#which isn't really relevant at all but always works anyway

[suzukiblu]

Day twenty-eight of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

“I'll show you how it works,” Tim says, smiling a little helplessly at him for no good reason. Kon's just–pretty. And cute. And wearing slightly smudged eyeliner, like he went out of his way to learn how to apply it just for this and didn't quite get enough practice with it during said learning process, which might be a little much to assume but sure is a thought either way. “There'll be placards and stuff that explain how it all goes too. If you don't like it we can leave, obviously, we'll just go to dinner early.” 

“You wanna do dinner too?” Kon asks. 

“My intentions tonight are for this exhibit, dinner, and then another surprise destination,” Tim says. “Do you like Japanese food, because I got us a reservation at a Japanese place I know, but if that's not your thing, there's always other options.”

Tim definitely did not make three back-up reservations in a Bat-panic, because that would be an insane person thing to do and he's operating with fully rational behavior for fully rational reasons here. Obviously. Of course-ly. 

Just like, yeah. There may or may not be back-up reservations. 

Contingency plans are vital, okay? 

“I like Japanese food,” Kon says. “Well–I like sushi and musubi and poke bowls and that kinda thing, at least. So like . . . same diff, right?” 

“Right,” Tim assumes, with still no idea what either musubi or poke bowls are. He'll google it. It'll be fine. If nothing else, Kon can get sushi. He'll buy him one of those huge fancy boats of it if he's gotta. 

. . . actually that's not a bad idea, Kon could probably use the calories. Hm. 

“You planned all that stuff, though?” Kon asks, peering around the gallery as they finally step out into it and frowning in confusion. 

“I promised you I'd take you someplace nice,” Tim says with an easy shrug. “So I found some nice places to take you. That's all.”  

“You only promised me one nice place,” Kon says with a little laugh, shaking his head. “Now it's three?” 

“I'm intending to take you to a lot of nice places, Kon,” Tim says, and feels his chest clench up a little when he sees the way Kon's expression softens at the sound of his name. He needs to be using it more, he thinks to himself. Like–way more. “Or just wherever you wanna go.” 

“Sure,” Kon says, ducking his head, then glances around the gallery again as his frown reasserts itself. “What's everybody doing? They're like–messing with everything.” 

“It's a sensory exhibit,” Tim repeats in clarification. “You're supposed to interact with the exhibits. Touch or listen to or manipulate them. Things like that.” 

Kon . . . blinks, slowly. Then he glances sidelong at Tim, biting his lip. 

He doesn't ask, but the question in his eyes is obvious enough, Tim thinks. 

“It's tactile telekinesis, isn't it?” he says. “So I thought you might be interested in something tactile.” 

“You . . . did?” Kon says, glancing back towards the rest of the room. 

“It at least seemed like a valid theory,” Tim says. Kon had kept touching the cashmere on and off for as long as he’d worn it, and petted the goat, and had apparently been clocking the whole damn mall most of the time they’d been there, and he’d just thought–well–

Kon really does talk about his TTK so much, whether it’s relevant or not. Doing something that might be deliberately relevant to it had just seemed, well . . . natural. 

If nothing else, it might help keep Kon interested in him a little longer. Tim still isn’t sure how long to expect Kon to stay interested, depending, so until he knows one way or the other, he might as well frontload his success here. Or at least try to, anyway. 

Look, he’s going to do his best, alright? His best is just the best he can do. 

“You know, if you wanted me to touch something, you could’ve just volunteered,” Kon jokes, but the way he says it doesn’t actually make Tim want to laugh. It’s actually all he can do not to frown, the way he says it. Just . . . something about it’s a little off, maybe.

“I told you I’d take you on a date,” he says. “Just telling you to feel me up doesn’t seem like putting in much effort there. Definitely not nice levels of effort.” 

“Oh,” Kon says, ducking his head as he glances away again. He’s still holding his hand. Tim wonders what kind of dates Kon’s even been on before–and if he’s ever been the one getting taken on one, too. Especially since as far as he knows Kon’s only dated girls, and there were probably some assumptions set in place there. Like–it seems likely that there would’ve been, at least. Even if just self-imposed ones. 

“Want to try?” Tim offers. “Like I said, if you don’t like it we’ll just go to dinner early.” 

“Um, sure,” Kon says. “We can try it. Um . . .” 

“This way,” Tim says, and leads him towards one of the closer stations in the exhibit. Kon looks a little unsure where to start, so he figures it’ll help if he gives him a little push. Though it’s weird to think of Kon as needing any kind of a push, except maybe a push to actually stay still and listen for ten seconds. Or like . . . anything remotely along those lines. 

The station is a low, hip-height sandbox full of . . . well, sand, unsurprisingly. There's stones and rakes and general Zen garden-style paraphernalia laid out inside it, and patterns and colors already marked and dyed into the sand to be mixed-up and deconstructed at will, though no one seems to have gotten too far into that yet. Kon tilts his head as he looks down at the display, his eyes briefly unfocusing. 

“You're just supposed to play around with it,” Tim says, wondering what that unfocused look on his face is about. “Rearrange the patterns or make new ones, I guess.” 

“Huh,” Kon says. “Okay. Like just however?” 

“I mean, what, are they gonna yell at us for doing it wrong?” Tim asks with a shrug. Kon smirks at him. 

“I could come up with something they'd yell at us for,” he says with a teasing leer. 

Tim suffers. 

“Let's wait a couple stations before we get ourselves kicked out,” he manages, swallowing awkwardly. Kon grins at him, then leans over the sandbox and presses both hands flat against the sand inside and immediately starts rearranging everything with his TTK. Tim is about to reflexively protest him not even pretending to check for any onlookers before realizing that there is literally no possible way that anyone could look at them right now without Kon being able to feel them turning their way, and also the two security cameras that were previously in their range are both cocked askew now.

Okay, so he could be worse at passing for civilian, Tim figures, and just leans over and lets himself admire the wave-like ripples spreading across the sandbox as Kon carefully constructs a swirling rainbow of an ocean with all of the brighter colors and a dark beach stretched out alongside it, accented with little rocks scattered around like shells and driftwood. The wave patterns look surprisingly accurate, but then again, he probably did get a great aerial view of the ocean on the regular back in Hawaii, didn't he. 

Tim takes his phone out and sneaks a quick pic or two of both Kon and the box on old reflex, and Kon laughs at him. 

“You like, babe?” he asks with a teasing smirk. 

“Most things about you, yes,” Tim replies frankly, because he's not Robin right now so he can do that, and Kon laughs again even as he blushes and straightens back up, the sand all brushing itself off his hands. 

“Only most?” he asks. “Guess I gotta step up my game, then.” 

“Find another excuse to wear that crop top and you'll be fine,” Tim advises, and Kon laughs so bright for that it's almost flustering. 

Well, no, it's definitely flustering. Actually it's very, very flustering. 

Adorable bastard. Absolute fucker. Tim should throw him off a bridge, but he'd just fly back up anyway, the asshole. 

Tim wants to kiss him so bad right now. 

Kon's eyes half-unfocus again, and then the sand and rocks and tools all . . . shift. Tim blinks, a little surprised, and then realizes–oh. He's sorting it all back. Like . . . very accurately back, in fact. The colors and patterns are all returning to the exact same designs as they were in when they first stepped over here. Which is probably for the best because again, they’re currently playing civilian, but–

“Holy shit,” Tim says as the patterns all settle back in and his eyebrows shoot up, more than a little incredulous. Okay, well–he's slightly less sure that Kon doesn't have Superman's eidetic memory now. Also, considering how mixed-around all the colors were, he doesn't even know how he did that so effectively. “How the hell did you do that?” 

“Wasn't hard,” Kon replies casually, but he looks smug about it, the–again–adorable bastard. Fucker. “Just undid what everybody already did, yeah?” 

Tim looks at the sand and belatedly notices that yes, in fact, Kon also reverted everything else that'd been done to it back to what was clearly the original design too. He cannot even fathom how Kon could tell how to “undo” any of that. Like–the pattern-recognition, fine, he could've done that himself–Bart could've, if he'd been interested enough to bother–but tracking back a design after undoing the whole thing to begin with and keeping the different colors of sand all correctly separated? Seriously? 

“Jesus,” he says. “That's incredible.” 

“No big,” Kon says, but looks very pleased about the compliment all the same. Tim thinks of about three thousand tactical applications for this skill alone and really wants to know why Kon doesn't brag about this part of TTK more. Or like, ever. It's always punching things and ripping up the street and tearing doors off their hinges and things like that, when he can do things like map an entire building blind and control sand down to the fucking individual grains? 

Tim might need to have a talk with all of their teammates about their actual abilities, actually, seeing all this. Like, some assessment tests might need to happen. Questionnaires. Something. The informal approach was clearly not thorough enough. If nothing else, he's definitely following up with Kon. 

“I honestly did not realize how good you'd be at that,” Tim says, and then has to watch in disbelief as Kon smirks smugly at him while simultaneously–without even looking–builds a little sand castle without even bothering to put his hands in the sand this time. Which he doesn't have to, obviously, because the sand is in the sandbox and it's part of the table which is on the floor he's standing on and Tim objectively understands how TTK works, but that really seems like it'd be much harder to pull off. Just–damn. Damn. 

. . . technically, if Kon can control things as small as a grain of sand, how small can he go? Could he–theoretically, at least–manipulate dust? Air molecules? 

Atoms? 

Because if he could, if things like that counted . . . well, the transitive properties of TTK would be a lot less of a limitation outside of maybe the vacuum of space, wouldn't they. There's always air, after all. And if Kon could manipulate anything on the atomic level . . . 

Jesus. There's a thought. 

As soon as Tim's done being desperately, overwhelmingly turned on and also reformatting several of his supervillainy-connected plans, he's gonna have to start drafting that superpower skills and applications thereof questionnaire. Like. Immediately once he's done, actually. 

Just–again, just Jesus. 

“I mean, it's just a party trick, but it's a fun one, right?” Kon says with another laugh. 

Tim is going to lose his actual fucking mind. 

“You call that a party trick?” he says in disbelief. There is no possible way that any lock could be secure against that. No one could ever hide behind cover. No one could even carry a concealed weapon without him knowing, for fuck's sake! 

