter again and again, the other man long awake by now, but you couldn’t stop. He was up and facing you and fighting to grab your hands, but you weren’t really hitting him with any rhyme or reason. Your vision was blurry, and you couldn’t see from crying so hard, but that didn’t stop you from hitting him.

“Y/N, stop-!”

“You’re not good,” you sobbed, pushing at him as he tried to restrain you. “I’m here because of you. They’re dead because of you.”

One harsh slap had Peter’s head whipping to the side, and you crawled back away from him. You kicked at his hands as he grasped at your legs. Your foot met his cheek, and you turned on your stomach. You could hear Peter calling your name, but you mistook the concern in his voice for anger, paying no mind to your haste to get off the bed until you were falling off.

The sound of your face connecting with the corner of the nightstand was loud, and you sharply inhaled when you hit the floor. You could hear Peter swearing, and you tasted blood when you licked your lips. You were crying for a whole other reason, now, your hands pressed to your face as you laid on the floor. Even from behind your lids, you knew the room was now flooded in light, and you flinched when you felt Peter’s hand on your shoulder.

“Let me see… Y/N, let me see,” his voice lowered, tone more serious than you’d ever heard him.

He pulled your hands away, and you heard him sharply inhale. Your face felt so warm, and when you peeled your eyes open, Peter was helping you sit up.

“You’re okay,” he breathed. “Come on.”

Your legs shook as he helped you stand, and he forced you to lean against him. The anger that you’d felt moments ago had dissipated into embarrassment. You couldn’t stop crying no matter how much you tried, and when you made it to the bathroom, Peter forced you to sit on the toilet. You could hear him wetting a rag in the sink, and you winced, hissing when the wet cloth met your skin.

Peter sighed.

He didn’t say anything for a while as you cried, just cleaning your face and occasionally running his gaze over it. You couldn’t tell how mad he was, if he was mad, at all, and your lips trembled as you thought about what Steve would do in his shoes. You shuddered at the thought, and again, you found yourself thinking about Jane’s words as she compared Peter to the other husbands.

As if he read your mind, Peter spoke.

“You know I should punish you for that…”

Your head started to fall, but Peter prevented it from doing so. You blinked at the redness on his face.

“…but I think this was punishment enough…don’t you…?”

You sniffed, studying the tiles of the floor.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled.

You felt crazy for apologizing to him of all people.

Peter didn’t respond, opting instead to stand and wet a new cloth. You could hear him wringing it out, and when he grabbed your arm, you let him pull you to your feet. You stumbled with him, tears spilling over again, and Peter kept his arm around you as he climbed onto the bed. You were crying again, the saltiness of the tears making your wound sting a little, and Peter pulled you against him as he leaned against the headboard.

Peter wasn’t a good guy, and you wanted him to stop acting like one. You wanted him to be mean, to yell at you and punish you. You wanted him to be like Steve, strict and hateful and violent. If Peter was like Steve, this would all be so much easier. If Peter were like Steve, you wouldn’t feel confused about the man who’d kidnapped you. You would hate him and fear him, and there wouldn’t be anything confusing about it.

…but Peter wasn’t like Steve.

Peter held you when you cried, and he kissed you to make you feel better, and he let you talk about things you weren’t supposed to. He’d let you see how your mom was doing, and he cleaned up after you when your body and your mind weren’t in sync. Peter held damp rags to your face even when the injury was your own doing…

…and he kissed it better.

“Once you make it a few times, you’ll barely even have to think about it,” Natasha said, taking the dish out of the oven.

Jane was supposed to help with dinner, but you’d come to find out that morning sickness wasn’t exclusive to just the mornings. The redhead had assured you that the two of you would be just fine, and you’d sworn there’d been a hint of a smile on her face. It wasn’t that Natasha disliked you. At least…you didn’t think so, but part of you felt like she was just as unsure of you as you were of her, and so the sight had given you pause…until you were reminded of the pain in your face.

You gently touched your cheekbone as you looked over the salmon wellington.

“Buck really likes it. He says it’s his favorite thing that I cook, and I guess I was feeling nice today,” she lightly chuckled.

You cracked a smile at that, noting how good it smelled and thinking that you probably couldn’t blame him. The thought of the brunette had it falling some, and you found it hard to reconcile Natasha’s husband with the same man who killed your best friend.

“I don’t know what Peter likes… I’m still just getting the hang of not burning things, so maybe he’ll never tell me.”

Your tone was light, but your frown deepened. There was something in you that wanted Peter to tell you, that wanted to see him smile with surprise as you cooked his favorite meal, and you grimaced. When you glanced up, you could see the other woman briefly looking at your face before looking away, a slight frown of her own on her features.

“Peter didn’t do this,” you suddenly said, feeling the need to defend him.

Peter, like all of the men here, was a lot of things, but he wasn’t that, and you didn’t want her thinking he was.

“You keep looking at it, and I know what you must think…”

She didn’t respond, focusing her attention on the side dish.

“…but I did it. I fell off the bed. I…I’m having a really hard time, and I didn’t want to be around him.”

You weren’t supposed to say that, and you were relieved that Steve wasn’t home yet. You didn’t want to think about being on the other end of his ire if he heard you saying anything less than stellar about your time here and your relationship with Peter. Your gaze found the counter.

“He’s been really…patient with me,” you whispered. “More than anyone else would be.”

Natasha eventually nodded.

“Bucky warned me that it might take a long time for you to adjust. They warned all of us to be understanding with you.”

You didn’t know that, and you blinked.

“It is hard,” she finally said, and you looked at her. “It’s very hard to think about how your friends and your family have to go on without you. To think about what conclusions they’ve been forced to accept about what happened to you.”

Your frown deepened, and as Natasha stared at the mashed potatoes, your mind whirled.

“I can’t say for sure that you’ll ever fully accept it. Some of us have, and some of us haven’t…” it was clear which category she put herself in. “…but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to think that they’ve found some kind of peace with whatever they think happened.”

Her green gaze met yours.

“I tell myself that it’s better they think I’m dead than know the truth.”

You blinked at her, and for some reason, you thought that she knew. You thought they all knew about the details surrounding how you’d gotten here, but Natasha’s mention of ‘friends’ made you think that maybe she didn’t. After all, if she knew that your friends had been brutally murdered in the efforts to take you, that would make her wildly insensitive…and she’d never struck you as the type.

“Did…?”

You paused, opening and closing your mouth.

“Bucky…didn’t tell you…?” you quietly wondered.

You could see the slight confusion on her beautiful face, and now you wished you hadn’t said anything. Before she could respond, you quickly shook your head, turning away.

“Never mind. I… Forget I said anything.”

You were quick to throw yourself into finishing dinner, and you could feel her eyes on you here and there.

Truthfully, you didn’t know why you just assumed that Natasha knew that. After all, that would make the man she laid down next to every night a murderer, and while you’d just assumed that wasn’t his first time, maybe you shouldn’t have assumed that she knew. It was possible Natasha thought that was one line her husband hadn’t crossed, and you didn’t think it was your place to tell her that he’d shot someone down in cold blood.

You didn’t think it was your place to tell her that the man who hugged and kissed her and who she was making dinner for was a killer.

At dinner, you found yourself eyeing Margaret here and there, concluding that if Natasha didn’t know about Bucky, then she didn’t know about Steve. It wasn’t a stretch to think that Sharon didn’t know about Sam either, and in all that, it really just hit you that the other wives probably thought you were just crazy.

As you felt Peter’s fingers graze your hand in your lap, you found yourself thinking that maybe you were.

When you looked at him, you felt your heart clench at the way his eyes dimmed with one look at your face. It wasn’t the worst bruise in the world, but the corner of the nightstand had cut you deeper than either of you thought, and it was more than noticeable. Peter leaned in, and your lashes fluttered when his lips brushed over the bruise. They lingered for a bit, and when he pulled away, he reached up to gently touch it.

You noticed that Peter’s own cheek was still a little red, and when you glanced over, eyes catching familiar blue ones, you wondered if he’d mentioned what happened to Steve. The blonde’s expression was unreadable, but he didn’t look the happiest. However, Steve rarely looked happy, really only when Margaret was smiling at him or when he was with his daughter.

You hurriedly looked away, your gaze resting on your plate, shoulders only relaxing when Peter’s hand met your back.

You shook your head at Peter’s words, fighting back tears.

“We knew this was temporary…”

Your lips trembled, and you looked towards the window, feeling like your stomach had dropped to the floor.

“I only did this to help you adjust better, to get into the swing of things-.”

“I don’t like being here when you’re not,” you tearfully interrupted, struggling to swallow.

“Y/N-.”

“I’ll be alone,” you choked out, and you didn’t look at Peter when he reached for you.

One of his hands was on your arm, the other reaching for your face.

“Hey…look at me,” he softly commanded, and you squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head. “You won’t be alone. The other-.”

“They can’t talk to Steve like you do…”

You were trying to keep it together, realizing how ridiculous you were acting, but was it crazy to say that had you realized your good behavior would make Peter’s hiatus from work shorter, you would’ve acted differently? You’d grown used to Peter being just around the corner, and the thought of going back to entire hours without him was making your chest hurt.

It was getting hard to breathe.

You could hear him calling your name as you squeezed your eyes shut, pressing your hand to your chest, but it did nothing. What about the nights where he’d have to stay late, and you would be forced to try and go to sleep without him there? You would be lying if you said that knowing he was just a room or two away didn’t make you feel more relaxed, allowing you to feel more comfortable in the kitchen or cleaning and therefore less likely to make mistakes like you had before.

The threat of Steve just around every corner made your stomach churn. Even if Steve wasn’t here, the other husbands weren’t yours. You didn’t belong to them like you did Peter. They wouldn’t treat you like Peter treated you, and most of all, unlike Peter, they wouldn’t plead your case to Steve should you screw up again. Hell, they might even punish you themselves, and you turned away from Peter.

“Y/N…”

“You c-can’t,” you gasped, struggling to breathe. “I’m going to break something else-.”

“You won’t.”

“…or burn the food again or screw up something like I always do and…”

You were shaking, and you reached up, twisting your fingers into your hair while Peter tried to calm you down. Your head felt too light, and the room wasn’t as clear as it normally was. You thought about the sting of the wood on your palms and the darkness of the basement. You hadn’t forgotten that Steve wanted to put you down there after your outburst that day. It was something you never forgot.

How easily and quickly Steve would’ve forced you back down there if it hadn’t been for Peter.

Peter was right. You had known this was temporary, but you hadn’t allowed your mind to linger on it. You hadn’t wanted to think about the day Peter would decide you were in a better place and he wouldn’t have to be here as much. You hadn’t considered having to function without him.

You were crying, now, and you hated it.

You hated Peter for putting you in this situation. You hated him for deciding you were who he wanted and ruining your life. Peter wasn’t the good guy, he was so far from a good guy, but he was the hand you’d been delt, and you knew that it could be so much worse. You’d seen the so much worse, experienced it, and as much as you hated Peter for who he was, you appreciated him for who he wasn’t. Peter terrified you and confused you, and you grappled with his role in all this…

…but you needed him.

“You can’t leave,” you sobbed, voice unsteady.

“I’m not leaving,” Peter whispered, taking your face into his hands.

“Is this about the other night? I’m sorry,” you hurried to say. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t-.”

“This isn’t about the other night,” Peter softly told you. “I told you I wasn’t mad about that-.”

“Then why? Why?”

You could hear your voice getting higher, but you couldn’t stop it. The thought of being in this house without Peter was pushing you over an edge you didn’t know existed, and you were positive you were going to be sick.

“I have to-.”

“Did Steve tell you you have to? Did you tell him what I did?”

Peter assured you he didn’t, but you didn’t believe him, frantically shaking your head.

“I shouldn’t have hit you,” you cried, pulling at your hair. “I was angry about the kiss, and I was confused and scared…”

The next time Peter said your name, it was stern, his voice hard, and it just made you cry harder.

“This was temporary. You knew that. You know that I have a job just like Steve and the others, and you’re meant to be here at home…”

You fought to get out of his hold, turning away and trying to stumble off of the bed, but Peter wouldn’t let you. His fingers dug into your arms, and he shook you.

“Do you understand?”

Tears spilled from your eyes as Peter held your gaze. The only sound in your ears was that of your own harsh breathing and the occasional sob. You snatched yourself out of Peter’s hold, stumbling to your feet.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” you cried. “After everything you’ve done to me…you can’t stay a little longer?”

You watched Peter sigh, and you knew he was gearing up to refuse you again. In a matter of seconds, you swiped the lamp off of the nightstand, the sound of breaking glass reaching your ears. The dark-haired man froze, his face falling just a tad, and you backed up when he stood.

He called your name when you ran around the bed, close on your heels as you grabbed the other lamp. He was calling your name, a warning in his tone as you broke the other. You could feel his hand on your arm, but that didn’t stop you from ripping the covers off of the bed, flinging them around the room in a rage.

You were heading for the bathroom when he wrapped his arms around you, holding you close. You hadn’t realized you were screaming until his hand covered your mouth, the room suddenly a lot quieter, and you couldn’t stop yourself from breaking down in his arms. You were a sobbing mess, and you curled in on yourself as best as you could.

Your wails made it past his hand, and Peter shushed you, but you couldn’t stop. You could only think about hours alone with your thoughts, hours without Peter, hours of having to navigate the ticking time bomb that was Steve. You couldn’t do it, not yet, and your head fell as you cried.

When Peter took his hand off of your mouth, his voice was in your ear, softly shushing you. You clung to the arm around you, struggling to breathe, and Peter rocked you with his lips at your ear.

“Y/N…”

“Please, don’t go,” you cried. “Please…”

Your nails pressed into his skin, and you were sure you were drawing blood.

“Please,” you begged him.

You could feel him sigh, and he didn’t say anything for what felt like a long time. Peter shifted so that he was leaning against the bed, and you were in his arms, your head leaning back against his shoulder, his jawline in your vision. He was still rocking you, his free hand smoothing itself over your head. Tears stained your cheeks, and Peter leaned down, pressing his lips into your hair.

“Alright…”

You tilted your head back, staring at him.

“I’ll stay a little longer. I’ll talk to Steve…”

You tightened your hold on his arm, holding him closer.

“You promise?” you forced out, voiced breaking.

Peter looked down at you, his fingers grazing your forehead.

“I promise,” he assured you, kissing your forehead. “Anything for you, pretty girl.”

#dark peter parker #dark!peter parker #dark!peter Parker x reader #peter parker x reader #peter parker #peter parker imagine #peter parker fanfiction #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction

[mmani-e]

Part 3 of the lineart teasers for Danganronpa Demix: THH, featuring:

Moral Compass Junko

Fashionista Kiyotaka

Biker Mukuro

Soldier Mondo

Sparkling Justice

Disguised Mondo (as Taka)

As always change will surely come for these designs and have some design insights below. Thank you for peeping, the final piece with all of them should be in the next few weeks.

Junko - Junko's a moral committee member known for being really really weird and off-putting but stupidly effective. She crocks up silly plans to basically cause everyone around her to sweat and be terrified of her despite her not really doing anything wrong. Essentially she's a fucking psychopath still but her focus is more on constantly entertaining herself rather than just dipping into despair, and mass-social engineering is the most fun thing for her. The easiest way to access that sorta thing is become part of the school morals committee.

Kiyotaka - Kiyotaka's family ruination goes a little worse in this AU, as Kiyotaka's family's grief really gets to him, he reminesces over the perfect world he had in his life, and seeks to create a world without pain or poverty or hatred... through eliminating free will, and establishing permanent control through despair! Can't have corruption when nobody's motivated to do anything right?

Mukuro - The events of Mukuro and Junko's early years still occur in this timeline, and Mukuro is convinced to run away to Europe, for what particular reason matters little, and Mukuro gets found by a gang of bikers in eastern europe, the violent variety, one she climbs up in and becomes leader of in record pace. Also she's still weird about her sister, but in a less screwed up way, she's just really clingy and the way she and Junko become better friends again is when Junko messes with her so much Mukuro gets fed up with her and bad mouths her to oblivion, something Junko highly appreciates.

Mondo - I'm still cooking this one up, but essentially Daiya's death sparks a way, way bigger catalyst than Mondo could ever hope to believe and his gang are impressed and indebted into becoming a private paramilitary group used by one of the people they'd wronged in the past. But this ends up being something Mondo would prove to be way too good at, something that'd blow up stupendously in the face of the person that initially forced them into working for them.

Sparkling Justice - He has a gun, a revolver and shoots bad people, bc in danganronpa 1 Makoro uses guns and truth bullets, I thought it'd be neat to give that to our serial killer. Also I gave him an ahoge styled after Takumi Hajirahara because it's heavily implied he is sparkling justice, also gave him a bit of a simpler mask. Probably will tweak it more.

Disguised Mondo - Yeah thtere's not really any kind of rhyme or reason for this I just think it'd be really funny if "Taka" didn't even remotely look like Taka but for some inexplicable reason Mondo can just do a perfect Taka impression and everyone's like "yep works for me."

#danganronpa #fanart #talentswap au #mani e. #danganronpa demix #kiyotaka ishimaru #mondo oowada #junko enoshima #mukuro ikusaba #makoto naegi #sparkling justice #usowa #usami #talentswap #danganronpa au #danganronpa thh

[evelhak]

Seen so many bad jokes about autistic people's literal black & white thinking that I wanted to talk about how it might actually look like. Yeah, sure, haha it's very funny if you say you have to turn the place upside down and someone thinks you literally want to turn the house on its roof, but who would actually think that? Sure, that image would pop in my head but I wouldn't think that's what you meant. Like, most people can understand the meaning of common sayings they've heard all their lives, even if they did misunderstand them for the first few times of hearing them. So if you're trying to write an autistic character and you're not autistic, here's some examples that could be helpful.

My mom asked me to empty the dishwasher while she was at the store. Once she came back and went to the kitchen, I wanted to ask her something, don't remember what anymore, but she replied that she was admiring my work in the kitchen. To which I just laughed and continued with my initial question. At this point my mom was suddenly enraged and I didn't understand why, until it became clear that she had wanted me to both empty and fill the dishwasher, which I had not understood, and "admiring my work" was sarcasm because she thought I was just being lazy and did know what she had meant. And her rage came from the fact that she also assumed I had understood her sarcasm and chose to ignore it.

What I want a writer to take away from this is 1) there's an internal logic to my thought process and actions that is just as logical as my mom's. It's not random and once I understood where my mom was coming from there was no longer confusion. 2) I also learned from this and didn't repeat the same mistake ever again.

Once at the doctor's office I was given a list of about a 100 things that one should avoid eating if they have IBS. I took the list and went home, immediately started to follow the list for a month. Next time at the doctor's office I was asked if I had been using the list and which things I had been avoiding. I blinked in confusion. All of them of course. The doctor's eyes widened. "All of them??" I was just like... Yeah. Apparently I should have understood that I could pick and choose.

What I think is important here is that 1) autistic people aren't necessarily "rigid" as if that's negative. We tend to process things very deeply so we assume instructions are to be taken seriously. 2) Again I learned from this and remember to ask specific instructions more these days.

This happened a LOT with my girlfriend: she would say something half heartedly, like, she wanted to go to a movie, and I immediately began to arrange when we could go and when I asked her if that day was good she didn't even remember she had wanted to go to a movie anymore. Because it hadn't been a serious statement, just a thought. But I could not tell the difference between serious and non-serious wishes because the words used for them would be literally the same, and I default to seriousness.

Here I'd like to highlight how 1) this example is more complicated because this dynamic can apply to so many different situations that it's harder to not make the "same" mistake again. 2) The default assumption for me is that all of people's words have the same weight. Sure, I have learned to tell pretty well if people are joking, but when they are not exactly joking it's hard to tell the degree of seriousness.

Obviously I'm giving myself as just an example.

All in all, my point is I want writers to consider the LOGIC, the subjective reasoning behind a character's actions just like they would for any other character. You can't just copy and paste together a bunch of autistic traits with no rhyme or reason because the traits are just the outcome of an internal process. They are just the visible part. And for any individual just being autistic isn't enough of a reason to give them a specific trait you have to figure out why their specific autistic presentation is the way it is. Autism is just the label. It's not the explanation. You have to understand how the individual traits your character has, relate to each other and work together from inside out, if you actually want to create good representation.

Obviously I know this is hard. It's almost like it's difficult to think with a different brain type to your own. But that's something autistic people who are high maskers attempt everyday, and can be quite successful at too. But there are still "leaks". These examples are some of mine.

#actually autistic #writing advice #autistic characters

[eroguron0nsense]

Straw Hats Pokemon League AU

I don't think I'm the first to do this by any means but here we go! I started thinking of how I'd make a One Piece AU in a Pokemon game format. I tend to play fairly fast and loose with the way the teams are structured; I like the thing they did in Gen 9 where gym leaders get a Pokemon not from their assigned type to terastallize but I would also like to see more gym leaders oriented around certain themes or gimmicks than just mono typing. These are not even remotely balanced and the few that have some strategy like Nami's can go wrong super easily; they're very very vibes-based. The region’s an archipelago, and all the crew members are friends who live and work on separate islands. I’ve always liked regions in Pokemon with lots of islands and water and I just feel like One Piece settings could translate well to that. 

Grass Gym Leader Usopp– The Usopp pirates are his gym trainers/pupils, and you fight him after going through a puzzle full of funny carnivorous plants like those on the Boin Archipelago (ideally there's a quiz format involved and if you get an answer wrong you get attacked by, like, a low level wild bellsprout or carnivine). This one could honestly have been more strategically developed although Shiftree and Sudowoodo were absolutely necessary because a long-nosed creature based on a tengu and a fake tree with an identity crisis are perfect for Usopp. He loves his status conditions and is generally very annoying to go up against Initial team: Lotad, Bonsly, Nuzleaf Rematch Team: Shiftree, Sudowoodo, Amoongus, Ludicolo, Tangrowth, Vileplume Normal/Doctor?? Gym Leader Chopper–This was a difficult choice honestly! I thought about making him a fighting specialist for the kung fu point, but ended up choosing this instead. He's a very young GP and gym leader on a winter island, and he has to split his time between doing house calls with Kureha and his League obligations and the poor boy is *stressed*. Marowak is there because Chopper and his backstory give me Cubone/Marowak vibes. The Sawsbuck is actually not there because of its deer associations; it’s a springtime/cherry blossom Sawsbuck because of Hiriluk’s cherry blossoms, I thought of giving him a Stantler but I think one deer is probably enough for him Initial Team: Spring Deerling, Stufful, Marowak Rematch Team: Mega Audino, Spring Sawsbuck, Blissey, Bewear, Marowak, Alomomola Weather (??) Gym Leader Nami–specializes in double battles with her cast form. Lives on an island kind of similar to Cocoyasi, and she's got her own lighthouse and meteorology lab up on a hill surrounded by tangerine trees. This is extremely strategically fucky and near impossible to program into something functional but I wanted to give her every kind of weather power and Pokemon that could adapt to every field change and hack weather balls at people. Nojiko and Genzo hang around. Currently training a Hippopotas gifted to her by Vivi and working on Sandstorm strategies Initial Team: Castform (Sun), Snover, Ninetales, Castform (Snow) Rematch Team: Castform (rain), Pelipper (drizzle), Ninetales (Drought), Abombasnow (snow warning), Castform (sun), Castform (snow) Ghost Gym Leader Brook–Brook is a touring rock star whose gym is on a barge with a kinda spooky ambiance; the Rumbar pirates work there as live musicians and there's a bar and a big stage set up for concerts. They pull up around the twin capes looking for Laboon around the same time as the player reaches there and are very distressed when he can't find him at first. I kinda debated giving him a toxtricity like Rhyme in SV but that's been done before and Frosslass kinda plays into his ice attacks, so I'm kind of leaving it open ended. His gym's located near the twin capes, and he's a former rock star who's slowed down a bit and taken some time off his career to look more actively for Laboon, who went missing in this world instead of being left behind. Laboon is a Wailmer Brook met years ago that later joins his team after they reunite, by which point he's evolved into a Wailord. Initial Team: Duoblade, Dusclops, Houndstone Rematch Team: Aegislash, Dusknoir, Wailord (Laboon), Polteageist, Frosslass or Toxtricity, Houndstone