. . . Tim is very glad he's been leaving the birdarangs home for his not-dates and current-date with Kon. Very, very glad. 

Jesus, that would've been fun to explain to Bruce. Well I didn't TELL him I was Robin, but I DID encourage him to tactile-telekinetically feel me up in a changing room while I was strapped with Bat-gear, sooooo . . . I mean, you never told me I couldn't do THAT. 

That's exactly how he would've explained it, obviously, but still. Bruce would not have taken it well. 

What a fucking way to come out to Batman, too.

#timkon #tim drake #kon el #conner kent #dc robin #superboy #young just us #young justice #rinfic #long post #wip: obligatory sugar baby kon

[tollingreminiscentbells]

Working on my RadioApple AU and the deeper I get into this series the more obviously "AU" it becomes. I just can't resist tossing out the weak Lucifer backstory the show gave us and going rogue.

There are so many relevant texts, you know? Give me Lucifer the first angel, the brightest and most beloved. The morning star who inspired a third of all angels to follow him in a war against heaven. If we're deep-diving, how about the destroying archangel Samael, who served as the prosecutor in the court of heaven before he fell?

The Samael thing is interesting, actually. A lot of Lucifer "canon" comes from midrash and Kabbalah and pseudepigrapha about Samael. Samael is the Adversary, Lucifer is the Adversary, they kind of merged. Lucifer isn't an angel's name, anyway, so it makes more sense if he wasn't always called that.

(Samael means "poison of god", by the way, which is pretty great.)

There's a lot of material out there, is what I'm saying, and we are collectively sleeping on most of the really fun stuff.

I am modestly knowledgeable about this subject. I have a Jewish religious education and read this kind of stuff for fun, but I won't claim more than that. You want to do some jazzy world building in your fic, though? Come talk to me. I've got you.

#radioapple #appleradio #fic progress #writing with noe #all changed changed utterly

[thirteenemeraldcats]

in one of your tags you mentioned-

'one of the things that gets chatted about A LOT in teaching is meeting students at their point of need- which ted does NOT do with jamie'

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this! Both in terms of what that concept entails, and also what you think Jamie's point of need was at the time versus what Ted saw the situation needing

(You have excellent tags btw, don't know if anyone's mentioned that)

I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS THAT I LOVE THAT YOU'D LOVE TO HEAR!

(I have more thoughts than I anticipated, this got errr, long. Whoops)

(potentially necessary/relevant background here is I am a high school teacher 👋)

Okie dokie, so, one of the principles of best practice in teaching is the idea I tag-rambled above; meet both the individual students and collective class at their point of need. Essentially this means practising differentiation in teaching and adjusting how content/ideas are communicated to students based on who they are as learners and people. Particularly if a student is performing outside the 'average' (either exceeding or still developing), this means adjusting to their needs by (among other things) curating differentiated resources and adapting delivery style. Differentiation is especially important in an all-abilities classroom, unfortunately public education is perpetually underfunded and overcrowded so everyone's just out here doing their best (the decent people of the world at least). BUT! WHILE I'M ON IT! SPEAKING OF THE THINGS I'VE TAG RAMBLED, the education system's (global) inability to adequately differentiate for students of different-abilities, particularly students with ADHD, ASD and Dyslexia, is perhaps the greatest failing of the whole dang thing and if anyone who ever stumbles across this is neuro-divergent and feels like they were a bad student or couldn't 'keep up' in mainstream education- THAT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT. You don't have to break yourself to 'fit', school is MEANT to bend for you. (Particularly when you're young, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG)

ANYWAY, the fictional football of it all!

We don't see a lot of Ted actually coaching in this show (stick with me). The scenes in which he 'coaches' are typically him and various other coaching staff standing on the sidelines while the team skirmishes or occasionally runs drills, so me saying Ted doesn't differentiate is more based around his patented Ted-talks. NOW, Ted PROBABLY knows the team fairly well as individuals, particularly in season 2 and 3, purely by having spent quite a lot of time with them, despite this the only times we really see him 'adjust' his style with the team are ironically season 1 (examples include conferencing Jamie and Roy in 1x04 For The Children, and allowing/facilitating Nate's speech in 1x07 Make Rebecca Great Again). The moment that always sticks out to me as most significant is when he goes and seeks out Keeley's advice on how to get through to Jamie in 1x02 Biscuits.

Side note: I will be forever obsessed with Keeley jumping straight from 'blowjobs' to one of the four operant conditioning techniques (positive reinforcement) when asked about this. That woman is a very fascinating puzzle of a person.

Ted recognises that his typical perpetual-optimism-style isn't cracking the Jamie-Tartt-nut and seeks out a different opinion. This kind of collaboration and whole-system approach is key in teaching too, either by tapping the knowledge-well of a student's broader school context or the difficult-to-crack student's parents.

SO, having gotten the Jamie-Tartt-cheat-code from Keeley he DOES meet Jamie at his point of need, speaks clearly to him and communicates what he needs from him. AND IT WORKS! Temporarily! During the conversation between the two in Ted's office we see Jamie engage, he even practises self-reflection! Granted it's about his left foot cross, but still! The nut is cracked.

Jamie even maintains the perspective Ted has taught him for about two seconds while talking to Trent, until Jamie's other (definitely not positively-reinforced) behaviours rear up and he reverts to what James others have taught him.

On the other hand.

Multiple times throughout the show we see Jamie be visibly or verbally confused by Ted's communication style. Ted often talks in meandering metaphors that Jamie doesn't seem to be able to follow. We verbally hear him state 'Why doesn't he just say that then, do you know what I mean?' in 2x07 Headspace after Beard has to translate Ted's 'peas and carrots/beefchunks' analogy to 'starters and reserves'. Then there's the infamous 'What the fuck are Denver Broncos?' from 3x09 La Locker Room Aux Folles. The only notable time we really see Jamie 'get' one of these metaphors is the sewer-system-tunnels from 3x01 Smells Like Mean Spirit.

(His understanding of that specific metaphor, along with his use of the magnets to demonstrate total football in 3x07 The Strings That Bind, and a Watsonian-perspective of his near perfect mimicry of movements he saw two years ago when executing the decoy play in 3x12 So Long, Farewell, are actually all examples I use to head-canon Jamie as a primarily visual/physical based learner. For whatever that's worth!)

NOW! Ted's willingness to seek and apply alternate techniques in season 1 when he should know the team as both individuals and a collective the least, coupled with his inability or unwillingness to practise differentiation in later seasons when he DOES KNOW THEM is why I don't think Ted is meeting the team, specifically Jamie at their/his point of need. Any person's ability to differentiate behaviour to meet the needs/requirements/comforts of the individual or group they're talking to is increased the more they know them. (We all do this in life, consciously or subconsciously we typically try and 'match the vibe' of whoever we're communicating with [doubly so for people who're engaging in masking.])

Ted should and does learn more about Jamie as a person and his background as the show progresses. He listens to Jamie vocalise both his internal justifications for his actions and his reflections of those justifications/actions in 1x06 Two Aces, he sees him being explicitly physically abused in 1x10 The Hope That Kills You, he listens to him describe a spiralling mindset in 2x02 Lavender, he sees him being explicitly verbally abused in 2x08 Man City.

Of course, one of the fascinating things about Jamie is how much he learns and grows over the course of the show, and there are instances in which I don't think Ted is recognising that (primarily his dismissal of Jamie in 3x03 4-5-1 and not utilising Jamie's knowledge of total football as a resource from the beginning in 3x07 The Strings That Bind).

Ted understands and has previously applied Jamie responding well to positive reinforcement, yet at multiple times in the series doesn't respond in a way that reflects his perspective being informed by that knowledge. Essentially not practising the appropriate level of care/caution when interacting with/around Jamie.

There's not intervening on Jamie's behalf in 2x03 Do the Right-est Thing or 2x06 The Signal when the team and Roy are targeting or ignoring him respectively. The assumed absence of any follow up to the events of 2x08 Man City, the Zava of it all in season 3, and of course the eternal 'forgiveness' kicker from 3x11 Mom City.

POINT BEING. And to actually answer your inquiry lol, I think Jamie is someone who needs clear communication, ideally bracketed in positive reinforcement based operant conditioning as a learning technique (reward behaviour you want reinforced by offering something desirable [praise in Jamie's case]) and visual/physical aid/references for concepts; as a LEARNER.

AS A PERSON, there's more. Ted can readily infer from all he's heard and seen that Jamie's a victim of child abuse. The long term damage to the adult psyche that abuse during formative years has is astronomical, it literally changes the foundational structures of a person's brain. And yet, again, we never see Ted even acknowledge this. Jamie in 3x11 Mom City, incidentally compares his father to Freddy Krueger, Ted elaborates on the comparison, then Jamie reiterates that Freddy Krueger's 'fucking terrifying'. Ted doesn't reassure Jamie (the requirement of his point of need), he gives him a Ted-talk (and in doing so doesn't differentiate his perspective/communication technique).

As far as what Ted thought the situation needed... search me I've got no idea. I do think Ted projects onto Jamie a hell of a lot. That he gets Jamie's personhood and life experiences all tangled up in the emotions he has about his father's death and his consequent perceived abandonment, his insecurities about his own ability to parent Henry and even in his own inability to clearly communicate with his mother. I do think Ted relies on his own forced optimism to 'get by'. Like how a great white shark dies if it stops swimming, if Ted stops being 'Ted', if he stops swimming, his past and his fears and his feelings will catch up to him and swallow him whole. (For what it's worth, I do think Ted is more unwell than even the show explicitly tells us, much like Jamie experiencing ongoing trauma due to childhood abuse, the effects both short-term and long-term as well as potential causalities of having a parent die by suicide are... grim.)

(Essentially the entire fandom has talked about basically all of this at one point or another, I'm just using slightly different language.)

NOW! These characters are fictional (obviously) and I am judging them based on real-people conventions and the best-principles of my own profession, as well as my background in theoretical psychology (which I think I forgot to mention and is also probably [??] relevant). My Doylist-perspective of Ted and his coaching/communication style is ...kinder, but if I get too sucked into the narrative it results in either brief tag-rambles or... whatever this thing I've just typed is. I think it's been too long since I've written academically, my thoughts have gone circular 🫠

ANYWAY! I hope this made something-approaching sense! Thank you again for asking to hear my thoughts! Always happy to word vomit!