Steel Gym Leader Franky– Franky's gym is also on board a ship he built, and he's docked outside a kinda high tech water seven sort of crazy artificial floating island structure. It's very much like water seven–Iceberg and Paulie run the show–and the Franky Family are his gym trainers. I threw in Alolan dugtrio because of the hairstyles and revavroom for the Kurosai FR-U. Metagross is there because I like him having a psychic type to link him to Robin (they're married and live together on Franky's custom houseboat). I thought of giving him a Magnezone but Franky with a Tinkaton just seems very funny and weirdly well-suited to his character Initial Team: Alolan Dugtrio, Excadrill, Revavroom Rematch Team: Alolan Dugtrio, Excadrill, Revavroom, Metagross, Probopass, Tinkaton

Psychic Gym Leader Robin–I tried to give Robin a few Pokemon that were more weird lore/ancient ruin themed without being actual legendaries to fit with her being an archaeologist. She spends a lot of time doing field work (Clover is the region's Pokemon Professor and her mentor; it even plays into the plant naming scheme) on a protected island full of ruins that looks kind of like Skypeia. I'd love for this world to have some ancient lore for her to research and make regular story appearances without the kind of tragedy we get in canon. Initial Team: Medicham, Duosion, Sigilyph, Claydoll Rematch Team: Bronzong, Medicham, Beeheyem, Reuniclus, Sigilyph, Claydoll

Water Gym Leader Jinbei–Honestly it was a bit hard making this one feel uniquely suited to Jinbei? Palafin suits his character best imho, but it was difficult choosing fish that ween’t tied in some other way to other existing fishmen characters. There's no whale sharks yet either :p That being said, Jinbei is a ship captain who works with both the Pokemon League and the Sun Pirates, and brings the player to a Fishman Island equivalent underwater town, giving you either a dive TM or something equivalent to navigate underwater and opening up a whole bunch of new areas for the player to explore. Initial Team: Wishiwashi, Palafin, Swampert, Omastar Rematch Team: Wishiwashi, Palafin, Swampert, Omastar, Dondozo, Tatsugiri

Fire/Kicking??/Culinary-themed Gym Leader Sanji–I feel a bit bad I gave Sanji so many starters when I generally try to avoid that for gym leaders but there's just not that many Pokemon with blaze kick and it's a necessity for him! You meet as he's soft-opening his restaurant in the All Blue equivalent, and going through some growing pains striking out on his own from Zeff (who’s very supportive of his boy's dreams but bad at expressing it). I threw a Clawitzer in because I thought I should give him a seafood item, and Siebold (one of the few Pokemon chefs) has one as his ace in X/Y. His team can kinda be split into kicking pokemon (Cinderace, Blaziken, Tsareena) and food Pokemon (Arboliva, Clawitzer, Garganacl). Zeff has a Stoutland, and the only reason I gave him one is because it more or less has his facial hair. Initial Team: Cinderace, Blaziken, Garganacl, Tsareena Rematch Team: Cinderace, Blaziken, Garganacl, Tsareena, Arboliva, Clawitzer

Zoro is the Champion and Luffy is the final boss, but I'll save them and my chosen Elite 4 members for another time. I'm not going to try and build an evil team, but suffice to say since I'm trying to make this AU a bit more lighthearted, everyone lives and they're all doing good

Edit: Link to Part 2–Elite 4, Champion, Final Boss Teams

#one piece #monkey d luffy #sanji #black leg sanji #cyborg franky #franky #nico robin #jinbe #one piece jinbe #jinbei #tony tony chopper #soul king brook #brook #one piece usopp #god usopp #usopp #straw hat pirates #straw hat crew #roronoa zoro #nami #one piece nami #cat burglar nami #op nami #nojiko #genzo #rumbar pirates #sun pirates #fishman island #thriller bark #one piece strawhats

[on-a-sunbeam]

Revenge and Dollhouse for the ask game?

YES HI!!! Uhm I’ll do Dollhouse first!

My rating (1-10): I’d give it a 6, maybe. Which is to say that I enjoyed it A LOT but also I have just like. A Few Critiques. Just one or two.

My favourite character: ADELLE!! There is no contest here at all I loveee her

My least favourite character: Okay, this used to be super easy because I really hated Topher at first, but I have grown to tolerate him so. I mean I hate like almost all the clients and also Sierra’s handler, but you’re supposed to hate them so it’s not really specific to me, I guess. I’ll say Nolan though, for obvious reasons.

The character I think I'd be friends with: I think Ivy because I have friends that Ivy reminds me of heh

The character I think I won't hit off with: Maybe Ballard? He seems very serious I don’t know

My favourite episode/scene: EVERY SCENE WITH ADELLE. I’m kidding but only slightly. Uhh I really liked A Spy in the House of Love, though, and I think Echoes is pretty funny. Belonging has um. A LOT going on in it, but I will say I really liked Adelle in that one, too.

Whose clothing style I like best: Unfortunately, I’m legally obligated to say Topher because I dress exactly like him. It was slightly detrimental to my whole initial hating-him campaign that every time I saw him I went ‘ah I would wear that’

Times I watched it (and if I would again): Once! And I definitely would again; despite its flaws I do really like it and it’s not super long either. Plus Adelle.

Aaand Revenge!!

My rating (1-10): 8.5! I love it a lot

My favourite character: UHHH HARD tie between Emily and Victoria. I do also really like Amanda so I don’t know.

My least favourite character: It’s been a hot second since I’ve watched this, so no one’s really jumping out to me. I will say though that I somehow forget that Jack exists half the time. I really don’t know how I manage that when he’s kind of a Main Guy, but it’s still a little surprise every time he shows up. This doesn’t even happen to Declan, just to him.

The character I think I'd be friends with: I’m not saying Ashley is normal, per se, but I am saying she’s MOSTLY normal. I feel like we could hang out and chat while I was blissfully unaware of any scheming.

The character I think I won't hit off with: I have a weird soft spot in my heart for Tyler but we most certainly would not be friends

My favourite episode/scene: SHOOT. Okay, I liked the party where it all came full circle to the beginning, and I feel like there were some really good twists, but I really like the scene where Amanda dies (which is stupid because I love Amanda but). Also I know this is SUCH a small thing, but for some reason that group shot of the Grayson’s after Victoria kills Helen means everything to me. It’s so silly, but I love it so much.

Whose clothing style I like best: Nolan, maybe? I don’t know, I feel like he had some iconic looks.

Times I watched it (and if I would again): I have a confession to make guys, I actually have not finished it yet 😔. I’m actually still in the middle of season 3 because I’m slow at watching things sometimes. But I have really liked it so far, so odds are pretty good it would be something that I will rewatch!!

Sorry, I just thought of an answer to the least favourite character thing. I HATE AIDEN. I HAVE NO RHYME OR REASON I JUST DISLIKE HIM.

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the ask though!!!

#yayayay i love talking about silly lil shows :D #also I SWEAR I WILL ANSWER YOUR MESSAGE #it is taking me a million years i’m sorry :( #revenge #dollhouse

[decepti-geek]

okay listen Aziraphale has basically NOTHING in common with Elle Woods aesthetically but besides that minor detail a Legally Blonde (specifically: The Musical au) would be PERFECT for Good Omens/Ineffable Husbands????

And I wanna make a distinction right off the bat - if we went by the movie, Crowley would proooobably be the only one who really fits Elle because she's the only one with a real fish out of water narrative. HOWEVER. Musical!Elle is more overtly like... fish out of water but still with some safety nets (ha) to fall back on, which are highlighted within the story. And meanwhile Emmett gets his own fish out of water story with the specific focus on his comparatively underprivileged background, and when you put those two together, Crowley feels a lot more Emmett to me.

Like, Aziraphale has the two key Elle qualities of a) lots of shit going unexamined because he's never truly lacked power/privilege before, and b) belligerent determination to do the right thing even when people are telling him it will cause him personal detriment. Crowley's whole dynamic with Aziraphale in the Job and Resurrectionist minisodes is basically just Emmett in Chip On My Shoulder if you swap 'navigating the heaven/hell dichotomy' with 'navigating law school.' GABRIEL IS A DEAD RINGER FOR WARNER. THE METATRON WOULD BE CALLAHAN. Serious and Blood In The Water fit them both so well post-s2 I'm just [clutches face] (the reprise for Serious is probably even more fitting for Gabriel than the initial version tbh).

Also, What You Want is just concentrated Aziraphale energy imo - "So! I will get into Harvard, impress Gabriel, win him back, and then marry him! Wait, you really think I need more of a plan than that? Can't I just... charge ahead and do it anyway?" In some ways I think I like this AU because it's effectively Aziraphale walking up to Crowley and going 'god says it's MY turn to be the absolute hot mess'

Beelzebub can a) be Vivian and b) stay together with Gabriel at the end, as a treat for Gabriel (Gabriel still drops out to become a model). This is partly because I find the idea of Beelzebub becoming Aziraphale's personal cheerleader towards the end fuckin delightful. The Brooke thing feels like it would take some finagling but I am confident it can be wrangled into a good shape with the right choice of characters (Harriet Dowling is legitimately a frontrunner right now but I think that could very easily change).

I can think of multiple directions in which to approach the Paulette and Kyle subplot, and honestly multiple couples who would fit if you changed up the surrounding circumstances a bit? I like the idea of Nina and Maggie in a very drifted version, maybe where they both still own their canon businesses, because then TECHNICALLY Nina as the one with the horrible ex would be Paulette, and it would be fun to switch around who is hopelessly pining after who!!

I am also playing around with Delta Nu roles BUT I know in my soul that Muriel is Margot if only because then they get her line like "Keep it positiiiiiive~ As you slap [them] to the floor! :D" Please take a moment to imagine Muriel singing that in full earnestness, it's a delight.

(And having decided this I kind of want the frat boys from the bit in What You Want to just be like... multiple Erics).

These are the edges of the idea, where stitching it together into something coherent starts to get a bit shaky, but at its core is Ineffable Husbands content along such lines as!

Crowley getting Emmett's little moment of delight at the end of Chip On My Shoulder when Aziraphale makes his first successful argument in class! ('Fell' rhymes with 'Elle' we can get some scansion going here with 'little Miss Woods comma Elle' I know it)

For that matter, the "Where are your law books?" bit in Chip On My Shoulder would be extremely funny if Aziraphale's dorm room is just the bookshop in miniature, and then still under all of that the textbooks are plastic wrapped and completely buried and unread becase they simply do not interest him the way an antique bible does.

Aziraphale in the playboy bunny costume and Crowley doing the "What's up?" [excruciating pause] "... Doc?"

The proposal right at the end where Crowley gets the repeated little 'oh my god's!

So many things about Take It Like A Man!

"Swallow your pride for me, just nod yes" is just such an Aziraphale @ Crowley line, generally.

THE CHORUS "Here you'll become what you're supposed to be/You think you can't but you can/Think of the guy you want most to be/Here's your chance to make it..." I will FIGHT people on how much this fits, Aziraphale has always wanted Crowley to have a place where he can inhabit the wants-to-do-good parts of his personality without fear or punishment, which Crowley is convinced he cannot have. This is the same idea!! (And in this AU, a more seamless role in the establishment is... legitimately the best that Aziraphale has the power to offer Crowley, tbh).

"Why can I never say no to her?" is basically just Crowley's canon inner monologue, c'mon.

"That's the best part/The outside is new/But now it reflects what's already in you/Couldn't change that if I wanted to" Again, I am prepared to Fight about this being a brilliant fit.

And then finally with this song, "Don't watch me change!" would have added embarrassed Crowley Noises which is wonderful to think about.

AND!!! The part of this whole stupid concept that so deeply compels me!!!!!

The duet part of the title song from either side of the door!!

"What about love/I never mentioned love/The timing's bad I know/But perhaps if I'd made it more clear/That you belong right here/You wouldn't have to go/Cause you'd know that I'm so much in love"-

AND

"We both know you're worth so much more"

AND

"If you can hear, can I just say/How much I want you to stay"|"It's not up to me..."

AND

[in chorus] "You are the best thing about this place-"

I am going to be thinking about this last one for days.

#Ineffable Husbands #Aziracrow #Good omens #Legally blonde #Legally blonde the musical #Aziraphale #Crowley #Ineffable bureaucracy #muriel #beelzebub #vinylatte #the metatron #gabriel #Also Aziraphale post-breakup with Gabriel doing the whole 'Must we all descend into madness?!' that feels extremely Him #And going back to Chip On My Shoulder AGAIN Aziraphale calling Harvard 'my personal circle of hell' is... extremely on the nose

[akaanonymouth]

“This is the third meal you’ve missed this week, are you okay?”  For the trauma prompt thingy please.

PTSD Mogadishu

Bernie’s recovering; she’s started talking more, they spend time together just sitting and walking, and watching tv, reading, and Serena cooks all the meals. But then Serena realises that Bernie’s made excuses for dinner three times, since she’s been off the hospital regulated meal replacement shakes.

She makes a lot of excuses at first, twists a fork around her plate, sometimes, when she does sit down, which is never for long once she lifts one to her mouth. 

Eventually, Serena broaches the subject, when they’re sat on the sofa, Serena having foregone her planned paella and chucked ice cream and bananas in a blender, tried not to watch as Bernie devoured it. 

“Sometimes I don’t think about it, because I’m hungry,” Bernie says, and Serena starts. It’s been an hour since Serena wordlessly handed her a milkshake, sat next to her on the sofa and put some mindless background noise on the television. Bernie studies it avidly, as though her Spanish has ever been good enough to follow the dramatics of a telenovela. “But then, when I’m not hungry, I think about it, and it sets it all off again. There’s no rhyme or reason,” Bernie shrugs, setting her empty cup onto the coffee table, still studiously avoiding Serena’s eyes. Serena watches as her fingers start to rub at the skin on her wrists, and it takes all of her will not to close the gap between them and engulf her in her arms. “It’s the texture, I think,” Bernie continues. “Not being hungry, everything aching and the effort it took to move any part of my face when stale bread was forced into my mouth by warm fingers,” Bernie swallows convulsively. “They were smoke stained, dirt stained, rough…large…” she swallows again, her fingers working harder at her wrists. “Being hungry, but only having rice. Dry, don’t even know if it had been cooked, or whether it was just left out. Crunchy. Makes your tongue feel funny when your mouth is already dry and you’re trying to swallow. Hard and dry and it rattles around your mouth that’s already hard and dry, and it’s like teeth, loose broken teeth rattling around your mouth, there’s no water, and the whole feels of it makes my tongue go numb, my brain itch-” Serena notices Bernie’s shift between first and second person, present and past tense, doesn’t quite know if she should intervene yet; it’s the most Bernie’s talked about any of it since they addressed her ribs and facial bruises, and that had rendered her mute for another three days. “And I have to swallow, I have to make myself swallow, got quicker at it, better at it, otherwise they…” she shudders. “I make myself, because if I have no strength when I need it, then I’ll never get out when I get the chance, never get to see Serena again-” 

Bernie’s breathing is quickening, she’s started rocking, so Serena leans forward and gently touches one of her hands. “Bernie,” she says, gently, and Bernie starts violently, wide eyes swinging wildly to Serena. Serena keeps eye contact, stroking her wrist gently, until Bernie visibly relaxes, the initial terror leaving her eyes.

“It was always for you, S’rena. Getting out,” she stares intently at Serena for seconds in which Serena hopes understanding and love shines through, before her eyes drop, buried under her fringe as she shrugs and smiles almost scathingly, her gaze now unable to settle. Her fingers scratch at Serena’s, instead of her own wrist. “It’s the textures. The warmth, the sounds in my head, being hungry, not being hungry… I don’t…It’s just…” she huffs, breathes deeply. “Just an awkward bastard I suppose.” She shrugs self-deprecatingly, but Serena refuses to let it go as a flippant conversation. 

“Bernie, no, you-”

Bernie pulls her hands away, grabbing at and running them through her hair and over her face. “I can’t even eat a meal with you, Serena!” she cries, voice breaking. “I don’t want your pity, I just want to be able to eat a plate of food with my partner without feeling sick and falling apart!” 

Bernie falls apart. 

Like grains of dry rice on a fork, Serena tries to hold her together. 

When Bernie wakes, mouth and eyes dry and everything else aching, she’s momentarily frozen. Blinking and breathing her way through the fear induced nausea to rationality, the events of the previous evening come back to her. She curls in on herself, ready to block out everything once again, until her eyes land on the bedside table, and a large glass of juice sat on it. 

Eventually, she makes her way to the kitchen, blinking in the almost midday sun streaming through the windows and open patio doors. Serena watches her approach, doesn’t move, doesn't even uncross a leg or close the book on her knee, waits until Bernie sits gingerly on the chair opposite her by the table laden with bowls of chopped fruit and some soft, milky looking things Bernie can’t even name. 

Serena pushes a mug of coffee towards her. “We’re in Spain,” she says, softly. “But even if we weren’t, wherever we are, you never have to eat dry food ever again.” 

Bernie takes a small piece of melon, pushes it between her lips, marvels at the way it melts in her mouth. She lifts her head to the sun, eyes closed. “You just have to keep talking to me,” Serena whispers. Bernie opens her eyes, finally meets Serena’s from under her fringe. Serena reaches her hand across the table. “But it’s alright,” she says, corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiles and Bernie tickles her wrist. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

#replies #fic prompts #berena fic #berena trauma prompts #my fic #Serena winks at the end obviously and Bernie's eyes crinkle and we all know they'll be ok eventually

[vermutandherring]

No spoilers

It's funny that despite all my love for the game, I didn't have any inspiration to write a review. Because how can you put into words the feelings it causes? Yes, the gameplay is like an endless dance that flows and twists the player into its vortex. Yes, every second in this game is melodious like a song, cutscenes are apt like rhymes in poetry, and the outcome suffered in the battle with the last boss gives a feeling of exaltation. And although each work is a matter of taste and everyone sees something different in the game, it seems that the audience has finally matured to understand the genius of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

It's a bit unfortunate that the game is mostly recognized by memes, which makes its perception superficial and not serious. On the other hand, a meme can only be understood with full context, which requires playing through the game. The context, in turn, gives a deeper understanding of the work. And therefore, even such popularity can attract new fans of the series. I also think that the example of this game shows how much the game industry has in common with high culture, not mass culture. Most games acquire their meaning over time, rather than gaining popularity as a phenomenon of consumer culture, quickly fading into obscurity. So in this review I will try to explain why MGRR will remain a classic for generations of gamers to come.

I'm happy that Metal Gear Rising was my first MG game. It does not require extensive knowledge of the history of the franchise. Therefore, discovering the character of Raiden and the meaningful content of the game, you want to get to know this universe more closely to understand its essence.

There is a perception that MGRR is not Hideo Kojima's canonical Metal Gear, so you won't be able to touch his genius in this game. In fact, it is not quite so. Although at some point the project was given to PlatinumGames, its initial idea and main character remained in the spirit of the good old Metal Gears, which is felt if not in the combat system, then certainly in the ideas, narratives and used means of artistic expression inherent to Kojima. In the game we have some elements of stealth, expressive cutscenes with unexpected angles, the philosophical basis of the plot and, of course, the codec - Kojima's greatest invention in video games, in his own opinion. It is interesting to observe how his principles continue their life in subsequent projects, changing and adapting to the needs of the time and the content of the games. Yoji Shinkawa, an integral part of the tandem, also contributed to the creation of the game. So if you look at it from a certain angle, MGRR is pretty much canonical Metal Gear.

Yep. I spent 20 mins of my life to find Kojima and Shinkawa in credits. They both are present.

One of the key features of MGRR, inherent in the MG series in general, is its ability to combine very different and, at first glance, absurd things. The game constantly balances between philosophy and satire, cringe and seriousness, kitsch and incredible aesthetics. This feeling is very similar to the first experience of getting to know anime. To a person out of context, individual episodes of anime can seem strange and wild, and a single series can make the entire industry seem like low-level geek culture. In short, this cultural phenomenon is shrouded in a lot of prejudices and stereotypes, which is caused by a different cultural context than yours (unless you are Japanese).

MGRR feels very Japanese, even though the setting of the game (like all the games in the series) has nothing to do with Japan. The very first mission resembles a traditional Japanese engraving, on an endless sheet of which heroes from ancient myths confront each other. I love finding parallels between games and art forms. Vampyr similar to a theater play, L.A. Noire is to the detective film, and Mafia is to the noir novel. And although I have repeatedly emphasized that Kojima brought video games closer to cinema through MG, I want to go deeper in the search for aesthetic parallels in Rising. This game resembles a mythological epic with its inherent trope about the hero's journey, the endless fight against evil and, of course, the worldview of a particular people, its philosophy.

In many mythologies, events take place in 'eternal' space and stretch endlessly in time. A dark force always appears to destroy the world, a light force always accepts its challenge. After all, the world is maintained thanks to their balance, the delicate balance of yin and yang, which should not be disturbed in any way. That is why evil exists. And that's why good always wins it. In general, most games with a plot, having a certain literary basis, use this pattern. But in MGRR, this principle seems to be embodied literally, only the actors are changed: robots and cyborgs take the place of deities and spirits. Powerful forces converge in a predestined battle, but we know its outcome in advance. Therefore, the most interesting part of this whole action remains the confrontation process itself. What is heard on earth when the titans are fighting in the sky? What does the Dragon say when he meets the Tiger?