ALSO, thank you for saying my tags are excellent (you are the first and currently only to say so!) - The tags are where I send my thoughts to die (in a 'I must banish them to move on' kind of way rather than a 'I'm strangling them' kind of way) so you saying they're excellent is even MORE flattering than you realise! Makes my brain want to purr 💚🤣

#what do i even begin to tag this slab of text as YEESH #ted lasso #jamie tartt #theodore lasso #ask box is always open #come hit me up for teaching rambles or psych rambles or fandom rambles or general rambles ANYTIME #readwing #jamiesfootball #oh shit trigger warnings #suicide #child abuse #if this indeed makes no sense i would like to blame it on the fact i've written it while drinking wine through a straw #(it's my friday night okay) #i'll post this in the morning when i've had the chance to read it while NOT drinking wine through a straw #hola- it is now morning and i'm only slightly hungover! win!

[dragongirltongue]

New Pinned post <3

Hi there, the name is Zelda, or one of like, 20 other names that may or may not be listed somewhere around here. If you know a name I go by that isn't findable here don't use it. <3

I'm bigender which is made up of girl and fem6oy, as such I use she/her and sometimes he/him pronouns when I'm feeling fem6oy enough <3

I'm in my 30s, not getting more specific than that until I decide it's not true enough to change it, don't try to find my exact age as I don't like sharing that information publicly, I don't even update it on my birthday <3

I'm a polyamorous bisexual voraphile freak and if you're over 18 you're welcome to talk to me about how much of a freak I am. I love to flirt and encourage it. Also happy to share my Other Blog with anyone interested, again as long as you're of age. <3

I'm a film graduate and currently working on doing something with that experience as well as working on a superhero comic and a 2D zelda style game. Feel free to bug me about any of those I love to discuss writing and media and want to encourage media literacy. <3

I'm also an ex-jehovahs witness and as a result I'm hugely into the holiday season in a very against my old god kinda way. Also big into sinning <3

Also I'm like, a dragon in probably an otherkin/thetadelta kinda way, like, it's core to who I am and how I understand myself so yeah. Despite this my fursona is a fox, the dragon in my icon is literally me <3

I also draw sometimes and when I do it'll be posted to @dragongirldrawings but always reblogged here too.

Also I'm a member of a plural system, feel free to check out the rest of the system over here @haven-sys <3

Further on the identity weirdness I'm an imaginary friend for the person who used to inhabit this body, they've been gone for like, over 20 years so it's not really relevant but I have started embracing my nature as a fictional creation, it's comforting.

So yeah that's me, hiii I love you all <3

this post is specifically a6out tum6lr user Zelda dragongirltongue

DNI list under the read more.

lmao imagine if I actually made one of those finally, that's how you'd know I've been replaced with an evil clone or something.

That being said if you're looking at my blog to send me an ask or dm about what someone gets off to please understand unless they're actively hurting someone I rly don't care. I have a lot of ignored and blocked anons about this.

This goes double if the person you're trying to alert me to is trans femme, we don't play that game here, especially given that I know I've been targetted for things as simple as engaging in vore the wrong way for some people or whatever.

Like, I just want to make it clear I rly don't give a fuck what another adult does in the bedroom, I rly don't care if the bedroom happens to include their blog and I rly don't care if they like to flirt about it with other adults on this website.

Also if your pinned post is a callout for anyone about anything it's likely to set off my paranoia around you, which is to say I will not be able to trust you if this is the case even if it's for someone who's actually a danger to a community, like, actively.

Like, this ain't a moral stance or anything, it's a mental health thing. I see that you want to make your first point of contact into a crosshair on someone else I'm gonna be scared you're gonna aim at me next even if it's completely reasonable that you'd never find anything objectionable with me. It scares me and I'm gonna spend every interaction walking on egg shells around you cos what if you're digging for dirt, like, I got no way of knowing.

Anyway as the opening joke implies I don't see any worth in having a list of things to not interact with me over cos the lived experience on this planet is so full of nuance and I've formed deem friendships with people who'd probably have avoided me if I had a DNI and they cared about it.

I think DNIs are dumb but this feels like a space to talk about some general limits on what I'm gonna put up with on this website. I'm just here for a good time with other freaks, anything else is optional. If you want to drag me into your discourse at this point then I guess this is whre I ask you to Do Not Interact. To anyone else, I love yall <3

If you've been directed here after sending an ask my way please apologize for wasting my time [here]

tl;dr DNIs are dumb but don't drag me into your personal grievances with others.

this post is still specifically a6out tum6lr user Zelda dragongirltongue

#6aaah #last updated dec 16

[effervescentdragon]

Vampire AU - whatever pairing you want I just want biting and some rancid vibes 😹

not quite rancid, except for your hate towards certain people. but maybe funny? im still in a certain headspace, as you can see. i call this "the one in which carlos is bella swan" in my head

Carlos remembers the story Fernando once told him, about his grandfather and the way he worked in a factory. He was pretty sure the story was bullshit, but Fernando was hillariously drunk, and that's when he usually let things slip. Carlos has learned more about the incestuous fuckfest that was the grid in 2010s than he ever wanted to know that way.

He also learned more about Sebastian Vettel than he ever could imagine wanting to know, but that's another story.

The point of this story was - quality control. Nando's grandfather apparently worked in a factory furing the war (and Carlos isn't asking which one, because Fernando is old), and he complained about there not being enough quality control about - shelling? Or shelving. Carlos isn't sure, and he definitely isn't going to ask because he doesn't really care and it's not even that relevant for the story of now, except it's all he can think about when he watches Lando hiss in pain and struggle to get the new watch Carlos had brought him off his wrist.

"It's got fucking silver in it!" Lando yelps, and throws the watch on the floor.

"No it doesn't," Carlos says, more confused than he ever has been in Lando's company (and those couple of times when he fell asleep beside Lando in the hotel rooms all over the world before and after the races and Carlos woke up dizzy and disoriented and hard don't count). "It's pure gold. I know you don't like silver, so I bought you gold."

Lando scoffs. "The fuck it is," he says, pain evident in his voice as he rubs his reddened wrist. "I don't know what bullshit your sponsors are feeding you guys, but there's definitely silver in this."

Carlos frowns, coming closer and taking Lando's hand in his. His wrist is swollen and a very unhealthy shade of red. "I didn't know you were alergic."

Lando's eyes shift to the side. "Yeah, I - I'm alergic," he says. "A pretty bad allergy." He chuckles. "Life-threatening."

Carlos feels like he's missing the joke. He feels like that a lot with Lando, except it never feels like the joke is on him, more like Lando is being hard on himself.

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely, trailing his fingers over Lando's skin. "I didn't know. I'll have a word with Richard Mille representative."

Lando's eyes are huge in the dim light of the room when he looks up at Carlos. It takes everything in him not to tighten his hold on Lando's wounded wrist.

"No problem, mate. It's the thought that counts anyway." Lando shifts a bit, and Carlos lets go. "I'll be fine. Wanna play FIFA?" He shakes the sleeves of his hoodie until they are covering half of his hands.

Carlos feels like he's missing something. He feels bad about the watch, though, so he only nods. "Sure."

Lando grins at him, and it's alright.

-

Except.

Except, when Carlos says goodbye that night, he catches a glimpse of Lando's wrist.

It's pale pink, and not swollen anymore.

-

Carlos watches Lando during the post race interview. His cheeks are a bit flushed, but he's still very pale. They've just spent a whole week on the beach and Carlos has an even darker tan than usual, but Lando is still extremely pale.

Carlos can't remember Lando using sunscreen once on their vacation.

He watches Lando until Caco elbows him in the ribs, muttering "Obvious and oblivious, my fucking God."

-

"He never sleeps," Oscar says offhandedly. "He texts me the weirdest shit at like, four in the morning, and then he's right as rain in the sim at seven." He turns to Carlos. "Was he always like that?"

Carlos ignores the gnawing in his stomach at the fact that Lando texts Oscar randomly. Before he can answer, Alex does.

"Oh my God, yes! He used to be the same when we were kids, never fucking sleeping. George, do you remember that one time..." he continues, but Carlos isn't listening.

Carlos can't remember a time when they were together and Lando fell asleep first.

-

"Aren't you hungry?" Max asks Lando on the plane taking them all back to Monaco.

"Nah," Lando replies, eyeing Max's burger with a mix of apprehension and disgust. "I ate before, plus, that just looks like an extra hour in the gym, and I don't wanna do that."

Max shrugs. "Suit yourself, weirdo."

Lando kicks him under the table and then leans back in his seat, fishing his earphones out. He catches Carlos' eye as he does so, and smiles.

Carlos smiles back instinctively, as he always does. Lando's lips look very red in his pale face. When he ducks his head, Carlos thinks he sees a flash of something sharp.

It must be the light, he thinks. Or the exhaustion.

It's probably both.

-

"Do you have an oral fixation, mate," George laughs, leaning on the fence. "You're always sucking on that straw, what are you even drinking?"

Lando shrugs, flipping George off for good measure. "You have an oral fixation," he replies, pulling his lips away from the straw. "And it's a protein smoothie, you dickhead."

Carlos watches him lick the remnants of his drink away. His lips are still stained red with it.

"Does it taste good?" he hears himself ask.

Both Lando and George turn to him, but Carlos is focused on the way Lando's eyes shift to the side for just a second before he scrunches his nose. "Not the best I've ever had, but good enough." He shrugs. "New recipe. Strawberries."

Carlos has a mild allergy to strawberries, so he can't ask to try it, at least not just before the race.

Lando knows Carlos is alergic to strawberries.

-

The race was a disaster, as are most of them lately. Carlos lies in his bed, finally free after the debrief. He can't sleep. His mind turns and turns around, and for once, he isn't thinking about the race data.

His phone is opened on the Google start page. Before he knows what he's doing, he types.

allergy to silver aversion to food paleness doesnt sleep symptoms disease

-

He knocks on the door too loudly for the early hour of the morning. There is shuffling, and then Lando opens the door.