Doan (Yamada Yorikiyo), Japanese. Tiger and Dragon, ink on paper, around 1560. The Minneapolis Institute of Art. Source: https://www.roningallery.com/artists/Kuniyoshi

'RULES OF NATURE'

The rules of nature are one of the key elements of the game. The problem of the main character's struggle with the natural state of things and their phenomena is embodied in many details and in the mythological background in particular. In primitive beliefs, people of all cultures addressed the forces of nature that they could not directly change, but that they could influence and interact with. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Raiden fights not with abstract thieves, but with destructive, unpredictable and dangerous natural phenomena. In the game, we have a group of Winds of Destruction - cold-blooded mercenaries who do dirty work. In the system of Japanese beliefs, in particular Shinto, spirits-deities called kami have a clearly defined good/bad characteristic. At the same time, they also have an opposite side to it. Therefore, people can interact with kami in different ways depending on their needs. Before his battles with the Winds, Raiden has moments of revelation with each of them, through which he discovers new truths. These conversations also show that if you judge the state of affairs from the point of view of the criminals themselves, their views also have a grain of rationality. They have come to choose their craft in a certain way, have their own beliefs and principles, and therefore it is difficult to call them unequivocally bad. Raiden himself is more like the Winds than he would like.

One of the most magical and, at the same time, one of the most dangerous and destructive forces of nature is embodied in the image of Raiden. In Japanese mythology, Raijin is the god of lightning. A variant of Raiden-sama's name can literally be translated as Mr. Lightening Bolt. But the most interesting thing is not that. According to the tradition of Japanese Buddhism, Raijin and his brother, the wind god Fujin, were originally evil demons who fought bitterly with the Buddha. As a result of the battle between the Buddha's heavenly army and the demons, Fujin and Raijin were captured, repented and now serve good as Buddha's guardian deities. To say how brilliantly accurate this tribute is - is to say nothing. Like Raijin, in the MG series, Jack went from a punishing dark force to a protective light force. At the same time, he does not depart from his original nature of destroyer and killer, but only directs energy in the right direction.

Folding screen depicting Raijin (left) and Fūjin (right). Tawaraya Sōtatsu, 17 century. Raiden-sama usually depicted as white demon, which also resonates with one of Jack's names - White Devil.

One could say that such a similarity between the fates of Raijin and Jack was only a coincidence. After all, this is where Joseph Campbell's theory of the monomyth, laid out in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, takes place. Campbell, researching the myths, fairy tales and legends of the peoples of the world, came to the conclusion that most of these stories rely on a common plot structure, which he called the monomyth. Since the modern literary tradition is drawn from the oldest literary forms, it still retains the most common and established models, albeit in modified forms. And therefore, the similarity of the paths of heroes in myths or literary works is only a consequence of an established tradition.

But Metal Gear wouldn't be Metal Gear if it weren't for its attention to details. As we know, in myths, things are rarely clear-cut. Raijin often fights with his brother Fujin. He is also depicted in the company of Raiju, a thunder beast or thunder demon that also acts as his animal totem, usually appearing in the form of a dog or wolf. Does this remind you of anyone? Another minor but interesting detail is that Raijin has a son, Raitaro, who is another deity of thunder.

Although Raiju is a companion of Raijin, it can act independently. During thunderstorms, Raiju descend from the sky, accompanying lightning to strike at trees and houses, causing disasters. Thus, Raiju attacks were also believed to be a form of divine punishment: those whose homes were struck by lightning were “suffering the wrath of the Raiju”.

The dystopian environment of MGRR tries to imitate the natural state of things and imitate nature itself not only at the expense of the mythological core. There are more direct allusions embedded directly in the design of robots and cyborgs. The most obvious is the already mentioned Blade Wolf, in which the prototype of the dog is easily guessed. Amphibians and insects, dinosaurs and birds, ungulates and predators inhabit the unexplored hostile spaces of MGRR. It is noteworthy that some of the mechs in the game are present in the MG series not for the first time. Even in previous games, you could find numerous modifications of Metal Gear RAY, Gekko or canine-like robots. The entire MG series in one way or another introduces allusions to the animal world into the design of the characters. On the one hand, this is a fairly obvious design approach. On the other hand, it adds more depth to the game's lore. The concept of human imitation of nature is a red thread through all Metal Gear, opening a kind of philosophical questions, and also conveys the idea of "naturalness" of those changes taking place in the alternate reality of the game.

Animal traits are evident in robots' behavior and appearance, such as design elements, mannerisms, sounds, etc. It would seem that this is enough to give the player information about what they are dealing with. But the designers give a deeper explanation of how these mechanisms work. They are endowed not only with the features of living beings. They have a similar 'body structure' and even blood likeness. From a practical point of view, most of these details do not make any sense.

From the perspective of game design, this is one of those elements that works on a subconscious level with the player's imagination. Blazing his way through enemy valleys, Raiden destroys more than just robots. They bleed, suffer and make shrill sounds like living animals. They seem to embody the next, albeit artificially created by man, stage of evolution. They are only a part of the usual state of things, where "wind blows, rain falls, and the strong prey upon the weak". Obviously Raiden is a predator in this story. Kill or be killed. At the same time, he is a victim. A victim of his own beliefs and memes, obeying them, he tries to change the natural order, to destroy long-established truths for the sake of the highest good. But, as we found out, good and evil will always exist side by side. Because as one little-known philosopher once said,

About memes, honor and war in the next part of the review~

Credits:

Japanese Tiger and Dragon. Minneapolis Institute of Art

2. RAIJU: The Thunder Beast Yokai

3. Gekko. Metal Gear Wiki

4. Raijin. Wikipedia

#metal gear #mgrr #metal gear rising #metal gear rising revengeance #raiden mgr #mgr raiden #video game review #video games #gaming #japanese mythology #mythology #my articles

[the-gayest-sky-kid]

so this here is auggie: semi finalized!!! halliwell's... probably? not going to be his last name but i had no clue what surname to give him so its acting as a stand in aaa

so this is the blorbo. the new bsd oc i have been working on. from the fanfic i am Struggling with. same guy from the Art a while ago. august (i like the month okay) whatever last name i decide on at a later date.

notes!

his ability is called lucy locket! i actually came up with the ability's function first, and then i found that it fit pretty well. basically its a pocket dimension accessed via the users pockets. so far it has infinite storage, but whatever is added or removed at the present moment has to have been able to fit in the pocket originally. so you cant add/remove a large waterbottle from tiny jean pockets, for example. i like to think it only works when august himself pulls something out or puts something in. so. yknow. "not a penny was there in it, only ribbon round it". hehe

hes 25 because as much as a harp on bsd i also suck with ages so i rng-ed a number between 21 and 27 chcbdj

his birthday is june 21st! stole that from james orchard halliwell (see where that came from now) phillipps, bc he was the first to record the nursery rhyme. i also think him being born on the summer solstice in june but being named august is soo funny.

forgot to add it in correctly but his height is 5'8! that's about 173 cm? i think? i rounded it up technically its only like. 172.72?

168??? pounds??? which is apparently like 76kg? look i have no clue how weights work either i just took my own weight looked up the average for an adult and made something up. dont expect it to make sense.

bloodtype is a! i thought it was weird that the blood types were mentioned at all in the character bios but then i remembered the whole stereotype thing so i just picked whatever i thought fit.

he likes goldfish (hence the socks and earrings), rice (its rice), and hats (because they are so neat)! i was thinking about funny sock patterns and then i was looking at the wiki page for catherine maria fischer (the supposed kitty fisher in the nursery rhyme) and one of her paintings had a fishbowl in it. and then i thought about yoimiya because i had been drawing her before and. yknow. he definitely does has a small hat collection, but he'd rather them not be damaged at work. theyre saved for parties and formal gatherings!

dislikes are long explanations, pollen (allergy 😔), and unpleasant textures (like bedsheets that give you the Feeling when you scratch them). he likes it when people get to the point, and im projecting my own sensory issues onto him hxjsj

moving on we have design notes!

so here's our boy.

starting with the shirt, its actually based on one of the shirts i own. it's got the solid torso and the loose sheer sleeves, and i thought that was neat! though for him i think the sleeves would be a bit more opaque, and he's wearing a vest!

as for the tie you can see i noted that it's a bit of a cross between a criss cross tie and like... a sailor tie? i know it says bolo but thats because the word i was looking for was Tie Brooch for the pendant in the middle.

the cargo shorts!!! so obviously to best use his ability august needs something with rather large pockets, but i didn't know how to add those in. initially i wanted to go with some tights or normal slacks and have him wear a hoodie, but it was kind of... eh? so i tried cargo pants but those didn't work either. so then i tried on shorts and i Realized what needed to be done fhdjjws

knee high socks! i asked what how silly we should get with them and eni said knee highs and nobody said ankle with silly patterns so i combined the two! i think the combination is really funny.

the shoes! theyre just sneakers. comfy!

moving on

i dont actually like this doodle but we're gonna have to bear with it augu

the earrings! theyre little fishies! initially i had different earrings planned but i wanted the fish socks to match with something hdhdhdh

hair tie! august has got the rest of his hair tied up with a little bow. i think its cute bfbdbd

and so you can see what i meant, here's the page of concepts i did!

you can see the cargo pants, the hoodie, as well as the old earring design. i was playing around with the sleeves for a while xhdhhs

plus i got silly with one so maybe ill do smth with that at some point idk idk

#shout out to everyone who bullied me heres the boy #longer post #august lucy locket #new tag for him yay #my silly. my boy. with his detective boyfriends. everybody be nice to him or i will literally Cry /j #my art :d

[fanfic-obsessed]

Do you dream?

This is an offshoot of  Perchance to dream. While I highly recommend reading it, because I think it is neat (as the writer), I will summarize it here. The gist is that what we know as canon, starting roughly when council goes to confront Darth Sidious (though the timeline does not match exactly to reality) is a shared hallucination of the Jedi council, caused by a chemical weapon created by the separatists (which has been calibrated, using the Jedi councils’ DNA, to only affect the Jedi council).  In this Palpatine is not a Sith, rather he is exactly what he portrays himself in canon. 

In this variation the creators of the weapon make mistakes in how it was formulated. The first mistake is that it does not drag the victim quite as deep into the hallucination, in that they can interact with the real world, however they will disbelieve or not perceive anything that contradicts the world in the hallucination. The more important and far reaching mistake is that they did not restrict who was affected quite like they thought. The Jedi council was affected, to be sure, but so was roughly 80% of the galaxy and not all groups were affected equally.  There did not seem to be any rhyme nor reason to who was affected or not.  

90% of the senate was affected by the weapon, it should be noted that both Sheev Palpatine and Padme Amidala were not.  The GAR was affected at 75% of the clones not stationed on Coruscant, though only 3% of the Coruscant Guard were affected (Most of this is more horror than funny but I just want you to picture this: Random Separatist Leader: You created a chemical weapon that only affects people based on their genetic code. Scientist: …Yes. Random Separatist Leader: And it is affecting roughly 70-75% of a group of genetically identical clones. Scientist, slumping: Yes. Random Separatist Leader:How? Scientist, wailing: we don’t know!!!), every battalion has clones affected. Of the Jedi, something like 97% is affected (Because the original intent was specifically for Jedi ), including all of the council (Anakin is not affected, though Ahsoka is). The highest ranked Jedi, by experience and title, unaffected were Jocasta Nu, Depa Billaba, Bant Eerin, Aayla Secura, and Anakin Skywalker. Most of the rest of the unaffected were padawans, initiates, and younglings. 

It will only be looking back that anyone will be able to pinpoint the first indication that something is wrong. It is a simple thing, the Rodian senator mentions the ‘New Emperor’ to several of his fellows. Most of the room nods or responds, knowing what he was talking about. A few look at each other, confused but ignored. 

Before we fully look at the horror, consider this. Here Sheev Palpatine does not want to be an Emperor.  He was actually looking forward to retiring, to becoming a consultant where he could have all the influence and none of the responsibilities. Now 90% of the senate is sure he is an emperor (a human centric, misogynistic, bigot at that) and ignoring anything and anyone who tries to protest otherwise. He is being forced, largely against his will, to be an all powerful emperor who can’t actually do anything that is not based in pure evil because the afflicted will ignore it. 