"Carlos? What the fuck, mate, it's like, three in -"

"I thought silver was for werewolves."

Lando stops speaking. Carlos thinks he might have stopped breathing, too. That wasn't what he was going to say, but fuck it, it's what came out.

"What?" Lando says slowly. "What are you talking about?"

Carlos would've thought he was crazy, except. Except Lando's eyes flicker to the side, and Carlos knows how Lando looks when he is lying.

"I thought silver hurt werewolves. That's the myth," he repeats. "But you're not a werewolf. I don't think." He takes a breath. "You're a vampire."

He isn't looking away from Lando. He can't. He stares right into Lando's eyes and sees the emotions and the calculations in them as they happen, and he isn't going away until he knows, because he isn't crazy, he knows what he knows, he knows he isn't imagining things and -

"Fuck," Lando breathes out, his shoulders sagging. "Fuck, I'm so screwed," he says, and then pulls Carlos inside his room and shuts the door, but not before Carlos sees his fangs elongate and protrude, biting into his bottom lip.

Fuck, he thinks, and then, hot.

#i had much fun writing this xD #carlando #vampire au #f1 rpf #effervescentdragonwrites #my writing

[infinitewarden]

Every day I fight battles for Osiris's honor. Every single time he's a relevant character being his Messy and Brash self people take it personally. Every time I think it'll be different.

Anyways

I really liked Osiris's characterization in Lightfall, it felt more true to how he is as a character than he was in Seraph. However I'm already seeing people being Weird about him. On one hand, I understand he isn't for everyone, not everyone has to like him as he's a very difficult man (which is exactly why I like him.) However there's a difference between just... Disliking a character and egregiously misreading and misinterpreting one.

Two major points I've seen talked about already, ad infinitum, that I feel I have to give you a better perspective of: the urgency of which he acts, and his unhealthy training techniques. (And to a lesser point the claim that he's been over exaggerated which spoilers: he's always been like this.)

His urgency

(or as so many of you claim, that he's yelling at us the entire time.)

I feel like someone having to walk a baby through how to use building blocks it's THIS dire.

THE THEME OF LIGHTFALL IS GRIEF. It's grief and finding a way to accept that grief, not push it down or block it, not fight it every step of the way, but rather let it flow through you and allow it.

Osiris's arc throughout Lightfall is grappling with this: he's not had the TIME to process his grief, both over Sagira and over the loss of his Light. He feels inadequate because there's never been a time where he hasn't been able to act himself.

Osiris outright states in the campaign that he always used his grief as something to push him forward, as a means to fix it, like he did with Saint. But he can't do that now and it frustrates him. He pushes us because it's a reflection of himself, he's beyond frustrated with the fact that he can't do this himself, that he has to rely upon others when he's been self reliant for hundreds of years.

Not only that but he's ALWAYS been a very no-nonsense kind of guy, it used to be that he had Sagira to balance out his social awkwardness, but since she isn't here to often speak For him he's been struggling to interact with others. Sagira acted as a median, now that she's gone he's had to go it alone, you can't blame him for his bluntness.

Now... the yelling scene... I don't know why but everyone seems to be taking this one really really personally despite that fact it's painstakingly clear he's yelling because he's angry with HIMSELF. You're all so focused on the fact he yelled — which, I feel I need to remind you he's in grief and he's going through a very hard change, he's always been calm so seeing him like this really puts into perspective how much he's hurting. No one is talking about his apology afterwards.

He recognizes that he lashed out incorrectly, (and imo he's ALLOWED to after all he's gone through. god forbid grief be expressed in any capacity other than quiet depression.) And then he apologizes. Because that's what he does. He recognizes a misstep and apologizes. This is how he's always been.

Training

And when he's training us, telling us to push beyond our limits, this is a reflection of himself again. This is how he trained. We know this because this is how the Crucible became what it is now.

But I will also take good ideas where I can get them. And Osiris's belief that Guardian minds and bodies can be sharpened as one sharpens a sword is a damn good idea. You've seen the results in the Crucible. Do I really have to say any more?

The Conqueror 2

Osiris has always pushed himself (and in part I think Felwinter added to this) so it only makes sense he'd try to push us in the same manner. The entire point of this is to show it's wrong and Osiris eventually recognizes it as wrong! His perspective was incorrect! And it changes! Because that's how stories work!

Grief

Grief is not always shown with crying messes, it's not always quiet depression, it can manifest by being incredibly volatile and angry and that's how Osiris handles his grief when he can't just power himself through it anymore.

His arc is coming to terms with the fact he can't just wrestle his grief into submission. His arc is that he doesn't have to deal with his grief alone. His arc is that his mortality and inability to act himself isn't a personal failure. His arc is that he lets it flow rather than try to push it down. Like strand, Osiris's grief is a river and he's been trying to build a dam for the past several months.

Osiris is a nuanced character. He has flaws and he's never hid them. If you played the entire campaign with the audio off and subtitles off and you can't grasp the simple fact Osiris is experiencing incredible amounts of grief and trauma that's on you, my friend.

#osiris #destiny osiris #osiris destiny #destiny the game #lightfall spoilers #lore.exe #cyrus.exe

[descendant-of-truth]

The amount of unexplored concepts in Zi-o is driving me insane but I can only tackle one thing per post so let's talk about Sougo for a minute

As someone who immediately clocked Sougo as having something off about him (to the point where I wrote day-one fanfiction about it), I was really expecting there to be a few episodes where we just. sat down and unpacked all of it. We didn't get that, but the crumbs we did get only solidify my opinion that Sougo is a really compelling character when you take the time to think about him.

On a surface level, Sougo is… very normal, I think. He's a cheerful guy, he's polite, he has a definite silly streak to him. He's kinda awkward, he fumbles around with Sento's catchphrase and struggles with his schoolwork. Like any good-natured protagonist, he has a drive to protect others and has no problem inconveniencing himself a bit to help someone out. These are all true things about him.

Sougo is also very good at manipulating people. And he does it by using his usual mannerisms to his advantage.

Take the episodes with Kuroto for instance. Sougo gets on Kuroto's side effortlessly by looking bright-eyed and enthusiastic about working with him, and this is completely believable to us as viewers because Sougo is always this enthusiastic. It's even relevant to his goal to become king - of course he would want to study under an actual king to get experience!

What makes this interesting is that it's only half true. Sougo isn't faking his enthusiasm, but he is faking his motivation. He doesn't want to work with Kuroto because he thinks he's cool, he wants to work with him because he wants to confirm if he's terrible first, and then take notes on how to not be terrible in the future.

And this is what makes him so good at manipulation: he knows how to channel his behaviors in such a way that he always seems genuine. Of course, it probably helps that he's often only half-faking anyway, which makes it even more convincing.

He's also usually using this skill for a good cause, but when armed with the knowledge that he became evil in the original timeline, it suddenly puts him in a different light; one where you can go "oh, so that's where he's keeping all his supervillain potential."

He displays this cunning side to him in a lot of smaller instances - using Woz's dedication to him as a means to summon him at any time, getting Geiz and Tsukuyomi to hang out with him under the pretense of their mission to keep him from turning evil, so on and so forth.

They sneak this part of him into the script all the time, and the only person to really bring it up is, interestingly enough, his mirror world self.

This scene makes me go nuts because it perfectly displays Sougo's inner conflict that he's usually really good at keeping under wraps. Though admittedly, they also make it a little unclear as to whether he was actually trying to manipulate anyone or just feels like he did anyway... but I think I've got it mostly figured out.

What's happening here, as I understand it, is that Sougo does genuinely want to save Geiz, but there is a small part of him that wants the power that comes with the Ryuga watch, too. And he does not like that part.

He knows that he's manipulated people before, and so when he notices having a second motivation here beyond his more idealistic one, he feels like he's manipulating people again. Making Tsukuyomi think that he's actually a good person when he just prompted Geiz to go sacrifice himself - he harbors a surprising amount of guilt.

And that's another key thing about Sougo that I haven't talked about yet: he hides things constantly.

Like, for example, why he wants to become king in the first place.

This is a lie. Sougo wants to become king because of a recurring dream depicting the most traumatic event of his life, where his only solace is someone telling him that he can save the world if he becomes a king.

But he insists in multiple episodes that it's just "something he's always known." He treats it very casually, despite it dramatically affecting his life plans.

Sougo treats most things with the same smiley nonchalance, honestly, in a way that can make him feel sort of detached from reality at times. But he takes things more seriously than it seems, and it's clear that he harbors a very deep sense of loneliness in him as well. Geiz and Tsukuyomi being his first real friends is one of the driving forces of the narrative, after all.

He also just drops lines like this sometimes that make me go crazy like hey has anyone checked on this guy emotionally during the entire show, I am Concerned

Like!! he says this about the possibility of him being the only person to not survive the final battle, and I know this isn't the first time he's expressed a similar sentiment and it's kind of a tradition for the protagonists of these shows to be like this but. god. and he says it while smiling

(You might be noticing a theme with Sougo and smiling through pain and you would be absolutely correct to do so)

I guess what I'm getting at with this whole post is that the appeal of Sougo's character, to me, is that he's just as much a silly, awkward guy with loads of enthusiasm as he is a cunning, clever person who knows how to lie to get the outcome he wants. He's both very cheerful and very sad on the inside, and none of these things are treated like they're in conflict with each other.

Sougo himself said it best:

And I dunno, I just think that's a really cool way to write your main hero who's working against his destiny to become evil. Or just any character in general. I both completely believe him as a hero and also never quite got rid of that "off" feeling that made me compelled to write about him when the show first started.

Zi-o as a show missed a lot of opportunities to explore things deeper, and Sougo is definitely included in that, but it never failed to keep me interested in him as a character because something about his specific combination of personality traits makes him very compelling to watch.

(He also makes the other writing flaws that much more frustrating because he's way too good of a character for these scripts)

#kamen rider #kamen rider zi o #tokiwa sougo #analysis #meta #Long story short he's Kinda Weird and I love him for it

[girlsies-week-2023]

Information on some of my favorite Girlsies !!! For sillies !!!

(working title was me infodumping about girlsies under the excuse that it is relevent to the event)

I don't have the energy to go through & update this post at the moment, but @thegroundsofbrooklyn has a post here that has more info on the UK Brooklyn Girls !!!