There is much confusion.  We will get back to the effects of that confusion in just a moment. 

Within the hallucination Order 66 goes out. Though there are signs that something was wrong earlier they are not nearly as wide spread. This, then becomes the most defining moment of the new era. 75% of the clones, not stationed on Coruscant, fall under the control of a chip that does not actually exist. To the utter horror of the unaffected clones, the afflicted clones open fire on any Jedi present (no matter who they might have been firing at in canon). Countless Jedi survived because they fell comatose at the same time, killed within the hallucination. Handfuls of clones that otherwise would have survived died at the hands of their brothers, who were trying to protect the vulnerable Jedi. 

The 501st never marched on the temple, their battalion fell below the average with only 47% affected and without Vader to lead them, they are able to subdue the affected before it happens. However, the comatose Jedi cover every surface of the temple and for a bit it is believed that some sort of sleeping sickness afflicted the Jedi while most of  the rest of the galaxy went insane. 

The separatists are not excluded. They match the 80% affliction rate of the rest of the galaxy. Most of the leadership that is afflicted also fall comatose (read die in the hallucination). Even amongst the scientists who created the weapon (roughly 100-200 beings depending on when in development we are talking about) about 20% fell to the effects.  The remaining scientists try for 6 months on their own to reverse the effects without success.

All the while the galaxy has largely turned itself into an oppressive empire, built a rebellion (that is being secretly supported by the Emperor himself), and is both tearing itself apart and gluing itself together at the same time.  Various non affected beings, who would have died in the first few months of the empire, watch as the people they love mourn them.  More than one unaffected Senators, up to and including Palpatine, see the way a number of so called respectable beings in power act when they are given free reign (case in point, Tarkin) and are horrified.  And for those first six months no one can figure out what was going on. It is called an illness, a madness.  

Roughly 80% of the galaxy believe themselves to be part of an empire and are unable to perceive anything that would break the illusion (Anakin becomes largely reclusive, as they react as if he is Vader and he can’t take the pulse of fear when anyone afflicted sees him).  A new government has to be built, staffed by the non afflicted and weaved around the hallucination. They are building blind as within the hallucination the human rights violations start to appear and grow exponentially.   

14 months in, Jocasta Nu finds a way to access the hallucination, an old mind based force technique.  It works in that she is able to convey what had happened, what was happening within the hallucination. It failed in that she, having been dead in the hallucination, fell comatose. No one was willing to risk anyone else. In particular Anakin, as the non afflicted were afraid that Anakin would fall to Vader. They could not risk it. 

Cody, who had been afflicted, woke from the hallucination after 2 years. It was only a coincidence that he was in the temple at the time. Anakin had requested to speak with him (hoping that they could find out more about what the ‘chipped’ clones thought was going on). He would be one of 400 throughout the galaxy. It was discovered that non force sensitives with particularly strong minds could break through the hallucinations, eventually being able to see the contradictions. Anakin without a suit was one of those contradictions. Cody, upon waking, had what could conservatively be called a panic attack, and what could rightly be called a series of panic attacks so severe that it drew the attention of empaths from 6 levels away. His attack on his general, his Obi Wan (they had built a relationship during the war and had plans to marry after it was done), had been entirely real. Obi Wan and Yoda could not be accounted for, no one knew if they had survived or not. 

Between the Separatists, who rejoined the Republic 8 months after the weapon was deployed, Scientists and the Republic they were able to study enough of the reawakened, like Cody (Volunteer only), that they could start building a device to reverse the effects. 

The device is activated 10 years to the day of the original weapon.  It stimulates the brain waves matching the frequency of the awakened in anyone who was afflicted. The non afflicted gather together across the galaxy in little clumps, clutching at each other. The previous decade has changed the face of the galaxy in a way that cannot be properly articulated. The non afflicted have watch the reactions to a genocide, have seen the people they love embrace the very worst evils (or watched them rise above to fight back).  Even those who would have supported the Empire are horrified by the depths that the hallucination dipped into (Over those 10 years they have been able to get other, scant looks into the hallucination).  And this was a decade long tragedy in which everyone who was unafflicted experienced, to some extent. Tragedy is a great equalizer. 

First the comatose began to wake, family and friends or very variety sitting with them. Even those who had no one unafflicted had someone celebrating their waking in the packed rooms. Then the afflicted started focusing fully on the people around them, fully for the first time in a decade.  Spouses who had ‘buried’ their loved ones blinked to see them hale and hearty. Children that had effectively been orphaned, both as afflicted and non, found that there was suddenly a decade missing. 

On Tatooine a Jedi Master turned butcher froze. He, like all the other afflicted, had gone to work that day, never noticing as the non afflicted among them were more anxious. The oppressive darkness vanished so abruptly he could feel it, even through the shielding.  Not far away he could see a Togruta woman clutching one of his coworkers to her, who was bewildered.

An announcement went out to a broadcast system that had been built specifically for this (and Obi Wan realized he had never seen that broadcast tower before) an hour after the afflicted woke up.  It took two days to reach the Outer Rim (but to be fair, so did the ripple that woke the afflicted). It gave a brief explanation about what happened and a location that any of the former afflicted could go to register themselves, in case they had changed planets under the affliction and wanted to find their loved ones again. It was recommended that the former afflicted remain where they were, as long as they were not in danger, to keep from clogging up the hyperlanes. 

Obi Wan collected his lightsaber from the desert, and found that there was only one when he thought he had buried two. Driven by the force, he reported to the registration locations. Once his information was in the system it lit up from here to the Core. Cody was the one sent to collect him, as Anakin was helping to settle Ahsoka (who did not react well to being a decade older and having been killed by Vader). 

Cody and Obi Wan maintained skin contact for the entire trip back from Tatooine, after a decade of thinking the other lost they could not bear to be parted.

Palpatine was finally able to step down, playing the emperor had been a horrific experience for him.  He retired entirely, unable to bear the thought of power. Even if he had been interested, people still flinched when they looked at him.  

Everything that happened next was to a galaxy irrevocably changed.

#commander cody #codywan #star wars #star wars the clone wars #sheev palpatine #anakin skywalker #jocasta nu #hallucinations

[randomvarious]

Falco - "Der Kommissar" 1981 Synthpop / Neue Deutsche Welle / Pop-Rap / New Wave

I think something that's lost on a lot of people when it comes to hip hop music is, really, just how quickly it managed to spread after scoring its first ever hit in 1979, with The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"—which was also, remarkably, just the second song that the genre had ever released up until that point. There seems to be a general presumption that the music largely remained within the confines of the New York-metropolitan area, but as I'm about to show you, that notion is actually pretty false.

See, what I think most Americans have never really come to realize is just how deeply seismic of an event the release of "Rapper's Delight" was on a global scale. It was a modest hit in its home country, reaching #36 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it did prove to a lot of New Yorkers who frequented the hip hop parties that this hobby of rhyming rhythmically and extemporaneously over extended disco-type breaks could actually be successfully metabolized into dollars, which people originally had their doubts about. But where "Rapper's Delight" actually performed much better commercially was in Europe: it went to #5 in Austria; #3 in the UK and West Germany; #2 in Belgium, France, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland; and #1 in the Netherlands and Spain.

And for Europeans who were hearing that song in 1979 and 1980, with all its pervasiveness, the fact that it sounded pretty much unlike *anything* that they'd ever heard before, and that rapping was also easily replicable, there was no doubt that "Rapper's Delight" was going to then end up inspiring a whole lot of different musicians to try their hand at something like it too.

So, while we largely tend to think of some of hip hop's earliest records as being made solely by New Yorkers (actually, the Sugarhill Gang were impostrous nobodies from New Jersey), that's actually pretty shortsighted, because some European acts were quick to start incorporating it into their own music too.

And such was the case with Austrian pop sensation Falco, who released his country's first known hip hop record in 1981, with "Der Kommissar," which also served as his breakout single, managing to not just top the charts in German-speaking countries like Austria and West Germany, but the ones in Spain and Italy too. Now, "Der Kommissar" is certainly not hip hop as we've come to know it; there's no DJ or record scratching, or a sampled or re-created beat; and first and foremost, it's a Neue Deutsche Welle (German new wave) tune. But there is clearly a lot of rapping on this record, and there's little doubt that the sudden Euro-popularity of "Rapper's Delight" is what initially sparked that fuse. I mean, this is before Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five even released "The Message" in 1982, mind you—another very early hip hop cornerstone. That's how early we're talking here. So, pretty fascinating when put into that context, no?

Now, maybe if you're an American, you're far more familiar with the 1982 Anglicized cover of this song by UK band After the Fire instead, as the video for it received heavy rotation on MTV, which then led to significant radio airplay, and then eventually a peak at #5 on the Hot 100. But Falco's German-language version is the one that came first.

And while Falco's only really rippled in the US, managing to reach just #74 on the Cash Box chart and #10 on the Billboard dance chart, the success of After the Fire's version appears to be what actually helped propel it into a very minor US hit in the first place. And that's just sort of funny, right? Like, the only reason that your record's even selling a little bit in such a huge market as the US' is because some other band who covered your song in English the following year is getting almost all of the limelight for it? That's a fun dynamic, huh? But Falco would still end up making *serious* inroads in the US a few years later anyway, with his terrific chart-topper, "Rock Me Amadeus," which also happened to have a bunch of rapping in it too.

So, ultimately there were two videos that were shot for Falco's "Der Kommissar" and this is the one that was released in the US. It's a very low-budget affair, in which Falco performs in front of a screen that shows footage of police cars traveling with their blue lights on, as he continuously makes like he's running away from them. And the song's about a couple who are on the run from the law—the titular 'kommissar'—so this very literal depiction certainly fits.

And actually, there were a lot more records from outside the US that both incorporated hip hop and also predate the release of "Der Kommissar" too. I came across this very enlightening list recently on RateYourMusic that shows what the earliest known hip hop release is for a bunch of different countries, and a lot of them happen to be from way earlier than you've probably ever thought! 🤯

Evidently, hip hop's been a global phenomenon for a bit longer than many people seem to realize 👀.

More fun videos here.

#synthpop #synth pop #neue deutsche welle #ndw #hip hop #new wave #rap #old school hip hop #old school rap #music #80s #80s music #80's #80's music #pop #pop rap

[nuggets-and-stars]

Six! Tickle headcanons?

Katherine of Aragon

babytalks her lees. definitely

also wiggles her fingers above a death spot

will VERY much make her lees ask for tickles if they're being a brat about it (coughAnnecough)

always has an iron grip on whoever she's wrecking

legit didn't know how ticklish she was until one of the other queens poked her in the ribs to get her attention

and she S C R E A M E D

she immediately lies (badly) and says that she just got startled

no one believes her

has a very raspy cackle (after the initial scream)

Anne definitely wrecks her the most out of the queens. But as soon as she first hears Lina's (that's what the fandom calls her right) laugh, her jaw drops. She thinks it's the prettiest thing ever

her ribs and underarms are two major death spots for her

because of Henrat, she actually doesn't like her laugh and attempts to hide it or at least muffle it

hasn't known a day of peace ever since the others found out about her insecurity

Anne Boleyn

the most mischievous mf you will ever meet

she just randomly pokes ppl in the side to see them jump, and acts like she didn't do anything

she thinks it's the funniest thing

when she's wrecking someone, she'll often rapidly switch between places to keep the lee on their toes

she loves teasing whoever she's wrecking

"tktktktktk"

really fucking ticklish though

acts like a brat to provoke someone into tickling her

has a bit of a bubbly, giggly laugh

that you will only hear if she's being tickled

the others absolutely adore it

her most ticklish spots are probably her neck and stomach

she has scars along her neck from the whole y'know beheaded situation. So if you trace them she will lose her shit

often swears and makes threats through her laughter (which are very empty)

squirmer

her cheeks are a massive melt spot

Jane Seymour

a very gentle ler

like so gentle it drives the others up the wall

she teases them with complements. Only complements

she'll say a pun and likely scribble at their stomach or something to get them to laugh at it

"Wow you thought it was funny? I didn't even think it was that funny. :)" ... >:(

is the best at cheer up tickles

either she'll know when you're upset and ask if you want tickles or you have to be very upfront with her

"Hey, Jane? Can you... do the thing..?" "What thing?"

I like to think that they all sometimes give platonic kisses to each other (or romantic if you ship any of them together) so ticklish kisses are very common with Jane

I honestly don't really see her as a lee so if you have any lee hc, I'd love to hear them :)

Anne of Cleves

the scariest ler ever

think of any type of ler, and that's her (that rhymed!)

gives killer raspberries

like absolutely deadly raspberries

playful, gentle, sadistic, you name it

knows exactly what teases to do to get the queens all red in the face

they are legitimately terrified by how she knows exactly how to get them flustered. She claims she's just observant

she'll never admit this, but she likes to see them smile. She sometimes feels guilty that she "had the best" out of the queens, so she feels like she has to make up for that

so I feel like she'd have people pleasing tendencies

like, she's not a people pleaser, just has some tendencies

and only towards the other queens

and don't think the others just let these insecurities fly by

and it turns out, Anna gets flustered super easily when teases are directed at her

and is also super ticklish

has very airy and squeaky giggles littered with snorts

her death spots are her waist and thighs plus a secret third option (her ears)

hates being the shortest out of the queens simply because they can hold her and wreck her super easily (either she or the other Anne are the shortest)

Katherine Howard

OKAY 👏

hated physical touch for the longest time because of *gestures to All You Wanna Do*

but here's the thing, she hated physical touch, but she wanted physical touch

so there's a bit of a problem there

she also saw the queens constantly wrecking each other almost on a daily basis, which she wanted to participate in

they never targeted Katherine because they know that she hates physical touch and they respect that

so Katherine approached Jane and asked if she could tickle her (through many stutters and a bright red face)

Jane ofc happily agreed and just lightly started tickling her

she knows Jane has no ill intent, she actually enjoys being tickled a lot

she became a prime target after that

oddly enough, the queens found her apologizing and often blaming herself for things after that time with Jane

so when they hear her apologize for something that she shouldn't apologize for, she's gone

also if she tries to blame herself for something that wasn't her fault

very much prefers gentle tickles to rough tickles

very giggly laugh, much like Anne (her cousin I should clarify)

a walking tickle spot (but she is uncomfortable with having her feet touch)

and her back is a big melt spot

isn't much of a ler aside from the occasional poke

Catherine Parr

oh this girl

THIS GIRL

honestly isn't much of a ler either

but she will get fed up with one of them. Stare them dead in the eyes, and just wreck their shit

due to being a night owl, she'll get tickled if she's writing late into the night and they're trying to convince her to sleep

but also gets wake up tickles

or tickles if she can't fall asleep

absolutely weak to raspberries (which makes her one of Anna's favorite targets)

can't even say tickle

her laugh gets silent very quickly

her death spots are her sides, underarms, neck, and ribs

EXTRA HC: they give each other comfort tickles if one has a nightmare

And that's all! If any of you have any headcanons I wouldn't mind if you sent them to me via inbox

#sfw tickling community #tickling #tword community #sfw twords #tickle headcanons #tickle hcs #six tickles

[i-translated]

Could you translate this song into english? I've made a translation myself but you seem more experienced with that and I was curious how you would do it. The creator is also on tumblr as @/nopanamaman and they interact with fans fairly often so I'm sure they'd enjoy reading a translation of their work

Done! Thank you for the request, going to ramble a bit under the cut.

Wow, this song was so out there for me, I didn't even know how to approach it. No wonder it took like. Over a week. Good god.

It was fun though. I did a lot of things differently from how I normally do. I didn't translate the title because it was already in two languages which felt purposeful enough to not touch. I didn't prioritize "close" translations as much as I normally do - the song is written in simple words, in some places I could have made more literal translations and tried to do just that initially, but then decided to play around a bit, try to keep the tone more than the individual line integrity. Like, okay, here:

"Ты шутишь, еле глотая дым - не смешно." - lit. "You're joking, barely swallowing smoke - it's not funny."

I very well could have kept "it's not funny" because it fits rhythmically and would have rhymed if I put enough thought into it, but it just... didn't have the same punch in English? Like, I dunno, I feel like if someone said "it's not funny" in response to my joke it would feel solemnly sad, but the same line in the song rings more accusatory to me. I mean, it is called "anger management". So I went with "it's poor taste" and gave myself a pat on the back for how smartly it rhymed.

The hardest part was the middle. The lyrics are easier than in the verses because they don't rhyme, but I have a very specific type of sound autism that makes it so I can only listen to a limited amount of sound per sound. I couldn't compare my text to the original quite as often as I would like. It might have some mismatched syllables but I hope it doesn't.

Also, even though the middle lines don't "rhyme", they still feel like there's assonance there, and I wanted to keep it, and so I did, to an extent. It sucks because I had to go with "words, words, words" in there, there's no other English word that would be quite as right, but the weird "-ur" assonance just doesn't sound as good as a clear "A" like in the original.

Overall I like how it came out but it's not, like, the best translation in the world or anything, I just tried to make something I personally would enjoy. Curious to know your thoughts though. Cheers!

#not a translation

[beta-adjacent]

“Woof” by Chai (me!)

This is the first post of its kind on my blog— my analysis of a song written/produced by me! This initial post will just have the song lyrics, my interpretation of them, my inspirations for the piece, and some “behind the scenes” of my writing process. If I can get my shit together, I’ll hopefully reblog this with an audio file with the actual song, so you can understand the song’s tone more!

Without further ado, I present….

I. The Lyrics

The reflection of the headlights passing by on the backseat window / I am happy pretending it’s the moon (awoo) Don’t ask about the silver on my neck/ you were never meant to know/ That I domesticate myself for you I want to say I’m sorry/ Or get angry/ I can’t even muster up a smile/ I am stoic but my tail will wag all the while Because it means you see me/ Do you see it? Do you finally see me?/ And I’m sorry/yeah I’m sorry I see you clearly Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind/ For all the words / I’ll never find:/ The fool in me/ will bark again/ And pray you’ll hear a labyrinth Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind/ For all the words / I fail to find:/ The fool in me/ will bark again/ And pray you’ll hear/I pray, I fear The reflection of the headlights passing by on the backseat window / and I’m happy pretending it’s the moon

II. Theme(s)

The major theme I try to tackle in this song is the juggle between desiring to express your wants while struggling with internalized shame for wanting. And I found that easiest to explain with this analogy of a werewolf, with the human side trying to forcefully domesticate this inner beast inside them.

III. Line-by-Line Analysis

The reflection of the headlights passing by on the backseat window / I am happy pretending it’s the moon (awoo)

This picture above kind of illustrates the imagery I was hoping to go for with this line! It's what inspired the whole song tbh; I was literally sitting in the back of the car late one night, and I kept seeing headlights reflecting off the window. It made me think of dogs who sit in the back of cars, which made me think of a domesticated wolf seeing headlights as the moon instead of the moon itself.

I think that the theme of being trapped/trained by the human side is shown well through this imagery, because the very key to the wolf's transformation —the full moon— is synthetic.

The little "(awoo)" part is just a silly thing I did in the recording, but I thought it was funny to keep in the lyrics because. because howling at the "moon".

Don’t ask about my silver on my neck/you were never meant to know/that I domesticate myself for you

I struggled a lot intially with this lyric, with some earlier drafts using "the dogbed in my room" and "my grandma-eating teeth" (referring to the little red riding hood tale). But I settled for the silver because it reminds me of dogs that actually wear a silver chain as a collar. It also made me think of a shock collar, since silver is like, a classic werewolf repellent, and that lended itself well to the theme of "training the wolf".

For a while, the lines were "don't ask about the silver on my neck, you were never meant to know /that I am always at your beck and call", which was really just an attempt to rhyme 'neck'. But I changed it because “beck and call” implied a servitude more than a protection, which isn't really on-theme.

I want to say I’m sorry/ Or get angry/ I can’t even muster up a smile/ I am stoic but my tail will wag all the while

I am hoping that everyone who's been on Tumblr understands the trope of a dog character wagging their tail because they're happy on the inside but trying not to show it. Fun fact: I spent so long recording this part specifically because I kept saying "my tag will wail".

Because it means you see me/ Do you see it? Do you finally see me?

And here's where we learn that the very neglected, overly supervised wolf-dog-thing is actually being noticed, probably during some argument that would normally warrant the human side to be apologetic/angry/sardonic/happy/etc. The stoic-ness (meant to imply a tiredness/jadedness) from the human side now makes sense; the thing being domesticated is going against its training by being seen. The toggling between someone seeing "it" versus "me" is also pretty painful to wrestle with, because it's an acknowledgement that, despite hiding away the wolf, it's still a part of the person or even a “glitch” in which narrator is talking (though I don’t think I ever bring up that concept of multiple narrators anywhere else)

There's also a large question as to whether the repetition of asking is done out of joy, desperation, or even a disbelief (like a “really?? Uh huh, yea sure *eye roll*”).

And I’m sorry/yeah I’m sorry that I see you clearly

It's heard way more in the recording, but there's a lot of sass in the last line. There is a suggestion that human has the ability to see the vulnerabilities in others, while struggling to show that vulnerability themself. And that having that ability brings some sorrow or regret, which gets expressed through that sardonic tone.

Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind

HANDS DOWN MY FAVORITE LYRIC IN THIS SONG AND MAYBE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MY SONG WRITING!!!

So yes, obviously, there’s the implication of a disconnect between what you want to say versus what you think/feel, “there’s a disjoint between mind and mouth”, you’ve been reading so much of this post that this is just a restatement of the theme.

So instead, look at tHE SYNTAX!!!!!! LOOK AT HOW MANY WAYS YOU CAN INTERPRET THIS SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Mind (noun) to mouth (noun)” for mouth (noun/verb) to mind (verb): first describing the transcription of words as an effortless/involuntary process, that then needs constant oversight/hindsight to not fuck up

Mind (noun) to mouth (verb) “for mouth (noun) to mind (verb)”: the mind itself is hyper-aware that there needs to be constant oversight on what is being said, could even be read as dismissive of the mind like “whatevs, not my problem~”

Mind (verb) to mouth (noun) “for mouth (noun) to mind (verb)”: reminding the mouth of its purpose to be overly analytical of what’s coming out of it, like a sardonic courtesy

Now, those are just Chai’s top 3 favorite interpretations. But I think that, because it’s 4 words (2 minds, and 2 mouths) that can be interpreted in 2 ways each (verb or noun), there’s 8 possible combinations for this lyric, or maybe even 16 depending on your calculation (4 multiplying versus squaring by 2)!!!!

And granted, this is a stretch, but since it’s a sentence About misconstruing thoughts/words, any other words listeners could hear (ex: ‘mind’ becoming ‘mime’) make a Legitimate alternate interpretation. In fact, the lyric would still make sense if the listener heard absolute gibberish, because the lyric is about Speaking Absolute Fucking Gibberish And Our Brains Will Fix or Rationalize It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And my favorite part is that it ALL depends on the prepositions. “Mind TO mouth TO mouth TO mind” is an Entirely different meaning than “Mind TO mouth FOR mouth TO mind”!!! And hopefully misinterpretations even fuck up the prepositions like “Mind TO mouth OR mouth TO mind”, (which btw is another awesome interpretation; it questions if the mind or body is truly the one in power).