Starting out with our number one, the original girlsie: Charlie (Hard Promises) !!!

Charlie was the original love interest for Jack in Hard Promises, and she was a newsie !! Her story was that she was living in a house of prostitution with her aunt (with her aunt trying to shield her from as much as possible to stop her from going into that life / being exposed to it) and she was planning to (and did!) go with Jack to Santa Fe at the end.

Next up: Smalls (Papermill - Broadway) (Manhattan / Possibly The Bronx) !!!:

I know that whether or not Smalls is a girl is up to interpretation but I am interpreting her as a girl & including her in this list (same with Sniper).

Smalls is a Bronx newsie (as implied by her yelling so's da Bronx during Brooklyn's Here), but she's still allowed in Manhattan (hence being there for KoNY in some versions), so she's probably allowed to wander around on her own.

According to Liana Hunt, she lives in a family with at least one parent and a ton of brothers who all work to support them, so she's sort've eager to be one of the boys in that sense — she's also super tough.

Talls !!! (Broadway) (Manhattan / Possibly The Bronx):

Talls was Caitlyn Caughell's newsie whenever she was on for that track. I have no information on her besides the fact that she was played by Caitlyn Caughell & is probably a play on her height of some kind — + also being a play on Smalls. Smalls & Talls <3

Sniper !!! (Tour) (Manhattan / Possibly The Bronx):

I'm going to be mixing in other backstories for this because as far as I'm aware Sniper's the only newsie on that list with a backstory that isn't from their actress ? + she has more involvement in the show when she isn't a girl so I'm going off that

But according to Alex Wong — Sniper's last name is Wah, and she's the daughter (son in this backstory but it's okay) of Sam Wah, who owns the laundromat above Jacobi's (the sign of which can be seen in the pre-uksies Jacobi scenes). She's named after her 'incredible aim' with a slingshot.

In certain versions, she's one of the scabs, the last one to throw down her papers, and the one to go 'Ah, what the hell? My father's gonna kill me anyway!' in the proshot. In the tour, she was also the one to yell so's da bronx.

Puddles !!! (Tour) (Manhattan / Possibly The Bronx):

Puddles is in the same group as Talls in the sense that there is like no canon lore about her & there isn't even any information besides her name and the fact that she was played by Melissa Steadman Hart during the tour. However she has the cutest nickname and deserved to be included in this list.

Marriott! Buttons !!! (Marriott) (Manhattan):

According to Adrienne Storrs, the actress for Buttons, she's been a newsie for three years. Her parents are poor Italian immigrants that don't speak English, so she works to support them. She was convinced to start selling Newspapers by JoJo after being caught pickpocketing on the street.

Buttons & JoJo are best gal pals, she sees Specs as a younger brother figure (she's always looking out for him), and Race and Albert are her favorite people to joke around with!

She has (had?) a rich boyfriend that went to jail for forgery a bit before the strike, so she's a little heartbroken during it, but she's 'continuing to live her life and she has the best newsie friends'.

She has a really positive mindset in general.

She also (along with JoJo) checked Katherine out when she walked into Jacobi's and later taught her how to Irish dance during KoNY with JoJo !!!

Marriott! JoJo !!! (Marriott) (Manhattan):

According, once again, to Adrienne Storrs, JoJo (who's real name is Josephine) is 'one tough cookie'. She was originally a pickpocket, but Jack found her and took her under her wing for ten percent of her earnings when she was almost twelve. She was one of the original newsies in the Manhattan group, and after three years she started seeking out other girl newsies (& that's when Buttons came along !!). She's been a newsie for about five years, 'not too far behind how long Jack had been selling'.

She has an Irish father and a Romanian mother and they were circus artists that came to America with P.T Barnum in the 1870s. She was born in 1882 (making her seventeen at the time of the strike) and she was raised around a circus.

Rafaela (Marriott) (Brooklyn):

Once again, according to Adrienne Storrs, Rafaela's parents moved from Spain to Puerto Rico in the 1880s and she was born there in 1885. They moved to New York City when she was five and she's very close with her brothers, who were six and eight at the time. All three children became newsies at the same time, being expected to work as much as their parents did.

She didn't go to school, she taught herself how to read and speak English, using her time as a newsie as a teaching device. She's super tough, and she had to grow up really fast. She 'has a strong sense of community with her family and fellow Brooklyn Newsies'.

Joey (Marriott) (Brooklyn):

You guessed it, information yet again from Adrienne Storrs!

Joey is Racetrack Higgins' cousin, and she's super positive. She's also secretly a really good fighter.

Hildy (Marriott) (Brooklyn):

You'll never guess where this info is from.

Hildy is German, and her parents own a sausage shop, and she likes to get into trouble.

Honorable mention to Nancy, Hazel, and Muriel from Newsies Jr.

I don't have the energy to read through all of newsies jr rn to find out which lines they have, however I can tell you off the top of my head that they are very supportive of Katherine and probably also on the younger side (because. Newsies Jr. Obviously).

If anyone who's played them would like to mention their backstory in the rbs or in this accs ask box, that would be lovely !!!

Spot Conlon (UK) (Brooklyn):

Using Lillie-Pearl's backstory for Spot here, because Clarice never got the opportunity to share hers if she had one :(

Lillie-Pearl's backstory for Spot is that her parents were Irish and African American immigrants living in Seneca Village.

Spot in Uksies is very close with Davey !!! According to Lillie-Pearl, she doesn't call him Davey, she calls him David, and in her cameo description she added 'making rhymes with Davey' into her list of things she enjoyed. She is also very close with her girls (obviously), specifically Lucky & Stray, who she did the handshake with depending on what point in the show it was. She also liked Race, depending on the day.

(She also probably isn't on awful terms with most of the Manhattan newsies, especially if they're girls.)

Lucky (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Lucky doesn't have a lot of canon lore too her HOWEVER I can tell you that she used to do the handshake with Spot back when she existed, was called Tops for some performances, AND her real name is Eliza !!! She also interacted with Scope a lot during The Rally.

Mack (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Mack's real name is Jeanie MacDonald, but she shortened it down to Mack because she didn't like her name.

She's a Scottish immigrant whose family moved to the U.S (just North of New York) to start a farm, but a plague of locusts destroyed the farm, so they had to move into the city for work.

She couldn't stand being stuck in their one bedroom cramped apartment, so her father suggested that she take up work as a Newsie.

Splint (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Splint's arm is in a Splint !!! For some mystery reason that definitely isn't because Bobbie's hand was injured at the time of the first preview. Definitely not.

She doesn't appear after The Rally, which is because — according to Bobbie — she falled down & died :( (Bobbie needed 2 be there as Hannah)

Also her real name is Splinty McSplint.

(Bobbie also said that if she were to have a love interest it would be Buttons.)

Scope (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

I have no canon info about Scope besides the fact that she has the world's cutest pigtails and hung around Lucky at The Rally a lot :(

Ritz (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Ritz' real name is Rita, and her nickname comes from ritz crackers and also Lucy's last characters name !! That's all the canon info we have on her as far as ik :(

Stray (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Stray's nickname comes from her feeding all of the stray animals of New York !!!

She is related to Specs in some way (probably siblings, considering the fact that Sam & Immie are).

She becomes a Bowery Beauty when she's older, and her real name is from a newsgirl turned dancer but Immie doesn't remember who that is — the closest I got in my research is Lillian Russell, who wasn't a newsgirl but yk close enough.

(Her love interest would've been Mike !!)

Pips (Newsies UK) (Brooklyn):

Again, no canon information on Pips as far as I'm aware, besides the fact that she is literally adorable

#girlsies week 2023 #newsies #girlsies #newsies uk #uksies #spot conlon #smalls newsies #brooklyn girlsies #hard promises #toursies #bwaysies #i was gonna add references & stuff 2 this but it's 1am & i'm tired #i just want 2 get this over with #anyways !! yeah !! i'm normsl #askbox is always open if you have questions / notes

[isleofair]

Tiger & Bunny Week Day 5

Fan Theories and/or Predictions

I've been wanting to make this meta post for a long while, but since there was no way to reach any truly solid conclusions, I always ended up setting it aside.

But since today's prompt is fan theories... I figure I might as well give this the best go I can!

Today on "Aria fixates on scraps of collateral canon in an attempt to better figure out the Tiger & Bunny timeline, since the authors just will not give us the info straight up, dammit": when did each of the characters debut as a hero?

(under a cut for length and screenshots of actual excel spreadsheets lol)

So, we know the answer to that question for sure for about half of the heroes: Wild Tiger debuted in NC1967, Barnaby in NC1977, and the three new kids in NC1980 (at least in Stern Bild; Subaru worked for a little while as a hero in Panjourney before joining Hero TV).

(Yeah, the hero card of himself Kotetsu picks up in the pilot is technically for the '76-'77 season of Hero TV, so maybe it saying he's got 10 years of experience means his debut was actually in NC1966... but nothing says the cards don't get updated as the season goes on, and this isn't too relevant to my number crunching, anyway.)

As for the rest of them, we can make at least an attempt at (vaguely) guessing by analyzing the experience data on the Hero Cards, which you can see for Season 1 and The Rising here on the amazing Merch Wiki (shoutout to @tnbscans 😘), and for Season 2 here in an older post of mine, or here on Twitter (both courtesy of @Kazuko_01 over there).

This is a chart of the experience values in all the available hero cards:

The reason Barnaby's values are in yellow is that they really, REALLY tried to throw off all of my math 😅

See, the experience values seem to only take into account how many seasons of Hero TV (or an equivalent of it) you've appeared in, however briefly. (At some point I thought maybe becoming the King of Heroes would grant you bonus exp, but Karina doesn't seem to get a boost from the '79-'80 season, when the CD dramas tell us she tied with Keith and became the Queen of Heroes.)

Barnaby took essentially all of NC1979 off, spent a quarter of NC1980 in the Second League, and his score during the Rising is still an absurd 3/5. The only possible way that can even remotely work is that the time off is discounted entirely AND that the exp values aren't strictly proportional to your years of experience, but more along the lines of a curve (stretched every time to accomodate the longest career, Kotetsu's) where having been a hero for at least a season before, as opposed to being a rookie, gives you an additional point on the scale, and each subsequent point requires more years of extra experience.

(This would make a certain amount of sense: there's a lot of difference between being a total rookie and someone who's been on another season, or two, but not that much difference between having worked 9 or 10 seasons before.)

The crucial facts to make this work, and the reasons I had to discard a lot of other possible ways map the years to the exp values, are:

The cards, in spite of having 5 possible scores in S1 and The Rising and 6 possible scores in S2, really only ever have a baseline plus four extra values above it, since the 1/6 or 0.5/3 score in the S2 cards is unused (hence me counting the scores as "out of 3"). I initially thought maybe it was because all the S2 kids had some prior experience, since Subaru used to be a hero before coming to Stern Bild, but the manga tells us Thomas for sure did not, so it's not that (RIP Subaru for them ignoring your days as Hello Goodbye);

Bunny skips ahead two notches between his debut in the 1977-78 season and the 1979-80 season in The Rising;

Antonio goes from having max 5/5 experience along with Kotetsu in S1 to having a score of 2.5/3 (or 5/6), along with Nathan, Keith, and Ryan, in S2. This means he definitely debuted after Kotetsu, but before Nathan and Keith (and almost certainly Ryan).

With all of that in mind, this is the best possible thing I could personally come up with:

I marked down the two most likely ways to map the years to the exp values for each set of cards that still somehow work at the bottom (with blue being min experience if you debuted that year, and red being max). The fully grayed-out years are downright impossibilities (again, not counting Subaru's time as Hello Goodbye, since the cards don't); the softer gray is "very unlikely", the mid blue is "possible", and the deeper blue is "most likely" (thin border) or "sure" (thick border).

I didn't really try to come up with an arrangement that would let any of Ivan, Karina or Pao-Lin debut any earlier than NC1976, because a) both Ivan and Karina have conversations with their bosses in the pilot episode that really make it seem like the just-concluded season was their first, and b) as it is Pao-Lin already became a hero at TWELVE YEARS OLD and that's enough of a headache for me, thank you very much.

The riveting conclusions, assuming this makes any sort of sense at all (and that I didn't put way more thought into this than the people who made the cards did):

Antonio almost certainly debuted in NC1969 or NC 1970, two or three years after Kotetsu;

Ryan (whose experience outside of Stern Bild seems to be fully counted, sorry again, Subaru) doesn't appear in the S1 cards, so it's a little harder to narrow his debut down, but since he's apparently younger than Barnaby, which would make him a teenager for most (if not all) of his possible range of debut years, I'd very personally tend to put him more around NC1973 than anywhere else;

Nathan and Keith most likely debuted in either NC1971 or NC1972... but I would strongly argue that the only really viable year out of these two is NC1972. That is the year Tomoe died, and Nathan and Keith, before episode 1x09, had no idea at all that Kotetsu was ever even married, let alone a widower with a daughter. I simply cannot imagine Nathan, especially, witnessing a colleague she sees pretty much every day go through the loss of his wife, and not prying enough, either with Kotetsu himself or with Antonio (who is not terribly good at keeping Kotetsu's secrets, see ep 1x09 again), to eventually find out what was going on. If Tomoe died before October, when the 1972 season of hero TV started, Nathan and Keith, debuting that year, would have met Kotetsu only after the fact, which seems a lot more plausible.

(Yes, that last thing does support my cute headcanon of FireSky being almost polar-opposite rookies together, but to be fair, the headcanon itself came directly from this math, and not the other way around.)

If you read all of this, we are true siblings in T&B nerdery and ILU forever. Especially if you have any ideas on how to make the data make more sense, lol. 💚

#tiger & bunny #meta #tnbw

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Layers and white lies: a Puzzle House takeaway

I'm not going to delve into too much detail on this amazing book here, but I will touch on a few themey, plotty things I saw and roll around in some angst for a while, so, behold, a cut for big ol' Puzzle House spoilers:

One of the clues that helps Claudia delve deeper into the Puzzle House - and the plot - is the little clue on the bottom of the lantern she picks up: some things are hidden in plain sight. And the deep angst and all of Kpp'Ar's intentions are some of them!

This story, like all of TDP's stories, is written to be understood at a certain level by children. And it is. But for us adults, if we slow down and study what's in front of us - another Claudia clue, which she advises Soren with - we can see more. (this works in the show too of course)

In this case, I'm seeing Kpp'Ar's entire plan - and why he abandoned it - and how it worked anyway.

There's the real angst. He set something in motion, and it became too big to stop on his own. And that's very much relevant to TDP's concept of the cycle too!

Okay, let's break down the situation Kpp'Ar found himself in:

Soren was very ill

Kpp'Ar was engaged with Viren in helping find a way to save him

Kpp'Ar knew about the power in unicorn horns

he captured a giant who was guarding a map scroll that could lead him to one

but then he realized he was not worthy to read its information, and instead of stopping to look at that, he pushed forward in a new direction

This is when things get a little dark.

When the fun cute carousel (that might be made of actual creatures turned to stone? did they all die for this performance?) carries Soren and Claudia deep into the tower, Soren sees the horrible traps and assumes he and his sister are off the planned track for their surprise. At one point he claims that what they're dealing with is literally too big for them.

He's right... but also, he isn't.

Follow the unicorns. That's what Kpp'Ar wanted Claudia to do.

They start on the lantern, and they're present on the balustrade right next to them. She was always supposed to pick up the lantern, remember the snap magic trick Kpp'Ar taught her, and head right up those stairs.

She was supposed to fail at the slide. She was supposed to find a different way to keep chasing what she wanted. Just like Kpp'Ar. When he closes a trap door, he opens a window? Sure.

Follow those unicorns, Claudia! Cutesy and bright, they led her all the way to the giant's prison. She was always supposed to push past the boundaries of "child-friendly" fun and go in there and read the map, so that her father and his mentor could go kill a unicorn for its horn, and then save Soren's life with it.

That was always the plan.

And it was always too big to just ask a child to do. So Kpp'Ar made it into puzzles for her. That way Viren could still save Soren's life, and Claudia would have fun and never be burdened with knowing what she was really doing.

She learned that trick, too, btw. Good job, Clauds.

The hidden angst of what happened to Kpp'Ar is a little harder to see, but it's there too:

Kpp'Ar realized he was dragging Claudia into the same kinds of machinations he'd dragged Viren into

he'd known Viren for years and something in that arc gave Kpp'Ar pause

he could see what Viren couldn't (until S5) - that he was hurting Claudia's future despite her trust in him

something in Kpp'Ar broke, and he had a tantrum (like Viren in S2) and a big change of heart (took Viren 3 more seasons)

he gave Claudia those snake bracelets just before he vanished because he wanted her to free the giant

she'd still have to follow the unicorns to find him - she still might find and use the map - but he couldn't control that now, all he could hope for was that she would show compassion for the giant too

And she did, because she was pure of heart. Kpp'Ar helped set things right, with one of his final acts. But he'd already put into place a whole big plan to kill a unicorn, and there was no way to separate rescuing Kruha from aiding that plan in progressing forward. He had to take his hands off the wheel and trust someone else to do the right thing. He had to give up his need to control everything, and start to trust just a little.

Themey, innit.

What's interesting is that Viren gives no clear indication to anyone - Atticus, Claudia, us - that he's aware of this big puzzle Kpp'Ar made, or its goal. All he admits is that things are complicated and the Puzzle House is dangerous. Very on brand with those layers and white lies.

Couple possibilities:

Kpp'Ar knew Viren would not allow him to endanger Claudia, so he didn't tell him about it, and Viren didn't understand the full scope until after Claudia had seen the map - possibly several years later, shortly before Viren proposed his vengeance plan to Harrow

OR, Viren knew all along about the plan to use Claudia (and was willing to risk her life for Soren's), but it didn't matter anymore, because he'd already found another way to heal Soren - possibly with (some of?) Kpp'Ar's life force - so he played dumb with the map paper and only told Claudia to keep it safe for later

Since he couldn't read the map... I lean toward him knowing all along. Coining Kpp'Ar for having a change of heart - something anyone should be allowed to do at any time - certainly added to the darkening of Viren's heart, but surely he and Kpp'Ar tested the map and found that neither of them could read it before going to these lengths.

With the comments Kpp'Ar makes to Viren in his fever dream - which now might be partially... real? - it's very possible that Viren pushed for the whole thing, trying to save his son's life. Offered Claudia up, got Kpp'Ar to give her a book so she could start studying up on magic, and then lost his cool entirely when his mentor basically said Soren should die, and coined him for it.

And Claudia never knew a bit of that. Probably still doesn't!

I wonder if she'll interact with any Kpp'Ar details in future seasons!

Alright, that's my thoughts!

Puzzle House is possibly the theme-iest graphic novel we've gotten so far. It's themes all the way down. They reach down through the PH plot, into Claudia's onscreen tactics, and they reach up to the meta level with the way that The Dragon Prince approaches the entirety of the show itself.

There is something scary in the dark. But that doesn't mean we should run. It's always better to go slow, to have compassion, and to follow your heart.

Because sometimes the solutions are hiding in plain sight.

Thanks for reading

#tdp spoilers #puzzle house spoilers #puzzle house #claudia #viren #kpp'ar #soren #tdp meta #puzzle house meta

[mantisgodsdomain]

can you talk about your interpretation of The North™️ and what goes on there so we can steal some of your ideas and put kabbu in a time loop for fun and profit. specifically we want to hear about beetle culture stuff and what sort of imagery/iconography would be the most prevalent in the arts but we'll take anything your hcs are always Fun to read

Sorry for the long-ass time we took to answer this! We have been going insane over Dungeon Meshi and this has distracted us from many things. We have worldbuilding! We have thought of A Lot Of Things. This is very long, be warned.

So, the North.

The North is an area of what's generally counted as Deadland - as the category of "deadland" is defined almost entirely by "can people live here without dying" and the level of mutation required for anything to survive out there is high enough that it's functionally impossible to live there unless you're adapted to the environment.

Technically speaking, they have a fairly normal spread of deadland vs. non-deadland, it's just cold enough that that distinction only really matters to people who already live there, so it all gets lumped into "deadland". Any major settlements are generally in not-deadland area anyways, but bugs will travel through the deadland-deadland on a fairly regular basis, it's just that they don't usually stay there.