Point is that this lyric is RIPE with potential, and that potential is endless. It is so easy to fuck up this (or any) lyric by hearing/singing/reading the wrong thing, but it still can be analyzed and have a thoughtful meaning regardless. And that process is Exactly what the lyric itself is describing!!! And that daunting feeling, that your words could be taken in any possible way, is such a major loss of control and matches the theme of the rest of the song seamlessly!!!!!!!

Isn’t that just the coolest fucking thing ever????? It’s definitely not The first lyric ever to do this, but it might be My first lyric to ever do this, and it might be nonsensical but goddamn it, I’m Proud to say I can extrapolate all of that from 6 fucking words!!!

The fool in me will bark again/and pray you’ll hear a labyrinth

Second favorite lyric, and it’s much simpler to wrap your head around too methinks!! This entire bridge is mind-melting tbh and I love it

Revealing this hatred of the inner beast (by calling it a fool), and how its attempts to articulate can’t (or rather, shouldn’t) be recognized as something worth listening to, or even something human.

And do you guys ever listen to an animal speak, or even a baby cry, and you’re just…. confused? Like, “I can’t tell what it wants and am glad it’s not my responsibility to figure that out”? That’s what the “labyrinth” is supposed to mean. The speaker hopes nothing of true value is heard in the barking. Instead, they pray that a warning label is produced, a placard with the face of a minotaur and the words “string store 300 miles left!”. Through careful training, the barking should threaten people to get lost inside of something larger than life (aka the meta-analysis of speaking/behaving, as described in the “mind to mouth” segment), so that they never actually venture in. Which hopefully also makes listeners question…

"why pray for it if the speaker can control it?", to which the simple answer is "it can't because fool is inside of the speaker, not the speaker itself; it’s a separate, uncontrollable entity, like how the mind and mouth are separate” or even cooler “it can’t because the general process of ‘mind to mouth’ takes the speaker and the listener, and since the listener is out of the speaker’s control, the whole process is out of control”, or even “the fool and the man are the same entity, but have been so alienated from each other by their own actions that reconnection of the self feels impossible!!!”

Either way, it’s a hopeless lyric, a pitiful cry for help over something already expressed to be uncontrollable. It’s a short way to explain how interaction is a two-way street, and almost always leads to a conversational car crash, which is so routine now it’s become desired

And in a way, this is the wolf. This overwhelming complexity —a black hole of thought and emotion that is near-impossible to describe due to its sheer vastness, which controls every layer of thought and perception, something that can’t even truly be understood or acknowledged by others because of how you interact with it— is the wolf.

Hopefully now all of the desperate measures from before make sense. The contradicting feelings when someone glimpses into the wolf’s personage. The internal strategies to keep the wolf contained. The futile scrambling for a simple reality. If you were plagued with a wolf, and how much letting to roam free could hinder you and others, wouldn’t you want to train it too?

Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind/ For all the words / I fail to find:/ The fool in me/ will bark again/ And pray you’ll hear/I pray, I fear

Can you believe I loved my lyrics so much that I just had to repeat them? It’s a popular motif in music so I’m not bothered, and it’s important to me at least to emphasize that 1) This Is Where The Analysis “Meat” Is At and 2) You Don’t Need an Analytical Brain to Enjoy This.

Which, speaking of, is a good time to bring up rhythm!! Because I don’t remember the poetry lingo, but this is the Most on-beat part of the song and it’s very stable (which is ironic). Let me rewrite it so you can see where phonetic emphasis is intended:

Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind/ For all the words / I fail to find:/ The fool in me/ will bark again/ And pray you’ll hear/I pray, I fear

Also here people get to sit on the amount of alliterations (mind, mouth, mind/ fail, find, fool) and repetitions (mind to mouth, and the pray/hear/pray/fear), and are able to enjoy a new rhyme scheme (the again/labyrinth versus the shortened hear/fear)

Speaking of, that shortened rhyme is a lead up to the final lyric:

The reflection of the headlights passing by on the backseat window / and I’m happy pretending it’s the moon

Which I fear is a segue easier seen on paper than heard because we’re mirroring the rhythm/notes of the first line, so the jump is a bit harsh. It’s meant to read like “I fear the following: 1) the reflection of the headlights passing by on the backseat window and 2) I’m happy pretending that’s the moon”

But analytically, the last thing we’re left with is a fear of being content with all of the training and trapping of the beast. This feeling of unrest, of wanting life to be simple but refusing to commit to simplicity or complexity, makes it a constant back and forth between man and beast. Really, this is meant to be when we can step back, and let the meta-analysis of the inner battle wash over us as the final chord is played, leaving us in a similar state of being stuck in our own heads, idly watching life pass us by…..

And yea, that’s the whole song! :> Congrats for reading/scrolling this far!!!

IV. Inspiration

My music has been heavily influenced by Midwest emo bands, especially ones like The Front Bottoms and McCafferty (Mom Jean and Pet Symmetry get honorable mentions). And I emphasize The Front Bottoms and McCaffetty because of the “mind to mouth” verse. The rhythm and the lyrics of this segment sound exactly like something these bands would write!!!

If you recognize these bands, I encourage you to read this verse again (pasted below), imagining the lead singer belting it:

Mind to mouth/for mouth to mind/ For all the words / I’ll never find:/ The fool in me/ will bark again/ And pray you’ll hear a labyrinth

If I find a decent Nick Hartop AI, it’s over for y’all!!

IV. Outtakes/“the Process”

Making this post: I had the terrible, terrible idea at one point to work on this post in the presence of humans, and at one point they saw my search history. Seeing “shock collar dog”, “silver chain dog”, and “bad guys tail wag gif” all in a row made them….Really concerned for me.

I wanted to share the song itself in this but I wussed out. Mostly because I’m terrified the FBI (or worse, my friends) will stumble across that file by accident (it’s the wolf, I suppose LMAO). I did convert it into an AI cover using Sonic the Hedgehog (which gave it a lovely Blink 182 quality) and even tried out Garage Band and using the piano feature! But I’m also a lil afraid bc it is Midwest emo inspired, and I don’t know much more than power chords (ooh, “not much more than power chords” is a good lyric, no one steal that unless you show me your demo first). So the backing is…kind of missing A Lot (like a consistent beat). If people want to hear it, I’d probably drop the half-baked piano version I made, which doesn’t do the song justice but would at least help people get the music’s vibe

V. Conclusion

Hopefully, I have been able to convince you that my song, “Woof” may be simple at first glance, but a lot of thought was put into its creation!! Making songs like these is one of my all-time favorite ways to understand my perception of the world. It’s really a process I treasure.

As perhaps expected now, the Meta-analysis Wolf in my mind is worried that everything I wrote is disjointed or that it’s not telling the cohesive story I want it to. So, if you have questions about anything mentioned in this post, or wanted to share critique, feel free to do so! My only request is that you be kind; I am a nothing more (and nothing less) than a student of thinking and creating

And I feel like I need an upbeat takeaway for this post sooooooooo…….. if you find something in you, urging you to be creative, listen to yourself!! Follow that instinct to be a fellow student in thought & creation!!!!!!!!!!

#keep reading at your own risk: this shit is lengthy and a lil existential? #you at least get to see into my anxieties; that’s what you sign up for when reading an analysis of a song used usually as a coping mechanism #song analysis #chai rl #lyric analysis #original song

[1ore]

Now that I have internet i can spring this on you from the ask meme C:< (edited the wording on it for my own personal clarity LOL) 23. Introduce an OC that has changed a lot from your first draft of them

Oh man. Okay here's a long one because I’m going and going and going and g

Old Mora has the funniest visual development I think, just because she’s as old as Moribund itself is, and you can tell just how badly I struggle to nail down her design. I think I’ve finally gotten the challenging bits out of the way, but I need to draw her more to get everything else in order.

In Moribund, there’s this concept of the world being birthed and given motion by the interplay of two ur-beasts, an osprey and a snake. It’s not technically correct to say that Old Mora is the definitive osprey, but she rhymes with it, if that makes Any sense at all. So designing her is kind of like designing that in terms of “need to be getting it right”

In her earliest drafts (early ~2014 above) she looked a lot like the ur-snake, funny enough. The defining features of her face came to me all at once, like it should be impossible to tell which side is up and which is down, she should have a jowl window that doubles as an eye, a throat that doubles as an iris, streaming light-tears that are like threads in the eye of the needle, an arrow-shaped beak, etc. And I was really attached to this specific face for a long time, but the rest of her body wasn't coming to me.

like this is very cool but this is not my beautiful wife. (also 2014)

At some point, I went in the fucked up handbird direction, and I stayed there for a longo time too.

These wyvern-y ones are from 2014 as well. I remember the bottom one being kind of a bolt of inspiration re: uncanny feethands and winghands, but looking back she does just look like Smooth Lugia here.

2014/2015 was when Moribund started to find its way in terms of like, cohesive vision and feel of the world, (and also just me as a visual artist finding my way to drawing what I really liked to draw) and I think one of those growing pains was Mora moving from slippery handdragon to giant death bird.

Then I finally knocked the silly beak horns off her face.

Then in 2015 Iuhhhhhhh

violence magenta and indigo blue became morb (TM) blue-black and red. her beak is extremely funny here. you can tell i was struggling so bad, but I forgive her. I still like this piece.

she kind of middles around here for a while. She is pretty much quadruped for all of these; I experiment with making her handwings into seperately-motile coverts and primaries.

During this time I am so very concerned with wings and with the launching power of birds vs. pterosaurs and with figuring out a quadruped Mora.

Long story short: Birds can only get so big, because there’s a tradeoff between having more wing muscle and having more leg muscle. Your legs aren’t what you use to fly, so as they get bigger, they’re better for launching but heavier and more unwieldy while flying. If you get more wing muscle to compensate for carrying them, then that means you are now heavier and need more leg muscle to initially get you in the air. Eventually, you hit a ceiling where you either can’t launch, because you don’t have enough power out back, or you can’t fly, because the clap of your asscheeks keeps alerting the gravity. But pterosaurs can get Absolutely Ginormous because their wing muscles are also their launching muscles and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

and then I get over it, because I like birds and mora looks cute but kind of dorky on all fours. (^ 2016)

(2018 ^) She’s allowed to get more organic over time. At some point I ditch the feethands completely, but I still choose to struggle with her beak teeth.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. that’s a design issue I had with her from day one. Drawing Mora from the front was a logistical nightmare because she’s so... shape (^ 2018)

I flirt with giving her perforated nostrils and making her more condor-like. (^2019)

doesn’t seem to stick. im still not giving up her beak teeth, but they’re still causing me problems. I want to go back and fix this piece actually, because it’s so recent but she looks sooooo dorky here. (^2021)

From here I think her most important additions are a.) extremely big feather boots and b.) moving the beak teeth up to her jowls. which fixes everything, for some reason

she's been one of those design journeys where a lot of the ideas were cool in isolation, but had to be abandoned because they just weren't serving the actual character that she is: a really big death bird who is also, like, just a woman.

now i just have to make good on drawing her more. and not at two in the morning. waw.

#THANK YOU REED!!! #now if youre asking about which character changed in writing the most over time thats a very different question #for lore who is not awake at two in the morning #i think ill do that aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa tomorrow #uncaptioned images tag #sorry about that i have no brainmeat left #Tomorrow. tomorrow. #mora tag