Elaborating on this would take a whole nother post about "what is deadland, exactly, and how do you decide what is or isn't deadland", but we do not want to do this on a post about The North. Functionally, it's a bunch of kingdoms lumped together into a single category because they're far enough north that no one can live there without dying unless they've got a really specific set of adaptations. Here, we're speaking specifically of the ones closest to Bugaria - the kingdom collective that most beetles who venture south come from, including Kabbu.

The North is known for a few things: being really fucking cold, having the most bizarre mutations in its inhabitants that you'll ever see (provided that you are a bug), and being extremely rigid in both tradition and lines of thinking. Almost all forms of leatherworking come from this area, as they're one of the only places that have an actual consistent source of things that can be made into leather - rabbit furs, as well as a particular technique of softening a shell, allowing it to be worked like fabric.

Fun fact about the North: most settlements and similar are underground. Tunnelers and similar are greatly valued, allowing shelter from the cold and the beasts outside without risking sheltering in a cave that something nasty has taken up residence in. Kabbu, specifically, has a VERY useful tunneling mutation - reducing his dexterity, but allowing him to dig through just about any soft soil within minutes, and harder objects within hours. Were he to stay in the North, it would've been highly prized - but tunneling isn't life-or-death in the south, so it's more convenient skill than anything else.

Though it would be really goddamn hard to summarize everything here, we're trying to scoop things into a decent "summary" - useful to you or not, we don't know. We wrote most of this and then paused for A While due to our ongoing madness. Hopefully it serves.

Not necessarily relevant, in most cases, but often turns up when dealing with knock-on impact - the North has no major species of mimic. The only one which may apply are Northern Sand Wasps - also known as "white bees", as most Northern tongues roll "wasp" and "bee" into the same word.

This turn of tongue is partially due to the uncommon nature of most wasps and bees this far north, and partially because eusocial insects in general are rare - as the local predators and Northern Moths in particular will go after any food source that becomes convenient, any sort of colony that grows too large tends to be targeted once the reward outweighs the risk, which is often far more of a blow to social bugs, which generally have more centralized storage systems than the more broken-up distributions of resources that solitaries generally produce.

Particularly prevalent with Northern bugs is a "waste not, want not" type mentality - you use everything that you can, because resources are scarce, and you don't want to waste anything that could be used. Beetle shell is a common material, as well as bug products in general - by using something of the bug in an object, it's seen as making a channel to allow their spirit to watch over the generations that follow, putting something of them into the paws of their descendants.

As a result of this, a lot of things are made out of parts from sapient bugs - either dead or just discarded. You use your shed molts, you use your shed cocoon, you use anything you hunt. A lot of Northern things look incredibly ghoulish to bugs who live further south as a result, what with the prevalence of bits from sapient bugs. Kabbu, for his part, would be incredibly shocked to learn that southern bugs generally don't know every detail about the origin of whatever they wear and use.

Of particular prevalence - there is a particular technique that can be used to soften the shell of a bug in order to make "shell leather", which is also occasionally used to make dolls to watch over grubs and young beetles and protect them from the afterlife. Generally, these are made of bugs who already did grub caretaking in life. When making things of the dead, it's expected to make it resemble the bug who donated the shell, but not mimic them - you're making a channel for one part of them to flow through, not a clone of them, and you're meant to be crafting bits of their essence into a new guardian. If you just make the same guy again, then you are trapping that spirit to earth, and it might hate you, so you have to introduce at least some

On a related note to this - it's Very Fucking Bad if your entire body is unrecoverable. In Northern tradition, if nothing of you is preserved or used, then your spirit has no more anchors to your life on earth, and you're stuck drifting into the nothingness, unable to see what becomes of your loved ones. When everything of your body is gone, your spirit is gone, as well. This makes The Beast fucking eating Master and Bit significantly worse for Kabbu, as there's nothing that can be recovered and thus no way to actually bring his companions into Bugaria with him, consigning their spirits to fade without knowing what's made of their life on earth. Sucks for them!

Generally speaking, there's a lot of focus on tradition - you follow how things are Meant To Be Done, because they've been done this way for countless years and have lead to success for countless people, and if you deviate from between the lines you might fucking die. Lawbreaking tends to be treated incredibly harshly - even if you had understandable reasons for breaking the law, you might have endangered everyone by doing so, and so you'll likely be shunned as a result.

This, obviously, can lead to Bad Shit - as the answer to "why does this law exist" is most often "because not following it will kill you", when there are rules that aren't specifically related to Not Dying, they still get conflated with Not Dying rules in importance. Though it doesn't have the same urgency, because it's written down in the same way, there are a good handful of arbitrary social rules that still get upheld in various places - and it's harder for them to be questioned, because everyone knows that you Follow The Rules, and if you don't then Bad Things Will Happen. Often Not Great, but... what are you gonna do about it? Go against the things keeping everyone alive? We'd think not.

Also, some notable bugs! The North has one of the very few remaining populations of fleas, who herd rodents. Rabbits are livestock in some places, as well as things like rats and lemmings. Anything that produces enough kids to beat the high percentage of "this baby has gained a mutation that kills it badly" that often happens in deadlands. They're Really Fucking Weird compared to those we might be familiar with, but a few hundred years of having a ton of kids in an area that increases mutation will do that to you.

Also, Northern Silk Moths are a thing, though we still need to make an actual info post about those. Technically originating from the same original stock as southern silk moths, they are extremely large bugs who corrected from being unable to eat anything to being able to eat anything that they can fit in their mouths. They are the only year-round surface-dwellers, with a coat thick enough to block out the wind, and eat such things as: deadlanders, giant trash, plants, random unfortunate beetles, and poison. Due to bioaccumulation, both over generations and over the lifetime of the moth, their flesh is violently toxic, and if you eat it, you will die.

Most residents will either hibernate in winter or swap to an at least partially subterranean lifestyle when it gets too cold. Northern Moths can endure the bitter cold on the surface even into the depths of winter, owing to a mix of mutation and size - the "second pelt" over most of their shell prevents the cold from seeping in, as well as covering most of the weak spots that a bug with just plain chitin might have.

#asks #we speak #headcanons #good luck idea stealing we are in some sort of state of mind rn so we hope this coheres #we will not put this in the bf tag until Later so that it doesnt nuke that entire tag #give it like a week and we'll tag properly

[rosiethedragongeek]

Soooo, long time no see. Anyway I'm going to Disney and was wondering if you have any head cannons of the gang there. Like what their favorite rides would be.

I'll go first. My favorite ride is the haunted mansion.

First things first, Snotlout would probably be terrified, and hide it incredibly badly. Clinging into Astrid or Fishlegs.

Hiccup is probably interested in how the ride itself works, "there's a lot of cool stuff, how does it work"

Fishlegs isn't as scared as Snotlout, but there's definitely fear there, just barely kept at bay by his curiosity much like hiccup.

Astrid couldn't care less, but enjoys the ride. She likes the killer bride part.

The twins enjoy the ride too, but much more, and much more chaotically of course. Probably relate a lot to the guy sitting on TNT in the stretching painting room, and look to Snotlout to recreate it with them. (He just flips them off)

This is the picture I mean btw.

I'm literally so sorry that I'm getting to this so long after you actually went and it's like not crazy relevant anymore omg I got real busy for a bit there but I am here now lol

Okay, so I've been to Disney maybe twice forEVER ago, and I don't really know the rides all that well so this is gonna be more of a list of vague theme park/disney headcanons than exactly what rides they would like

Snotlout and the twins are SO excited to go like they are dragging Hiccup, Astrid and Fishlegs behind them

Hiccup and Astrid get Mickey and Minnie ears and it's very cute

The twins obviously love the roller coasters and stuff the faster the better

They go on the teacups and the twins are in one w Snotlout and they spin it around so fast that he throws up

While the rest of the gang goes on rollercoasters, Fishlegs is the one who waits for them and holds their bags

Fishlegs also constantly remind people to drink water and reapply sunblock and stuff

Snotlout complains about the slow rides and stuff but he's also terrified on the roller coasters (he screams the whole time) there's just really no pleasing him

They cannot for the LIFE of them pick a ride, the twins want to ride EVERYTHING, whatever's closest or fastest, Fishlegs planned the whole day in advance and his plans went out the window immediately, Snotlout and Astrid never want the same thing and bicker about everything and Hiccup is just trying to survive the day lol

Fishlegs is so excitable the whole time bc he loves Disney movies

He wants to get as many character signatures as possible

The twins keep trying to bribe people for their positions in line lol

Astrid also really likes the roller coasters

All of the pictures that they get from being on the roller coasters she looks totally cool like she's just sitting there or wtv

The twins are always making dumb faces or doing something stupid in the pictures (but they don't know when to expect them so they just do stupid stuff the entire time)

Snotlout and Fishlegs look like they're about to cry

Hiccup is having just so much fun he likes that it feels like he's flying

They all wanna try everything but obviously, that's a lot of food so they get one of everything and share it between all 6 of them and it leads to a lot of bickering

Fishlegs insist they take pictures in front of the castles and stuff

Fishlegs actually takes a lot of pictures throughout the day

Astrid hates waiting in line hates it so most of the rides she suggests are just whatever has the shortest wait time

Any of the rides like the like competitive shooting things ones?? idk what they're called, or if there are more than the toy story one which is the only one I remember or if that one is still there or wtv but any of those Astrid KILLS it there's just no competition

The twins are very good at those too

That’s what I’ve got for now I’m so sorry this is so late lol

ily bestie<3

#httyd gang #httyd ot6 #rtte gang #rtte ot6 #httyd headcanon #rtte headcanon #hiccup horrendous haddock iii #hiccup haddock #hiccup #astrid hofferson #astrid #snotlout jorgenson #snotlout #fishlegs ingerman #fishlegs #ruffnut thorston #ruffnut #tuffnut thorston #tuffnut

[tea-and-finalfantasy]

oh my god like i know their names are in fuck-all order bc it's just a mess of aesthetics with some things done bc they're entertaining (kuai liang's name meaning above showing preference for a name that sounds "cool" in general and for the sub-zero reference) but i just. how does any of this work

like unless i'm missing something crucial here (which i could be), i'm really confused. someone say smtn if i'm missing something

ok so bi-han's name is obv his whole first name bc it's hyphenated but kuai liang, despite parts being referred to as the first name or last name, is also his whole first name despite being ??? non-hyphenated and made up of a first name and last name

bc we wouldn't be referring to bi-han by first name alone if we were always stating kuai liang's first and last OR we wouldn't call him kuai liang if one part was his last name/we'd just use the first

but on the other hand going by the info above, kuai is his first name and liang is his last name. when ppl (ex. smoke, kenshi) refer to him as kuai liang, it's done in western order of first name then last name (kuai liang) rather than in the chinese order of last name then first name (liang kuai)--similar to how we call kenshi "kenshi takahashi" in western order of first then family, not calling him "takahashi kenshi" in the japanese order of family than first

but that means bi-han's last name is liang and only we refer to kuai liang as his full name all of the time??? like. unlikely/not true but why is this set up like this. at least fucking hyphenate it if it's his whole name--which is probably is--even though it's like. that's a first name AND last name

like pretend we have two brothers named Mike and John Smith, referred to as such

somehow, both of those names are presented as their first names--making one guy named John Smith as his whole first name--OR we're calling one man Mike and omitting his last name, Smith, while referring to his brother as John Smith

so it's Mike (Smith) and John Smith

or it's Mike and John-Smith (John-Smith then having a last name to go with his combo first-name-last-name first name)

like unless there's an additional naming convention i don't know about, this is what it fucking sounds like????

in the asian localizations, it's liu (family name) kang (first name) (so kang liu in western order) but CANONICALLY in the west, it's liu (first name) kang (family name) (so liu kang in western order)

kung lao's name is tied to his family name and history but raiden, his best friend who is surely close enough to him to just use his first name, uses the whole thing when addressing him? all the time? to the point where it'd make sense as a full first name but it isn't it seems if his family name is mentioned to be important and relevant to his character?

like i guess we do so with liu kang for the most part, the using the whole name all the time (sans johnny's liu almighty joke kinda settling it as liu as his first name), but are we doing this with kuai liang as well then???

also raiden straight up has no last name and is chinese despite the name being japanese (another form of raijin, goes w the raijin/fujin reference, is pronounced rai-din--like rai-jin--but... we don't in canon i guess?)

so like. kung lao calls raiden by his first name only AND it's all we have for him anyways (johnny cage, kenshi takahashi, kung lao which may or may not be his first name and family name?, and raiden no last name) but raiden calls kung lao by his whole name and not just the first? when they're besties and should be able to be on a first name basis if kung lao's name is a first name and a last name?

but then we get scenes where johnny and kenshi are called just. johnny or kenshi bc we're calling them by their first names but kung lao is always kung lao and kuai liang is always kuai liang...

so we're either calling them by their whole government names every time (which also implies bi-han has liang as his last name which could be interesting if it wasn't used bc he'd forsaken it BUT THAT'S NOT THE CASE)

or these men have firstnamelastname + omitted last name. john-smith johnson. doug-lindholm stevenson. if tomas's name was tomas-vrbada (first name) + (something for the last name despite there being a last name now included in the first name)

are we seeing how weird this is if i'm not in fact missing something here

bc even if this was the structure of names or how you'd refer to someone, it doesn't even apply to everyone of the same culture in game so i don't ??? i don't understand. there's not even continuity between characters? if liu kang is (first name + last name) but kuai liang is (first name only)

like. i get that some names are snappier when u say the whole thing even when u don't need to. johnny cage for example. and i know i shouldn't expect coherence from a series that, again, just throws asian stuff in here if it looks cool or sounds cool but i am so confused LOL

#mortal kombat #mk1 #genuinely someone help #using a few name tags to see if anyone else has an answer #kuai liang #kung lao #liu kang

[oathbreakerapologist]

Sortie Thought Journal 1: Christ, Antichrist, God, Bog

(subtitled The Moment I Read that Sal Was Catholic I Knew that Detail Would Become Important and Oh Boy It Has Become Important)

I can't keep adding onto my long-ass Sad Sack thought journal post so these are gonna be separate but in my heart this is just one long reblog chain. anyways.

Question 1: Is Sal a Christ figure?

Several relatively shallow indicators say yes. Firstly the name Salvatore is an obvious connection, then there's the look—while a tan-skinned man with long wavy hair isn't always a Christ figure those two characteristics certainly don't hurt—and then there's the overarching narrative of a man performing work mandated of him by God despite its (physical and emotional) cost to himself (which is not exclusively a Christ narrative, of course, but is similarly suggestive of it). We might also read SADS #5 as a Passion of sorts. On page 170 in SADS #5, Sal takes a sledgehammer to the head, and that sort of head trauma doesn't exactly tend to leave person capable of walking out of a warehouse a few minutes later; in some sense his survival here has the taste of the supernatural.

So we have a Passion of Christ, a rebirth, and, perhaps, a Holy Spirit that now follows in the wake of the reborn Sal—speaking of course of the masked man, masked Sal, who in Sortie differentiates clearly into his own person, as we can see in Sortie #1 circa page 118, that is, as long as we take the emaciated minotaur in that scene to be Sal (I take it to be Sal) (the inscription on page 120 is probably relevant here)—and all that seems suggestive of a Christ figure.

But there are several good reasons to take him as something other than a Christ figure. Perhaps reason number one is that he does not seem to view himself as a Christ figure, at least not as far as I've seen yet. His dependence on Father Morgan for direction is particularly relevant here, as if he were a Christ figure, it's almost non-negotiable that his relationship to God would require no intermediaries. What Sal is told in the confessional booth in Sortie #1 is similarly instructive: the quotes (see Sortie #1 pages 39–42ish) are from Philippians 2:13–15ish (which itself references Deut. 13:5), which is a Pauline epistle, so it's written to an audience at some significant distance from Christ, and that's possibly a relevant indicator of Sal's own narrative position.

But perhaps the most interesting reason to reject Sal as a Christ figure is that the events of SADS #5 are 100% a Passion of Christ, but not for Sal. I read SADS #5 as a clear Christ allegory for Garv (fascinating)—I ought to write a bit more about this but this isn't the post for that—and, well, there's only room for one Christ on the cross. In that reading of SADS #5, Sal still has an interesting part to play (he probably plays several parts, which a better exegete could figure out, but my Christology knowledge is weak enough that I'm only really solid on this one so far) as St. Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with the Holy Lance as he hung upon the cross. Compare SADS #5 page 224.

So Sal is in fact the killer of Christ (not exactly a canonical understanding of St. Longinus, but, I mean, that's what he did) in a Passion reading of SADS #5.

Question 1.1: Is Sal an Antichrist figure?

I'm gonna work on this question in more detail in a later post, but for now, suffice to say that for other reasons (enumerated in more detail in the Long Ass Sad Sack Thought Journal Post) he certainly appears to be an anti-Garv, so, fill in the blanks. (That's not really an answer, and I'm not committed to reading him as an Antichrist figure yet, but I do think that's a good place to start answering that question.)

#not bg3 #sad sack #sortie #my sad sack thought journal

[skunkes]

can u tell us more abt al and smunker lore!!

its not really anything tangible or even interesting its just the current backdrop for my little continuous daydream i explore before sleeps

Foundational info:

(in past) Cow Al is struggling to recover from emotional crisis experienced in college (traumatic relationship), + tries to hold down some jawb but finds himself unable to stay in that environment away from home (none of his "friends" acknowledge the turmoil which makes him feel more lost), + moves back to family farm.

He likes doing different kinds of manual jobs which are always needed around + he does have that "my parents are my best friends" thing going on so he kind of just stays there to present day.

He lives in a little, idk what else to call it but a mobile home, but its the longer rectangular ones ykwim, some ways off the main Hub. (Also there's lots of focus on community in my furryverse + there's lots of non al family furs living in and working on the place + sharing resources and work and such. Its not a HUGE place but its big ^_^)

Anyway, Smunker moves in to the little forest that you cld walk to from the farm area. He lives in a little sunken tree stump den thing hee heeeee. Not many other furs live there, + there's actually more Lesser Animals (what i call just regular non furry animals) present

-

The two of em meet at a grocery store, there was a relevant little point here that I forgot, which was that one of em wasn't even supposed to be there that first day for (x reason). Whatever.

The area that Cow Al lives in doesn't have very many Different looking furs. Al's family is actually all natural colors too. So he sees this pink smunk and goes a little insane (positive) (he promises later its not just because smunker looks different, but it was what drew his eye) but they never really interact (al keeps going to that same store Just In Case lol) until one day (cliche incoming) the little wheeled ladder that helps smaller furs get to higher shelves isn't available + he gets to help smunker get something from high up (he all but runs to be able to be the person to do this LOL)

Al actually has game + is confident, he's just out of practice from prior Events. He loves being social and misses making/being able to make friends so he does in fact manage to build up on interactions with Smunker...they become friends ➡️ realize they live close to each other.

Al actually accidentally damages smunker's home at some point by accident, + houses them while it's fixed, and there's another instance where smunker gets his leg caught in an illegal bear/foot trap on the walk back home at night, and then Al is also adamant on keeping an eye on him while he heals (+ is also the one who had to go help him get out of said trap...its literally a whole dramatic thing.)

I think I'm keeping both of these events as canon because it leads to the funny little situation of Al being like no wayyyyy i actually for real like this guy now that we've spent more time together like this...i need him to sleep on my belly to live :3 and cant stop having weird dreams about him. Idk if he feels the same. heeeeeeeeeelp. While skunker is like. Im for real going to kill myself for inconveniencing this person. He probably thinks im the biggest nuisance ever. I've overstayed my welcome for sure.

I haven't yet decided on the event that gets em Together. Might just be a little "date" at nearby ducky pond or something LOL. Skunker is shocked either way like huhh I didn't even know you liked me... Al has to get used to having a small partner again + navigate a relationship that doesn't suck ass again. Smunker has to get used to having big nice bf who cares about them. They like each other

#oc text #long post - #skunk mail #anonymous #dis is all subject to change and also its very boring